You’re still functioning. From the outside you look absolutely fine, possibly even capable. You’re the one holding things together, being sensible, not adding to the problem.

But there is a specific kind of tired that comes from loving someone who is struggling, and if you’re in it, you’ll know exactly what I mean. It’s not the tired of a long week. It’s the tired of always being a little bit on, always monitoring, always calibrating your responses around someone else’s state. Of having versions of the same conversation so many times you could do your half in your sleep. Of quietly rearranging your life, and your needs, and your sense of what’s normal, around something you didn’t choose.

The feelings you’re not supposed to have

Alongside the worry and the love, there are usually feelings that are harder to admit to. Frustration, anger, resentment. The occasional wish, shameful and human, that this wasn’t your life. A kind of flat, dull exhaustion that’s hard to distinguish from despair. Perhaps never feeling present.

People who are supporting someone they love often feel they’re not allowed these feelings – or that having them means they’re failing, or that they should push through because at least they don’t have the actual problem. So the feelings get shoved down, and the supporting continues, and the tank gets emptier. And the feelings of guilt for having difficult feelings can be another burden you carry around.

You are allowed to need support too

This isn’t a small thing you’re carrying. The emotional cost of what you’re doing is real, and it accumulates, and it deserves to be taken seriously – not because it’s worse than what the person you love is going through, but because it’s yours, and it counts.

Counselling for people in this position isn’t about fixing the other person, and it isn’t about deciding whether to stay or go, and it isn’t a referendum on whether you’re doing enough. It’s a room where you get to put down what you’ve been carrying, and say the unsayable things, and be the one who’s looked after for an hour. And to learn about the importance of self-compassion.

You can’t keep giving from nothing. That’s not a moral failing – it’s just physics. If this is where you are, please do get in touch.