Some nights, the heaviest thing you carry isn't the weight of the world but the exhausting silence of pretending everything is okay.
Sun is setting on this lovely summer evening. I'm sitting on a sofa with my favourite sparkling water in hand, looking through the window. I notice many thoughts passing through my mind like a train track. I allow them to pass: some of them are funny like from a comic scene, some of them wandering into the future and causing my body to tense. I don’t stop them; I allow them to stream. They are only thoughts. I don’t need to fixate on them, as I know for sure it will cause anxiety. I become an observer for myself. It’s like watching a movie inside my mind. How fascinating.
However, there was one specific thought that made me pause, catch it and sit with it. The thought was: ‘Why do people choose me to be their counsellor?’ My eyes froze on the beautiful flower on the windowsill while I kept this thought closely to myself.
People want to bloom like this flower in front of me. They want to find themselves - their true self, not the one who has been faking for years just to fit in. People are exhausted by this performance of saying: “I’m fine, everything is normal,” while quietly crumbling underneath the weight of expectations. They are exhausted from feeling lonely within a relationship, looking into their partner’s eyes and seeing empty space when their heart is screaming, ‘Please tell me you are truly with me.’
They are breaking down from carrying too many responsibilities, always caring for others but completely neglecting themselves. They are tired of the tears that flood that one secure hiding place where they finally let their guard down, just to allow themselves to simply exist.
Can you feel the weight in these words? I certainly can because I have been there myself. I had been there on those long nights when my eyes were closed but my mind was racing with endless worst-case scenarios and the constant fear. I cried under the duvet cover to hide my vulnerability from the world because I was always the one expected to hold everything together. I wore that exhaustion like a second skin, believing that asking for help was a sign of weakness.
It wasn't until I truly learned to allow myself to be human, to become friends with my own emotions, feelings, fears and insecurities, that everything shifted. It happened when I finally allowed myself to fall in love with life as a person who knew and honoured her own needs rather than abandoning herself to please everyone else.
This is the exact reason people walk through my therapy door.
I show up as a human first. Not as a textbook wrapped in clinical language, not as a list of credentials or accumulated clinical hours, but as a real person with real lived experience. I understand the quiet desperation of trying to keep up appearances. I can deeply feel the pain you have been carrying in silence for years. I know that familiar, aching need for change because that protective persona of yours is finally breaking apart and trying to keep everything intact has simply become too heavy to bear.
You don’t need to perform when you are with me. You don’t need to wear a mask or pretend you have everything under control. I am here to hold your pain safely and help you land it gently so you can finally access the profound beauty you hold inside.
Has anyone ever told you how amazing and resilient you truly are? If not, you can find that out for yourself. You don't have to keep living in survival mode. You deserve to find calm in the very middle of the chaos and you deserve to find true safety in love.
The mask cracks, the performance ends and the real life begins the exact moment you stop running from yourself. Step out from the shadows of your own endurance, drop the heavy armour and let’s finally bring you home.
Warmly,
Gintare
DipCouns. PGCERT in Relationship Counselling, MBACP (Accred)
25/07/2026