You Don’t Have to Be the Strong One All the Time: Learning to Lean on Love

You don’t have to be the strong one all the time. Discover how letting yourself lean on love — instead of carrying it all alone — can help you find peace, connection, and your own inner calm again.

You’ve always been the strong one. The one people count on. The one who keeps it together when everything feels like it’s falling apart. You show up, you handle it, you keep moving — because you have to. And most of the time, you don’t even stop to think about it. It’s just what you do.

But sometimes, late at night or in those quiet in-between moments, you feel the weight of it all pressing down. You wonder what it would be like to let someone else carry some of it — just for a moment. To be the one who doesn’t have to hold it all together. To be the one who can exhale and say, “I can’t do this alone right now.”

The truth is, being strong is beautiful. But being only strong is exhausting. Even the most capable, caring people need a safe place to fall. The problem is that when you’ve spent so long taking care of everyone else, it can start to feel uncomfortable — or even wrong — to let someone take care of you. You might worry it’ll make you seem weak, needy, or too much. So instead, you swallow your emotions, smile, and keep going, all the while carrying an invisible load that no one else can see.

In Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT), I often work with people who have learned to protect themselves by staying strong and keeping their feelings under wraps. Somewhere along the way, they picked up the message that showing emotion makes them vulnerable — and vulnerability feels unsafe. So they shut it down. But underneath that calm, capable exterior is often a heart that’s longing to feel seen, supported, and loved for exactly who they are — not for what they do or how well they hold it together.

One of the most healing parts of EFT is that it helps people reconnect with those deeper emotional needs in a safe, compassionate way. Together, we slow things down and gently explore what’s really happening beneath the surface — the fears, the hopes, the moments you wish someone would just be there for you. Through this process, you start to see that vulnerability isn’t weakness at all. It’s the doorway to connection.

When you can begin to express what’s inside — even just a little — something powerful happens. You stop feeling like you have to fight your battles alone. You start to let others in, to trust that love can be a source of strength, not something that makes you fragile. You learn that leaning on someone doesn’t mean you’re falling apart; it means you’re allowing yourself to be human.

It’s such a relief when you realize you don’t have to do it all by yourself anymore. The armor can soften. The tears can come. And instead of feeling like you’re breaking, you start to feel like you’re finally breathing.

At Inner Calm Counseling, I help individuals and couples learn to lean into love — to build relationships where emotional support feels safe, not scary. Through Emotionally Focused Therapy, we work together to uncover what keeps you in that “strong one” role and help you find a new kind of strength — one rooted in connection, authenticity, and care.

Because you deserve to feel held, too. You deserve a space where you can rest, let down your guard, and know that you don’t have to carry it all alone anymore.

Shoshana Ort, LCSW, is the founder of Inner Calm Counseling, where she helps individuals and couples strengthen emotional connection, heal from disconnection, and rediscover safety and closeness through Emotionally Focused Therapy (EFT). Licensed in Colorado and New Jersey, Shoshana believes that true calm comes from feeling safe enough to be fully seen and supported.