By the end of this page, you can stop holding everything underwater — so the bone-deep exhaustion will finally start to lift and you'll have energy for your life again, not just for getting through it.

The Weight You've Been Carrying

You're running on empty. Not the kind of tired that sleep fixes—something deeper. A bone-level exhaustion that makes everything harder. Focusing at work. Being patient with people. Getting through a single day without feeling like you're dragging yourself across the finish line.

And here's what makes it worse: you've been trying so hard.

Every time a wave of grief about your grandmother surfaces, you push it down. Every time fear about your partner's health creeps in, you tell yourself to stop being ridiculous, that worrying won't help. You check your phone constantly during your commute—just to make sure everything's okay. You avoid certain topics because you know they'll make you upset.

This is what "handling it" looks like. Pushing through. Staying strong. Not falling apart.

So why are you more exhausted than ever?

The Exhausting Math

One person in therapy described it perfectly: "It's like holding a beach ball underwater all day. The second I stop pushing, it pops right back up."

That image captures something most people never examine—the sheer energy required to keep difficult emotions suppressed. Every worried thought about your partner requires effort to push away. Every pang of grief about your grandmother demands attention to redirect. Every anxious what-if needs you to actively not think about it.

Now here's the question worth sitting with: After months of holding that beach ball underwater, are the difficult thoughts coming up more often, less often, or about the same?

If your experience is like most people's, the honest answer is more often. And they feel stronger somehow.

So you're using massive amounts of energy to push these thoughts away. And the result is... more thoughts, more often, feeling more intense.

Does that seem like a good return on investment?

The Paradox No One Warned You About

Here's what research reveals, and it runs completely counter to common sense: trying to suppress unwanted thoughts actually increases their frequency and intensity.

This isn't motivational fluff. Studies consistently show that the act of pushing something away requires you to keep monitoring for it—which keeps it active in your mind. You can't watch for something without thinking about it. The very effort to not think about your partner's health means some part of your brain is constantly scanning for those thoughts.

It's like trying to fall asleep by focusing really hard on not being awake. The harder you try, the more awake you become.

This explains something that's probably been confusing you: You've been fighting harder than ever, yet the anxiety is worse than ever. That's not a sign that something is wrong with you. That's the predictable result of a strategy that works backwards.

What's Actually Draining You

Here's the hidden truth most people miss: The exhaustion isn't coming from your emotions. It's coming from fighting them.

Think about that for a moment. You've probably assumed that the grief and fear themselves are what's depleting you. But consider this—when your partner was last discharged from the hospital and you spent time together at home, were you actively wrestling with worried thoughts the whole time?

Probably not. The worry was still there in the background, but you weren't using energy to suppress it constantly. You were present with them. And despite the worry being present, you felt more at ease—not less.

The emotion was there. But you weren't at war with it. And you had energy for your life.

This reveals something that changes everything: You don't need to eliminate difficult feelings to function. You need to stop spending all your energy fighting them.

The Safety Behaviors Trap

There's another piece to this puzzle. Those things you do to feel safer—checking your phone during the commute, avoiding certain conversations, seeking reassurance—they're actually making things worse.

Here's how: When you check on your partner and everything's fine, you feel a wave of relief. That relief feels good. It feels like the checking worked. So you do it again next time.

But research shows this relief works like a high-interest loan. You feel better for a moment, but the anxiety debt accumulates. Every time you use a safety behavior, you miss the chance to discover something important: that you can handle uncertainty without the safety net.

Your brain never gets the message that you're capable of tolerating distress. So it keeps sounding the alarm. And you keep needing to check. And the cycle tightens.

The hypervigilance, the constant worry, the tiredness, the irritability—it's all connected. Avoidance leads to temporary relief, which increases vigilance, which requires more avoidance, which causes exhaustion, which makes everything feel more threatening.

It spirals. And the way out isn't fighting harder.

The Opposite of Fighting

So if fighting doesn't work, what does? The answer feels counterintuitive: accommodation, not elimination.

This doesn't mean ignoring everything or letting yourself "fall apart"—which is probably your fear. It means something much more specific.

Think about when you're cooking on the weekend or watching TV with your partner. Where is your attention in those moments?

Outside yourself. On the food, the show, your partner. Not stuck in your head.

The worries might still exist in the background—like noise in another room—but you're not focused on them. You're not spending energy pushing them away. Your attention has somewhere else to go.

This is the key that changes everything: When you're anxious, your attention locks inward. You start monitoring your body. Scanning for threats. Replaying worries. This internal focus creates a feedback loop—your brain interprets all that inward attention as confirmation that something must be wrong.

But external attention—genuinely engaging with what's outside you—interrupts that loop. Not by forcing thoughts away, but by giving your attention somewhere else to land.

A Simple Way to Practice This

There's a technique built on this principle that you can use anywhere. It's called 5-4-3-2-1, and it systematically shifts your attention outward through your senses.

Right now, name five things you can see.

Then four things you can hear.

Three things you can physically feel (your feet on the floor, the texture of your clothing).

Two things you can smell.

One thing you can taste.

What typically happens when people do this—especially when they actually slow down and engage each sense—is that their breathing slows. Their chest feels less tight. They feel lighter.

Not because the worries disappeared. They didn't. But because attention shifted from the internal monitoring loop to the external world. The difficult thoughts can still be there—like background noise—while you engage with what's real and present.

That's accommodation, not avoidance. You're not suppressing anything. You're just giving your attention somewhere else to go.

How to Build This Skill

The key is practice—and not just when you're overwhelmed. Use this technique:

During your commute. Instead of checking your phone constantly, engage your senses with what's around you. What do you see outside the window? What sounds are in the car or train?

At your desk. Before a meeting, take 30 seconds to ground yourself in the room. Notice five things you can see.

While cooking. You're probably already doing this naturally—the sizzle of food, the colors of ingredients, the smells. Lean into it intentionally.

The more you practice external attention when you're relatively calm, the more accessible it becomes when anxiety spikes. Think of it like training a muscle. You don't wait until you need to lift something heavy to start exercising.

Research suggests practicing twice daily for several weeks to build what's called "attentional flexibility"—the ability to shift your focus deliberately rather than having it hijacked by worry.

What Changes When You Stop Fighting

When you stop pouring energy into suppressing emotions, something shifts. Not the emotions themselves—given what you're going through, grief and fear make complete sense. You're facing real losses and real uncertainty.

But the war ends. And wars are expensive.

The energy you've been spending on internal battles becomes available for other things. Being present with your partner when they're home. Focusing at work. Having patience with yourself and others.

The grief over your grandmother, the fear for your partner, the sadness about the wedding you had to postpone—those feelings don't need to disappear for you to function. They need room to exist without you treating them as enemies to defeat.

Because here's the final piece: when you treat your emotions as the enemy, you're fighting yourself. That's exhausting by definition. And it's a war you cannot win.

What's Next

There's something we haven't addressed yet. You mentioned that every hospital emergency visit has become its own source of trauma—having to re-explain your partner's condition each time, the uncertainty, the fear. Those recurring high-stress situations require more than just attention techniques.

There are specific ways to build resilience for those repeated difficult situations. Ways to prepare your nervous system so you don't feel like you're reliving the trauma with each visit. Ways to create a sense of agency when everything feels out of control.

That's a different skill set than what we've covered here—and it builds directly on what you've just learned about how attention and avoidance work.

But first, spend a week practicing. Notice what happens to your energy when you stop holding the beach ball underwater. Notice what it feels like to let the worry exist in the background while your attention engages with life.

You've been working so hard at something that was never going to work. Now you know why. And you know what to try instead.