Feeling like a burden to those around you can be a heavy weight to carry. You may feel this way because you are going through a particularly tough life stage, such as divorce, losing a job, or physical illness. This feeling can also stem from deeper roots, like low self-esteem or chronic health conditions. Past experiences, like having critical parents or a toxic relationship, can also play a role.
The good news is there are ways to cope. To stop feeling like a burden, you will need to focus on building your self-esteem and increasing your self-care. Additionally, you may need to increase your autonomy and learn how to communicate these feelings to others. You may also want to begin therapy if this feeling stems from a mental health disorder or previous trauma.
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Reasons You Are Feeling Like a Burden
Feeling like a burden can come from many different experiences. Maybe you’re going through a tough period and need more support, or you’re dealing with ongoing challenges like mental health or chronic illness. Past experiences, like being made to feel this way in relationships, or holding yourself to impossible standards, can also play a part. Understanding why these feelings arise is the first step toward challenging and changing them.
Here are some reasons why you may feel like a burden:
Low Self-Esteem
Low self-esteem can make you feel like you don’t deserve to be cared for or loved. This can create doubt about whether others genuinely want to be there for you, leading to the belief that asking for help is too much. When you don’t see your own value, it’s easy to feel like you’re placing a burden on others.
When you struggle with feelings of worthlessness, it can be hard to see what you bring to your relationships. You might feel like you take more than you give and overlook your own contributions. You may worry that others spend time with you or do things for you only out of pity or a sense of obligation.
Unhealthy Parent(s), Romantic Partners or Friends
Sometimes, feeling like a burden comes from a toxic relationship dynamic. A parent, partner, or friend might always swoop in to rescue or fix things, leading you to believe you’re incapable of doing things on your own. Or, they might be overly critical, demeaning, or controlling and even tell you directly that you’re a burden or helpless and couldn’t survive without them. Over time, you might start questioning your own worth and believing what they say.
If this unhealthy dynamic occurs within a parent-child relationship, it can be particularly damaging. The things your parents said to you as a child often become your inner voice later in life. So, if a parent is emotionally abusive, overly critical, or scolding, you might find yourself talking negatively to yourself in the same way. This can set the stage for feeling unworthy, not good enough, or like a burden
Difficult Life Stage
Difficult life stages, like losing a job or going through relationship changes or breakups, can leave you needing more support from others than usual. When you find yourself relying on others more, those feelings of being a burden can creep in or come back. And feeling like a burden can make a tough time even tougher by making it harder to reach out for the help you need.
Mental Health Struggles
Many mental health conditions can cause low self-esteem and negative self-talk, which can contribute to feeling burdensome. Depression, anxiety, and OCD can all lead to ruminating on negative thoughts like “I’m a burden” or “I hate myself for bothering people.” Serious conditions like bipolar disorder or schizophrenia can lead to paranoid thinking like “everyone is talking about what a burden I am.”
Borderline personality disorder, in particular, can lead to feeling like a burden. Some of the symptoms of BPD include a deep fear of abandonment and a distorted or unstable self-image. For people with borderline personality disorder, feeling like a burden in a relationship can be part of an ongoing and disruptive pattern.1
Financial Dependence
Being financially dependent on a parent, partner, or someone else can deeply impact your self-esteem. It can make you feel less capable and take away some of your independence. Since money is tied to so many aspects of life, not being able to provide for yourself can easily bring up feelings of being a burden.
Perfectionistic Tendencies
When you have perfectionistic tendencies, you are likely never to meet your own high expectations for yourself. When you don’t live up to these expectations, especially when it comes to needing help or support from others, it can bring on those feelings of being a burden. Perfectionism can make it tough to accept that everyone needs help sometimes, leaving you feeling less independent or capable than you would like.
Physical Illness
When you’re dealing with physical illness, an injury, or recovering from surgery, you might find yourself needing more help than usual—whether it’s with meals, getting around, medical appointments, or daily tasks. It’s a vulnerable time, and it’s easy to start feeling like a burden.
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Impact of Feeling Like a Burden
When you feel like a burden, it can weigh heavily on your sense of self-worth and well-being. This feeling often creates a cycle of negative thoughts and emotions that affect how you see yourself and your relationships with others. You might start to withdraw, believing that you’re protecting others from the inconvenience you think you cause. In reality, this withdrawal can lead to isolation, anxiety, and even depression.
Impacts of feeling like a burden include:
- Strain on relationships: When you feel like a burden, you might find yourself constantly seeking reassurance from others, which can start to wear on them and create tension or conflict. If you stop communicating your needs, it can also lead to resentment and distance in your relationships.
- Social withdrawal: Feeling like a burden can lead you to pull away from others, resulting in self-isolation.
- Increased depression and/or anxiety: Feeling like a burden can trap you in a cycle of loneliness and isolation, which often feeds into depression. Isolation doesn’t just come with depression; it can also make it worse. The constant worry about being a burden can also add to your anxiety, making everything feel even heavier.
- Unwillingness to ask for help: When you feel like a burden, you might hesitate to ask for help, even when you really need it. This can lead to feelings of isolation and prevent others from having the opportunity to support you.
- Chronic stress and burnout: Feeling like a burden can lead to overwork, perfectionism, and trying to prove your worth. This level of stress and busyness is unsustainable for most people and can eventually lead to chronic stress and burnout.
- Suicide risk: Research shows that feeling like a burden, particularly in older adults, can lead to a higher risk of suicide. Many people who struggle with suicidal ideation feel that they are a burden and tell themselves that others would be better without them.2
How to Stop Feeling Like a Burden
To stop feeling like a burden, begin practicing self-compassion and learning to love yourself because this feeling is often rooted in low self-esteem or feeling like your needs don’t matter. If there are areas in your life where you feel too dependent on others, set goals to build autonomy. Also, focus on appreciating the support your loved ones give you without feeling overly indebted, and offer your own support in return. We’ve included worksheets throughout this section to help you stop feeling like a burden.
Here are eight ways tips for coping with feeling like a burden:
1. Challenge Negative Self-Talk
Negative self-talk can play a huge role in feeling like a burden. Challenging and reframing these beliefs and learning to replace them with positive self-talk and healthier thoughts can be very helpful.
Here are a few strategies to challenge negative self-perceptions:
- Cognitive restructuring: Cognitive restructuring is a technique that helps people challenge and replace their negative thoughts with more helpful, healthy thoughts. For example, a person who says to themselves, “I’m a burden,” would notice that thought and then check in on whether it is actually based on fact. Most likely, it is not, and the thought would be replaced with something more positive like, “It’s okay for me to have needs.”
- Checking the facts: Checking the facts is a skill used in dialectical behavior therapy (DBT). It involves noticing any time you start to have a negative thought about yourself and checking it against what is actually true. For example, you may think to yourself, “My parents never call me. They don’t care.” You could then check to see when they actually called you and whether you have called them. This can help change the stories you may be telling yourself that contribute to feeling bad about yourself.
- Put the thought in a bubble: Putting the thought in a bubble is a skill from acceptance and commitment therapy (ACT). The next time you think negatively about yourself or feel like a burden, imagine putting those words into a bubble above your head and then watching them gently float away. This can help you detach from the thought and not give it so much power. It’s just a thought; it’s not reality.
- Act as if: Sometimes, it’s helpful to act your way into feeling good about yourself. Let yourself imagine how you would act if you did not have negative thoughts about yourself and then do those exact things. If you didn’t feel like a burden, would you reach out to someone? Would you ask for help? Identify what you would do differently and then do it, regardless of your thoughts.
2. Pay Attention to What Triggers Your Feelings
Feeling like a burden doesn’t just come out of nowhere – this thought is usually sparked by specific situations, words, or actions that make you feel this way. Maybe it’s when someone sighs heavily after you ask for help or when a friend cancels plans last minute. By recognizing these triggers, you can start to understand why certain situations make you feel like a burden and see patterns in your reactions. Once you know what triggers these feelings, you can prepare for them in the future so you’re not caught off guard and can handle them more calmly and compassionately.
3. Practice Self-Love
Feeling like a burden can become a self-fulfilling prophecy, causing you to withdraw and hesitate to ask for help, which can reinforce the feeling of being a burden. Practicing self-love directly combats this by challenging those negative thoughts and nurturing your own well-being. There are several ways to practice extending love to yourself. The more you practice these things, the less awkward they will feel.
Here are some simple ways to practice self-love:
- Give yourself a heart hug: Rub your palms together briskly until they feel warm, and place them over your heart with gentle pressure. Imagine extending love to yourself and saying to yourself, “I love you.”3
- Do a loving-kindness meditation: Loving-kindness meditation is a type of mindfulness meditation focused on extending love and kindness to oneself and others. It has been shown to increase self-compassion, increase feelings of well-being, and reduce stress.4
- Visualize being and feeling loved: Think of something that helps you feel positive or loving feelings, like a family member, a favorite place, or a pet. Cross your arms over your chest with a hand on each shoulder and slowly tap on alternating sides, allowing yourself to feel the positive feelings associated with your image.
- Do a quick digital detox: Take a short break from social media. Turn off notifications and silence your phone for an hour. Immerse yourself in a calming activity like reading a book, taking a walk in nature, or listening to music you enjoy.
- Name your strengths: Take a few minutes before bed to reflect on 3 of your personal strengths that helped you get through the day. Even if it seems like an insignificant strength, noticing where you helped yourself throughout the day will improve your self-love.
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4. Increase Your Autonomy
If you are feeling like a burden, it can be helpful to increase your confidence and autonomy. When you feel confident in your ability to meet your own needs and care for yourself, this can take some of the pressure off of relationships with others and help you feel less dependent. This opens up the door for a mutual give and take, which is healthy in relationships.3
5. Communicate About How You Feel
Communicating with others about how you feel can help alleviate the feeling. Talk to them about how you feel like a burden, and let them know that this is something you would really like to work on and change. It’s important not to put the responsibility on them to fix this for you, but at the same time, let them know how they can help.
Here are some tips for how to communicate with loved ones about feeling like a burden:
- Pick the right time and place: Find a good time and place when the other person is available and willing to listen without distractions.
- Be transparent: Be open and honest about how you feel.
- Be specific: For example, instead of “I feel like a burden,” say, “I feel like I’m putting stress on you when I need to ask for rides to work.”
- Ask for honesty: Ask your loved ones to be honest with you if there are ever times when they’re not available to meet a request or need from you. Encourage them to say no when needed.
- Make it collaborative: Work together to come up with solutions that work for both you and the other person. For example, maybe they are completely fine with giving you a ride to work two times a week but not every day.
- Keep communication ongoing: Continue to communicate openly and honestly about your needs and check in with the other person regularly to ensure they are not feeling over-extended.
6. Do a “Pay It Forward” Act of Kindness
Paying it forward with acts of kindness can help you feel like you are contributing something positive to your community and less like you are a burden. These could be simple acts of kindness that don’t have to cost anything at all but are considerate towards others.
Here are a few “pay it forward” acts of kindness to try:
- Give a compliment to a stranger
- Hold open the door for someone with a stroller or in a wheelchair
- Offer to pay for the person’s coffee behind you in line
- Make a donation to a non-profit or charity
- Volunteer at a soup kitchen or food pantry
- Donate blood
7. Begin Gratitude Journaling
Gratitude journaling involves regularly taking time to reflect on your gratitude. These can include people who bring positivity to your life, health, pets, or even something as simple as noticing a pretty flower or a blue sky. Focusing on the things you’re grateful for can help shift your attention away from feeling like a burden. Journaling can be done with paper and pen, but there are also many different journaling apps that can help you along the way.
8. Talk to a Therapist or Counselor
Sometimes, feeling like a burden comes from more deeply rooted experiences of trauma, abandonment, or loss that aren’t likely to go away on their own or with self-help. Working with a licensed mental health professional can be extremely helpful for breaking those patterns, healing from past experiences, and learning to love yourself and value your own needs.
Reaching out and asking for help is scary for people who struggle with feeling like a burden, but it is also imperative for growth and healthy relationships. It’s important to overcome the fear of appearing weak or being more burdensome in order to reach out. It might help to let the mental health professional know that asking for help is hard for you. Remember, they understand the challenges of feeling like a burden and can provide tools and support to help you rewrite that narrative.
Worksheets for Increasing Self-Love
How to Find Professional Support
Finding a therapist can help you overcome your feelings of being a burden, help you heal from past trauma and difficult relationships, and improve your self-esteem. A local therapist directory is a great way to find a therapist who specializes in your unique concerns. If you prefer to see a therapist remotely, there are many different online therapy services that can match you with a qualified therapist. Online-Therapy.com is a service tailor-made for cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), which is especially effective at combating negative self-talk.
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In My Experience
“Feeling like a burden can have a profound impact on a person’s life and relationships. It often comes from a past history of painful or traumatic experiences that contribute to negative beliefs about oneself and one’s worth. The good news is this can absolutely change with therapy, and a person can go on to love themselves and have healthy relationships.
As a trauma therapist, if a client came to me with feelings of being a burden, I would start by exploring their past history. I would want to know about their family or origin, past traumatic events, and other contributing factors that feed into negative self-worth. I would then help them build their support system, heal from past events, and replace their negative self-talk with healthy self-esteem.”
Feeling Like a Burden? Infographics
ChoosingTherapy.com strives to provide our readers with mental health content that is accurate and actionable. We have high standards for what can be cited within our articles. Acceptable sources include government agencies, universities and colleges, scholarly journals, industry and professional associations, and other high-integrity sources of mental health journalism. Learn more by reviewing our full editorial policy.
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Bohus, M., Stoffers-Winterling, J., Sharp, C., Krause-Utz, A., Schmahl, C., & Lieb, K. (2021). Borderline personality disorder. The Lancet, 398(10310), 1528-1540.
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Cukrowicz, K. C., Cheavens, J. S., Van Orden, K. A., Ragain, R. M., & Cook, R. L. (2011). Perceived burdensomeness and suicide ideation in older adults. Psychology and aging, 26(2), 331–338. https://doi.org/10.1037/a0021836
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Wirth, J. H., Allen, A. B., & Zitek, E. M. (2020). Feeling like a burden: Self-compassion buffers against the negative effects of a poor performance. Social Psychology, 51(4), 219–238. https://doi.org/10.1027/1864-9335/a000411
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Totzeck, C., Teismann, T., Hofmann, S. G., von Brachel, R., Pflug, V., Wannemüller, A., & Margraf, J. (2020). Loving-kindness meditation promotes mental health in university students. Mindfulness, 11(7), 1623–1631. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12671-020-01375-w
We regularly update the articles on ChoosingTherapy.com to ensure we continue to reflect scientific consensus on the topics we cover, to incorporate new research into our articles, and to better answer our audience’s questions. When our content undergoes a significant revision, we summarize the changes that were made and the date on which they occurred. We also record the authors and medical reviewers who contributed to previous versions of the article. Read more about our editorial policies here.
Author: Michelle Risser, LISW-S(No Change)
Reviewer: Kristen Fuller, MD (No Change)
Primary Changes: Revised sections titled “Reasons You Are Feeling Like a Burden” and “How to Stop Feeling Like a Burden.” New material written by Faith Watson Doppelt, LPC, LAC, and medically reviewed by Naveed Saleh, MD, MS. Fact-checked and edited for improved readability and clarity.
Author: Michelle Risser, LISW-S (No Change)
Reviewer: Kristen Fuller, MD (No Change)
Primary Changes: Fact-checked and edited for improved readability and clarity.
Author: Michelle Risser, LISW-S
Reviewer: Kristen Fuller, MD
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