Feeling Like a Burden in Adulthood: Causes and Relief
Feeling like a burden doesn’t mean you are one. Instead, it often reflects a history of stress, trauma, or relationships where you learned to stay small to stay safe. In context, this pattern might be understandable, but it doesn’t have to define your adult relationships or sense of self-worth.
If you suspect that feelings of being a burden stem from a history of trauma or self worth issues, a mental health professional can help. They can assist you in processing underlying causes and provide avenues for healing.
This page can also help you understand the causes of and relief options for feeling like a burden by exploring:
- What it means to feel like a burden, signs you might have this feeling, and why it can be so convincing
- What causes someone to feel like a burden
- Ways to begin letting go of this feeling, and therapy to address negative beliefs
- Answers to commonly asked questions about feeling like a burden in adulthood
What Does It Mean to “Feel Like a Burden?”
According to the American Psychological Association, around 62% of adults don’t talk about their stress because they don’t want to burden others.1 This can stop us from showing up as our authentic selves and making genuine connections.
Many people might not even be aware they’re carrying this belief until it starts to impact their lives. So how can you detect that you have this belief?
Signs That You Feel Like a Burden to Others
Sometimes it takes really paying attention to notice our patterns because they’ve become so ingrained in attempts to stay safe. Some signs that you might be feeling like a burden, or are struggling with self-worth, are:
- Apologizing for things that don’t need an apology, like before asking a question, offering an opinion, or simply existing.
- Avoiding asking for help and convincing yourself you can handle it alone.
- Downplaying your emotions, telling yourself that your stress, sadness, or overwhelm is “not a big deal” or that other people have it worse.
- Feeling guilty when other people support you, like offering a ride or listening to you vent.
- Second-guessing your place in relationships, instead of trusting that people like you for who you are.
- Staying quiet in group conversations, avoiding voicing preferences, or choosing whatever opinion inconveniences others the least.
- Showing up for others with enormous generosity, but struggling to accept the same in return.
- Feeling responsible for other people’s emotions.
- Having difficulty resting or slowing down.
Why the Feeling Is So Convincing
Feeling like a burden is so convincing because the mind tends to treat old emotional patterns as though they are present-day facts. When you’ve spent years bracing for criticism, rejection, or disappointment, your nervous system becomes trained to anticipate it.
This means that even neutral interactions can trigger an outsized sense of guilt or self-doubt. For example, someone taking a moment too long to reply to a text, a friend canceling plans, or a partner asking a simple question.
What Causes Us to Feel Like a Burden?
The belief of being a burden usually comes from a combination of messages, experiences, and emotional patterns that we’ve subtly internalized for years. Some of the things that contribute to this feeling might be:
Early Family Experiences
Our childhood family environments often influence how we develop self-esteem.2 Therefore, for many of us, feeling like a burden starts long before adulthood – beginning in childhood because of our family dynamics. For instance, if we grew up in an environment where caregivers minimized our feelings or where support came with strings attached, we may have learned that our needs were inconvenient.
In other situations, we may have grown up taking care of siblings or parents, learning to put others’ needs above our own. Or we may have learned to sense tension in the home and adapt by becoming low-maintenance. In time, the idea that “I shouldn’t need anything” becomes the default setting rather than a conscious choice.
Trauma and Self-Worth Issues
People who experience trauma often have thoughts that reflect intense negative core beliefs about themselves.3 For example, when someone has experienced neglect, abuse, or unpredictable relationships, they might hold internalized messages like If I take up space, something bad will happen. When the body becomes trained to anticipate conflict, hurt, or rejection, you may learn that your presence causes strain, even when it doesn’t.
Mental Health Conditions
Certain mental health conditions can worsen feelings of being a burden. They tend to create a cycle where the mental health issue is telling us we’re a burden, while at the same time, feeling like a burden increases the issue.Some mental health conditions that could reinforce this feeling are:
Depression: Feeling like a burden and depression influence each other, where the depression may tell us that we’re “too much” or undeserving of care. In turn, this can cause us to feel more depressed.- Anxiety and guilt: Anxiety and guilt symptoms might turn minor requests for help into imagined disasters. For example, you might imagine that asking a friend for a ride could suddenly warp into them resenting you or feeling obligated.
- Chronic illness, disability, or financial hardship: When we’re already dealing with limitations, it’s easy to worry that every request adds to someone else’s load. We might feel too dependent or guilty that our constant needs are overshadowing someone else’s.
These conditions don’t create the belief that we’re a burden; instead, they magnify the negative inner voice that is already there. Feeling like a burden is also one of the suicidal ideation warning signs.6 So it’s something to pay attention to and seek crisis support services if these feelings worsen.
Social and Cultural Pressures
Western culture often prizes independence, productivity, and self-sufficiency. So needing support is often framed as “weakness,” especially in the views of masculinity and in communities where stoicism or self-sacrifice is the norm.4 This pressure can turn ordinary human needs for comfort, help, or reassurance into sources of guilt.Internalized Shame
Shame has a way of convincing us we’re “too much” and is negatively related to self-esteem.5 It narrows our sense of worth and makes vulnerability feel risky. Shame and guilt affect mental health, making these feelings feel like the truth. This is often why people who feel like a burden struggle to believe reassurance, even when it comes from people who genuinely love them.How to Begin Releasing the Feeling of Being a Burden
The belief that you’re a burden doesn’t disappear overnight. It takes time and patience to practice steps for negative inner voice help. While therapy is often the most effective approach, there are steps you can take at home to relieve this belief.
You could try the following steps to begin releasing the feeling of being a burden:
Name the Thought Without Automatically Believing It
Many of us move through life without paying attention to the stories we tell ourselves. One of the most powerful steps in breaking this belief is to recognize the script we’re saying to ourselves. Instead of accepting thoughts like, I’m bothering this person or They don’t want to deal with this, as fact, try shifting to I notice I’m having that thought again. Creating a bit of distance from our thoughts allows us to examine the belief rather than accept it.
Calm the Body When Shame or Anxiety Takes Over
Negative beliefs often start in the body before we even notice them as thoughts. For instance, they might start out with tightness in the chest, a sudden need to isolate, or a rising heat. Working with the body can help anchor us.
You could try…
Deep, slow breaths that lengthen the exhale.- Grounding practices, like picking up or touching items near you, to bring awareness back to your senses.
- Placing a hand on your chest or shoulders to remind yourself you’re safe.
These physical cues can help interrupt the spiral before it builds.7
Practice Small Moments of Allowing Support
You don’t have to leap into vulnerability. Relearning that it’s okay to ask for support comes from small moments. Try letting a friend pick you up from the airport without declining or telling a partner you’ve had a bad day, instead of pretending you’re fine. Each small act becomes relationship reassurance and teaches the nervous system that we can still have needs and be loved.
Coping with worthlessness and no longer feeling like a burden starts in small steps. Relearning takes time and will have its ups and downs.
Therapy and Support for Negative Self-Beliefs
Though we can practice steps on our own to relearn how to accept our own needs, sometimes releasing these beliefs is about understanding where they came from and how to shift the long-standing patterns. Therapy for hopelessness and negative self-beliefs includes:
Cognitive Behavioral Therapy (CBT) for Self-Esteem
CBT helps us identify and recognize the mental loops that are reinforcing the belief of being a burden. This includes automatic thoughts like I’m asking for too much or I shouldn’t need this.
With CBT, we learn to notice these thoughts, examine the evidence behind them, and create alternative interpretations that feel more realistic and compassionate. With time, these new patterns can help reduce guilt around seeking support and improve self-esteem.8
EMDR for Shame and Trauma-Based Beliefs
For some people, the idea of being a burden is rooted in past traumatic experiences where expressing needs was discouraged, dangerous, or dismissed. EMDR works by stimulating the brain’s natural healing process and reprocessing traumatic memories. Using side-to-side stimulation, such as eye movements or tapping, EMDR helps reorganize how past experiences are stored in the brain.9
Attachment-Focused Therapy to Explore Relationship Patterns
Attachment-focused therapy explores how our early relationship patterns with parents or caregivers shape our experiences later in life.10 By pinpointing that comfort was uncertain, or that sharing our emotions brought disagreement, we can see how we may have become self-reliant, believing it was wrong to ask for support.
Mindfulness Skills for Shame and Guilt
Mindfulness helps interrupt the instinct to fall into shame or guilt the moment we need something. Instead of spiraling into I shouldn’t have asked, we learn to sit with the discomfort, observe it, and respond with steadier awareness. In this way, mindfulness gives us structure and strengthens resilience.11
Mission Connection: Find Emotional Healing Programs
At Mission Connection, we understand how exhausting and isolating it can be to feel like a burden to loved ones. Our goal is to explore the systems that shaped these beliefs and help you build new, more functional ones. With low self-esteem counseling that includes CBT, EMDR, and mindfulness, we’ll help teach you how to gently shift this narrative and build more confidence.
If you’re tired of carrying this belief alone, you don’t have to. Get started with us today to build a life where you can breathe, be supported, and take up the space you deserve.
FAQs About Feeling Like a Burden
If feelings of being a burden are, unfortunately, too familiar for you, you may have some ongoing concerns after the information provided on this page. For this reason, we’ve answered some commonly asked questions on the topic.
1. Is Feeling Like a Burden a Symptom of Depression?
Depression can cause someone to feel like a burden, but research actually shows that anxiety is more likely to be related to feeling like a burden than depression.12 However, depression does often cause low self-esteem and negative self-worth. So even if feeling like a burden is more related to anxiety, it can still be a symptom of depression. And if these feelings are also causing suicidal thoughts, it may be helpful to find residential depression treatment for safety and support.
2. Why Is It So Hard to Ask for Help Without Feeling Guilty?
It’s sometimes hard to ask for help without feeling guilty because for many of us, guilt becomes a reflex. We may worry about overstepping, taking too much, or creating an obligation for someone else.
3. How Do I Know if My Needs Are Reasonable?
Most needs are entirely normal. If you’re questioning whether your needs are too big, it might mean you’ve spent years getting messages (directly or indirectly) that they shouldn’t exist. A therapist can help you recalibrate what healthy needfulness actually looks like and support you in expressing those needs with more confidence.
4. Does Mission Connection Help With Self-Worth, Shame, and Feeling Like a Burden?
Yes, we specialize in helping adults deal with shame-based beliefs and form healthier, more secure connections. Whether this feeling comes from trauma, anxiety, or years of minimizing your needs, our therapists can work with you to create space for healing and genuine self-acceptance.
References
- Bethune, S. (2023, November). Stress in America 2023 A nation recovering from collective trauma. American Psychological Association. https://www.apa.org/news/press/releases/stress/2023/collective-trauma-recovery
- Krauss, S., Orth, U., & Robins, R. W. (2019). Family environment and self-esteem development: A longitudinal study from age 10 to 16. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 119(2), 457–478. https://doi.org/10.1037/pspp0000263
- Lanius, R. A., Terpou, B. A., & McKinnon, M. C. (2020). The sense of self in the aftermath of trauma: lessons from the default mode network in posttraumatic stress disorder. European Journal of Psychotraumatology, 11(1), 1807703. https://doi.org/10.1080/20008198.2020.1807703
- Silvestrini, M., & Chen, J. A. (2022). “It’s a sign of weakness”: Masculinity and help-seeking behaviors among male veterans accessing posttraumatic stress disorder care. Psychological Trauma Theory Research Practice and Policy, 15(4), 665–671. https://doi.org/10.1037/tra0001382
- Budiarto, Y., & Helmi, A. F. (2021). Shame and self-esteem: A meta-analysis. Europe’s Journal of Psychology, 17(2), 131–145. https://doi.org/10.5964/ejop.2115
- National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH). (2025). Warning signs of suicide. https://www.nimh.nih.gov/health/publications/warning-signs-of-suicide
- Koniver, L. (2024). Grounding to treat anxiety. Medical Research Archives, 12 (12). https://doi.org/10.18103/mra.v12i12.6024
- Langford, K., McMullen, K., Bridge, L., Rai, L., Smith, P., & Rimes, K. A. (2021). A cognitive behavioural intervention for low self‐esteem in young people who have experienced stigma, prejudice, or discrimination: An uncontrolled acceptability and feasibility study. Psychology and Psychotherapy Theory Research and Practice, 95(1), 34–56. https://doi.org/10.1111/papt.12361
- Shapiro, F. (2014). The Role of Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing (EMDR) Therapy in Medicine: Addressing the Psychological and Physical Symptoms Stemming from Adverse Life Experiences. The Permanente Journal, 18 (1), 71–77. https://doi.org/10.7812/tpp/13-098
- Gould, W. R. (2025, September 2). What is attachment therapy? Verywell Mind. https://www.verywellmind.com/attachment-therapy-definition-techniques-and-efficacy-5203776
- Oh, V. K. S., Sarwar, A., & Pervez, N. (2022). The study of mindfulness as an intervening factor for enhanced psychological well-being in building the level of resilience. Frontiers in Psychology, 13, 1056834. https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2022.1056834
- Alfaro, A. J., Carlson, C., Segal, D. L., & Gould, C. E. (2021). Distinctions between depression and anxiety with fear of being a burden in late life. Aging & Mental Health, 26(12), 2366–2371. https://doi.org/10.1080/13607863.2021.1993131