#32: MBT 1 on 1 Therapy > Not Everything Has to Be Mine to Carry

🎙️ Special Episode – “Not Everything Has to Be Mine to Carry”

Welcome to this special episode of the MBT podcast.

In this episode, we once again step inside a one-on-one therapy session — a place where change often begins long before it becomes visible on the outside.

What unfolds in this session will feel familiar to many people: spending years carrying responsibilities that may never have been yours to carry in the first place.

Not only your own worries.

But also the worries of others.

The emotions of others.

The problems of others.

And then, slowly, discovering that not everything belongs on your shoulders.

Today, we listen to a conversation in which old patterns of control, responsibility, and adaptation begin to give way to something new.

Not because life suddenly becomes easier.

But because the client is beginning to recognize what belongs to him — and what does not.

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🧠 What is central in this episode

Letting go of responsibility

Some people spend years carrying more than they were ever meant to carry.

Trying to solve.

Trying to protect.

Trying to make things better.

In this session, a new realization begins to emerge:

being involved is not the same as being responsible.

And letting go is not the same as not caring.

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Taking up space without guilt

An important theme in this episode is learning to take up space.

Not by becoming harder.

Not by caring less.

But by finally including yourself in the equation.

What happens when your needs no longer automatically come last?

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Allowing appreciation to come in

Sometimes receiving a compliment is harder than receiving criticism.

In this session, the client begins to notice something changing.

Positive feedback is no longer immediately dismissed.

Recognition is no longer pushed away.

Instead, there is a growing willingness to let it in.

And that turns out to be a bigger shift than it first appears.

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When others have to adjust to your change

Change rarely happens in isolation.

People become familiar with who you have always been.

And when you begin to change, they often need time to adjust as well.

This can create confusion.

Resistance.

Misunderstanding.

But sometimes it can also create entirely new conversations.

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What belongs to me, and what belongs to someone else?

One question runs throughout the entire session:

Whose responsibility is this?

Whose emotion is this?

Whose problem is this?

Again and again, the client finds himself exploring the difference between caring for someone and carrying someone.

And those are not the same thing.

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Doors that may still need to be opened

Toward the end of the session, another theme quietly emerges.

Not the changes happening today.

But experiences from much earlier in life.

There is a growing curiosity about whether some parts of the past may still be waiting behind closed doors.

Not from fear.

But from a desire to understand what may still need attention.

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🌟 The common thread

The common thread in this episode is the difference between caring for others and carrying others.

For a long time, those two things felt almost identical.

Now, something new is beginning to emerge.

The realization that you can remain connected to people without taking responsibility for everything they feel, think, or experience.

Mentalizing plays an important role in that process.

By slowing down.

By staying curious.

And by continually asking:

What belongs to me?

What belongs to the other person?

And what is happening between us?

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💬 Closing

This episode shows that growth is not always about doing more.

Sometimes it is about carrying less.

Less fixing.

Less controlling.

Less responsibility for things that were never truly yours.

And sometimes change begins with one simple realization:

“I can care deeply… without carrying everything.”