I have such caregiver burnout, I skimmed a stupid article on Facebook this morning about nice things to do with for your partner who is struggling with mental illness and my gut reaction was immediate nope nope nope

I am deliberately limiting the depths of my connections now because I know I cannot be a good support system for anyone else and I feel shallow and irritated with myself and the world.

@smallesttiger I feel this incredibly hard. There's not a lot of stuff that acknowledges the very real cost of being a very heavy emotional / social / practical support for folks in your life who are struggling, which I think makes it easy to feel like it's expected of you in every circumstance and if you can't always do it, you're somehow bad

@angrboda @smallesttiger Caregiver reserves are finite, too. And often they're assumed to be infinite just because they're deeper than the people who're depending on us. Managing that is __hard__. And sometimes the shame of not knowing how to say "I can't help you right now; I have to take care of me for a while" can drive me to burn spoons I haven't got. I've done a lot of damage to myself that way over the years, from which I'm only just now starting to recover.

@literorrery @angrboda Telling someone who needs me “I can’t” feels like the hardest most hurtful thing I can do. How can I tell someone who is depressed that the unrelenting misery every time I talk to them is burning me out, without only making it worse? (of course the answer is to not say it like that but. Any kind of pulling away or withdrawal from these people who need so intensely feels like such a tight rope it’s easier to just continue on)