When Survival Feels Normal: Signs You’re Carrying Too Much

La Tanya Walker
May 5
3 min read

You don’t always notice when it happens.

At first, it’s subtle. You’re just tired—but not the kind of tired a nap can fix. Then it’s the short temper. The skipped meals. The moments where you stare at your screen for fifteen minutes, not because you’re confused, but because you’ve gone numb.

That’s how it begins.

For many women—especially Black women in leadership and ministry—carrying too much becomes the norm. You’re praised for your capacity. Celebrated for your endurance. Rewarded for showing up when you should’ve been resting. And somewhere along the way, your nervous system adapts to the strain by numbing your awareness of it.

That numbness is not resilience. It’s depletion.

Let’s get honest about the signs.

Constant Fatigue Isn’t Always About Sleep

It’s easy to write off exhaustion as poor time management or a full schedule. But when you’ve slept eight hours and still wake up tired, that’s not a time issue—it’s a nervous system issue.

Chronic fatigue often hides behind phrases like:

“I just need to push through.”
“I’ll rest after this deadline.”
“I’m built for this.”

But your body is built to rest, too. If you ignore that long enough, your system stops trusting you. It starts to conserve energy because it believes you’re in survival mode. The fatigue isn’t laziness. It’s a quiet red flag.

Irritability in Disguise

That edge you’ve developed? The one you blame on needing things done right or being “locked in”? It might be irritability—and that irritability might be coming from grief, stress, or burnout that hasn’t been given a name.

Snapping is not strategy. It’s a symptom.

In high-functioning environments, emotional fatigue often gets misread as intensity or excellence. But if you’re always on edge, that’s not leadership—it’s leakage. And eventually, it seeps into your decision-making, your relationships, and your health.

Isolation Dressed Up as Focus

You’ve probably said it yourself: “I’m just focused right now. I don’t have time for distractions.”

But focus isn’t supposed to feel like emotional isolation. You weren’t designed to carry everything alone, even if your title says “visionary,” “founder,” or “pastor.”

When isolation becomes your comfort zone, you stop being seen—and start being silently depleted. Leadership will require solitude at times, yes. But community is part of the cure. You can’t heal what you keep hiding, even if you’re hiding it behind productivity.

Numbness Is Not Strength

This is the sneakiest one. The lie that being unbothered means you’re strong.

But numbness isn’t peace. It’s your nervous system detaching to protect you from what it no longer thinks you can process. If you don’t feel joy, don’t feel pain, and don’t feel anything in between—it’s not because you’ve mastered your emotions. It’s because you’ve silenced them.

And silence, in the name of strength, will always lead to fragmentation.

You’re Not Lazy. You’re Carrying Too Much.

We tend to gaslight ourselves with guilt:

“Other people have it worse.” “I should be grateful.” “This is just a busy season.”

But when every season feels like a storm, it’s time to check the weight you’re carrying. Especially the weight no one sees—the emotional labor, the spiritual pressure, the invisible expectations to be “on” all the time.

You don’t need to be more productive. You need to be more present with your body, your soul, and your story.

Survival Is Not Your Calling

Sis, let me say it clearly: survival is not your assignment. God didn’t call you to grind yourself into greatness. You are not just a leader. You are a human—a whole person with needs, limits, and rhythms that deserve to be honored.

If this post hits a little too close to home, take a moment. Breathe. Pay attention to what your body’s been trying to say for months.

You’re not failing.

You’re just overdue for rest.

Want support that honors both your leadership and your healing? Explore how The Healing Well and the SoulFix Collective can help you lay the weight down—and lead from a place of wellness, not weariness.

La Tanya D. Walker is a Clinical Mental Health Counselor, Leadership Coach, and Change Agent dedicated to helping high-performing women in ministry, business, and leadership cultivate emotional wellness, mental clarity, and purpose-driven success. Through Authentic Perspectives Counseling & Coaching, she provides professional counseling, leadership development, and strategic mentorship to support personal and professional transformation.