5 Gita Shlokas for When You’re Tired of Being the Strong One for Everyone
Riya Kumari | Nov 27, 2025, 00:49 IST
Gita
( Image credit : Pixabay )
There comes a time when being “the strong one” stops feeling noble and starts feeling lonely. You keep showing up for people, holding their emotions, guiding their decisions, absorbing their chaos, while no one notices how quietly you are collapsing inside. Strength becomes a habit. A role. A responsibility. And slowly, without meaning to, you lose the space to feel your own pain.
There is a kind of exhaustion that sleep cannot fix. It comes from being the person everyone turns to, the one who listens, takes responsibility, stays calm, solves problems, and keeps the world around them functioning. Over time, people stop noticing your tiredness. They assume you’re “emotionally built for it.” But the truth is: even the strongest person reaches a point where holding everything together begins to break something inside. The Bhagavad Gita speaks directly to this invisible fatigue. Not through dramatic promises, but through principles that help you reclaim your energy, boundaries, and inner balance.
When You Feel Responsible for Everyone’s Life
Shloka (2.47) “You have the right to action, not to the results.”
Being “the strong one” often means carrying burdens that aren’t yours. You try to fix people’s decisions, their emotions, their outcomes and slowly your life starts revolving around problems you didn’t create. The Gita reminds you that your duty is to show up sincerely, not to manage everyone’s destiny.
Stop assuming responsibility for outcomes you cannot control. Start asking: Am I helping, or am I rescuing? Give support without taking ownership of someone else’s life.
When You’re Overwhelmed Because You Haven’t Rested in Months
Shloka (6.17) “Balance in eating, recreation, sleep, and work destroys sorrow.”
Strength collapses without balance. Many strong people don’t break because life was too hard, they break because they never rested. They kept pushing, kept saying “I’m fine,” kept showing up even when nothing was left inside. The Gita calls this out clearly: a life without regulated self-care creates suffering.
Protect your sleep like it’s medicine, because it is. Stop treating rest as a luxury. Reduce the situations that drain you instead of tolerating them endlessly.
When You Feel You’re Losing Yourself in Other People’s Problems
Shloka (3.35) “It’s better to follow your own path imperfectly than to follow another’s perfectly.”
When you’re the strong one, your own dreams, plans, and growth often get pushed aside. You delay your life because someone else “needs you.” You shrink your desires to keep the peace. But the Gita insists: your dharma, your path, must not be sacrificed to maintain others.
Identify where your life has been paused for others. Reclaim one decision that you abandoned for the sake of someone else. Let people handle problems they should handle themselves.
When You Feel Invisible, Unappreciated, or Taken for Granted
Shloka (4.7) “Whenever imbalance rises, correction appears.”
This isn’t about divine avatars alone. It’s about inner imbalance. When you give too much for too long, when boundaries blur, when you accept disrespect to “keep harmony,” life eventually forces a correction, through burnout, conflict, breakdowns, or emotional withdrawal. The Gita reminds you: imbalances don’t stay unnoticed forever.
Acknowledge when you feel unappreciated instead of waiting for someone to guess. Pull back from relationships where effort is one-sided. Remember: the moment you start valuing your energy, others learn to value it too.
When You Feel Utterly Alone in Your Struggle
Shloka (6.5) “Lift yourself; do not abandon yourself. Your self is your friend and your enemy.”
Even the strongest people feel lonely, not because they lack people, but because their depth is rarely understood. This shloka is not asking you to isolate. It’s reminding you that your inner self is a source of strength you keep forgetting to lean on. You don’t need everyone to understand you. You need to stop abandoning yourself.
Start checking in with yourself before checking others’ needs. Build a habit of asking: “What do I need right now?” Treat yourself with the same compassion you freely give others.
The strong one is often the most neglected one, both by others and by themselves. The Gita doesn’t ask you to stop being strong. It asks you to stop being strong at the cost of your own well-being. Strength is not measured by how much you endure. Strength is measured by how gently you can return to yourself. Let these teachings remind you of something simple but life-changing: You matter too. Your rest matters. Your peace matters. Your boundaries matter. And your life is not meant to be lived in service of everyone except yourself.
When You Feel Responsible for Everyone’s Life
Help
( Image credit : Pexels )
Shloka (2.47) “You have the right to action, not to the results.”
Stop assuming responsibility for outcomes you cannot control. Start asking: Am I helping, or am I rescuing? Give support without taking ownership of someone else’s life.
When You’re Overwhelmed Because You Haven’t Rested in Months
Strength collapses without balance. Many strong people don’t break because life was too hard, they break because they never rested. They kept pushing, kept saying “I’m fine,” kept showing up even when nothing was left inside. The Gita calls this out clearly: a life without regulated self-care creates suffering.
Protect your sleep like it’s medicine, because it is. Stop treating rest as a luxury. Reduce the situations that drain you instead of tolerating them endlessly.
When You Feel You’re Losing Yourself in Other People’s Problems
Path
( Image credit : Pexels )
Shloka (3.35) “It’s better to follow your own path imperfectly than to follow another’s perfectly.”
When you’re the strong one, your own dreams, plans, and growth often get pushed aside. You delay your life because someone else “needs you.” You shrink your desires to keep the peace. But the Gita insists: your dharma, your path, must not be sacrificed to maintain others.
Identify where your life has been paused for others. Reclaim one decision that you abandoned for the sake of someone else. Let people handle problems they should handle themselves.
When You Feel Invisible, Unappreciated, or Taken for Granted
This isn’t about divine avatars alone. It’s about inner imbalance. When you give too much for too long, when boundaries blur, when you accept disrespect to “keep harmony,” life eventually forces a correction, through burnout, conflict, breakdowns, or emotional withdrawal. The Gita reminds you: imbalances don’t stay unnoticed forever.
Acknowledge when you feel unappreciated instead of waiting for someone to guess. Pull back from relationships where effort is one-sided. Remember: the moment you start valuing your energy, others learn to value it too.
When You Feel Utterly Alone in Your Struggle
Journal
( Image credit : Pexels )
Shloka (6.5) “Lift yourself; do not abandon yourself. Your self is your friend and your enemy.”
Even the strongest people feel lonely, not because they lack people, but because their depth is rarely understood. This shloka is not asking you to isolate. It’s reminding you that your inner self is a source of strength you keep forgetting to lean on. You don’t need everyone to understand you. You need to stop abandoning yourself.
Start checking in with yourself before checking others’ needs. Build a habit of asking: “What do I need right now?” Treat yourself with the same compassion you freely give others.