We all want to be that person who others feel safe enough to vent to and lean on. And if you already identify with this experience, it’s very likely that you hear the following sentence (or a version of it) very often: “You would make such a good therapist.”
The gesture, of course, is meant as a compliment, and, in many respects, it is. It’s usually meant to communicate that you are insightful, composed and are able to sit with people’s big and intense emotions without getting affected by them.
Nonetheless, there is a side to being the emotional support friend that is hardly ever visited, and that’s that you only tend to give the “therapist version” of yourself to people, not the human version. You’re there for them, but only from a distance. You’re loving, but for some strange reason, people cannot really reach you. People trust you, but are rarely allowed to see you.
These patterns actually have names and they appear in relationships in several different ways, actions, gestures and words. Here are three of them.
1. Your Inner Therapist Regulates Before They Feel
Recall the instances in your life where you pretended to be fine before you even had a chance to admit to yourself you’re upset. Maybe your friend said something that stung, or your partner overlooked a bid for closeness, or perhaps your voice was ignored in a meeting. Internally, you probably felt hurt, annoyed or even disappointed at how others treated you.
Yet, almost instantly, you probably shifted into internal crisis-management mode. You likely began rationalizing your feelings and telling yourself things like, “They’re probably having a rough day,” or, “This isn’t the right time,” or even, “It’s not a big deal. I can handle it.”
And the catch is that you do handle it. You may even pat yourself on the back for your excellent emotional regulation skills. But what happens when the other person, the person who hurt you, never actually gets access to the emotional truth of your experience?
A recent symptom-level study on expressive suppression found that the very specific behavior of controlling emotions by not expressing them can, over time, create a psychological bottleneck. Choosing to suppress emotions and move on instantly from an emotionally triggering situation might not be the act of composure you consider it to be. Instead, to your nervous system, it can feel like your emotions are ricocheting inward, where they tend to fuel rumination, brooding and endless mental replay instead of connection.
This means that what looks like grace under pressure often comes at the cost of relational closeness. When you’re constantly regulating, other people never get the chance to relate to your real, imperfect and feeling self.
This has long-term effects on your relational identity. You may just end up believing that your emotions are “too much” or that they “don’t need to be discussed.” Whenever someone asks you how you are, you look for the version that makes the most sense, not the version that wants to be heard.
So, the next time you experience that internal tightening, you can experiment by trying to be a notch more honest than usual when you feel an urge to manage, minimize or reinterpret your feelings.
Simply saying something like, “A part of me gets what you’re saying, but another part of me feels a little brushed off,” can be a powerful way to turn a moment of solitary emotional support into a shared emotional experience.
2. Your Inner Therapist Draws Emotionally Rigid Boundaries
Perhaps you are the kind of person who doesn’t share too much, never unloads their problems on others and generally maintains a state of composure. From the outside, this can look like emotional maturity. But upon closer examination, those “good boundaries” can feel more like a glass wall. That is, people can see you clearly, but they’re never allowed to enter.
This is very often the result of a need for self-protection: once others perceive you as the one who is grounded and emotionally literate, and you feel the pressure to keep up that image. You can mistakenly come to believe that if you expose your messiness to others, you’ll burden them or fall short of their expectations.
The problem is that these “healthy” boundaries can become a socially acceptable way of keeping people at a distance. A 2024 study found that consistently presenting a composed exterior while hiding your real emotional state, also called “emotional dissonance,” directly predicts exhaustion and a creeping sense of inauthenticity. So, it’s not the steadiness itself that drains you; it’s the performance of it.
Healthy boundaries protect connection, but rigid ones only serve to protect your image. The latter kinds often close you off completely under the guise of keeping your emotional world safe.
So, when you notice yourself polishing your responses while something real is happening inside, you can try naming just the physical sensation instead of the whole emotion. For instance, you can try saying, “I’m noticing my chest tighten a little,” or, “I’m unable to find the right words for what I’m feeling.” It lets someone glimpse your inner world without overwhelming either of you, and keeps your boundaries human, not impenetrable.
3. Your Inner Therapist Ignores Your Exhaustion
When you take the responsibility of absorbing everyone’s emotions, you inevitably go into empathic distress: a state of apathetic resignation resulting from holding tension or fatigue in your body for an indefinite period of time.
Studies have shown that people who always pretend to be calm on the outside while being emotionally overwhelmed on the inside create the conditions of a self-inflicted burnout. And it might be the reason why you feel like you have no energy after an emotional interaction, why you’re tired when you wake up or why you struggle to turn off the mental carousel of conversations in your head.
Here’s the reframe you might want to consider: Being a “safe person” does not mean being endlessly available. Letting your body set the pace of an interaction, instead of your assumed role, can break your over-functioning habit and invite others to meet you where you actually are.
The therapist version of you certainly has its place in your life, as it’s a valuable part of you. But you also need to make room at the table for the rest of you: the parts that don’t have the answer, can’t hold it all and need others just as much as they need you.
Are you allowing your inner therapist to take a break? Take the Authenticity in Relationship Scale to find out.