3 Ways to Hold Space for Yourself Before You Burn Out

Presence can change everything about your healing journey

In this week’s collaboration, John introduces the concept of holding space through the lens of his personal story, and provides an overview of how it works.

Then, I dive into three techniques that can help you mindfully hold space in your everyday life, with the goal of meeting yourself where you are, so you can also meet others where they are.

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What is “holding space?”

It means maintaining presence without judgment, interruption, or trying to fix others. It’s creating a safe place where someone feels seen, heard, and accepted.

But why can we hold space for someone else, while it’s seemingly impossible to hold space for ourselves?

Let me answer this by telling you a brief story about my amazing friend, Daryl.

When I started my journey, I was an emotional wreck.

I cried for hours every day. I lacked emotional regulation and didn’t understand what I was going through.

Daryl listened to me and validated my feelings. He didn’t judge me when I burst into tears. He didn’t change the subject or offer platitudes or generic solutions.

Instead, he genuinely wanted to know how I was doing. He cared.

Ironically, not trying to fix me was a crucial part of my healing. It allowed me to find my own path through the storm.

But here’s the thing: Daryl was able to hold space for me because he was emotionally balanced enough to hold space for himself.

However, many of us are taught to suppress our emotions, solve surface-level problems quickly, and move on. In fact, we have it drilled into our heads that we don’t deserve our own compassion, which prevents us from feeling safe and accepted in our own skin.

Over time, this conditions us to avoid stillness, leaving us disconnected from ourselves and unable to hold space when it’s needed most.

Consequently, when you willingly support others, yet fail to recognize your own need for compassion, it drains you to the core. What’s more, when you offer words of advice from this vantage point, they land as hollow and inauthentic.

Bottom line: If you want to provide a safe space for others–without burning out, you have to provide one for yourself as well.

Thankfully, there are techniques and mental shifts that can help. This is where mindfulness can play a big role.

How Does Mindfulness Help You Hold Space for Yourself?

Mindfulness is a buzzword these days. However, it simply means:

1. Bringing your awareness to the present moment

2. Exploring your conditioned reactions with curiosity

3. Choosing to respond in ways that better serve who you are

In these ways, mindful awareness allows you to create a space between stimulus and response. And it’s in this space where you can foster a relationship with your inner experience.

Here are three techniques for exploring your internal landscape with curiosity.

3 Tried-and-True Techniques for Creating Inner Space

Mindful Breathing

Mindful breathing remains my go-to, even after practicing for 20+ years. And it’s super simple:

1. Find a comfortable space where you can sit or lie down uninterrupted.

2. Once settled, take three deep breaths, inhaling through your nose and exhaling from your mouth. As you inhale, imagine pure, white light entering your body, and with each exhale, picture darker, heavy air exiting.

3. Return your breathing to normal.

4. Count each breath from 1 to 4. Then, then start again at 1.

5. Continue for 5 minutes, but if you need to stop sooner, that’s perfectly ok. Remember: This is a practice, not a perfection!

Body Scanning

This technique involves starting at either your head or toes and systemically working your way down or up.

As you move to each body part, pay attention to sensations like pressure, temperature, tingling, or heaviness, which builds a detailed awareness of your physical experience and helps identify areas of tension.

Doing this also helps you connect where certain emotions “live” in your body, and once identified, you can create space by recognizing that they are simply reflections of your internal states and aren’t “you” in any way.

Mindful Movement

You can practice any movement with mindfulness, including walking, stretching, eating, completing chores, bathing, and playing sports that involve a lot of repetition (e.g., cycling, running, fishing, etc.).

Whichever works best for you, simply pay attention to the different sensations of movement: the beginning, transition, and ending points; how different body parts coordinate, the breeze against your skin, the temperature changes, or the constantly fluctuating sights, sounds, and smells.

When Holding Space Feels Selfish (& Other Internal Roadblocks)

Your ego isn’t familiar with you holding space for yourself, so when you do, it will attempt to make you stop. And one of the most common ways it does this is by creating a sense of selfishness.

Common Stumbling Block #1

"Who do you think you are, taking time for yourself?" it will scream.

And that ick-factor will make you want to give up immediately and fall back on your old coping mechanisms (e.g., electronics, drugs/alcohol, sex, shopping, etc.). Anything that gives you a temporary dopamine blast.

Healthy reframe: Holding space for yourself helps you avoid these unhealthy coping methods and prepares you for relational integrity with others.

Like putting on your own oxygen mask before helping someone else, holding space for yourself ultimately makes your relationship with others more bountiful.

Common Stumbling Block #2

When first facing your painful thoughts, you’ll probably feel a healthy amount of shame. Then, this can cause you to over-identify with your guilt, leading to the same perpetuating behaviors as feeling selfishness.

Healthy reframe: When you feel shame, gently remind yourself: “I am feeling shame” versus “I am shameful.” This helps create space between you and your feelings, which ultimately will help you create a similar space for others.

Common Stumbling Block #3

Impatience is typical when first sitting with yourself in silence, and your ego will make you want to immediately quit and sprint in the opposite direction.

“I’m not doing it right” or “Nothing’s happening, anyway,” it will say, so you can justify giving up.

Healthy reframe: Instead of trying to sit for long periods and giving your ego more justification, start small. Just a few minutes of mindful awareness can work wonders, and will slowly let your inner critic know that what you’re doing isn’t going away anytime soon.

From Inner Work to Outer Impact

When you learn to hold space for yourself, you create a foundation for genuine connection with others.

Mindfulness techniques like breathing exercises, body scanning, and mindful movement build your emotional capacity to accomplish this, and help you authentically show up in all of your relationships, whether romantic or platonic.

Sure, you can count on your inner critic’s resistance at first.

But by starting small and staying consistent, you’ll create lasting change that flows into every facet of your life.