New Delhi, Sept. 9 -- A 46-year-old client says that when she started therapy with me, she remembered feeling she must endure everything at work, at home and as a parent even though she was running on empty. "Over the last few years I have begun to see how my emotional and physical fatigue is closely linked to this self-imposed belief. I feel my endurance serves me well in many scenarios but I also pay a price for it. Now I recognise that I never gave myself permission to feel exhausted."

What the client is trying to articulate is that she has begun to see her capacity for endurance as both a strength and a weakness. In my experience, this is true for most of our qualities whether it's empathy or our capacity to be pragmatic or optimisti...