There is a specific kind of weight that no leadership book prepares you for.
Not the weight of hard decisions, though those are real. Not the weight of difficult people, though those exist too.
The weight of what you cannot say.
The personnel decision in process. The organizational uncertainty not yet public. The confidence placed in you by someone who trusted you with something significant. Your own private fear that you might not be enough for the role — the one you cannot voice to the people who are counting on you to be certain.
In Episode 3 of The Weight of the Chair series, Tanya Engesether names this specific, rarely discussed territory of leadership — the experience of carrying things that have no appropriate outlet — and brings both clinical honesty and deep theological comfort to bear on it.
She walks through what emotional suppression actually does to the body — drawing from the research of psychologist James Pennebaker on expressive writing and physiological health — and names the predictable consequences when the weight accumulates without release: emotional numbing, displaced emotion, physical symptoms, and compassion fatigue.
She then offers something both clinically grounded and spiritually profound: the specific practices that allow a leader to tend to the weight she is carrying within the appropriate limits of her role.
This episode will not take the weight away. But it will help you carry it better.
In This Episode You'll Learn:
- The four specific categories of things leaders carry that cannot be shared — and what makes each one uniquely difficult
- The physiological cost of emotional suppression — what the research shows about holding things without outlet
- What happens to a leader's body and leadership when the weight accumulates too long without release
- The theological reality of being fully known by God — and why it is more than spiritual comfort
- What Psalm 139 and Psalm 62:8 offer the leader who cannot tell anyone
- The difference between honorable carrying and carrying that has become costly
- Five specific, legitimate, boundaried outlets for processing what cannot be shared broadly
- The practice of full-weight, unedited prayer — and why specificity matters
- James Pennebaker's research on expressive writing and physiological health
- When to know that the weight has exceeded what solo carrying can hold — and why asking for help is a leadership strength
Scripture Referenced
- Psalm 139:1-4 — "You have searched me, Lord, and you know me... Before a word is on my tongue you know it completely."
- Psalm 62:8 — "Pour out your hearts to him, for God is our refuge."
- Matthew 11:28 — "Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest."
Key Takeaway
The weight of what you cannot tell anyone is real — and it has a physiological cost when it has nowhere to go. Being fully known by God is not just spiritual comfort. It is the most complete outlet available to a leader — the one place where nothing needs to be held back, the weight can be fully set down, and the confidentiality is eternally safe.
I hope this episode blesses you!
Xoxo,
Tanya
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