Pastor Dolapo Lawal has warned people who frequently counsel and support others not to carry every emotional burden as though it belongs to them.
According to Lawal, people with a strong counseling gift may sometimes leave difficult conversations feeling emotionally drained or unusually heavy.
“When people say things like, ‘After I finished talking to you, I felt light,’ where did they drop their problem?” he asked.
Lawal said Christians who regularly listen to people’s struggles should learn to bring those burdens to God in prayer rather than internalizing everything they hear.
“You are not Jesus,” he said, referencing Isaiah’s description of the government resting upon Christ’s shoulders.
He described this experience in spiritual terms as a “spirit of heaviness” and encouraged believers to consciously hand those burdens back to God.
During his message, Lawal also repeated a story he said he had encountered on Instagram about a police officer who allegedly spent hours talking with a suicidal person before both eventually jumped. Lawal himself noted that he did not know whether the story was true.
I could not find reliable reporting confirming that specific incident, so it should be treated as an unverified illustration rather than a factual case.
More broadly, supporting distressed people can be emotionally demanding, but sudden sadness, anxiety or depression should not automatically be assumed to come from “absorbing” another person’s problems. Emotional strain can have many causes, and persistent or severe symptoms may require professional mental-health support alongside prayer and pastoral care.
Lawal’s central message was that people called to help others should serve with compassion without trying to carry every burden alone.