Brenda Winkle 00:00:01 Welcome to your yes filled life. I'm Brenda Winkle, energetic leadership guide, psychic, medium and somatic coach for ambitious leaders who know their gifts are real and who want to stand fully in them. Here you'll learn how to trust your intuition, embody your vision, and step into the freedom you've been craving, all without chasing more certifications or carrying stuff that does not belong to you. Every week, I'll share powerful practices and conversations with thought leaders and changemakers that help you transform your vision into embodied confidence. Claim your gifts without apology and lead with both clarity and freedom. Because your gifts aren't cute. They are powerful. They're real, and they're needed. Start today by downloading my free energy audit at Brenda Winkle. Com forward slash audit. It's the exact tool I use to track what's fueling me and what's draining me. It will help you discern between that hit of achievement and true joy, so that you can lead with more clarity and impact. This is your space to stop proving, start embodying and live fully in your gifts.
Brenda Winkle 00:01:16 Welcome to your yes filled life. Hello and welcome to your yes filled life. I'm Brenda Winkel, your energetic leadership guide, psychic medium and somatic coach for ambitious leaders who want to trust their wisdom, reclaim their energy and lead with ease. We've just moved through eclipse season, and if you've been feeling stirred up or unsettled. Trust me, you are not alone. Eclipses often show us where we've been out of alignment, because they shine a light on all the places where something has to shift. And now we're stepping into fall, which is a season of release. Just like the trees let go of their leaves, we're being invited to let go of the things that no longer serve us, so that we can harvest the fruits of our efforts over the past year. So for many of us, when we get ready to look at things that need to be released, one of those things is a pattern that I hear all the time. And I'm going to use the words self abandonment to describe this, but this is essentially saying yes when you mean no or agreeing to do things that you don't want to do, or not even acknowledging that you have a choice.
Brenda Winkle 00:02:39 One of my clients recently said that she realized through our work together that she wasn't acknowledging her own presence in decisions that her family unit was making, and she said that she found herself saying yes in the moment and then regretting it later. Can you relate? Well, since working together, she has stopped self abandoning and she's now really creating a pause between accepting anything to make sure it feels aligned and it feels like a real yes for her, and it's really making a massive impact on her life, her relationships and her creativity. And how is she showing up in every area of her life? So maybe you have said yes to a project or a commitment or even a coffee date, and then as soon as you did, something whispered, oh, I didn't really want to do that. Or maybe it's more like, I'm not sure this is aligned. Well, if you go through with it and you do the thing that you didn't want to do, or you show up to the thing you wished you didn't agree to do, that is what's called self Of abandonment.
Brenda Winkle 00:03:54 And for emotionally intelligent leaders like you, it can happen without you even noticing unless you're paying attention inside. Today's episode, I'm going to share what self abandoning really looks like, the hidden costs it has to your energy, clarity and confidence, and a simple reset that you can use today to start showing up more fully from yourself. And if you've been creating a space where you can practice this in real time, where you'll feel resourced, seen and celebrated as you trust your inner wisdom, I'm really excited to tell you that there's something very special coming in March of 2026, as well as a live workshop that's coming up in November. So invitation to take a deep breath, pour yourself something delicious and let's dive in. So if we think back to the client that I mentioned when she said I wasn't acknowledging my presence in decisions, I was saying yes in the moment and then regretting it later. This is really, really common. It's not bad to say something and then to regret it. That's not the problem.
Brenda Winkle 00:05:08 The problem is when we tell ourselves that we have to fulfill it, that we have to follow through. Even when your body might be giving you signals that this isn't aligned. So what might those signals be inside the body? Well, it could be a sudden headache. It could be muscle tension. Tension across your back, your shoulders or your neck. It could be a sense of stomach upset. You might notice that you have nail prints on your fists. Depending on the level of stress you had in the moment, it might just be a feeling of heaviness. So if that's ever happened to you, know that there's nothing wrong with you, you're not alone. And this is actually tied to your incredible emotional intelligence because you are so emotionally intelligent and perhaps because you are so emotionally intelligent, and maybe you even have deep empathy and compassion. Maybe you even are an empath or an intuitive. It's really easy for you to read a room, and it's really easy for you to know what other people want.
Brenda Winkle 00:06:14 And if we're not being really clear about creating sovereignty for ourselves, to be able to feel and witness our own emotions, it's easy for us to get mixed up what we want with what someone else wants. And let me give you an example of this. If you have ever told yourself that you are not going to, under any circumstances, buy your kids toys on this shopping trip, and then on the shopping trip, you ended up buying your kids toys that you said you weren't going to buy. That is this emotional intelligence at work, when you can feel their deep, deep, deep desire and you can also feel into a consequence of not meeting that desire, which is what's motivating you to make the choice that goes against what you promised yourself. So when we look at fall and it's now fall as I'm recording this episode, and by the way, if you're listening to this, when it's not fall, you have an opportunity to release every full moon. So you could apply any of the tips or guidance from this episode to a full moon, as well as applying it to fall.
Brenda Winkle 00:07:28 But since it is fall, this is an invitation to release. So just like the the trees let go of their leaves, we're being asked to release what's not ours to carry. And you know, this is really important for us to do because in my eyes, your unique gifts are something very special that only you have, and they're going to help you create the massive impact and change in the world that's going to improve not only your life, but the life of your family and the lives of other people. And if we're not taking good care of our gifts because we're self abandoning, we're doing things we don't want to do. We're agreeing to things that don't align with us. We're not actually being good stewards of those gifts. And so if it feels initially selfish to start to create some spaciousness and some boundary around all of the ways that you might be guessing that it is actually maybe time to put in some nose. Just know that this is not actually selfish. It's not selfish. And I know that you know this, but I also know how good it feels to be reminded Did that.
Brenda Winkle 00:08:46 You're not selfish. So because we've just moved a clip season, there's probably more awareness that you have right now in this moment of things that need to shift than ever before. I know I've definitely been going through my own version of this as I get really clear on what's working, what feels good, what feels good in my business, what feels good in my friendships, what feels good in my house, what feels good in my community. And so if you've been feeling a sense of chaos, I'll just say chaos, because that's how I've been perceiving it, where you're like questioning things and things haven't felt the simple way that they hadn't feeling. Maybe there's a little crunch here and there. That's that eclipse energy. So the eclipse window started on September 7th, 2025, and then with the second eclipse on Sunday, September 21st, it officially closed the eclipse window. But because the 21st was also a new moon and the 22nd was fall equinox. We have some other energies at play. So because of this correlation with the eclipse and the moon, the new moon, we actually have an entire moon cycle to kind of clear out the cobwebs that may have been revealed to us in the eclipse cycle.
Brenda Winkle 00:10:03 So there's still time if you need to do some more releasing. And then because of the fall equinox coming on the 22nd, there's another like we're doubling down on this release energy, even though new moons are typically about planting seeds. So right now we're kind of doing both. It's like we're cleaning out the garden bed and planting the bulbs for the spring. Oh, so here we go. So when we talk about the pattern of self abandoning, there are three big things that might be happening. One thing is you're saying yes when you mean no. And this could be to your kids, to your partner, to people that you work with. To your team. Anytime you're saying yes when you mean no, that's actually self abandonment. Another way that this shows up is not acknowledging your ability to have a say in certain decisions. So let's say, for example, that you are a dean of a university. And let's say, for example, you are the department chair of a university and you have all of the considerations for your staff, for your students, but then you also have accountability to the upper administration for budgetary, considerations.
Brenda Winkle 00:11:28 Let's say, for example, you are a professor, maybe you're a chair of a department and you have the entire department to run, which includes the faculty, the staff, and then also having some oversight for what's happening with students. And then you also have accountability to upper administration in terms of budgets. So in this role, it's easy to feel like you might be sandwiched, but you have more choice than you think. So there are some things that are going to be cyclical, and you'll be able to see the deadlines of when things happen. And you can kind of make your time work for that. But then when a request comes in and let's say this, actually, this actually happened to a friend of mine, where she had closed out a major cycle with the faculty and staff, got the students going in the school year, and then an upper administrator, a dean or something, had come through with the request to get her budget in and gave her two days to complete it. Now, if you were self abandoning, you would clear your schedule.
Brenda Winkle 00:12:33 You would cut back on sleep to be able to make sure you could meet this deadline and you might even put yourself in physical jeopardy because of the lack of sleep and the additional stress, maybe even cutting meals and so forth. That would be self abandonment. A way that you could shift that exact same scenario would be to respond to the dean or the dean's person that reached out and say, I understand that there are time constraints for this, and I will be able to get this to you, but it's going to take me more than two days. I'm going to need at least a week so you can build in a weekend around. It might still take you extra time then you're working, but it doesn't mean you have to jeopardize your health. So that would be an example of not acknowledging you actually have impact to change things. You have a way to say yes or no. So many times we give away our power before we even had an opportunity to claim it. We give it away. We don't even ask the question.
Brenda Winkle 00:13:35 Well, that seems like it's a really big ask. Is there any way we could push this out a little bit? And then the third way that we self abandon is by ignoring our body's cues. So this might be when you're in a meeting, you notice that you feel slightly dizzy or slightly nauseous, or maybe you get a headache every time one particular topic comes up. Or maybe you notice after you've gone out for lunch with a certain group of friends, that you're always so tired you have to go nap. Or maybe it's that you go for a walk with a friend who complains the whole time, and by the end of the walk, your ankle really hurts. If we are busy treating our body sensations, you know, popping ibuprofen for headaches or popping antacids for stomach upset, we might miss out on really critical information that can help us to stop self abandoning. So when you notice these physical sensations, what might actually feel like symptoms? My invitation would be to get curious. When did it start? What was happening? What happens when you remove yourself from that situation? Does the symptom change at all? Now I want to be very clear.
Brenda Winkle 00:14:49 I am not giving you professional medical advice. You need to go see your medical healthcare provider for any medical advice. But I am telling you that your body is giving you cues that you might be missing. So we want to normalize that. All these things are really, really normal. Whether it's saying yes when you mean no, not acknowledging your presence in decisions and ignoring body cues, this is all very, very normal. We're socialized to do this. We've been overtly and covertly taught that we should do all of these things. We should say yes just because we are. We are taught to be nice. We don't want to really rock the boat. So we're not going to acknowledge our real choice in different decisions. And then we are were taught to treat our body symptoms instead of looking to them for information. So there's nothing wrong with you and you're not broken. If you have been doing any of these things, you're not weak and you're not bad for sure. What it does mean is that you are emotionally intelligent, and you haven't been shown how to use that emotional intelligence without losing yourself.
Brenda Winkle 00:15:54 So that's where we're going to dig in today. So some signs that this is an issue for you might be feeling a sense of regret after committing to something. Feeling drained after social interactions, or that general feeling of like something's off. I just feel kind of, oh, or maybe you use the word it's just heavy or out of alignment. If you've ever experienced that, there may be some self abandoning going on. So we're going to talk about the hidden costs of this. And then we're going to dive into some solutions. So when you leave this podcast episode, you're going to have some tools for your toolkit to help you stop self abandoning. So the hidden costs of self abandoning include energy leaks. And this might mean you never feel fully rested or you never feel fully restored. It might feel like you are always just a little tired. It might feel difficult to access your creativity. You might even say things to yourself like, I used to be so creative, but lately, I don't know.
Brenda Winkle 00:17:04 It's not you. It's just that we've got an energy leak. Another area that we can see costs in terms of self abandonment would be in lost clarity. So this comes up a lot. If you feel like you're confused or if you feel like you can't make a decision, it's probably because you have other people's emotions and energy so close to you, maybe even in your physical, energetic space that it's difficult to discern. Oh, this is mine. I feel this way. I believe these things, and this is theirs. They're wanting me to do these things and they are asking me to feel this way, but that's not how I actually feel. So this happens with emotionally intelligent people, and there's a lot of research to back this. In fact, if you take a look at the work of Elaine Aaron, she's the one who started the research and really coined the term highly sensitive people. In her research, she found that there was 20% in the original study. In like 1996, she found that there were 20% of the population that had more neuro receptors and neurotransmitters in their brain than the other 80% of the population.
Brenda Winkle 00:18:22 And of that, there was another subset, about 10% of the entire 20% that had more neuro receptors and the ability to read facial expressions, especially for people that they love to read body language and to actually experience other people's emotions in their own body as their own. And that term was called empath. So this comes from the work of Elaine Aron back in 1996. Now, there was a more recent study done in 2023 that revealed the percentage of the people in the population that are actually highly sensitive is much larger than originally thought. It's actually up to 30%. So my guess is there's a possibility, if you're drawn to this podcast, that you have some of these sensitivities, that you have this deep emotional intelligence, and you probably have some empath abilities too. And what can happen is over time, if you're continually absorbing other people's thoughts and energies and emotions because of your gifts. Whether it's emotional intelligence or intuition or empathic abilities. What can happen is it can lead to an eroded sense of self-confidence where you're second guessing yourself, you have self-doubt, and then you feel guilty for saying no.
Brenda Winkle 00:19:47 Because all you can feel in your body, in your system, is the disappointment of the person you said no to without feeling that clarity, that sovereignty, that resolute ness that you want to be feeling in your own body. So as we enter fall, if you're carrying things that aren't yours, you may not have the energy for your real harvest because it's hard to focus if you've got everybody else up in your business and nobody else is intending to do that. That's just what's happening because of your unique gifts, where it feels like you can't separate what your partner thinks from you, or what your best friend thinks from you. And if you've ever noticed that you like, really enjoyed a conversation at lunch and it just felt like there was such great chemistry and it was so engaging, and then you get home and you think to yourself, wait, I don't think that I didn't, I didn't agree to anything that I just found myself agreeing on. That is so weird. What happened? That's this at work.
Brenda Winkle 00:20:54 So let's give you some practices, okay? Let's give you some practices that you can use right now to put in your toolkit so that you can stop self abandoning and instead create a greater sense of sovereignty for yourself. So the first thing that I'm going to invite you to do is to pause. This is so important. Just pause, even if it's for a count of three inside your own mind. Pause. It's a myth that you have to react or respond right away. And our culture definitely wants to rush this decision process, and definitely is going to make it feel like you have to decide right now. But my invitation is just pause and then take a deep breath and ask yourself, am I showing up for myself and my gifts right now? Or am I abandoning myself here? And that simple question am I showing up for myself and my gifts right now? Or am I abandoning myself here? You're going to have an answer. It's going to be very, very clear. And I invite you to weave in some body wisdom.
Brenda Winkle 00:22:13 Ask you, as you ask these questions of yourself, how does your body feel when you are showing up for yourself? Does it feel Expansive, maybe like a little bit buzzy or vibrational. Maybe it feels like your shoulders are rolled down and back. Maybe it feels like you can breathe more easily. Maybe it feels kind of smooth or exciting as compared to what it feels like when you're self abandoning, which often feels like tension and tightness and heaviness. Clenching. It might feel like making your body kind of get smaller. Maybe your shoulders roll in a little bit. So get curious what's happening in the body. As you ask yourself these questions. Because the truth is, if you can intercept the message of the body before your mind has a chance to weigh in, you're going to have a lot more accurate information. Your body is never wrong. You know the the buzzword of embodiment. It's a buzzword for a reason. It means being in the body. Now, what does that actually mean? Well, for most of us, we have been taught to bring everything into our mind.
Brenda Winkle 00:23:31 And we're thinking and we're just trying to use our intellect and our intelligence to muscle through so much of our lives and ignoring the impulses and sensations that are inside the body, that are giving us tremendous wisdom and guidance. And the thing is, your body is going to interpret this information differently than my body, which is why one of the things I say to all of my clients, we want to create your unique energetic map. How is your body communicating to you? What does it feel like when you're completely in your self energy? What does it feel like when you're not in your self energy? And what I'd invite you to do is you're asking yourself these questions. Am I showing up for myself or am I abandoning myself here. You're going to pay attention to the body, and then I invite you to apply this to Small Decisions this week, deciding like what to eat or whether or not to accept an invitation or even how you're scheduling time. Do it in low stakes ways so that you can develop that sense of trust that your body actually does know what is aligned for you, and you're going to immediately feel clarity in your body when your answer is true to you.
Brenda Winkle 00:24:50 And again, that's going to feel like expansive or a little bit of a release or an unknown and maybe feels like shoulders back and down, breathing freely. So pay attention to what's happening in the body as well as to what you're experiencing emotionally. And this really matters. It matters all the time. But it's it really matters during fall because fall is this season of release. And again, if you're listening to this after the fall season. You can apply this to any full moon cycle that you want to. Because the full moon is all about releasing energy that's no longer serving us. Where the new moon is, most typically where we plant the seeds of what we want to bring into our lives. So you can apply this during fall or during a full moon. Letting go of self abandonment patterns make space for your unshakable clarity, and this is important for you as a leader. Because clarity is not a personal luxury. It's the foundation of powerful, intuitive leadership. And this is the clarity we're going to explore deeply inside our November workshop, which I have not picked the date yet.
Brenda Winkle 00:26:07 I don't have a sign up link for you, but just know that there is a workshop around clarity coming in November. Be sure you follow along. Make sure you're on my email list so that you can get notified when that's live, because my email list will have first crack at the sign up for that workshop, and you can join my email list. In fact, go grab the energy audit and then you can join my email list. And the energy audit is a really great way to build in some practice around what it feels like when you're doing things that feel really, really good and also what it feels like when it's not feeling as good so that you can make more informed decisions. So go grab that energy audit at Brendan Winkle for audit. Now, just as a recap, we've talked about what self abandoning is and what it can look like. We've talked about the hidden costs of self abandoning. We've talked about the reset you can use by asking yourself that question or those two questions. Meaning am I showing up for myself or I am abandoning myself here? We've talked about listening to the whispers of your body.
Brenda Winkle 00:27:21 We've talked about the clarity reset, and we've talked about seasonal alignment. And if you are ready to stop abandoning yourself and come home to yourself, you are going to love a special event that I have coming up in March 2026. Oh my gosh, I can't wait to tell you more about it. Be sure you follow along either in the email list or on social media for more on that. And I want to tell you a story before we close today, because I want you to know you're not alone in this journey to stop self abandoning and create more self sovereignty. I want you to know that you are very strong and brilliant and wise and intelligent, and that we can all make mistakes in this and we can all self abandon in big ways and in little ways. And I'm going to tell you about a really big way. I saw it abandoned. So as I was making the transition from being a full time music educator into being a full time entrepreneur, I was very lonely. I had gone from working, surrounded by teachers and students and administrators and parents to being a solopreneur, working in my house.
Brenda Winkle 00:28:32 And then my daughter moved out and she took her dog. So I went from being around all the people to being totally alone. And it was honestly really scary. And I was more lonely than I ever knew was even possible, which meant that I was at risk for making misaligned decisions because I was in a place of pain. And anytime we're making decisions from a place of pain, I think there's a possibility we might be self abandoning. We want to make decisions from a place of Empowerment, a place of going toward something. A place of like going into something purposefully with great intention instead of trying to solve pain. But I went in to solve pain, and I joined a $25,000 mastermind because I was buying hope that I could get this entrepreneurship thing figured out. I was buying friends who were on the same journey that I was on of entrepreneurship, and I was buying something to do. And companions, honestly, because I knew, oh gosh, you know, I'm going to be on calls these days of the week.
Brenda Winkle 00:29:51 It's going to give me community. It's going to give me a chance to plug in. And I told myself, this is going to be so good because of all the things that I've just mentioned. And then also I'm going to learn how to be an entrepreneur. Well, what I did not use was discernment. I did not look carefully for any of the promised outcomes of the mastermind. Turns out there were none. It was literally just what I told you. I bought Hope and friends for $25,000, and the longer I was in the container, the more I had recognized I have self abandoned in a very expensive way. Not only was it expensive financially, but it was expensive energetically because I had spent all this money to try to learn to become an entrepreneur, and I was not learning how to become an entrepreneur, but also the leader of the mastermind had not disclosed her values. And there were some things that made me kind of go, I'm not sure we're aligned on that, but I kept talking myself out of what I knew.
Brenda Winkle 00:31:08 I kept telling myself it was okay because she had this LGBTQ community member working for her, or this one in that position, or there was this, Bipoc member in her community. So it couldn't be that we were that far apart ideologically. But it turns out we're very far apart ideologically now. Would I have joined the mastermind had I known that? I don't know, this person is incredibly talented and gifted at at what she does and what she teaches. And so it's possible I still would have would have joined, but because I wasn't clear and didn't know and they weren't disclosed on her values, there were some of the things that she taught us that were sort of absolute to being an entrepreneur. That turned out to be in direct contradiction to my values. I value social justice. I value women's rights. I value people being fed and having access to water. I value science. I value access to health care for everyone, including women. And I value our LGBTQ and Bipoc communities. And what I learned the longer I was in this, this mastermind, was we didn't share those values.
Brenda Winkle 00:32:35 And. It became an energy leak for me. Because when we're doing things that don't align to our values, it is energetically expensive. It's really expensive because if you're doing things that aren't aligned to your values, you are you're you're costing your soul. Costing your soul. And so I'm not going to tell you what I think you should value, but I am going to be very, very clear around what I value, because one of my commitments is that if you choose to work with me, or if you already are working with me, that you know where I stand, so that nothing I say can be construed as this is how you build a spiritual entrepreneurship business, or this is the only way that you can heal so that you can hear the difference for yourself. If something I say is rooted in one of my values, or if it's rooted in best practices, does that make sense? So in learning to not Self Abandoned, I actually came closer to home for me. I came more into myself and it actually made my boundaries more solid.
Brenda Winkle 00:33:50 It actually made my values more solid. And it made me wonder, how could somebody with my values be so drawn to a community with opposite values. Well, one of the things that puts people at risk for making choices that aren't aligned with values is isolation or feeling like you don't have community. It's literally a risk factor, according to some research done at Portland State University. there is a a researcher named Hayley Savannah Robertson, who published a piece called Coercion Conversion Control Techniques Used to recruit and Indoctrinate new members into Cult organizations. And I don't know if you have seen the research or all the Netflix specials on different types of spiritual organizations that were actually cults, but they're really out there and they're targeting people who are feeling this sense of loneliness and feeling this lack of community. So one of the things that you can do to minimize your own risk is to find community fast, Find it fast and make sure it's aligned with your values. And then the other thing that I was questioning is I was thinking to myself, I perceived these people inside the mastermind to be good people, to be good humans, kind humans, people I cared about.
Brenda Winkle 00:35:21 How could our values be so, so different? And so I started researching. I would type in like in Google Scholar. I would look up scholarly research for values or scholarly research around differences and political ideologies. And what I found was fascinating. There was a 2017 study done at the University of Nebraska, and in this study, they determined that people who lean towards conservatism in political conversations have a thicker amygdala, while people who tend to lean toward liberalism in their political ideology have a thinner amygdala. Now, the amygdala is the part of the brain that governs your nervous system. It's like the reptilian brain. It's the thing that keeps the lights on when your body is under extreme stress. So when your energy center is in the amygdala, you're not thinking clearly. You're very, very motivated by fear and by releasing and mitigating fear, which is to say that the thicker amygdala is in the people leaning towards conservatism make them very prone to wanting relief from fearful messages. And it means that any type of certainty slash authoritarianism.
Brenda Winkle 00:36:57 If you see where I'm going with this is much more appealing to people with this specific thickening in the amygdala. And by contrast, people leaning toward liberalism have a thinner amygdala, meaning they're not as affected by fear. It means they can more quickly get out of the amygdala. It's not to say they can't get stuck there, too, but they can more quickly get out of the amygdala because they're not as motivated by fear. So in thinking about where you lie on that spectrum, it might be interesting to think about, are you making decisions from a place of power or from a place of fear? Because that, my friend, is the real power move when it comes to stopping self abandoning when you make decisions from a place of power. That's the power move, right? When you make decisions as a way to mitigate fear or avoid pain, we can make some really misaligned decisions that ultimately lead to self abandonment, such as me joining that mastermind. So I'd love to hear from you if this resonated with you.
Brenda Winkle 00:38:06 Would you please send me an email? Brenda Brenda Winkle. Com or message me on social media. And if you really love this, would you please go give the podcast your rating and review wherever you're listening? If you're on Apple Podcasts, you can give it a rating and a review. If you're listening on Spotify, you can give it a rating and then leave a comment. And if you're listening anywhere else, you can leave it a rating. Thank you, thank you, thank you for doing that. I know it takes like 30s, and it's one of the best things you can do to help a podcast grow, and I hope you want this podcast to grow. I'm asking for your help to grow it, and if you loved this episode, would you please share it with three people you care about? Thank you so much for listening. Bye for now.
