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 creating, 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 for 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 your host, Brenda Winkle. Today on the podcast, we're going to be talking about something that many high capacity leaders experience. And that's something that I call the collapse. So the collapse isn't like literally falling down in the collapse. It's an energetic collapse. So if you think about the difference between like even with your posture or try this now curling the shoulders in and lowering the chin just slightly, that energetic posture versus creating space. and wit the cross your shoulders, lifting the head and the chin. And so that now we've got straight back, shoulders pulled back and down in a relaxed way. Do you feel that difference now? Let's go back and forth between them just one more time, so we can really embody the difference between a collapse and a full empowerment in the body. And then we're going to talk about what's happening when we feel this energy. Because I know that this will be familiar to you because this is human, right.
Brenda Winkle 00:02:35 This is no comment on your ability as a leader. This is no comment on your healing journey. This is something that all of us experience from time to time. So let's go back into the collapse. We have our shoulders turn inward. We're kind of rolled down in the front of our body. We're hunched over a little bit, the chin is lowered. Just feel that energy. And I'm sure that you can remember times that you have been in this kind of configuration, even if your body didn't show it times when you didn't speak up, when you wanted to. When you didn't share the solution that you knew that you had. Or even when you didn't share the idea that you had because you were worried it wasn't good enough or it wouldn't be received. Or what is so common with the visionary leaders and high capacity people that I work with is you have a tendency to see things in a really broad perspective, in a really broad way. You can see solutions that no one else can. Because of your access to intuition and empathy, and so many times people with less broad vision and less empathy are the ones calling the shots.
Brenda Winkle 00:03:48 And so there may have been times in your life when you thought I shouldn't speak up, because they must know more than me, because they're in positional leadership when the truth is you actually have a different holistic and broader perspective. That would have been actually useful, but you didn't share it because of this collapse energy. So if you're still in that position, go ahead and take your shoulders back and down and let's make sure that they're really comfortable there. Let's roll the shoulders back in down three times. Just roll them back and down one, two and three and then allow the arms to just naturally hang from the shoulders. If you're on a chair with arms or you're driving, just allow them to go straight down from the body. If you're standing or if you're walking, just feel what that feels like to have the arms directly below the shoulders and the shoulders are back lifting from the chest, and there's a little slight lift in the chin that allows you to look up and out. It feels really different, right? So one of the things that I've been working on personally, and that I've been working with clients on is exactly this getting out of this collapse energy and taking back your power.
Brenda Winkle 00:05:08 Most of the time when I find high capacity leaders in a form of a collapse, it is not weakness. It is not that you don't know what to do. It is that you are overwhelmed with the empathy that you have, because so many times you are suffering in advance somebody else's emotional response to the thing that you know you need to do or say. Does that feel true? Because it feels true for me. And it's been true for so many of the clients I've had over the last several weeks. We're working on issues around this and related to this. And so it can feel like you are in a functional freeze, and in fact, you may be in a functional freeze. And if you've listened to previous episodes of your yes filled life, you know that the functional freeze is a nervous system stress state. We don't get a choice what nervous system stress state we go into. The nervous system decides that. So it might be a fight where you get combative, or you add more things to your schedule, or you get really busy, or you're just a little bit contradictory, or you're argumentative, or perhaps your current flavor is more flight.
Brenda Winkle 00:06:28 And that would be where you're trying to get away, in a manner of speaking. You might be noticing, trying to escape into your phone where you go into a doom scroll just so you don't have to think about things, or you avoid opening your emails, or avoid responding to the text, or avoid having the conversations that you need to have. And instead, you try to busy yourself consuming information. Listening to podcasts. Signing up for courses. Signing up for summits. That's all part of the flight response. The fan response is where we people please like our life depends on it, because the nervous system at that point really believes that it is life threatening, that the that we do have to actually people please to save our lives, even though that is not true. So today we're talking about this functional freeze, the collapse. Again this is a nervous system response. We are not going to make it good or bad. It is truly neutral, but it doesn't feel neutral. And it doesn't feel good when we're in this collapsed state, many times when we're in this collapse, the functional freeze, some of the things that we'll start to see are we take on more responsibilities, even though we know we don't have capacity for them.
Brenda Winkle 00:07:47 So maybe this looks like you have a very full schedule. You've just added Something new to your life, perhaps like, let's say you're taking care of yourself and you've noticed that you had this pain in, let's say, your knee. You've had this pain in your knee for a long time, and you're finally going to physical therapy for it, finding out that it's truly justifiable pain. It's not in your head. And the physical therapist wants you there twice a week. So now you've added two hours to your normally busy week, and then you have a teenage daughter who decides that they need you to bring them a novel because they're bored at their rehearsal or their practice. And so even though you've now added two additional hours to your week of responsibility, instead of saying no to your daughter, who wants you to go driving out of your way and take your only free time of the day to deliver her a novel, you go ahead and agree to do that. That is actually an example of functional frees, and that is a true story.
Brenda Winkle 00:08:52 It's a true story. It could be not musical rehearsal. Maybe it's soccer practice, and maybe it's not a novel. Maybe it's a phone charger. But in any case, this is functional freeze in real time. And when we are highly empathic, highly compassionate leaders, it's so easy for us to take on extra responsibilities because we want to help. It makes us feel good to help. It gives us a little bit of juice when we feel the emotions of the people that we are working with or serving, or family members with. It feels good to us to serve in this way, but the truth is, it's actually not good for you, and it's definitely not good for them because we are not giving them the dignity of the experience of their own choices, in this case with like delivering stuff to kids when you're already busy, but you're also not acknowledging what needs to happen for you. And this is the piece that I see highly successful, high capacity leaders struggle with. Most especially as you step into new identities.
Brenda Winkle 00:10:04 Your new identity is going to reveal the decisions that you have been making that are no longer aligned, whether that is with friends or with people on your team, or even your own kids. There may need to be a shift in the way that you are showing up. There may need to be some new boundaries in place around your time, your energy, your bandwidth. And I also just want to really normalize that. Of course, you're responding in the way that you have been responding. Of course, you say yes to doing more, to answering the texts from this person who started out on your team as just a team member who's now become a friend. But they're going through something really difficult. And so you've tried to support them, you've tried to make yourself more available to them, and now it is literally sucking the life out of you. Of course you feel away, of course, and that is because you are a highly and passionate and passionate. And I'm combining words. You're a highly empathic, compassionate person.
Brenda Winkle 00:11:13 But if we don't step into our own power, think shoulders back, leading with the chest chin raised right now. If we don't step into our own power and protect our own energy, time, and bandwidth, no one else is going to. And one of the things that we need to do as we step into these new identities is to allow ourselves to admit to ourselves, oh, I'm in a new identity right now, and the behaviours that I've engaged in and the ways in which I've shown up, are no longer aligned with my new identity. We're not going to make you bad. We're not going to make the identity bad. We're not going to make the other people bad. None of that's true. Nothing has gone wrong here. But you're exhausted and you're depleted, and you need some relief, right? That's where so many people are having conversations with me right now, both in my membership, the spiritual CEO and my private clients. This is coming up in any number of ways. In fact, the stories that I've told you today about dropping off the novel to musical practice and the responding to team members who are going through a time, those are real stories from my client's lives, and they're so relatable to me because I can see myself in them.
Brenda Winkle 00:12:32 There have been so many times that I have had to really get clear on what am I available for now in this current configuration, in my current identity. Of course, we want to be helpful and we can be helpful, but we are diluting our own helpfulness if we are indiscriminately giving away our time, energy, and bandwidth. Now, one of the things that can be happening for this is when we're experiencing a stress response. And I want to be clear. These types of events are in fact stressful and can be adding to your stress response, because in the moment, there's a little bit of walking on two sides of the fence. We have the old identity who showed up in this way, driving to deliver the novel or responding to the team member who is in need. Old identity would have done those things right, but your new identity can't support it and it creates stress in the body. So not only do you have the stress response of the ask that is being asked of you, but now you also have an identity shift stress response.
Brenda Winkle 00:13:50 And so what happens is your field of vision narrows and it gets really, really narrow, almost like you're looking through like a telescope. So you can only see this exact problem in front of you. And when you can only see this exact problem in front of you, your mind, your ego, your mental field is going to say, I must solve this problem in front of me because I need to feel better and this problem in front of me seems like the natural thing that will make me feel better. It is the next domino that should fall that will move the energy along, right? That's so natural. It's a natural response to want to respond to that energy in that way. Because what's happening is literally your field of vision narrows. This is what happens in a stress response. If we can Regulate the body and the nervous system enough to allow that field of vision to open back up. It will allow you to see the broader picture. And when you can see the broader picture, you can now have the spaciousness to determine is this thing that I'm being requested of or that I'm being asked to do, or that I'm even considering doing? Is it actually aligned with my goals, with my identity, with how I care for myself, with how I show up for others? Is it aligned or is it misaligned? And I want to really normalize that.
Brenda Winkle 00:15:23 This is part of that identity process. And in my experience, I'm just on the other side of a massive identity shift. And I'm noticing that one of the things that is incredibly supportive for me right now is pausing, giving myself time to notice. How do I feel? Am I in the collapse or am I in the fullness of me? Am I in my empowered self energy with my shoulders back, my chin up a little bit and my chest lifted? So if I pause and I allow myself to feel the energy, a lot of times I can make a more aligned decision and it's really important to name that. Again, nothing has gone wrong with you. Nothing has gone wrong here. You are not weak. You are not bad at boundaries. You are just going through an identity shift. And one of the things that can happen for us, especially if you're really good at what you do and you are if you're listening to this podcast, you're probably a high achiever. You're high capacity. You're doing big things.
Brenda Winkle 00:16:36 You're creating big things. And one of the things that can actually get in our way is how good you are at those things, because it comes so naturally to you, and it's probably even fun for you to work inside your gifts. You're probably like, yeah, this is so much fun until it's too much. And so just wanting to give you permission to evolve in the way that feels right for you. Permission to set new boundaries with this new identity. Permission to do things differently in a way that feels more nourishing to you. And if this resonates with you, stay close. Because I'm teaching something around this very, very soon, I want you to know I believe in you. I see you, and you are worth going through this identity shift. You are worth taking time to consider how this new identity impacts your decisions. You are worth standing with your shoulders back, your chin lifted. Leading with your chest. You're worth it. I believe in you. Thank you so much for listening to your guest filled life.
Brenda Winkle 00:17:51 If you enjoyed this, please go give the podcast your rating and review. And if you're looking for one on one support, I have a brand new offering for you. It's called the Get to Know You session. It's a reduced price session just to get to know each other, to see if this would be a fit to work together. And of course, you can come join my membership, the spiritual CEO, where we talk about all things related to becoming the CEO of your energy, your life, your work, your business, your relationships. And again, I'm just going to say stay tuned because I'm teaching something about all of this very, very soon. Thank you for listening today. Bye for now. Until next time.
