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 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 in the podcast, we're going to be talking about the subtle line between carrying and carrying. Many empathic women like us were taught that caring means being accommodating, being understanding, being flexible, being supportive. We were rewarded for those behaviors in subtle ways and in very overt ways. So think about like how many times you've been thanked for. Thank you for being so flexible. Thank you for being so accommodating. And by the way, it is perfectly okay. In fact, even encouraged to be somewhat accommodating because we don't want to walk in to the world and have it be only our way all the time. That's not at all what I'm talking about, but when we are always the one who is accommodating, understanding, being flexible and supportive, caring can slowly become caring. And when we're the ones that are carrying it is exhausting. So compassion says, I care about how you feel.
Brenda Winkle 00:02:42 I care about you. You matter to me. Your experience matters. That's compassion. When we are in any type of self abandonment, as far as a pattern that turns into your feelings matter more than mine. Now here's the thing. A lot of times this idea your feelings matter more than mine is not something we're consciously walking around saying or thinking. It's more subtle than that, usually. And let me give you an example. So I've been single since 2008. I've been in and out of relationships, but I've never had another adult living with me since 2008, and my daughter moved out in 2022, and I became an honest to goodness empty nester, like, I was the only one in the nest, and I've even shared on the podcast how lonely that transition was. And at one point, when I looked up at the wall of an apartment that I moved into after she moved out, I was so relieved to see a box Elder bug crawling on the walls of the apartment, because it meant I wasn't like in some alternate universe, just stuck there all by myself.
Brenda Winkle 00:03:57 I was so desperately lonely. I don't feel that way anymore. And there's been a lot of podcast episodes where I've talked about why that is, but that's not the point of this episode. The point that I'm trying to make here is I live alone. I understand what loneliness feels like now. My dad died in August of 2024, and my mom is now living alone. For the first time in her life. She went from living in her parents house to a dorm room to a shared house with my dad, and then she lived with him for 59 years and or maybe more. I guess I would need to do the math on that, but a long time, maybe even 60, I don't know. The point is a long time. And there was a conversation my sister and I were having, and my sister was trying to soften the transition of living alone for my mom. And this was several months after my dad had died, and she was trying to soften it and asking me for advice and asking me to do things so that my mom wouldn't be or feel Alone.
Brenda Winkle 00:05:03 And I was deep into this conversation when suddenly it dawned on me. I live alone too. Why am I engaging in making sure that my mom has a different experience of living alone than I have? That makes no sense. Why should I go out of my way to make sure that when my mom comes home, somebody is on the phone for her or somebody you know, texts her or calls her? That was the plan that we were making. And then when I go home, I have given this to my mom, but there's still no one there that's going to text me or check on me. And it was a mind blowing moment where I realized how subtle it was that I had made my mom's experience of living alone more serious than my own. Now, that's not to say that my mom hasn't, you know, transitioned well. And we did do some things to care for her, and that was the right thing to do. The point I'm really trying to make is, in my mind, subconsciously, my mom's experience of living alone was something I needed to soften, even though I also live alone.
Brenda Winkle 00:06:16 And sometimes, quite frankly, it's really difficult. That's a great example of self abandonment, trying to make someone else's feelings more important than your own. Only in this case, that's what I was doing. So compassion allows connection to the other person, to the group of people and to yourself. Self abandonment creates disconnection from yourself. Where all of a sudden you're not tracking your feelings emotionally, your sensations and your body, and you're making everything else about other people more important than your own experience. That's called self abandonment. Now, why do empathic women cross this line? Well, we're taught in subtle and over ways through our social interactions the whole time we're growing up that this is the way to do it. We are rewarded for it. And then if you have the deep empathy and compassion which if you're drawn to this podcast, I know you do. Then you also not only experience compassion, which is a very nice trait for all humans to have, but you experience empathy in your body so that you have the experience of the other person's experience in your own body, meaning you can feel their own disappointment in your body.
Brenda Winkle 00:07:41 You can feel it when they're sad. You can feel it when they're in pain to a certain extent. And so because you can feel emotional nuance quickly, you are emotionally intelligent, like above average emotional intelligence. You're probably the one that regulates every family gathering because you can anticipate the impact, because you value the harmony, because you don't want to cause any harm. So oftentimes, what happens for those of us with deep empathy and compassion, we adjust quickly. We soften our truth. We delay making decisions we know we need to make because we're worried about how it's going to impact other people. And we over explain this is not because you lack clarity. This is not because you're weak. It's because you feel everything. And I just want you to know this comes up for me. Still. I have been doing this work honestly with integrity since 2015. I've been on a personal development journey since 2008, and I really dove into the energy work and the semantics beginning in 2015. And I've been in the somatic space since 2021.
Brenda Winkle 00:08:50 And when I say I feel everything, I mean, I feel everything. You know, I was really questioning whether I needed to get some more reliable income. And I was on this journey to think, do I need to supplement my income with another role? What do I need to do so that I'm not putting so much pressure on my business or my clients, and that's just a little bit cleaner energy. So I applied for this job, and as as I got into the interview process, the interview process felt really big and really heavy. And I started to think to myself, I don't have capacity for this role. I don't want this role because it's going to take away from my business and my other choir that I direct. And so I made the decision that I was going to withdraw from the interview process. And the first thing that I thought, because this is so patterned, was, oh, I don't want them to be disappointed. I don't want them to be disappointed. Now, I've been doing this work long enough that I know exactly what to do to tend to my nervous system when those kinds of thoughts come up and I'm very self-aware.
Brenda Winkle 00:10:08 And so I knew that thought was like a whisper or a shadow from another place in life for me. And so I just did some semantic processing, and then I was able to send the email and say, no, thank you. I appreciate the offer to interview with you further, but I need to decline. And I'm naming this because I don't want you to think that this is going to be a one and done fix. You have this deep empathy and you are going to continue for the rest of your life. Have these moments where you're going to have the opportunity to either choose to self honor or self abandon because of your empathy, and it is literally going to be a choice every single time because you feel everything. So when this can show up, it could be in relationships. It can show up. As you grow and evolve, you might be less available to carry things that aren't yours in your relationship, and it can create some changes inside your relationship dynamics. It can come up for you during career transitions when you're moving from one role to the other, or you're really lighting a fire under your business, or you're moving into retirement.
Brenda Winkle 00:11:26 We can see this. We can also see this when you get ready to take a stand into more visibility, being more visible in whatever work you do, whether that is putting yourself out there and applying to speak at conferences, or putting yourself out there and showing up on social media or creating an email list or whatever the case is for you. We also see this happen and impact in family roles, especially with shifting dynamics when we have either aging parents or growing up kids, where we still might be feeling like that sandwich generation, even though our kids are actually fully functional adults. We still take on so much for them. And when we step into or into a leadership role or we move into an adjacent leadership role, these things can come up and it absolutely comes up whenever you're getting ready to step into a new identity. So when you get ready for that identity shift, this choice to self honor or self abandon is absolutely going to be present. And so when you're in a period of growth or transition, whether it's something you've chosen or something that has happened to you, it is really important for you to notice and be aware that as somebody with deep empathy and compassion, this choice to self honor or self abandon is going to come up for you.
Brenda Winkle 00:12:54 It is going to come up for you. So let's talk about what we can do about it. Okay. Caring deeply does not require you to self abandon. It doesn't require you to leave yourself. It doesn't require you to ignore your feelings and your needs. You can be compassionate. You can be thoughtful. You can be kind without overriding what you know. I can't tell you the number of messages I get in my DMs. By the way, I love it when you DM me. I. I'm active on Facebook and I'm also active on Instagram at Brenda Winkle. And I love hearing from you. And I can't tell you the number of DMs I hear from people who are in transitions at work, or they're in transitions with family. Maybe it is kids growing up approaching empty nesting, or maybe it's aging parents moving parents from the family home into an apartment, or into assisted living. And the thing that I hear over and over and over again is I don't know how to do this. I don't know how to take care of myself and not disappoint someone.
Brenda Winkle 00:14:05 And I just want to acknowledge that is real. And we want to reframe this so that you can be the caring, compassionate, considerate person that you want to be without ignoring what it is that you need. And this is exactly the kind of moment we work with inside power. Power is self trust for empathic women navigating growth and transition because empathic women know exactly what they want. Usually if they take the space to figure it out. But the emotional complexity of change and transition and growth makes decisions feel so much harder and heavier. Power strengthens your ability to feel everything, to notice what's happening without losing yourself, without self abandoning, without making other people's emotions more important than your own. And this is nuanced because as somebody who has high empathy and compassion, I know that the number one thing in your mind right now is, okay, I'm really curious about this. I really want to step into my self trust area era, not area era. I really want to do these things for myself. I want to take better care of myself.
Brenda Winkle 00:15:29 I know I'm burning the candle at both ends. I know I'm being too much for too many people and yet I don't want to disappoint them. And so I just want to acknowledge that when you learn to really take care of your sweet self, your empathic self, you will still be compassionate and kind and loving and generous, but you won't do it at your own expense. And there's something really magical that happens when you learn to protect yourself, prioritize your own well-being, prioritize the things that are important to you and when you show up, you're going to show up with a totally different energy. You're going to show up more, radiantly more fulfilled, more generously. Because the truth is, a lot of times when we're in these patterns of self abandoning where we're being overly accommodating, overly flexible, over giving, over committing, we tell ourselves that it's sort of a have to. And if we're in any type of a fight stress response, we are adding fuel to the fire. We're adding more to the calendar.
Brenda Winkle 00:16:39 We're saying yes to more obligations, we're saying yes to more volunteer opportunities. And we're just. Yes, yes, yes. And what happens is we continue to say yes, but we have this low level resentment and we tell ourselves that no one knows. But that's not true. People know. People do know. When you're showing up with resentment, they can feel it. They may not care because they may be benefiting from you showing up and turning yourself into a pretzel. But I promise you, they can feel it. And that's why sometimes there's those snarky comments. Because even though you do want to be very compassionate and very generous when you're saying yes to things that you want to say no to, you're showing up in a way that people can feel you're not kidding anyone. Or let's try this one. This is a very, very common one that I see when you get stressed and you know that you're over giving, over committing, over accommodating, being overly flexible. You will turn into information gathering mode and you will continue to sign up for new courses.
Brenda Winkle 00:17:46 You will sign up for new summits. You will read more books, you will subscribe to more podcasts, and you will try and learn your way out of feeling exhausted. You will try and intellectualize, how can I possibly stop being so overly accommodating and overly flexible and you won't ever implement? You'll just continue to learn that is actually the fight. Excuse me. Flight stress response at work. So if you find yourself in that pattern, you're in a flight response. And these fight and flight responses are very common for empathic women. You know what else is common? The freeze and the fun. So if you're in a freeze response and you are so overly accommodating, so overly flexible, so over giving, over committing, over guessing, if you're in a freeze response, it'll look like you say yes, but then you know, so you don't follow through and you always have a good reason. Probably like you get a migraine headache right before the event, and there's a part of you that's actually relieved that you've got the headache because you didn't want to go anyway, but now you have a headache.
Brenda Winkle 00:18:58 You have a night off and a headache. That's an example of the freeze response. Or when you agree to do the thing, but you just drop all the balls until the very, very, very, very, very last moment. And in the meantime, people are like, hey, you got that thing ready? Hey, you got that thing planned? That's freeze response in action. And if you have a fond stress response, it's going to look like people pleasing, as though your life depends on it. You are going to continue to agree to do things you don't want to do. You're going to agree with conversations you don't agree with. You're going to actually continue conversations you don't want to be a part of, and you're going to continue to do things that just don't feel good. And you're going to ask yourself, why am I doing this again? I promised myself I wouldn't do this, but it's not you. It's your stress response. It's that phone response. These are the moments we're going to work with inside of power so that you can really understand.
Brenda Winkle 00:20:00 Number one, when you're in a stress response. And number two, what to do about it so that you can call back some of your own power. Power is my framework that I developed in 2023, and it's a five part framework that I teach inside of all of my programs, and it's a five part framework. I posted retreats around and it really works. Each letter of power stands for one of the Pillars of Power. And so I will let you go look at the sales page for power so you can see what that is. But essentially it's presence optimize wisdom and body and renew. And when you put together these five pillars of power, life shifts in pretty dramatic ways. So go check it out at Brandon Winkle. We're enrolling now through April 20th, and we begin April 21st. And if you are an alumni of any of my programs, your yes, filled Life second chapter or yes Academy, you have an automatic 30% re enrollment discount. Even though this is a brand new program. This is what I'm doing for you when you're a client.
Brenda Winkle 00:21:12 So if you didn't get the email from me and you're an alumni, reach out for the code to save yourself a 30% enrollment fee. Thank you so much for listening to your yes Filled Life podcast. It means so much that you're here on the journey, and it is my mission to empower and lead you to your own empowerment. As many empathic leaders heart lead people as possible because we need you in the world in all kinds of ways. We need you showing up in the community as ski instructors, as business owners, as entrepreneurs, as coaches, as physicians, as educators, as retirees, as volunteers. We need you. So please consider sharing this episode with three people who you really care about. And if you haven't left the podcast or rating and review in a while, please go do that now. Thanks so much for being here. Bye for now.
