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, Brent Winkle. Today on the podcast, we're going to be talking about something that most empaths, at least at some point in their journey, think is kindness. But it's not. Have you ever done something that you didn't really want to do and then told yourself, you're just being nice? Maybe you stayed longer at an event than you wanted to, or you said yes when you really meant no, or you didn't speak up about something that felt important. You didn't tell the truth in the way that you were feeling, or in the way something impacted you. Or maybe you didn't ask for what you needed, or admit that you were uncomfortable because you didn't want someone else to feel disappointed or sad, or rejected because you wanted to be kind. But what if that's not actually kindness? What if it was a form of subtle self abandonment? Now, a lot of times as empaths, because we are so tuned in to everything that's happening around us, this can happen without us being consciously aware of it.
Brenda Winkle 00:02:37 Let's talk first about how we might have learned how to do this. A lot of us unconsciously learned that our needs didn't matter as much as the people around us. We talked about this in the last episode. We heard messages like, be nice, don't be selfish. Think of others. Put other people first. Don't rock the boat. Be the bigger person. But there are some of us, especially if you're an environmental empath who may have endured chaos or some type of instability, unpredictability, or maybe abuse in childhood. You may have overtly learned that your needs didn't matter. That was absolutely my case. So I'm a bio empath. I mean, I don't ever remember not having my gifts, but I'm also an environmental empath, and I have complex PTSD from childhood sexual abuse and an abusive marriage. It's really interesting because I thought the whole time I was being kind by not rocking the boat, because if I didn't rock the boat, it meant I wasn't making other people uncomfortable. I wasn't, quote unquote, destroying other people's lives.
Brenda Winkle 00:03:50 And I really believed that. I know that you can learn that your needs matter. That's the whole premise of your yes filled life. Your needs matter. Your desires matter. The things that you want for your life matter. Hopefully you don't have a story as dramatic as mine. Hopefully you are a bio empath and you just are biologically, physiologically able to read a room. But in case you're also an environmental empath like me, I just want you to know I see you and this is for you too. So the messages that we received that may have subtly taught us our needs aren't important, aren't inherently bad. I mean, I think it could be argued they probably caused harm in some ways, but we probably also have said these things to our own kids and to our own friends. Right. And so it's not that the messaging is bad, it's that it hits differently when you are an empath, because it can subtly send the message that my comfort is negotiable and their comfort is not. And eventually that becomes their experience matters and mine can wait.
Brenda Winkle 00:05:15 And this is where the self trust erosion begins. This is one of the exact patterns that we work on inside Power self trust for empaths. That is my signature program. Enrollment is open now because self trust isn't built by learning another concept. It's built by practicing what happens when somebody disagrees or somebody is uncomfortable with the choice that you make, or has an opinion about your choice. Many empaths operate unconsciously from the belief that if I make sure everyone is okay, then I'll be okay. I've seen this in my own clients. It's absolutely how I operated. For the first, I would say 35 years of my life. I'm not exaggerating. If everyone else is okay, then I'll be okay. And when I was 35, that was the that was the year that I decided enough, I chose me, I left that marriage. I went on a healing journey and started the life that I now live. When I was moving into that belief, I didn't have conscious awareness that if I make sure everyone is okay, then I'll be okay.
Brenda Winkle 00:06:43 But that's absolutely my motivation. That was what kept me doing what I was doing because if I could make sure everyone around me was okay, then I would be safe. And again, hopefully your story is not as dramatic as mine, but my guess is there's a subtle part of this that rings true for you. Because if you are the peacekeeper in the family, if you were the one that everyone turns to for emotional regulation, if you are sort of the emotional set point of the family, you probably also operate from the unconscious belief or maybe conscious belief. If I make sure everyone else is okay, then I will be okay. But here's the thing I want you to hear. And I'm going to say this gently and lovingly. That's not kindness. That is survival. It's a strategy. It's a coping mechanism. Because underneath that is a hope that no one's going to be upset or mad. No one will reject me. I will be safe. People won't leave me and nobody will think badly of me.
Brenda Winkle 00:07:58 So instead of telling the truth, we start to manage other people's reactions and we try to manage their emotions. But we've talked about it before. That's not really a thing. When is real kindness look like? Well, most empaths somehow internalize the belief that self abandonment and selfishness are the only two options on the scale, and those are both extremes on the whole continuum. They're extremes. Self abandonment and selfishness. There's a whole scale in the middle. Real kindness includes you. Real empathy includes you. Real kindness includes honesty. It doesn't require chronic resentment. If you're being kind. True kindness will not lead to resentment. It will feel generous. It will feel regenerative. It will feel restorative. It'll feel really good when it's coming from a place of true kindness. So I told a story last week or last episode about my client who said, why am I worried about how this person feels when it's so clear they're not considering how this affects me? When we start to ask ourselves those questions, it can change everything.
Brenda Winkle 00:09:30 Because for the first time, sometimes we're including ourselves in the equation. And so if you've noticed that come up for you. Like, why am I so worried about how this person feels? Because it's clear they're not considering me. I want you to know I see you. So I had an incident like this happen. It was a very small incident, but it was, over the five K race at the five K Wicked Wine run that I did this week in the Oregon Willamette Wine Valley. It was so beautiful. We went to the Left Coast estate, and there is a member of the girlfriends group who she and I had loaned each other books. I took a very specific bag with me to the wine run, because I knew that she was going to be there, and we had texted previously to say, when am I going to see you next? I'd like to return the book, that kind of thing. And we had exchanged that we were both going to be present at the Wine Run.
Brenda Winkle 00:10:32 I did not confirm with her that I should bring the book, but we had agreed that we were both going to be at the wine Run. I decided that I would bring the book. That would make sense. It would be kind for me to do to bring the book. And I got there with this special bag that I chose, just because I would be able to carry the book at this wine run. And I got ready to hand her the book, and she's like, well, I'm not going to take that. I have nowhere to put it. And it was so interesting because in the moment I was taken aback because I was like, what do you mean? We texted about seeing each other here and exchanging each other's books. But then when I got real with myself, we texted that we needed to exchange the books. We texted that we were going to be at the wine run. We did not say we would exchange books at the Wine Run, and that's one of those things that can happen for us empaths.
Brenda Winkle 00:11:32 So I'm saying this because I don't want you to think that this stuff never comes up for me. It does, It does. But I also want to say, really clearly, there will be a point at which it doesn't take so much effort, and it will be a point at which it's very low stakes kind of events like that book. Who cares? Okay, so I brought home a book. I was going to bring home a book in the backpack anyway, and I really, really loved this book. It was called Wedding People. If you haven't read it, it's a great read. A really enjoyed it. So we just closed our first cohort of power and power is enrolling for the summer cohort right now. And Jill is one of the people that joined the first cohort of power. And she said something that absolutely made me jump up and down and cheer. She said, I don't want to live small so someone else can tolerate me. How many of us have called that kindness. How many of us have toned ourselves down, or stayed a little bit quiet, or hidden our preferences, or made ourselves smaller in some way just so someone else could be more comfortable? That's not kindness.
Brenda Winkle 00:12:55 That is self abandonment disguised as kindness. So the cost to you is pretty obvious. We talk about it a lot. When self abandonment gets mislabeled as kindness, it's easy to feel exhausted and resentful. And we've talked about the flip side of resentment becomes entitlement, where you feel entitled to certain things, which we'll get to in just a second. The cost is also becoming overwhelmed. Just absolutely overwhelmed. Like you cannot take on one more thing. You probably will feel disconnected from yourself. You probably feel emotionally depleted, and it might even be confusing to think about what you want. It might be confusing when somebody asks you what you want. You might say, I don't know. And that's because you're constantly prioritizing everyone else's experience over your own. But here's the part people don't talk about. It's the cost to your relationships. We oftentimes assume as empaths that self abandonment is generous. The problem is, it can create the very thing you're trying to avoid. Because people stop being able to trust your yes.
Brenda Winkle 00:14:18 Or you're setting yourself up to be taken advantage of. So let's say, for example, somebody says I'd love to or no problem, or I'm happy to do this for you. And then you discover later that they never wanted to. You start to wonder which version was real? The one who said yes, the one who's resentful now. And if we're constantly saying yes to things that we don't want, we're training people to not trust our yes. And I'm going to give you a personal example. Recently, I had a friend who. Said that she would love to organize an event, and I didn't ask very many follow up questions. I took her at her word, and then we began to plan and organize the event. She continued to ask me questions throughout the event planning, and I would help and I would plan, but my understanding was that she really wanted to do it. And then the event came and went and it was lovely. It was so beautiful. It was really fun. It was well received, it was well attended.
Brenda Winkle 00:15:38 And then shortly after the event, this person and I got together for some type of social thing and she said, you know, I felt really weird about planning that event. If you wanted me to do it, you should have just asked. And I was like, I thought you offered. I thought you said you wanted to do it. And she said, well, no, I didn't want to do it. And so it left me feeling uncertain about whether or not I could trust what was happening between us, because I kept checking in with her throughout the event. Planning. Does it still feel good? Are you enjoying this? Do you want me to take over? Do you want me to help in some way? And she kept saying, no, I've got it, no, I've got it. And I'm friends with a lot of empaths. And so I'm not angry or upset about this. And it makes me question whether or not I can trust her. Full. Yes. And my guess is you've probably been in similar situations because the truth is, if we're not saying no when we mean no, that's not kind.
Brenda Winkle 00:16:52 It's not kind. It at a certain point becomes dishonest, and then it creates crunchy things in the relationship after. Because the truth is, the discomfort that you avoid today becomes the pain you create. Tomorrow I'm going to say that again. The discomfort you avoid today becomes the pain you create tomorrow. Many of us avoid difficult conversations because we don't want to hurt something. We don't want to hurt someone. But what's more painful hearing right now that you don't want to do something or learning years later? They never wanted to do it, or they never liked it, or they never felt good about that specific thing, or that they've been pretending. The discomfort that you avoid today becomes the pain that you create tomorrow. And people never really get to know the real you. If you're hiding your preferences, your limits, your deal breakers, your boundaries, your truth, your desires, people aren't actually relating to you. They're relating to the version of you that's managing their emotions. And that means they never really get to understand the real person underneath.
Brenda Winkle 00:18:04 So of course, so often those of us that are empaths feel unseen, we feel invisible, we feel unnoticed. It's because we're turning into chameleons, we're turning into chameleons, and we shift identity based on what we think the other person wants to see. That's not a flex. I used to think it was. I used to actually brag about my chameleon like qualities. And then I realized it was exhausting to try and remember what it felt like to be me in this group, and what it felt like to be me in that group, and what it felt like to be me in that group. And none of it actually felt like me. And I felt completely unknown. I felt unseen, I felt like different parts of my life were siloed inside certain groups, and it was all self inflicted. It was not my friends that did that. That was me that had done that. And my guess is, if you're listening to this and you're still here, you're probably thinking, oh, I can think of some ways in which I'm doing that myself.
Brenda Winkle 00:19:14 And one of the biggest ways for me was coming to terms with my psychic and intuitive gifts and really owning. I have very strong psychic abilities, so strong that I work on the apps as a phone psychic. It's something that I hid for years because I was worried about getting fired from my job as a teacher, because I had been told that if I let people know that I was doing that, that the parents wouldn't like it and I would lose my job, I was told I was committing professional suicide by working for myself full time. I was told a lot of things and it got under my skin. And so I started to kind of hide different parts of myself, until one day I looked up and I realized, I don't think anyone actually knows the real me, because I had just shown this facet of Brenda to this people and this facet of Brenda to other people. And it wasn't until I finally decided, I'm going to show the fullness of me, and either you're going to love me or you're going to hate me, and I'm good with either because I want to be me.
Brenda Winkle 00:20:30 That was my unlock. That was my freedom. And I don't know if you can hear it right now, but I'm hearing sirens right now. Loud sirens as fire trucks roll by. That's a confirmation. that often happens when I'm giving psychic readings. I'll hear sirens or dogs barking to confirm what I'm saying. And so I don't know if you can hear that, but it just, it's not lost on me that that just happened. So one of the things that can happen for us, also as empaths that can affect our relationships is the unspoken contract. Most empaths are not trying to manipulate anybody. Would you agree? Like, I don't think we're manipulative because we know how that feels. But the problem is that self abandonment can create an invisible agreement, and it's an agreement that isn't mutually agreed upon, it sounds like. Look how much I'm sacrificing for this. Or look how much I'm sacrificing for this relationship, or look how much I'm doing for you. Or surely you'll appreciate this. Or now you're going to choose me because I've done these things, or now you're really going to love me because I did all of this for you.
Brenda Winkle 00:21:56 Don't you see? The problem is the contract was never spoken out loud, which means the other person never consented to it. So for most empaths, when we get to a certain point of being exhausted with these invisible agreements, we'll explode like a volcano in anger. And then we'll probably have to go back and apologize for our behavior, for our angry outburst. We'll collapse under the agreement and we'll get sick. And that might mean sick like a cold. Like if you have constant colds, that would be something I would be really curious to look at how many unspoken agreements you might be having with people, and it can manifest into more serious illnesses as well. We want to make sure that we're asking for consent, and this is really difficult for us empaths because of course we want people to consent, but also we want to help. And so much of our life has been giving help, whether we offered it or whether it was taken, that now sometimes we confuse the helpfulness that maybe people haven't actually consented to, maybe they haven't agreed to, maybe they don't even want.
Brenda Winkle 00:23:15 One of the most powerful insights that emerged during this cohort of power came from Stephanie. And she noticed a pattern, she said. Discomfort for them has meant action for me. Think about that. Someone else feels uncomfortable and immediately we explain. We accommodate, we soften, we rescue, we go to fix. And this isn't because we're bad or manipulative. It's because we've learned to treat someone else's discomfort like an emergency, like it's an instruction or a directive, because we don't want them to feel discomfort. Because if they're uncomfortable, so are we. But what if their discomfort is more like information instead of a direction? What if they can be uncomfortable and you can still be kind and you don't have to rescue them? Imagine what that would feel like. So most empaths think that the goal is to be kinder. But the real goal, according to me, is to include yourself in the kindness. You don't have to become less caring. That is not the goal you are incredibly carrying. That is a really important, special part of what makes you you.
Brenda Winkle 00:24:44 But you need to stop excluding yourself from that care. Another participant in one of my programs said I would rather stay my embodied self than back off. And what she meant by that is she wants to claim her embodied truth. The truth she feels deep in her body, then to back off of her truth because someone else is discomfort. That's the work. It's not becoming harder or brittle or selfish or detached. The work is to stay connected to yourself, even when someone disagrees. Even when someone's disappointed. Even when someone doesn't understand. I've said this before and I'll say it again. Your ability to trust your intuition is directly related to your ability to be misunderstood. We're going to be misunderstood sometimes. Now, this brings up a really important part that I want to talk about inside power. We get together for six weeks live, and then we take a break. It's an integration break where you have time to actually do the work. And the reason is I have been the person where healing became my whole personality, where I was walking from one healing modality to another healing modality to getting certified in that healing modality.
Brenda Winkle 00:26:11 And all I did was heal. I was not living. I was not practicing what I was learning inside relationships. I wasn't implementing or integrating anything that I learned, and I realized it's because the healing felt so good and it made me feel like I was doing something. But until I actually began to apply what I was learning and apply my healing inside relationships, things did not begin to shift for me. And I can tell you, I can name the moment when things began to shift. And that was when I went to start traveling full time in June of 2024, I removed myself. You don't have to do this, by the way. This is just my journey. I removed myself from everything familiar and I went and traveled full time for seven months. During those seven months, my dad died and I was able to be with him when he died, which was such a blessing. My dog Bentley and I, we put gosh, I think like 12,000 miles on the car or something. We drove from the coast of Washington, clear over to Ohio through the course of those seven months, and then made our way back, and we stayed in all different kinds of places.
Brenda Winkle 00:27:32 Airbnbs and hotels. We stayed with friends. We stayed with family. And one of the things that I learned was I was making healing work. My entire personality, I was obsessed with it. And when I got to Madison the second time that summer, just a few days before my dad died, he and I were sitting together on the couch and we were watching a movie. My mom had gone out to a concert. It just worked that I arrived so that she could go to the concert, because at that point, my dad was sick enough that he wasn't really being left alone. And so my dad and I just sat on the couch and we were talking and he was telling stories, and I asked if I could record some stories. And so I turned the voice notes app on my phone, and we just sat and had a conversation. And he had so much fun that when he woke up the next day, he had my mom make a sticky note of other things he wanted to make sure that we talked about.
Brenda Winkle 00:28:39 And so for the next three days, we spent hours just talking, just to him telling stories. And he kept saying, oh, I feel emotional. He kept saying, I've had such a good life. And he did. He kept saying, I had I've had such a good life. And his stories were they were not obsessed with healing. They were obsessed with joy and service and helping other people and having fun and travel. And it really struck something in me, and I realized that I wanted my life to be a lot, a lot more balanced. I wanted my life to be about relationships and service and balance and joy and travel, which my life was already about travel. I was traveling full time, but I wanted to be more present and not feel like I had to get to a certain level of healing to actually start living. And so in November of 2024, I started to search for a way to come off of the full time travel circuit. And before I knew it, by Thanksgiving time I settled in the home that I am now in, and that solidified it for me that I needed to stop being obsessed with healing.
Brenda Winkle 00:30:09 I needed to do some healing. Of course, I think we all have some maintenance that we do in our healing, but it also needed to go live. I needed to go apply and integrate what I'd learned and practice it and build relationships. And I have I've maintained friendships for decades with people that are really important to me. And so I'm not saying that they're not still beautiful friendships. They are beautiful friendships. And also, I have more friendships now than I've ever had. And it's because I started to implement and integrate what I was learning. It increased my capacity to show up for my own life. When I got off of the must be in a constant healing journey thing. So when I designed power, I designed it knowing I attract people like me who are also prone to wanting to be obsessed with a healing journey. And so power has built in integration periods where we don't meet at all. There's no new content, there's no calls. It's just integration. Go live your life, go apply what you've learned and then come back for another cohort.
Brenda Winkle 00:31:27 We'll be together for another six weeks, and then we'll take another break. And you'll go implement the next time. And you get to do that as many as three times over the course of a year. The only reason you do not three times is because you do more than three times. If I add another cohort, I designed it with this in mind because I know that once you get on a healing journey, it can become your whole personality. Is it true that you'll probably continue to think about some of these things throughout your life? Yes. As an empath, that absolutely is true, but it shouldn't be your main focus all the time. So six weeks of work here, six weeks of work there, and the rest of the time you're out living your life, applying what you've learned, building relationships, creating more solid relationships. So I have some reflection questions for you. And you can write these down if you want, and I'll put them in the show notes as well. I have some reflection questions for you, and I'm going to pause a little bit between each question.
Brenda Winkle 00:32:31 And you can also hit pause. And I'm going to put these in the show notes too. So number one when do you call something kindness that actually feels like obligation. Number two where are you saying yes because you are afraid of disappointing someone. Number three, where are you hoping someone will notice a sacrifice that you've never discussed or agreed to? Number four Can someone feel disappointed and you still be kind? I'll give you a hint. The answer is yes. Number five. Can someone disagree with you? And you still be kind. And the last question is what would change if honesty became a part of your definition of kindness? So the goal in all of this work is not to become less caring. The goal isn't to become more rigid or harder or more brittle. It's definitely not to become selfish, but the goal is learning to extend the same compassion, understanding, empathy, love, and consideration to yourself that you have spent years offering everyone else. Because self trust begins when your experience matters to and healthy relationships deepen when your truth matters too.
Brenda Winkle 00:34:11 Real kindness tells the truth. Self abandonment hides it. Most empaths don't need to become more caring. You are very, very caring right now. Your expert. You are literally expert level at being caring. What you might need is to to stop excluding yourself from that care. And that's exactly what we're going to explore in the free masterclass. Trust yourself again why you already know more than you trust, and I'll put the link to the free masterclass. It's June 25th at 10 a.m. Pacific, will be live for about an hour and there is a limited time replay. The link is Brendan Winkle level. I'll put it in the show notes, and if you are ready to do some focused work on this and then go integrate and the new, more focused work and then integrate. Invitation to come join us. Inside power self trust for MPs. We're enrolling now. Enrollment is open now through July 7th and we begin July 9th for the summer cohort. And the link for that is Brenda Winkle. Thank you.
Brenda Winkle 00:35:24 Thank you for being here. Thank you for listening. Thank you for sharing your heart with the world. And thank you for being an empath and sharing the gifts of your empathy. And let's also include you in that empathy, shall we? If this episode meant something to you, could you please consider sharing it with three people you care about and giving the podcast your rating, review or comment wherever you're listening. It makes such a difference. Thank you. Thank you for being here. Bye for now. Until next time.
