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 the phenomenon that happens for us empaths when you know exactly what to do, the action to take, the decision you want to make, the boundary you want to set the conversation to have until someone else enters either the conversation or the situation. And then self trust feels a little harder to access. So we're going to be talking about that. But first I want to tell you a story. So a couple of weeks ago I was in Madison, Wisconsin at my niece's graduation, and my sister, my older niece, my daughter, and I went out on to Lake Wingrove with paddle boards. And Lake Winkle is one of the smaller lakes in Madison. Madison is a city that is really lake life like. There's so many. There's three big lakes in the city, and there's a whole river system of lakes on either side of Madison.
Brenda Winkle 00:02:23 And so we have often paddled at Lake Winkle. It's so beautiful. It's just this small little lake. It feels pretty safe. And even when it's windy out, you can just sit on your paddle board to lower your profile and you can paddle on it on a windy day. And that happened to be one of those days. So as we were paddling, we were paddling in the middle of the lake towards the lily pads with the beautiful yellow lotus flowers like picture perfect Lotus flowers. Incredible. So pretty. And we were traveling across the lake because we wanted to get to this area where there's a fresh water spring that feeds Lake Wingrove. I think it probably comes. I think it is actually a spring, but I know it's also part of the Yarra River system, and I don't really know the geography there. So if you do feel free to to let me know. But anyway, when you get to where this spring comes, you can see it kind of coming in from the rocks and it travels down into the lake.
Brenda Winkle 00:03:28 And then that area is secluded by trees and reeds. And so even if it's a windy day, you can get back in there and it's very still, it's very shallow. You could walk and it might be up to maybe, you know, mid calf or something in that part of the lake. The rest of the lake is much deeper, but in this part it's clear water and you can see down to the bottom and it looks like it's dirt. And I'm fascinated by this because I love the lily pads. I love the lotus flowers. And I'm just fascinated by the whole process of how they attach to the floor of the lake. And so as we paddled over to this spring area, the more shallow the water got, the more clear it became. And I just was curious how deep the water was. So I took my paddle and instead of just paddling in the water, I sent it straight down into the dirt just to major. Now, I actually don't even remember what the measurement was because I was so fascinated by what happened next, which was the minute my paddle touched what looked like solid dirt, there was a puff.
Brenda Winkle 00:04:47 It looked like a cloud of silt that was just like a cloud of smoke, only in the water. It was just a cloud of silt. It was beautiful. And it also meant that the water that had been clear a moment ago was now very cloudy. And I think this struck me so much because that's what it feels like to be an empath. Sometimes when you're really clear on what you need, on what you want, on what you want to say and what you want to do, and then somebody else's preferences, emotions, desires, or even anticipating someone else's emotions, sensations and desires starts to make it feel cloudy. We're no longer we. We don't have access to that clarity anymore. And I am certain that this is why so many people who come to work with me say they want clarity. And that's also why that's not what they need. Clarity is the desire. But you have clarity. The problem isn't clarity. The problem is that you're being affected by the energy, emotions, expectations, and needs of other people because you're an empath.
Brenda Winkle 00:06:13 And those are two very different conversations. So when I start to work with somebody, I have noticed that they come in saying they want clarity on certain things. And what I'm discovering is they're not confused. There is clarity there. They already know. They know the conversation they want to have. They know the boundary. They know the decision to make. They know what they want. They know the change that they want to make. But then somebody else comes into the situation, the energy field, the conversation. And all of a sudden what was clear now feels cloudy. Sound familiar? So today I want to talk about why that happens, because I really believe most empaths are not struggling because they don't know. I don't think that's true. I think empaths struggle because of what happens after we know. So let's talk about that really specific moment here. Here's one I love family gatherings. I think they're very fun. I used to believe that. And I'm saying I used to believe this is going to sound silly, but if you're an empath, you're going to get it.
Brenda Winkle 00:07:30 I used to believe that I love to cook. I used to believe that it brought me joy to make a big turkey on Thanksgiving, and to make the mashed potatoes, to peel the potatoes, to boil them, then to whip them in the mixer, and then to make the green bean casserole, which is my favorite. Love it, hate it. Judge me if you want, but I really do love that green bean casserole. And I believed that that was what I garnered joy out of. But what I realized over time and over changing life situations that I don't actually enjoy cooking on Thanksgiving at all. I don't like cooking a turkey. I don't like peeling potatoes. I don't like boiling them. I don't mind the mixing part, but the rest of it I really don't like. And the reason I figured this out was after we moved to Portland, I was getting ready to prepare a Thanksgiving meal for my daughter and I, and as I was thinking about preparing a traditional Thanksgiving meal for my daughter and I.
Brenda Winkle 00:08:41 I realized I didn't want to. The thing I had tracked for years was how much everyone enjoys it when I cook. I had tracked how much everyone enjoyed it when we were together and gathered around my table, and I had mistaken that for I like to cook Thanksgiving. I don't like to cook Thanksgiving. I enjoy people being around the table, and those are two really different things. But if I wouldn't have accidentally discovered that the part of Thanksgiving I enjoy is the connection, the community, the gathering around the table, I would have gone on telling myself that it was the turkey that I liked to make. I was always confused because mid-summer, sometimes I would get an idea that, oh, maybe I should make a turkey, and then I could eat off of the turkey for a couple of weeks and freeze some and make sandwiches and salads and things like that. And there was always one reason or another that I was talking myself out of it, And it was very confusing because I was thinking. Why am I not excited about making this turkey? I love to make turkey.
Brenda Winkle 00:09:44 The thing is, I don't love to make turkey. But until I teased apart what it was that I loved, I didn't know that. And my guess is you have things in your life that are affecting you in this way as well. So maybe it's not specifically Turkey, but there are things that you do that you love that have components of things you don't actually like. And it's confusing because the people that join you for those activities like a specific part of what you do. So my mom, for example, loves it when anyone cooks for her. So this idea that I love to cook Thanksgiving dinner is something that she tells herself and I do mean, she tells herself, because it makes her feel good about coming to Thanksgiving at my house. And so if I say to my mom, I don't actually like cooking turkey. She will say, yes, you do. And there's a split second moment where I actually question, oh, do I? Do I like touching the turkey? Do I like making the turkey? And the answer in both cases is no, I don't.
Brenda Winkle 00:10:56 And until we give ourselves permission to actually like what we like, want what we want, not like what we don't like, it can be really confusing. So here's another example. Let's say you're getting ready to apply for a job, and then your friend points out all the risks of taking that job compared to the one that you're in. And next thing you know, you're questioning whether or not you should actually even apply. We're not even talking about accepting the job or moving to a new location. We're just talking about the application, and then somebody points out the risks and then you're thinking, yeah, maybe you're right. Or let's try this one. Maybe you'll relate to this. Let's say you needed a day to rest. This was me last week. I gave a big talk on Thursday, and I needed Friday to rest because I knew I was holding energy for a lot of people in that talk, and I knew that I wasn't going to have an actual calculation of how many people I was holding space for, because it was for an organization called Weld Women in Economic and Leadership Development.
Brenda Winkle 00:12:11 And I knew that however many zoom screens I saw logging in, that the number was going to be exponentially larger because some of the people on that call were logging in from one zoom that was being zoomed into a conference room, so I knew I needed the data rest. And it was really interesting because I had some requests come in on the day of my rest, and I needed to articulate I'm taking a recovery day. And it was so interesting because some of the people and these were not my clients, by the way, some of the people that were requesting things from me did not understand why I would need an entire day to rest, and I had to really stay sovereign in my own energy to realize I'm not letting anybody down. I'm not disappointing myself in order to people please somebody that really has no way of tracking or understanding my energy in any way. Here's another one. Maybe you know you need to end the relationship. But then something happened. They did something that you had been requesting them to do, and now you're like, well, gosh, maybe I maybe I shouldn't leave.
Brenda Winkle 00:13:29 I've lived this one too, so I was in a specific romantic relationship at one point when I was teaching junior high, and I was noticing that I was very emotional the next day. Every time after we had been together the evening prior and I was noticing it was this was a new job. It was a new middle school choir position. I was noticing that when the other staff members were coming to work with me, that it felt so nice. And what I mean by that is the staff members that I did not know were being kinder to me than that current romantic partner at the time, and it was really confusing, and I, I didn't understand at that point in my life that I was an empath. I didn't understand that I was sensitive to absorbing energy or emotions. I just knew I was sensitive. I had been told I was too sensitive. My whole life, and I kept thinking that I needed to end this relationship. But every time I got ready to start to close the relationship down, that partner would come back with, everything I do is high stakes with you.
Brenda Winkle 00:14:46 We can't just, like, have a nice dinner, was the response. And, current version of me would say, well, this isn't nice. This is not a pleasant interaction for me. So no, we're not going to be having a nice dinner and I'm going to go home. Goodbye. But that version of Brenda was like, oh yeah, yeah, you're right, you're right. Let me try and make this a nice dinner. And then I would push down the things that I was feeling, and I would swallow the things that I had been trying to say. And then I would go to work the next day and realize these staff members who don't know me are being much kinder and much more considerate than that romantic partner. I don't have a great track record with romantic partners. I mean, I'll just tell you that. So the point is, you know, you've probably known for a long time and then someone else's experience or energy enters the equation. So why does this happen? Well, empaths don't just process information.
Brenda Winkle 00:15:48 It's not just data to an empath. We process impact. We process future impact. We can anticipate impact, which is why a lot of times we spend time and energy rehearsing things that haven't happened yet, because we can pretty accurately figure out if I say this, if I do this, then they'll respond in this way or they'll feel this way. So we begin to calculate who will this decision affect and how will they respond? And will they be disappointed? And if they're disappointed, can I handle it? Can I actually build the capacity in myself to feel safe enough to let them be disappointed? And that is a big part of the work. Then you're asking yourself, well, what if they don't understand? And what will change if I do this? And then suddenly everything that we knew and we were really clear about starts getting crowded out by all of these other questions of our calculation of how this is going to affect other people in our lives. This is not weakness. I really want you to hear that this is not weakness.
Brenda Winkle 00:17:03 This is because your abilities as an empath, tied together with your current nervous system state, are impacting how you go about making these types of decisions in your lives. So your nervous system has learned. Your nervous system, coupled with your empathic abilities, which not very many people in the world have. By the way, it's probably like 2 to 4% of the population is an empath. If we go into brain scans and so forth, that's what we think. I think the data is still changing, but it's not a very large percentage of the world that is an empath, which is why so much of your life you have felt a little bit alone, a little bit like you don't fit in a little bit like nobody gets what you're experiencing. I understand I was in the same boat, so as an empath, your nervous system likely if you didn't have somebody shepherding you and helping you understand your empathic abilities, your nervous system probably paired somebody else's disappointment means I'm not safe. And here's why. If you're an empath and you're feeling your own emotions, and then you feel emotions from other people, which that's what empaths do.
Brenda Winkle 00:18:29 If someone's disappointed, now, you're experiencing their disappointment directed at you energetically, but you're also feeling it internally, emotionally. So it's like a double whammy where you're feeling that disappointment directed at you, but you're also feeling that disappointment. Emotionally, it's a lot. And so that means that if you don't have strategies and different things in place to support your empathic abilities and to regulate your nervous system, conflict feels completely unsafe. Your body will not allow you to engage in conflict because your body has paired. Conflict means lack of safety, which means your body is going to push the brakes any time you try to do the thing, whether it's to set the boundary, to have the conversation, to leave the relationship, to ask for the raise. Your body is going to override any type of mental or cognitive plan that you have, which is why you can set all the scripts up that you want and you still won't say it. It's not because you're weak. It's not because you need a different script. It's because your body doesn't feel safe.
Brenda Winkle 00:19:50 And so it's jumping in to say, oh, we got to keep them alive. So we're just not going to say the thing. The same thing can happen when we start to do things that might mean people don't understand our decisions, because if we have paired feeling misunderstood with feeling Unsafe. Your body is going to override any cognitive plan that you have. You cannot willpower your way through this, especially as an empath. But over time, all of this means that overriding yourself has begun to feel safer than honoring yourself. Which is what brings us back to the need for self trust for empaths. Now the cost of this self override. You already know there's a cost. You wouldn't still be listening to this episode if you didn't know there was a cost, but every time you override yourself, you're teaching yourself something. You're teaching yourself. My knowing isn't enough, and I can't trust my intuition. And over time, that erodes more self trust, and it erodes the rest of the trust that you have for your own intuition.
Brenda Winkle 00:21:10 and it has nothing to do with whether or not you actually know. It has to do with the fact that you have outsourced your knowing to the strongest energetic system. And unfortunately for many empaths, that means that we get taken advantage of, that we get talked into things that we kind of get muscled into doing things that aren't aligned for us, that we don't want to do. And I'll tell you a really a really recent example, I, I've been pretty open about the idea that I value working with coaches, and I have been absolutely beyond grateful to be working with Tiffany Carter, because she is also an empath, and working with other coaches that are empaths has been a game changer for me. I also still work with my friend Sheena every week, and I've taken on another coach who you'll get to meet soon on the podcast named Tasha, and we've been coaching each other. It's really cool. But there was another coach that I was very interested in working with, and this is where my empath abilities almost tripped me up.
Brenda Winkle 00:22:29 So this is somebody that I very much admire and I very much respect. And I agreed to something that was not aligned. I agreed to something I didn't need. I agreed to something that I didn't really have capacity or time for. But in the moment, in that call, because I was doing my little empath jam with this salesperson, it felt really good. As soon as I got off the call, I realized I don't feel as good I was mirroring her energy. If we make someone else's fear our future, or if we buy into what they are projecting, our future would be. Oftentimes it's not aligned. And that's when we find ourselves agreeing to do things. And so the question that I really want you to sit with is, what do you already know? And if you had to ask yourself, does the price I'm going to pay to do this thing, to have this access, to join this thing? Does that match or feel good to the problem that I'm currently facing? What decision have you already made that you're still waiting for other people to approve? And then I want you to ask yourself another question, which is what would change if your experience right now and in the future mattered.
Brenda Winkle 00:24:06 Two. And then the last question is, what's stopping you from stepping into that version of you? And I'll tell you what I think it is. And when I witnessed it be for a lot of people, it's an identity shift. A lot of times the identity that we are currently sitting in that we currently have, is the very thing that's keeping us from reaching the next level of claiming our sovereignty, claiming our clarity, setting the boundaries, doing the things that we know we need to do that are best for us when we can shift that identity through nervous system work, like tapping in breathwork so that our bodies feel safe enough to step into the new identity that really begins to shift. So if this conversation feels personal, if it feels like I could be describing little scenes from your life, it's because this is exactly what I've been seeing over and over and over again in my clients and in myself. The people I work with don't lack intuition. In fact, if anything, they're incredibly intuitive and the people I work with are not lacking information.
Brenda Winkle 00:25:31 They already know they're highly educated. In most cases, the challenge that all of us empaths face is trusting ourselves enough to live it. And that's why I'm teaching a free masterclass. Trust yourself again. Why you already know more than you trust. And inside this masterclass, we're going to talk about why self trust feels harder under stress. We'll talk about the exact mechanism that is at play here, why empaths override themselves, what happens when other people's emotions enter the decision making process? And probably most importantly, I'm going to teach you a really practical framework for returning to yourself so that you can make those decisions from a place of real compassion for self, empathy for self first, and then you can turn that empathy outward. And if that masterclass sings to you, if it feels like, oh, I really want to learn that, then I invite you to come. Register. Go to Brenda Winkle. Com and sign up for the next masterclass. If you've been nodding along to this episode, like how does she know this? Then that's your sign.
Brenda Winkle 00:26:50 That's your sign that there's something in that masterclass for you. And if you know you're ready to take that next step to step into the identity of I am someone empowered in my gifts as an empath, then invitation to check out Power Self Trust. For empaths, power is one year of support for people who already know what they want and need help trusting themselves enough to live it. And we'll talk more about that at the masterclass. So if the masterclass sounds good, invitation to get yourself signed up now, maybe you're not waiting for more information. Maybe you're waiting for permission, and maybe that permission you've been waiting for isn't coming from external places. Maybe it's something that is going to come from internal and the energy. Right now, as I'm recording, it's June 2026. The energy right now is inviting you to step into the version of you that you know you're ready to claim. And as we make this transition into 2027, the call to be more authentically yourself, to be more unapologetically you is going to only get louder.
Brenda Winkle 00:28:16 And a lot of it comes back to identity, and a lot of identity is tied to how safe you feel in stepping into the new version of you. So if you haven't yet subscribed to the podcast, wherever you're listening, click subscribe or follow and make sure you don't miss a thing. I have Judith Orloff coming onto the podcast in a few weeks. She is known as the godmother of the empath movement. It is a conversation that is literally going to change your life. It brought me to tears, so be sure that you're subscribed wherever you listen to your podcast because you won't want to miss a thing. And if it feels like there's still a little bit of curiosity there about coming to the masterclass or learning more about power, go check out the links in the show notes if you feel like you're being called to it. Invitation to come join and trust that I'm not going to convince you, because I know that you already know enough to trust yourself, so there's never going to be any pressure for me.
Brenda Winkle 00:29:21 For two reasons. One is, I believe, to the core of my being, you are your highest authority and you already know what's right for you. And two, I don't want to work with anyone I had to convince to work with me. So I can assure you that if you're curious and you want to learn more, you're not going to be convinced into doing anything that doesn't align for you. Because if nothing else, I want you to fully trust that you do Know what's best for you, and maybe that means subscribing to the podcast. Maybe that means joining the master class. Maybe it means joining power. Maybe it means finding a different mentor. Whatever your path is. Invitation to go there now. But if those offers sound appealing to you, go check out the links in the show notes. Thank you. Thank you for being here. Thank you for listening. It means more to me than I can even say. I love it when you comment on the podcast, when you share it, and if you haven't left the podcast or review on Apple Podcasts for a while, it would mean so much if you could.
Brenda Winkle 00:30:26 I love your comments on Spotify. I try to respond to everyone. I love your comments on YouTube. I try to respond to everyone, and I'm just so grateful to be on this journey with you. Bye for now. Until next time.
