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 cost of caring without boundaries. And I'll explain more what I mean in just a second. But I want to start talking about the rock painting party that I went to a couple of weeks ago. I told this story last episode, and I've told it on my social media channels, and I was having a wonderful time at the party with my friends. I enjoy artistic things. I don't consider myself visually artistic, but I really love the process of creating and interacting and being with my friends, and the whole thing is totally my jam. And then I noticed I was tired and immediately my brain said, but the party isn't over. So seven years ago I would have stayed and 20 years ago I would have stayed, and then I would have helped clean up after the party. And I probably would have held emotional space, even though I didn't have capacity for it.
Brenda Winkle 00:02:30 And I would have been exhausted, depleted, resentful. And then I'm not proud to admit this, but maybe you'll see yourself in this. I would have made it the other person's fault, and then I would have told myself that maybe I shouldn't be friends with that person anymore. And I'm like, clenching my hands as I say this. If you're watching on YouTube, you probably notice my knuckles turning white. And the reason This is so emotional for me and I'm clenching through it is I. Oh, I feel like the spring of emotions. Oh, I spent so much of my life not realizing I had choice and not realizing I had power. And so to me, sometimes the choice was to walk away, to isolate, to choose aloneness instead of choosing connection. Because I didn't know how to be in connection safely because of my PTSD, my background with domestic violence. And 20 years ago, I was just on the verge of leaving a domestic violence situation. And so I often wondered, like, what would happen if What would happen if I actually honored what I thought? And at that time, I was pretending what it would be like.
Brenda Winkle 00:04:06 And what I mean by that is, I remember vividly going to the JC Penney portrait studio. Do you remember those? Are they still there? Do they still have those? Anyway, there was one near our house when I was living in Kansas City, and so that would have been prior to 2004. So sometime between 2002 and 2004. And I took my daughter there. And at the time, I really was committed to having professional photos taken of my daughter every three months, because I wanted that really cool baby picture to document her growth. And there was one time when she was around 18 months old that my, that I ended up going by myself to the portrait studio because of whatever. And I remember there had been a big fight in my home about whether or not I should even be doing this or spending money on it, and I knew that this was something I really valued because I wanted that documentation. I wanted to capture her growth, and it just meant so much to me. And so it had been a fight.
Brenda Winkle 00:05:19 And then I ended up at the portrait studio with my daughter, and she looked just as cute as she could be. She was little. Maybe she wasn't even 18 months old. It doesn't really matter for the story. But she was little and the photographer said, would you like to have a photo with the two of you? Because I had booked them just for her. And I thought to myself, oh, I couldn't possibly, even though I really wanted to. And the reason that I felt like I couldn't possibly is it felt so. subversive. And it felt like admitting something that I had been considering, which was becoming a single mom. And I agreed to have my picture taken with her. And I was so excited and proud of the picture, and it was beautiful and we looked so similar. Definitely see a family resemblance. And I was so happy with it. And then immediately when I got home, I hid the picture because I knew that it was going to really escalate the abuse and the violence that was present in my home.
Brenda Winkle 00:06:42 And so I hid the picture. But then I would get it out and look at it. And about, you know, 2 or 3 weeks later, it was eating at me. And so I finally admitted, it's a weird word choice, but that's what it felt like. Then I had had this picture taken and and showed my daughter's dad, and he didn't think anything of it. Or if he did, he didn't say anything. And the reason I'm telling this story is that there's a part of you that knows exactly what needs to change. There was a part of me that knew exactly what needed to change, and there was a part of me that was really scared to make the change, because I knew that if I actually reclaimed my power, I couldn't do it in that configuration. There are a lot of women that find themselves in situations that they know what needs to change, whether it's leaving a job that is not writing you up, or maybe it's leaving a toxic job, or maybe it's leaving the marriage that is holding your growth back.
Brenda Winkle 00:07:55 That will not let you spread your wings or won't let you breathe anymore. Or maybe it's leaving the marriage that's outright abusive. Maybe it's leaving the friendship. Maybe it's leaving the town. Maybe it's finally admitting that you need help managing the finances. Maybe it's giving yourself the credit for the brilliance that you have as you create these new programs that can absolutely change lives. And finally, stop playing small and trying to think that you need to hire some expert to formulate your app or formulate your program when the truth is that brilliance is coming from within you. Whatever it is that you know needs to shift, you already know it. You don't need me or anyone else to tell you what needs to change. You already know. I knew that day in the JCPenney portrait studio that if I wanted my daughter to be healthy and safe and grow up, and if I wanted to find my own happiness and safety and peace. I knew that day that I was going to have to change. I knew that day I was going to have to leave that marriage.
Brenda Winkle 00:09:11 But I also was not ready. And so there is a phase in all of this where you're aware that a change is needed, but you're not ready to make it. And so I just want to normalize that. There's love for that. I teach in my coaching that there are four cycles of change, and one of those are not four cycles, four stages, four stages of change. And one of those stages is being aware that a change is needed and we can stay there for years or decades. I was married for 14 years and it wasn't like it was hearts and roses even at the beginning. There were problems before the wedding. You're probably crystal clear on what needs to change, but you're not willing to actually admit it even to yourself yet. And here's the thing. A lot of times we put this in a category of thinking I want to be compassionate. I want to be kind. I want to be caring. Yes. Me too. I don't want you to become less caring. I don't want you to become empathetic.
Brenda Winkle 00:10:34 I don't necessarily want you to blow up your life unless that's what you need to do. And in some cases, that is what needs to happen. But think about construction. Like there are some cases where you can go into a home or a building and you can remodel it, and you can tear out countertops and put in new countertops, and you can take out the old cabinets, and you can put in new cabinets, and you can remodel bathrooms. And it is even better than the original when you're done. And there are some cases when you absolutely have to take it down to the ground. And there's room for both of those things in our lives, and you already know which one it is for you. Whether it's like, let's do the little remodel, let's redo things a little bit, let's change it up, or let's, let's start fresh. And I really want you to hear that. Caring becomes expensive when you disappear. If you're not able to care and still continue to be part of the equation and prioritize your emotional safety, your physical safety, your ability to grow and evolve into the human that you're becoming.
Brenda Winkle 00:11:56 Because by the way, we're all growing and evolving all the time. Change is the only constant. So if you're not being allowed to change or evolve, that's a problem. And I'm reticent to use the word allowed because at a certain point, we're all sovereign beings and no one can allow or not allow us to do things. But a lot of times we give that power away, and when we do, we pay the price. So. This has happened in my life, whether in different phases, whether it's career or relationships with friends, relationships with family, romantic partnerships. There's a point at which I recognize, Oh, I'm the one that needs to change here. And this is not about making any one bad or any situation bad. It is about being really honest with yourself and what price you are paying. I was listening to a podcast called The Spiritual Investor this week. I really enjoy this podcast. It's hosted by Elizabeth Ralph and she was interviewing a coach named Karen Elrod. And Karen has been on multiple different podcasts that I listened to over the last couple of weeks.
Brenda Winkle 00:13:32 And she's a bestselling author of the book Gilded and Guilt Free. Guilt Guilt free. And in the conversation between Elizabeth Ralph and Karen Elrod. The idea of freedom came up. Karen is quoted as having said something similar to freedom begins at the point at which you stop agreeing to systems that rely on yourself. Abandonment. That was a mic drop moment. Caring becomes expensive when the cost of your care is you disappearing. And this happens in subtle ways. Like, for example, I have one client who's absolutely brilliant, I mean, probably genius level, brilliant, trained as a physician, expert level businesswoman, owns a large, successful company, and she is a fast thinker and a fast mover. And ideas just come in for her all the time, and the people around her can't always keep up. But that is not evidence that she's doing it wrong. It's just evidence that she's faster than the people around her. And the more she has learned to completely trust herself and the ideas that come in, the faster she has grown, the happier she is, the more satisfied and fulfilled she is.
Brenda Winkle 00:15:13 And the people around her oftentimes are having their heads spin because of the way that this woman can move through the world, she's moving at her own pace. She's moving at the speed of her own genius. And does that make people uncomfortable? Sometimes, yeah, you bet it does. But that is not evidence of there actually being a problem. And the thing I really want you to hear is, if you're not allowing yourself to be the fullness of you, whether that's allowing the ideas to drop in and then executing on them quickly, or if it's putting yourself on your own list so that you can actually have needs in different relationships and situations, or whether it's telling a toxic boss, no, I'm not changing my vacation schedule because you want to take the day off the day before the 4th of July, whatever that case may be. Those are all real stories that have come up in client calls this week. That does not mean you should change what you're doing because we've talked about this. Resentment is definitely a price that we pay when we have disappeared off of our own list.
Brenda Winkle 00:16:35 And the flip side of resentment, an unknown cost. And I've talked about this before. I'll talk about it again, is entitlement. And I'm going to tell you something. I'm an empath, which means I can track emotions. And an interesting fact is that the more I harnessed my own gift of empathy so that I wasn't crumbling under the weight of other people's emotions, the more my other forms of intuition began to come in, and I can tell you, I can track the relationship between resentment and entitlement, I can feel it. It's as obvious to me as whether the sun is shining or it's cloudy outside. It is that obvious to me. I can feel it, I can see it, and I see it even in my clients. I can see it in myself, I can see it in family members. And so I think one of the reasons that's not talked about is it's, first of all, not socially acceptable to admit that there's a form of entitlement that has been birthed from a resentment.
Brenda Winkle 00:17:33 But it's absolutely true. If you're resenting things, you're coming out as entitled in other areas of your life, and it never directly correlates to where you are resenting. So let's say if you're resenting one specific situation, let's say a boss at work. If you're resentful of that boss, the entitlement is not coming out towards the boss. The entitlement is coming out towards one of your coworkers, where maybe you're showing up a little bit late, or maybe you're not handing things in in a way that is helpful. The entitlement and the resentment go hand in hand, but they come in and go out at different directions. And so a lot of times, if you're harboring resentment in one area of your life, you're creating problems in other areas of your life. The other thing that can happen when you have allowed yourself to disappear as you care, is you become hypervigilant and you become hypervigilant because your nervous system is actually activated. Your nervous system is looking for a crisis. and the crisis that you're looking for is not because you actually want a crisis.
Brenda Winkle 00:18:51 It's because you probably can't handle another crisis. And so your body knows that. Your nervous system knows that. And so instead of relaxing or letting yourself slow down or retraining your nervous system to be able to be calm, you continue to scan the room for the crisis because you want to make sure that you can handle it. You want to make sure you're ready. It's like. A sports analogy. I'm not very sporty and athletic. I'm a dancer. I love yoga, I liked paddleboard, but if you throw a ball at my face, I am not going to catch that ball. I am going to block the ball. I'm going to protect my face. I'm going to make an X over my face every time. And I don't necessarily want to do that, but it's what I will do unless I duck and sometimes I duck. So the point is, if you catch me in a game that involves a ball, I am hypervigilant. I am so anxious. I'm looking around because I don't want the ball to hit me.
Brenda Winkle 00:20:00 I don't want the ball to hurt my fingers because for most of my life I've been a piano player and then I don't want my face to get hit because that hurts. And so on and so forth and so on. The sports field I am hypervigilant, looking for can I get hit by the ball? And you're probably doing this in your life if you're carrying without being on your list fully, you're looking for where's the next crisis going to come from? And the problem with that is that when you're looking for a crisis, that's what you have programmed your reticular activating system, the neurons in your brain. It's like the filter so your brain knows what to focus on. And so if you're looking for a crisis, guess what? You'll find a crisis. So if you've ever felt like you're in one crisis after the other, after the other, this may be what's going on. The next part of the expense that happens when you care and you disappear is you'll find yourself replaying conversations. And it happens on both ends.
Brenda Winkle 00:21:04 It happens replaying conversations that haven't happened yet. And then you'll also replay conversations that have happened and you'll wonder, did I say the right thing? Did I express myself? Did they understand what I meant? Did they really get me? Was I kind? Did I say something stupid? Oh my gosh. Should I call them and say that I really meant this? What should I do? And if that sounds like you, this is definitely a sign that your caring has gotten very expensive. And the last thing I want to talk about this as far as an expense goes, is emotional labor. We do untold amounts of emotional labor as empaths, and if you identify as a woman, you're also doing emotional labor. And we do it voluntarily. We do it almost like an impulse where we're holding space for people that are never going to hold space for us and probably don't even want us holding space for them and definitely don't appreciate it when we do. And then, of course, we're also doing emotional labor for the people in our lives that we love, that we care about.
Brenda Winkle 00:22:14 You know, our kids, our family, our romantic partners, our friends. And between it all, the next time somebody calls you and they want to talk to you about something, you'll find yourself enraged, absolutely enraged, like, oh my gosh, I just can't solve one more problem for you today. Even though you haven't talked to them all day, and maybe you haven't talked to them in a week, and now they're trying to confide in you, but you have no space left. You're depleted and you feel irritated and enraged. It's not a sign that something's wrong with the friendship, although that could be true. It's more likely a sign that you're at capacity with emotional labor. Self trust changes how that compassion feels. And when I say self trust, I want to be really clear. The self trust that I'm mentioning is grounded. It is steady. It's neutral. It is relaxed in a way. And it just feels easy and simple. It is not trusting in the chatter of a racing mind.
Brenda Winkle 00:23:24 That's not self trust. Self trust is a knowingness that. You can honor what you feel that there's truth in it. That's self trust. It's understanding you can really rely on your intuition. On the knowing that you have. On honoring the sensations that you have. In fact, creating space to notice. Are you hungry? Are you thirsty? Do you have to go to the bathroom? So my client, Jill, and you're going to get to hear from Jill very soon on the podcast. We've already recorded our episode. I'm so excited for you to hear from her. She is brilliant. She's a former music educator. She is a current sound healer, and she has been doing a lot of inner work to really trust herself, to reclaim her own power, to use the framework of the power program in her daily life. And she has not become less generous. In fact, she's actually more generous. She's more helpful. She's even more kind. I didn't even know if that could be possible because she's so kind.
Brenda Winkle 00:24:45 But she stopped apologizing. She stopped asking for permission. And that is so beautiful. Because so many times, as empaths were worried that if we put ourselves on the list, if we actually honor what's true for us, if we say no and we don't want to do something, if we ask for help when we actually need it, if we admit that we need to take a break because we're hungry, we worry that we're going to be selfish. But the opposite is true. Because the generosity that comes when you've actually resourced and nourished yourself is so pure and it's so expansive. And so I want to talk about how this has impacted me. I was really scared to that. If I learned to trust myself, if I honored my own needs, if I put myself first, I was worried I was going to be selfish, but I still make soup and take it over to sick friends. I still offer to sit with my friends while their loved ones are in surgery. I actually gave away a purse.
Brenda Winkle 00:25:53 I really loved that I had gotten at a retreat, and I had gotten it at a retreat with a friend. We had each gotten the same purse at this retreat, and then her house was destroyed when 200 foot tall fir trees fell on the house, crushed it. They lost everything. And I gave her my purse because it was one thing I could do. I couldn't lift the tree off her house. I couldn't replace all the contents, but I could give her a purse she loved. I'm actually way more generous now because I have capacity to be generous. Because I'm on my own list. So the power program came because I needed it. I needed a framework to stay rooted in myself. And power is an acronym that stands for presence, optimize, wisdom, embodiment, renew. And the thing about working the framework of power is that you're going to become. The same person, but feel so much better. And also, you'll become completely new because the person, a year after power still cares deeply, still notices people's emotions because she hasn't lost her empathy, but she also leaves the party when she's tired, and she stops replaying conversations for hours, and she doesn't feel responsible for everyone's emotions or reactions to decisions or circumstances that are beyond her control.
Brenda Winkle 00:27:52 And the person a year after power can disappoint someone and sit in that discomfort of the disappointment without abandoning herself. That's the outcome of power. You can maintain your deep compassion and empathy because the goal is not to care less. It's to stop leaving yourself out of the care. Your compassion, your empathy doesn't have to cost you connection to yourself. If you have spent years trying to become less sensitive, I don't think that's actually your work. I think your work is learning how to stay connected to yourself while remaining beautifully compassionate. And that's why I created power. Not to change who you were, but to help you become more fully yourself. And here's what I want to tell you. I have always felt a deep connection to my intuition, but until I began to put myself on my own list and I began to harness my empathy so that my empathy did not harness me, my other intuitive gifts skyrocketed. I'm not carrying around everybody else's emotions, everybody else's problems. I'm clear. I still care for people.
Brenda Winkle 00:29:21 I care about people. I show up for people. I show up for the people in my life. But I don't take on responsibility. That's not mine. And I should probably say, when I do take on responsibility. That's not mine. I course correct it quickly because as an empath, that still is my work. It's not like I get this right 100% of the time. There's a reason I created a framework. It's because I teach what I most need to know. So if you're looking for a guru, keep looking. That's not going to be me. I don't want to be on a pedestal for a lot of reasons. Number one, I don't want the pedestal because if I'm on the pedestal, eventually I'm going to fall off that pedestal for you. So I want you to know I am deeply human. I am working through the framework with you every time we go through it. I work through it every single day. Because just like you, I want to become more fully me.
Brenda Winkle 00:30:22 I want you to become more fully you. Because here's what I know for sure. There are not very many empaths like us in the world, and my belief is in this Changing time. We need more empaths in leadership, in power, in communities, in neighborhoods than we've ever needed. And the only way that we can rise is by dropping the things that aren't ours to carry in the first place. And here's the thing. Whether or not you join power, I want you to please think about where are you on your own list? Are you a priority? Are you believing yourself, or are you trying to talk yourself out of what you already know? Invitation to notice what you already know is true for you. And even if you're not ready to make a change, just let it be true. Thank you for being here. Bye for now. Until next time.
