The Ones who Overgive

Healing can save your life and still become a trap. We’ve both seen how easy it is to swap one kind of survival for another: scanning for what’s wrong, chasing the next supplement, the next diagnosis, the next nervous system technique, the next piece of trauma to uncover. When the “work” becomes your identity, it starts to quietly reinforce the belief that you’re broken. We dig into that uncomfortable turning point and the reframe that changes everything.

We also talk about the tenderness of returning home to yourself. The world teaches achievement, performance, and masking, but it rarely teaches the inner path: who you are underneath survival mode, what’s true for you now, and how to hold your story without living inside it forever. We explore why knowledge alone doesn’t equal transformation and why embodiment matters more than perfectly explained concepts. Real healing shows up in grief, devotion, surrender, forgiveness, and self-love you can actually practice on a hard day.

Then we get specific about overgiving: the snacks-for-everyone moments, the free-help reflex, the urge to overextend so you can feel worthy of care in return. We unpack how a core wound can drive that pattern, how the nervous system learns to search for unconditional love outside of itself, and what “mature healing” looks like when you finally choose differently. If you’re ready to stop performing wellness and start valuing yourself, press play.

If this resonates, subscribe for more, share it with a friend who overgives, and leave a review so more people can find the show. What pattern are you ready to choose differently?

Transcript

When Healing Becomes The Loop

0:01

There comes a point in healing where you realize healing itself can become the loop. Not because healing is bad, 'cause honestly, healing is what saved me. It helped me survive. It helped me understand my patterns, my nervous system, my relationships, my pain, my story. But after so many years of doing this work, I'm realizing that if we're not careful, we can become addicted to searching for what's wrong physically, emotionally, mentally, spiritually. We can get into this loop of, what supplement do I need now? What wound do I need to investigate now? What trauma do I need to uncover now? What therapist, healer, modality, podcast, diagnosis, nervous system technique do I need now? and suddenly our identity becomes built around fixing ourselves. Healing after healing becomes the loop, and I think there's a really important distinction here. I know I turned to spiritual modalities and energy work because I needed it. I needed it. I didn't have a strong family foundation. I didn't have a support system. I didn't have, a north star, so to speak. And the journey offered me a curiosity around being able to ask myself: Who am I? Who am I underneath survival? Who am I underneath the trauma? Who would I be if I didn't have the story of my past? Why do I overperform? Why do I overgive? Why do I get triggered by those things? Why do I feel that way? Where does that come from? And what is true for me now? And there's something empowering about doing the healing work. We just don't wanna get stuck in it, and I wanna offer a little reframe around it as well.

The Tender Path Back Home

2:05

I had a really beautiful conversation with a friend recently, and she said something that landed. I was like, "Whoo. That is a really interesting concept." And she said, "You know, I realized that, we're taught how to create our path forward in life." You go to school, you get an education, you get a job, you find a partner, you get a house, you, you know, dot, dot, dot. But what I'm realizing is there's not a clear path for those who are trying to return home to their selves. You know, we are taught how to achieve and perform and mask, you know, how do we mask up in life to be somebody, to be lovable, to make money, to go after the thing. But nobody really talks about how tender it is when you're on your journey back home to yourself, to who you are, to what is real for you. And I think that's where the deep remembrance work begins. It's not in becoming someone else. Energy can get tricky that way, but it's finally being able to see yourself clearly, and this is hard. it has been really hard for me, I will say. And I have to ground into my own wisdom.

Lived Experience Over Concepts

3:34

My husband and I have this phrase we say sometimes, and we call it goodwill hunting. And if you've seen this movie, there's this powerful scene where Robin Williams, who plays the therapist, is talking to Will, who is this brilliant young guy played by Matt Damon. And the character Will, in this movie, is so smart. He knows everything intellectually. He can quote books, theories, facts, concepts. And Robin Williams, who's the therapist, tells him during this really powerful scene, and he's just like, "You're just a boy. You're just a boy. you don't know what it's like to sit beside someone you love while they're dying. You don't know heartbreak. You don't know devotion. You don't know grief. You don't know surrender." And that's what this podcast is for me, Spiritual Shitshow. It's not me regurgitating spiritual concepts or trying to sound wise, because trust me, I have studied this work my entire life. It has been my anchoring tool, spirituality, and all the things spiritual and energetics. I know the teachings. I know the tools. I know the concepts. But there's a difference between information and having it be your lived experience. There's a difference between studying healing and actually living it. And what I'm learning is love sounds so easy, but love is actually really hard I have to remind myself that I know what it's like to sit bedside while a parent is passing. I know what it's like to hold my dog while he's making his transition. And it would be easier just to put him down. But we were present through the whole transition process. I know what fucking deep shadow work feels like. I know how grueling it can be. I know that underneath all of the healing actually is the tough call in practice of learning how to forgive yourself. I know what it's like to be like, damn, I got a lot of guilt and shame in there. Shit. Fuck. I know what it's like to have a call on your heart to love even when you don't want to. I know what it's like to have your life completely flipped upside down and be left standing there with fragmented pieces trying to rebuild it. And I know how long that can take and how annoying it can be. And now I know what it's like to practice self-love, self-forgiveness, and being able to hold a lot of compassion for myself while I am calling myself out on my own bullshit.

Overgiving And The Core Wound

6:30

All right. So here's the story. This weekend, I was at my daughter's basketball tournament and I caught myself in real time overgiving. I was like, what am I doing right now? Look. Look, Julie. Stop. What are you doing? I was overgiving, overdoing, overextending. And I was like, okay, Julie, next time you don't have to bring snacks for everybody, the team, the coaches, the parents. You can just bring a snack and that's good. Then I started thinking about in my life all the times I overgive. I'm constantly giving away free sessions. And if somebody needs something, I'm like, oh, well, let me psychically tune in for you and let me give you a free coaching session or let me come to your side while you're trying to work this through. Let me, let me, let me, let me do for you, do for you, do for you. And I'm realizing, I'm like, gosh, where is this coming from? Why do I do this? And then this realization hit me this morning. My overgiving isn't random. There's a reason I do it. I was reminded that a few months ago I did a meditation, and the guides came in and said, "Okay, you know, we wanna support you on your healing, and we wanna show you a core wound, one of your core wounds." And I was like, "Cool. Yeah, let's do it. I'm excited. Show me. How does this work?" And I was fucking wrecked after the guide showed me my core wound. I cried for hours on the floor, and my husband kept on coming up like, "You good? You need anything?" I was like, "No, I'm good." I know I needed it, but it is hard. So let me tell you what the guide showed me. They gave me this vision of me as a little girl, and my mom is standing in front of me, and she's putting on my jacket, and she's zipping it up. And she's zipping it up, and I'm looking at her, and she's so close to me, and I can feel her love. And I'm smiling, and she smiles back, and she boops me on the nose. And then she reaches out so I can hold her hand, and I hold her hand, and I get this really beautiful somatic experience of what it was like. I could feel it in my body. It's almost like I was reconnecting to that energy of what it was like to have somebody reach down a hand to me, and I get to reach up and hold it, and it's love. It's just unconditional love there. And then they showed us walking together holding hands, and again, I got this really incredible somatic experience within my body, this reconnection of what it's like to have somebody love you and that you bring them joy. You bring them joy. So that was really a beautiful but hard experience. And what the core wound was here was this realization that I had that as a little soul, and when my mom passed away, I never had that again. So my sweet little self has been living an entire life trying to find that again, trying to feel what it feels like to radiate love and radiate out big love and have somebody radiate it right back to me. I'm radiating love out, seeking that, overgiving, overdoing, oversharing. But the real reason I do it, a sole truth, is because there is a part of me that is seeking somebody to radiate back to me that same type of love, unconditional love. And to feel once again what it feels like to know that I bring someone joy simply by being me. So again, compassionate understanding of self, that I place myself in situations and places and friendships where I'm seeking that. This realization that I have been searching for unconditional love outside of myself, and this is the part where healing after healing becomes something deeper. It's

Mature Healing Means New Choices

11:14

not for me to analyze anymore. I have the awareness around it, right? And so now that I see it, then the next step is, "So what do I wanna do about it? Can I make a different choice now? What does this feel like to actually value my time, value my gifts, value who I am just by being? Can I still be generous without overgiving and emptying myself? Can I, like, maybe bring one appetizer to the party and not three? Can I stop performing care in order to feel worthy of receiving it back?" And honestly, this feels like the work now. Not less healing, just a more mature healing, actually, a more embodied healing, a healing that says, "I understand why I do what I do, and now I get to choose differently." Not from shame, not from judgment, but from love, because I'm learning how to love myself. And I can also see that this overgiving part of me is really beautiful too. There's a part of me that, you know, I can see, like, she is loving, she's generous, she's thoughtful, she's playful. She deeply wants people to feel seen and cared for. But now I'm learning that I deserve some of that care too. That same love that I am radiating out so I can experience what it's like to have that same unconditional love radiated back to me. I think maybe I can only find that if I radiate that love to me. To me. And it feels like it's about time to love yourself, to believe in yourself, to value yourself, to stop trying to endlessly fix yourself as if you are broken. but to nurture yourself, to love yourself, to feel that joy that can come with you being yourself authentically. That you don't have to give and overgive and perform. That you're good just being you. And that is the real return home, the journey home to yourself.