57 | What’s Yours to Carry (and What Isn’t): How to Stop Absorbing Everyone’s Emotions and Find Peace Again

If you’ve ever felt like you’re carrying everyone’s emotions — your spouse’s stress, your kids’ moods, your friends’ disappointments — this episode will hit home.

Lisa shares a deeply honest look at what happens when we try to fix, manage, or hold other people’s peace instead of protecting our own. Inspired by Melody Beattie’s Codependent No More, this conversation will help you:

• Recognize emotional patterns that leave you drained and resentful
• Understand Lisa’s “Three Buckets” concept (Mine, Theirs, God’s) and how it brings instant clarity
• Learn how to release emotional responsibility without guilt
• Discover why letting go isn’t giving up — it’s giving space for grace

💧 “God’s not asking you to play Savior. He’s asking you to steward peace.”

If you’re ready to stop carrying what isn’t yours and finally breathe again, join The Relationship Reset Bootcamp at lisacovert.com/bootcamp
.

⚡ Early-bird registration (50% off) is open through Sunday, November 23 at midnight. The Bootcamp officially launches Monday, November 24 — so grab your spot now and start creating peace that lasts.

👉 Grab your F R E E P.A.U.S.E. Guide: 5 Triggers Keeping You Stuck (and How to Break Free). ✨ Click Here Now. ✨

✨ Click Here Now to Sign Up for the Bootcamp!✨

🎶 Instrumental Acoustic Guitar Music by Viacheslav Starostin (original_soundtrack),

W E B S I T E - LisaCovert.com

I N S T A G R A M - @lisamcovert

Transcript

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Welcome to episode 57. Today's topic is what's yours to carry and what isn't. How to stop absorbing everyone's emotions and find peace again. Let's get started. Hey, I'm Lisa Covert. Welcome to the Empower Work Podcast for women breaking the cycles of reactivity through truth, trust, and a little faith. No perfection here, just real talk, real tools, and the reset your heart's been asking for. Let's get into it. If you've ever felt like you're carrying everyone's emotions, your spouse's bad mood, your child's meltdown, and your friend's disappointment, this one's for you. Because let's be honest, women like us, we don't like to see people struggle. We jump in, we soothe, we fix. We think if we can just help enough, maybe everyone will finally be okay, and then we can finally rest. But what actually happens? We end up carrying the weight of everyone else's emotions while we quietly abandon our own. We call it love. But it's really fear. Fear of being misunderstood, of being blamed, or being seen as selfish for needing space. And that's where this quote hit me right in the gut. It's from Codependent No More by Melody Beattie. You can't control or fix people. You can only heal yourself. Whoo, let's say that one again. You can't control or fix people. You can only heal yourself. I didn't think I was controlling anyone. So when I first read this, whew, I was shocked. I thought it was helping. I thought I was loving well. Fixing things felt like compassion, not control. So when I first read that line, it was a hard pill to swallow for me. Because it forced me to see that my need to fix wasn't always about love. Sometimes it was about my own discomfort with other people's pain. That was a hard pill. Really was. But once I swallowed it, then came the real truth. I wasn't even doing that for myself. I could hold space for everyone else's emotions, but not my own. I was showing up as an emotional glue for everyone except me. See, the hard part about being a caring person is that we confuse compassion with control. We think it's our job to hold everyone together, our kids, our marriage, our friendships, maybe even our neighborhoods, our coworkers. And then we wonder why we feel like we're falling apart. But here's what I've learned. You are not responsible for everyone's peace. You are responsible for your presence. And there's a big difference between them both. Because when you start trying to control what isn't yours, you lose the very thing that makes you powerful. Your ability to choose peace in the middle of chaos. So today we're going to talk about emotional boundaries. And I'm talking the kind that aren't cold or hard, but grounded and honest. The kind that help you show up in love without losing yourself in the process. You know, I can think of so many seasons where I carried more than what it was mine. Not because I was trying to control anyone, not on purpose, but because I genuinely cared. When people around me were hurting, I didn't just feel compassion, I felt responsibility. If someone needed help, I said yes. If someone wanted to talk, I stayed. Even when I only had thirty minutes, somehow I'd still be there an hour and a half later, nodding, listening, trying to hold space for their pain. And look, there's nothing wrong with being kind. I want to show up for people, I really do. But the truth was I wasn't showing up for myself. My to-do list grew longer, my sleep got shorter, and while everyone else walked away feeling a little lighter, I was the one left carrying the weight. I've had neighbors lose their spouse, partners needing extra care, people even falling and they need help because they got hurt. And I just kept saying yes, yes, yes. Because saying no felt mean. But each yes chipped away at my piece until I was running on literal fumes. And the heaviest wasn't just physical, it was emotional. I was trying to fix feelings that weren't mine to fix. And then there's the harder one. The daily version of that pattern, like when my husband walks in after a hard day, he doesn't even have to say a word. I can see it. The stresses on his face, the way he moves, the silence that fills the room. It's all so visible to me. It's almost like learning a language and then pretending you never did. I can't unsee it. Body language is something I can read very fast. And so I'd shift my whole evening around it. What's wrong? I'd say. He would say nothing, I'm fine. But he wasn't fine. And deep down I knew it. And because I couldn't fix it, I spiraled. I'd start scanning the room, adjusting my tone, my body language. I was over explaining myself. Trying to make him laugh. Cooking something special that I didn't plan on making. Suggesting on a walk or anything to pull him out of it. Focusing all my attention and energy on him and not me. And when it didn't work, I'd take it personally. Because somewhere along the line, I learned that if he wasn't happy, I couldn't be happy either. I became the emotional thermometer for the whole house. Reading everyone's temperature and trying to keep it from boiling over. If one of the kids came home in a bad mood, I felt it immediately. And instead of letting them have their own emotions, I'd absorb them. Their sadness became mine. Their frustration became mine. And the truth is it was exhausting. Because no matter how much I tried to manage everyone's peace, I always ended up losing mine. And that's when I started to understand this idea of boundaries differently. Boundaries aren't about shutting people out. They're about recognizing what's mine to carry and what isn't. Can I be honest for a second? There was a time when I was doing everything I thought a good woman, wife, and mom should do. Fixing, managing, helping. Until one day, I realized I was the one who needed saving. I wasn't angry. I was just tired. Emotionally tired. Tired of walking on eggshells. Tired of trying to keep everyone else calm while losing my own peace in the process. And the truth is, I didn't even know who I was outside of everyone else's needs. If you've ever felt that way, like you're holding it all together, but inside you're barely hanging on, I created something for you. It's called the Relationship Reset Boot Camp. And it's a three-day experience designed to help you stop living on emotional autopilot and finally find your peace. You'll learn how to recognize what's yours to carry and what isn't. So you can love deeply without losing yourself in the process. It's short, it's simple, and powerful. The reset I wish I had sooner. Go to LisaCovert.com slash bootcamp and grab your spot. Because peace doesn't just happen. It's something you can learn to create and repeat. You're not here to fix everyone else. You're here to find your calm and lead from that place. Again, that's LisaCovert.comslash bootcamp. Your reset starts there. Because when I take responsibility for someone else's emotions, I rob them of the chance to grow. And I rob myself of the chance to rest. And after I started realizing how much I was carrying, I knew something had to change because my body was telling me I couldn't keep living like this. And that's when I started thinking about it differently. Almost like three invisible buckets. There's my bucket, there's their bucket, and there's God's bucket. And every single thing in our life, every emotion, every responsibility, every reaction belongs in one of those buckets. When I finally started sorting things that way, it was like I could breathe again. For example, with my husband, I used to think his moods were mine to manage. He'd walk in heavy and I'd immediately go to work emotionally and start thinking, what's wrong? How can I fix it? Should I make dinner? Should I not make dinner? Do you think you need space? Do we need to go out? Did I do something? I'd twist myself into not trying to keep the peace. But it was the wrong bucket. His stress, that's his. My reaction to his stress, that's mine. The outcome of how it all unfolds, that's God's. And I can't tell you how many times I've stood there holding something in my hands that was never mine to carry. And I wondered why it felt so heavy. Because I carried all three of those buckets. It's because when you carry what's not yours, it will always crush your peace. And here's the part that still challenges me. Sometimes what's mine doesn't look like what I want. I don't want to carry the emotion or the reaction because I want to help. I want to fix. I want everyone okay. But when I confuse compassion with control, I rob people of the space they need to meet God for themselves. So letting go isn't cold. It's not giving up, it's giving space for grace. When you let go of what isn't yours, you make room for God to do what only He can do. And when you stay in your own bucket, when you take responsibility for your own emotions, your own choices, and your own peace, you stop leaking energy into everyone else's storm. That's when peace stops being something you're chasing and starts to become something you carry. And listen, I know this can sound simple, but feel impossible. There are little moments I have to stop and ask myself, wait, wait, wait, is this mine? Is this theirs? Or is this God's? And sometimes I still get it wrong. That's why in day two of the relationship reset boot camp, we go so deep into this. I walk you through how to know exactly what belongs to you, what doesn't, and the surprising moments when you realize, because you're like, oh my gosh, this thing I've been losing sleep over, that was never mine in the first place. Because peace doesn't mean perfection, it means clarity. And clarity creates calm. You know, the more I do this work, the more I've realized over and over again, God's not asking you to play savior. He's asking you to steward peace. And stewardship starts with awareness, with noticing where peace is leaking out of your life. I once heard a story, it's by Jennifer Rothschild in a Bible study group on Amos. And she told this story about water, and it really stuck with me. She said she was standing near one of those massive water features, I think it was in Vegas, I can't remember exactly where, and the sound was so powerful that you could feel it in your chest. She felt the power of this water. She said you can you had to talk louder just to be heard over it. That water had force. It was alive. Then she shared how when she came home from a trip, a slow leak from her dishwasher had soaked her entire downstairs. The floors were warped, the wood bowed, everything ruined. Two totally different situations, but both showed how powerful water is. And that's the way emotional responsibility works. When peace is flowing strong, it's life-giving, steady, grounding, powerful. But when it's leaking, even slowly, it can destroy what you've worked so hard to build. Every time we take responsibility for someone else's emotions, it's like another small leak. We don't notice it at first, but it starts with, I'll just check in one more time. Or I'll stay a little bit longer than the time I said, or I'll fix this for them. But soon our energy is draining, our patience is gone, and our peace is warped from the inside out. And it doesn't stop there. Because when we don't hold our own emotions, we end up handing them to the people around us. I've done it with my kids and my husband. Definitely. They'd walk into the door with their moods and I'd take them on. But then on the days when I was frustrated and exhausted, I'd expect them to take mine. That's not emotional responsibility. That's emotionally outsourcing. And that's why I love the word repent. Not in the old way, not the guilt-based way I was taught, but in the truest meaning to change the way you think about something in order to shift your perspective. Repentance isn't about punishing yourself. It's about rethinking what you've been doing and choosing a better way. You know how it is you can't unsee something that you saw? I've had those experiences many a times. It's about saying, I've been leaking peace and I don't want to live like that anymore. That's it. Because the moment you see the leak, you can repair it. You can own what's yours, your thoughts, your reactions, your peace, and let other carry what's theirs. And when you do that, you stop drowning in everyone else's emotions and start standing firm in your own. You're starting deciding which ones are really working for you and not. Peace doesn't mean you're detached, it means you're disciplined. And that discipline, that holy awareness, is what creates calm in the middle of chaos. Okay, before we wrap up, I want to give you a few questions to sit with because this is where awareness becomes peace. You don't have to have the answers today. You just have to be honest. What is it saying? The truth will set you free. You've got to be truthful. So if you're journaling, driving, folding laundry, just let these settle in your mind for just a few moments. First question What am I carrying that was never mine? Maybe it's someone's disappointment, someone's silence, someone's stress. If you're losing sleep over something you can't control, it's probably in the wrong bucket. Two. And hand it back. Not in anger, not in blame, just a quiet, releasing that's not mine. Imagine placing it back in God's hands or simply saying, that's theirs to hold. No anger, no anything, but that's not mine. Three. What do I need to repent? Not in guilt, but in thought. Where have I believed that peace depends on someone else's mood or someone else's approval? Or someone else's comfort? Because the moment you change how you think about peace, you change how you carry it. The truth is you might not know exactly what belongs to you and what doesn't. And that's okay. I hope these questions help to see. That's why we do this work. Because when you get clear on what's yours to carry, you stop leaking energy and trying to fix what was never your assignment. And if this is stirring something in you, if you're realizing how blurry those lines have been, I want to invite you to join me for the Relationship Reset Bootcamp. This is exactly what we walk through on day two. How to take the emotional responsibility without the guilt, how to recognize what's yours, what's theirs, and what's God's. And I'll help you find peace that doesn't depend on anyone else doing their part. You can grab your spot now at LisaCovert.comslash bootcamp. The Early Bird Special, 50% off, is open now through Sunday, November 23rd at midnight. After that, the price goes up when the boot camp officially launches on Monday, December 24th. So don't wait, get in early. This is your time to stop carrying everyone else's piece and start creating your own. Because when you finally learn what's yours to carry and what isn't, you stop living like the world's fixer and start living like a woman who's free. Did you have fun with my mom, or did you learn something from my mom? Then hit subscribe because we've got way more coming your way. If this episode made you pause, reflect, or even breathe a little deeper, would you do me a favor? Take 30 seconds and leave a quick review for the show. It helps more women who are stuck in the same overwhelm we've talked about today actually find this podcast. I'm not here for everyone, but I am here for the woman who's tired of holding it all together and ready to live a life that finally feels like her own. And hey, if you're feeling brave, take a screenshot of your comment and email it to me at Lisa at LisaCovert.com. Every month I do a little giveaway drawing for listeners who share or review the show. You never know, you might get something special. Thanks for listening. Thanks for being here, and most of all, thanks for choosing to keep showing up for you.