The RISE Experience
It’s not always about becoming someone different.
Sometimes it’s about realizing you’ve been disconnected from yourself for longer than you thought.
The RISE Experience is a podcast for the woman who can handle everything — except herself. The one who shows up, gets things done, keeps things together… but quietly feels like something isn’t landing the way it should.
Shannon Denniston is a behavior change coach and the founder of RISE. What she talks about here isn’t behavior on the surface. It’s what sits underneath it — patterns, beliefs, and identity-level disconnects that make consistency feel harder than it should.
A lot of what gets called “starting over” isn’t starting over at all. It’s noticing what’s been running in the background for a long time, and learning how to move differently from there.
Not forced. Not rushed. No reinvention, no reset, just more aware, more honest with where things actually are, and returning to yourself in a way that holds.
The RISE Experience
How We Lead With Strength, Not Emotional Overload.
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I used to think that being a “good leader” meant holding everything together for everyone else. But what if the very weight you’re carrying for others is the thing quietly burning you out?
Welcome to The RISE Experience, a podcast for women who are rebuilding trust with themselves — in health, leadership, faith, and everyday life. This is a space to slow down when everything feels loud, to lead from steadiness instead of urgency, and to listen again. Here, identity, faith, the body, and quiet inner wisdom matter. A place to pause, reflect, and rise from clarity instead of pressure.
Episode Highlights
In today’s episode, I’m naming the quiet way responsibility piles up on women who lead at home, at work, and in faith, and how caring for people slowly turns into carrying their emotions, outcomes, and problems as if they were our own. We walk through the difference between being present with someone and absorbing their struggle, why your nervous system feels constantly “on,” and the simple question that brings everything back into focus: Is this mine to hold, or is it mine to support? With a faith-centered, grounded lens, this episode makes space to release what isn’t yours, let others grow through their own process, and lead from steadiness instead of pressure and exhaustion.
Episode Outline
- The thread from control, trust, and boundaries into what we hold
- Leadership is what you carry, not just what you do
- The hidden weight of being the one everyone turns to when caring quietly turns into carrying
- Emotional overload and a constantly activated nervous system
- The cycle of stepping in: care, expectation, habit
- Leadership as a steady presence, not emotional absorption
- How over-carrying keeps others from building capacity
- Shifting from “I need to fix this” to “I can support this.”
- Caring without carrying in everyday relationships
- The clarifying question: Is this mine to hold or to support?
- Releasing what isn’t yours and staying grounded in God’s assignment
- A closing prayer to lay down what you were never meant to carry
Episode Chapters
00:00 – Welcome to The RISE Experience
00:07 – Faith, leadership, and rising without burnout
01:10 – Control, trust, and boundaries: the bigger pattern
02:05 – When leadership becomes emotional weight
03:15 – Caring vs. carrying: the subtle shift
04:40 – Emotional overload and your nervous system
05:37 – The cycle of stepping in: care, expectation, habit
06:47 – Why leadership is not emotional absorption
07:40 – How carrying others’ weight blocks their growth
08:55 – From “I need to fix this” to “I can support this”
10:30 – Caring without carrying in real life
11:41 – Is this mine to hold or mine to support?
13:10 – Releasing what isn’t yours and leading from steadiness
14:20 – Prayer and final reminder: you don’t have to carry it all
Action Taken
- Pause and notice where emotional weight is being carried that doesn’t belong to you at home, at work, in your closest relationships
- Ask in real time: “Is this mine to hold, or is it mine to support?"
- Begin releasing situations, emotions, and outcomes that God has not asked you to carry.
- Allow others to hold their own experiences so they can grow their capacity and resilience
Conclusion
You were never asked to carry every emotion in the room or hold every outcome together by yourself. When you start to notice what you’ve picked up that isn’t actually yours, and gently place it back where it belongs, something in your body and spirit begins to settle. Leadership becomes less a