Season 2 Episode 3: Are You Connecting Or Protecting?

Have you ever replayed a conversation in your head long after it ended?

Wondering if you said enough...
If someone was upset...
If you missed a cue...
Or if there was something you should have done differently?

For years, I thought that meant I was emotionally intelligent.

I thought it meant I was empathetic.

I thought it meant I was simply "good with people."

But lately, I've been asking myself a different question...

What if some of what I called empathy was actually my nervous system trying to keep me safe?

In this episode, I'm opening up about a realization that has completely shifted the way I see myself. We explore the hidden cost of constantly reading the room, why so many of us become experts at understanding everyone else's emotions while ignoring our own, and how our brains can quietly create stories that keep us stuck in survival mode.

We'll talk about:

✨ The surprising difference between empathy and hypervigilance

✨ Why being "the caretaker" can feel both rewarding and exhausting

✨ How childhood experiences can teach us to monitor everyone else's emotions before our own

✨ The difference between caring for someone and carrying someone

✨ The simple question that's helping me come back to myself:
Am I connecting... or am I protecting?

If you've ever been the peacekeeper...

The helper...

The one everyone leans on...

Or the person who's constantly scanning the room before you can even relax...

I think this conversation might help you feel a little less alone.

Because regulation isn't becoming someone who stops caring.

It's becoming someone who can care...

without disappearing.

Ready to Go Deeper?

If this episode resonated with you, I'd love to invite you to join me and Bryony from The Blood Moon Collective for our upcoming live workshop, Dark Night of the Soul.

Together, we'll explore why seasons of uncertainty, identity shifts, and emotional upheaval often signal transformation rather than failure. Through heartfelt conversation and a guided breathwork journey, you'll have the opportunity to move beyond simply understanding your patterns and begin experiencing what it feels like to create safety within your own body.

🗓 Sunday, September 27
🕑 2:00–4:00 PM ET
🎥 Replay included if you can't attend live.

If you're ready to stop surviving and start coming home to yourself, we'd love to have you with us.

✨ You can find the registration link in the show notes or visit ManifestingYourShit.com for all the details.

Ready to Experience the Shift Instead of Just Hearing About It?

If you're ready to stop collecting information and start creating transformation... let's breathe together.

Every week, I guide live virtual breathwork experiences designed to help you regulate your nervous system, release what no longer serves you, and embody the life you're creating.

🌿 Wednesday | The Midweek Reset: A Nervous System Rewire
Reset your nervous system, quiet the mental noise, and reconnect with yourself before the rest of the week runs away with you.

🌊 Thursday | Sacred Release: The Art of Letting Go
A deeper breathwork journey to help you release emotional patterns, old identities, and the stories that are no longer yours to carry.

☀️ Sunday | Regulate to Receive: Sunday Nervous System Reset
My signature weekly breathwork experience designed to help you create safety in your body, expand your capacity to receive, and step into the week feeling grounded, regulated, and aligned.

 Looking for more?

Inside The Breathwork Vault, you'll find downloadable breathwork journeys you can return to anytime, along with workbooks, guided practices, and resources to support your healing between our live sessions.

You can explore upcoming sessions, The Breathwork Vault, workbooks, and everything else I'm creating at:

🌐 www.ManifestingYourShit.com

Let’s stay connected:...

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

Welcome to Manifesting Your Shit, the podcast, where we ditch the fluff, drop the rules, and create a life that's unapologetically ours. I'm Lisa, and here, your mindset, your energy, your messiness, and your wildest dreams are the only currency. Are you ready? Let's fucking go. So today, today, I want to ask you a question. Have you ever walked away from a conversation and immediately started replaying it in your head? Like, did I say enough? Were they upset? Like you start evaluating and analyzing every single nuance that happened within the conversation. Should I have responded differently? Did I miss something? What cues were right in front of me, but I didn't quite get at that moment. Now, the thing is, for the longest time, I thought that that meant that I was emotionally intelligent because I analyzed both sides. What was I feeling? What were they feeling? I thought that it meant that I was being empathetic. I thought I was being a caring person because I was analyzing exactly what the other person was doing and how they were feeling throughout the conversation. And the thing is, like, don't get me wrong, empathy, empathy is a beautiful, beautiful thing. But lately, I've actually been wondering something a little bit different. Like, how much of what I actually called empathy was actually my nervous system trying to keep me safe. I have been noticing that my brain is constantly, constantly reading the room. It's scanning faces, it's listening to the tone. Like I think on a subconscious level, I literally notice every tiny, tiny infliction with the way that people either talk to me or the conversations that I'm observing and the tone and the energy in the room that I'm walking into. So it's like I'm trying to figure out what someone might need before they even ask, trying to make sure that everybody else feels okay and safe. And the thing is, I know that I've done this literally since I was a child. And for years, I've worn it kind of like a badge of honor. And coming from some of the places and fields in which I've worked in, like being a customer experience manager, being a general manager in hospitality, like these were things that helped me like tremendously in my job. I could literally read like what somebody needed before they wanted. I could help to diffuse a situation by being empathetic from both points of view and be able to help people. And like I said, it's something that I was actually very, very proud of because I can always tell when something was wrong and exactly what people needed. And it's like I've always been kind of like a caretaker. But here's the thing that I have been kind of trying to be more in tune with lately and kind of questioning and digging more into myself about at what cost am I doing this? Because while I was becoming incredibly skilled at reading everybody else, I wasn't reading myself. I could tell you when somebody else was uncomfortable, before I could tell you that my own shoulders were tense while doing it. I could I could sense when somebody needed some type of reassurance or comfort while completely missing the fact that while I was doing this, I myself needed some rest. I became so fucking fluent in everybody else's nervous system that at times I completely forgot about my own. And here's where it kind of gets more interesting. I've started catching something in real time. My brain doesn't just notice what's happening, it also, while it's noticing what's happening, it begins creating its own entire story. Every pause that I hear from somebody becomes a are people upset? A neutral comment sometimes becomes, did I do something wrong? Are are they okay? If somebody's having a bad day, what should I do to make them for their day something better? The situation changes, the people change. This is something that I've consistently do have done. It's like a cycle, but the story, the story's all the same. Somewhere, somewhere deep inside my nervous system has learned from an early age. If I can stay one step ahead of everybody else's emotions, then I'll be safe. Maybe you know that feeling too. Maybe you also grew up in a home where you learned to read the room before you spoke. Maybe you became the peacekeeper, the person that was helping to neutralize any situation that came up and trying to care for everybody else's emotions, the fixer, the helper, the one who could always tell when somebody needed something. And maybe just like me, you're realizing that constantly anticipating everyone else is exhausting. And not because caring is wrong, because caring is beautiful, caring is magical, and I love being a caring person, but because caring was never meant to come at the expense of caring for yourself. And here's what I'm trying to practice now, and I'm learning and trying to integrate it into my life. Instead of immediately asking, what do they need, I'm taking that extra second and coming back into myself and saying, What do I notice in me in this moment? Instead of assuming some type of responsibility for somebody else's emotional experience, I'm getting curious about my own. And and not with judgment, but but with compassion, because what I'm actually discovering as I'm kind of digging into this is that regulation isn't becoming someone who stops caring. You can keep caring, but it's becoming somebody who can care without disappearing from themselves. And that's the thing that kind of hit me through this whole thing is that I realized there was so many times that in order to accommodate somebody else's nervous system to make sure that they were okay and they felt good in a situation, I would kind of disappear from my own truth and my own authentic authenticity and hide my voice, hide my true feelings and emotions, and just to make sure that they were okay and they were receiving this moment good, but then I was then depleting myself. So I I believed that having to disappear into those things was the same thing as caring. But but if I wasn't constantly monitoring everyone else, does that make me unkind? Does that still make me loving? The answer I'm discovering is that yes, actually, more so, because kindness that comes from freedom feels very different from that kindness that comes from fear. One feels like love, the other is survival. And survival, we all know coming from survival means that it's a trauma response and it's not true and authentic to who we truly are. So today, I just wanna I want to leave you with a question. When you're reading the room, are you connecting or are you protecting yourself? Because these two things can look almost identical from the outside, but your nervous system knows the difference, and maybe, just maybe, the safest room you'll ever learn to read is the one inside of yourself. If today's conversation felt like I was describing your own inner world, something that you have been experiencing, battling, going through, and you actually start to realize it. I want you to know something. This isn't your personality. That's not you. It isn't because you're too sensitive, and it isn't something you have to spend the rest of your life carrying. Your nervous system learned these patterns for a really good reason. And and just like just like it learned them, it can learn something new. And that's exactly why I'm gonna tell you, I am so excited to be co-hosting the Dark Knight of the Soul workshop um in September, towards the end of September. Um, because these seasons where life feels uncertain, where you don't recognize yourself anymore, where old patterns start surfacing. They aren't signs that you're broken very often. They're invitations, invitations to meet yourself in a completely different way. We'll talk about all of that actually, how and what, like why this happens during um these seasons of transformation, but more importantly, we won't just understand it intellectually, we'll actually experience it through breath work. We'll have the opportunity to help your body release what your mind has been trying to so to carry. And if this resonates with you, I'd absolutely love for you to be there. You can find all of the details in the show notes. And whether I see you in the workshop or right back here next week, um, keep asking yourself this one question. What does my nervous system need from me today? So until next time, take a deep breath, come back to yourself and remember you don't have to disappear to a good person. Thank you, thank you, thank you, as always. I greatly appreciate every single one of you guys listening in. Um I implore, leave a message, write me. Um, I reply and see every single email that you guys send me. Um, thank you so much. Check out my website. I have some new exciting things going on. Like I just talked about the I'm really excited about the workshop. Um the soul workshop that I have going on. I have a bunch of new workbooks. If you haven't already, get your the regulated woman starter kit. It's completely free to kind of start and delve, start to delve into yourself. But you guys have this. I love you guys. Have the most amazing day, and I will see you guys next week. Bye for now. All right, beautiful souls. That is a wrap on today's episode of Manifesting Your Shit. Remember, manifestation isn't about doing more, it's about becoming more, more of the version of you who already has it. If this episode lit you up, share it with a friend who needs the reminder. And don't forget to subscribe so you never miss these juicy downloads. Also, please review and leave me a message telling me more about the things that you want to hear about. You've got this. I believe in you. Now go manifest your ship.