The Weird Thing About Birthdays

In this episode of The Energy Xchange, we're getting honest about the weird, heavy, quietly exposing feeling that can show up on your birthday, even when everything is "fine".

Whether you're someone who tends to reflect deeply, someone who's hit a milestone and felt strangely low about it, or someone who just can't figure out why birthdays feel more like a reckoning than a celebration, this episode will give you both insight and a practical way through it.

We're diving into:

• Why birthdays feel like a life audit you didn't ask for 
• The key difference between New Year's energy and birthday energy 
• Why going "low-key" can sometimes amplify the void instead of softening it
• How deep feelers experience birthday blues more intensely 
• The three questions that can help you get beneath surface-level feeling
• Getting neutral (not positive) is the first real step
• What to do once you've named what's actually going on
• Why action -- not reflection -- is the real antidote

The Energy Xchange is a podcast for highly sensitive people (HSPs), empaths, INFJs, and deep feelers navigating relationships, business, and personal growth.

Links & Resources For This Episode:

• Subscribe to my Weekly Newsletter
• Visit My Website
• Get the Book: The Empath Detox
• The Empath Detox Oracle Deck
• Book a Storyboarding Session / Messaging Audit
• Book a Full-Scale Marketing Audit (Website/Messaging/Digital Presence)

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:03

Welcome to the Energy Exchange, a podcast for deep feelers and quiet leaders. Here, we explore what happens when we start working with our natural energy in both our business and personal lives. I'm Colleen Wollock. I'm a highly sensitive professional who spent years untangling patterns of overthinking, people-pleasing, and playing small just to feel safe. Now, I help others like me step more fully into their power without losing the superpower of their softness. We don't have to be allowed to be seen, and we don't have to push to be powerful. Everything is energy. Let's start this exchange. Welcome into this week's episode of the Energy Exchange. Today's topic is inspired by a conversation I've had with several people recently that helped me feel a little less alone in what I've been feeling these past few weeks. And the only way I know how to describe it is the birthday blues. You know, that moment when your birthday rolls around, and instead of just celebrating, you start introspecting. Maybe it's a deep feeler thing, maybe it's just getting older, but birthdays have started to feel like this life audit I didn't ask for. Even when you're doing something fun, even when you're celebrating, there's still this underlying energy that can feel a little heavy. I know this last year I entered into my birthday with thoughts of, you know, where am I? Am I where I thought I'd be? What do I have? What have I been trying to call into my life that hasn't shown up yet? And it's subtle, but it's definitely there. And because I am absolutely incapable of having a feeling without going down a whole rabbit hole about what it means, this is what we're diving into today. What's interesting about the birthday audit is how different it feels from the energy we have around New Year's. Because on paper, they should feel the same, right? It's a fresh start, it's a new chapter, but they really don't. New Year's is collective. It's this forward-looking energy. We're all in this together. There's this sense of possibility. We're asking, you know, what do I want to create this year? What do I want to change? And there's hope in it. And then at least for a few weeks, we're super pumped about whatever we've decided to change. But birthdays feel a little more internal, more personal. Instead of asking what's possible, maybe we're asking, Am I where I'm supposed to be? Because we also have this number, our age, attached to it as a benchmark. And that's a really different emotional entry point. One feels empowering, the other feels kind of exposing. It feels more like a timeline. And what makes it so hard is that we're comparing ourselves and our life to this timeline that we've made up. I thought I'd have this figured out by now, I thought I'd be married by now, I thought I'd be rich as fuck by now. Whatever it is, we're not just looking at where we are. We're measuring it against something that was never real to begin with. And if you're someone who already tends to reflect, overthink, feel things very deeply, birthdays can turn up that volume. You're not just noticing the gap. You feel the energy of it. And it's not always a this is good or this is bad kind of feeling. It's more like, does this feel like the life I want to be living? And in that way, birthdays aren't just markers of growth. They also tend to be markers of loss or inferred loss, you know, versions of you that didn't happen, relationships that didn't turn out the way you thought they would, time passing. And obviously, we don't know how much time we actually have, but there's something about a birthday that reminds you that you might have a little less of it. And that can feel heavy. I've been noticing this pattern for a few years now in both myself and in quite a few of the people that I work with. And what I've learned is that the feeling is almost never actually about the birthday. The birthday is just the thing that highlights it, it makes it impossible to ignore. So here's what I mean. This year I tried to do a low-key birthday. I wasn't feeling the whole coordinate something fun energy, and I just went super low-key. And I think that was a mistake because instead of it feeling relaxed, it highlighted where I was feeling disconnected and out of alignment. I went low-key to avoid the pressure, but what it actually did was remove the intention, the celebration. And instead of softening the feeling, it really just amplified the void for me. And there are the obvious things that come up. You know, for me, it's been a few years since I've been in a significant relationship. So that's always going to surface around birthdays, you know, not having that one person to celebrate with or that one person that's going to plan something for you. But what was interesting this year is that it didn't stop there. I I really wasn't just thinking about not having a partner. It was pointing to something deeper. I am one of the only single people in my group of friends right now. I'm pretty firmly rooted in a group of people that are mostly coupled up, married, whatever. And I'm kind of existing in other people's dynamics. And it made me think back to a version of me eight or nine years ago who had just gone through a big breakup. I had moved to a new city, I was meeting new people, trying new things. There was this real adventure energy. So what came up for me this year wasn't just, I want a partner. It was where did that version of me go? Am I creating enough of my own life right now, or am I just fitting into other people's? And I did not expect that to surface. I knew some things were feeling a little heavy, but that one caught me off guard. So what do we do with that? Here's what I've landed on, and I want to be really super clear. This isn't just a birthday thing. Anytime you're feeling a little out of alignment, a little heavy without really knowing why, this is the move. Step one, we get neutral. We don't have to look for silver linings, get super positive. Nothing is good, nothing is bad. Because the second we make something a problem, we bring it a completely different energy. We go into judgment mode, fixing mode, and that's not where good decisions get made. So if we can step back and ask, what is this pointing to, the view changes? Usually this kind of heaviness is highlighting one of a few things. It's either something we've outgrown, something we haven't fully claimed yet, something we're tolerating that doesn't feel good, or a truth we've been softening or avoiding. It's almost never about the first surface level thing that came up. There's something deeper. So we get neutral first, and then from there, ask yourself these three questions. I actually journaled a bit on these this week and they were super helpful for me. Question one: What am I tolerating? And I don't mean this in a dramatic way, but where in your life are you just putting up with something? A dynamic, a habit, a situation you keep saying you'll deal with later. Birthday energy has a way of making those things really impossible to ignore. So getting it out of your head and onto paper is really helpful. Next up, what am I not yet claiming? That heaviness we feel isn't always about something being wrong. Sometimes it's about the lack of something we know is right, but we haven't stepped into yet. Maybe a version of ourselves that we can see, but we haven't fully committed to. It could be a desire you have that you keep putting on the back burner because the timing doesn't feel perfect. So what is that thing for you? And this is usually where that disconnect is, right? A lot of misery is just unmet expectations. So what is that version of yourself that you've always seen that you just expect will be there someday? Because if you know that and you see that clearly and you feel that strongly, you're always gonna feel that gap if you're not there or you're not taking steps towards it. And then three, what do I actually want more of? Not what should I want, not what makes sense given my age or where I thought I'd be. What do I actually want more of right now? For me, it's more adventure. It's more connectedness in my friendships. We just want to name those things. We don't want to bypass the feeling. We want to move with it. And then we move. Something I've heard over and over. I think I first heard it from Jill Coleman, a business mentor of mine. Action is the antidote. It's almost impossible to stay stuck in a feeling if you're taking steps to change it. We don't want to try to think our way through this. We want to actually do something. Even just one small action that tells our brain and our body, hey, I'm paying attention to this. I'm doing something about it. Order the book, text the friend, sign up for the thing. Our nervous system doesn't need a full plan, it just needs forward motion. If you guys are on my email list, you're gonna hear on Friday about some of the things I am doing, those action steps I'm doing to shift me out of this birthday funk. You can find the link to sign up for that at just onewoo.com. It's also in the description box for this podcast episode. As I wrap this up, I just wanna say some of these episodes every week come from things I've already worked through maybe decades ago, and I kind of look back now and I laugh about it. And then some of them, like this one, it's me working through it in real time and hopefully giving you something to hold on to if you're feeling the same way. If this resonated with you, I'd love to hear from you. You can DM me on Instagram at v.energy.exchange. That's with an X. And if you know someone who's in a season where something feels a little off, please share this episode with them. And as always, thank you for being here. I'm getting really close to a thousand downloads, which blows my mind a little bit, but it tells me that this is landing somewhere and that means a lot to me. So thank you again, and I will chat with you next week.