What You're Consuming Is Consuming You

What if the anxious, behind, not-enough feeling you carry has less to do with your life and more to do with what's playing in the background of it?

In this episode of The Energy Xchange, we're diving into becoming intentional with our inputs, the accounts, podcasts, newsletters, background noise, and even the people, so the loudest voice in your life can finally be your own.

This Episode Dives Into:

• The Thanksgiving story that started it all
• Why empaths and HSPs absorb more than they realize
• How who you follow is an energetic choice
• The gut checks that reveal whether something grounds you or drains you
• Why the algorithm compounds your insecurities
• What your background noise is actually doing to your nervous system
• How to unsubscribe and unfollow without the guilt
• A one-week experiment to notice the energy shifters in your life

Who This Episode Is For:

• Highly sensitive people, empaths, and deep feelers
• Anyone who fills every silence with input
• People who feel behind or not-enough after scrolling
• Overthinkers who struggle to hear their own voice
• Sensitive professionals protecting their focus and energy
• Anyone ready to curate what gets access to their attention
  
  

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

Links & Resources For This Episode:

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

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:03

Welcome to the Energy Exchange, a podcast with deep feelers and quiet leaders. Here, we explore what happens when we start working with our natural energy in both our business and personal life. I'm calling the wicked and a highly sensitive professional years untangling patterns of overthinking to think and playing small just to feel safe. Now, I hope others like me to 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 I'm gonna start with a Thanksgiving story. So a few years ago, I spent Thanksgiving by myself. You know, I had I had dinner plans at a restaurant later in the day. I was meeting my friend Nicole, but for most of the day it was just me. And for some reason, I had Kenny G holiday music on, just playing in the background. And I spent the whole day just feeling sad and lonely. Like, what am I doing with my life? Do I need to change something up? Do I need to move somewhere else? Where are my people? What am I doing? And at some point, the music on the TV changed. And all of a sudden, I was fine. I was upbeat. I poured myself a glass of champagne. I was looking forward to my dinner with Nicole. Nothing about my circumstances changed. The only thing that changed was the sound in the room. And I think about that all the time. It was such a good representation of the fact that we're always being shaped by what we're consuming. We are always in conversation with something, even when we're alone. Maybe we're listening to a podcast or scrolling Instagram, reading an email newsletter, or just engaging with our own inner dialogue. And when we're surrounded by that much input, we have to become really intentional about what gets access to us. Because eventually other voices, other noises can become louder than our own. And if you're a deeply feeling person, maybe you consider yourself an empath, a highly sensitive person, this matters even more because it's a pretty safe bet that you're going to absorb more than you realize. You're going to take information in at a deeper, more emotional level than maybe some other people do. And before you realize it, it can start to impact how you think and how you move through the world. What you listen to and who you follow is an energetic choice. Notice the difference in how things make you feel, whether it's a social media account, a podcast, a newsletter, the people that you're spending time with. What and who leaves you inspired? What triggers you? What makes you question yourself and maybe your timing or where you are in life? And what makes you feel like maybe you're not doing enough? And quick caveat: like just because something confronts you that way doesn't automatically mean it's bad for you, but you want to notice that feeling around it. What is the energy of it? Because there's a big difference between following someone and thinking, oh wow, that's really great. That's inspiring. I'd love to try that, versus that pit in your stomach of, wow, look at them. I'm not good enough. I should have been doing this by now. There is an energy behind these things, and we want to be conscious of what's serving us and what is not. And some of these things we proactively seek out, right? But then other things we get hit with. And those things are probably going to be the social media things. Maybe people or accounts that you followed months ago, years ago, even. Maybe you followed them out of curiosity, or maybe at that time they were helpful for you. Whatever the case is, you're going to get hit with stuff that you are not proactively trying to participate in. So as we audit these things in our world, a few gut checks that I come back to. Number one, does this leave me feeling more grounded or more frantic? Am I actively learning something or am I just collecting more information? And then am I inspired to act or am I just comparing myself? Because those two feelings can look surprisingly similar, especially for deeply feeling people. So I'll give you an example from my own life, and this is going to be very social media forward. There is a woman that I used to follow on Instagram. And at one time it made sense. We'd had a bit of a business relationship. We'd done some things together, you know, a decade or so ago. I'd actively engage, I'd share her stuff, all the things. And over the years, we lost touch. We don't align anymore. Our values certainly do not align at all. And that's not to say that what I'm doing, what I value is right and what she's doing is wrong, but the energy of that difference was really getting to me. It was rubbing me the wrong way. And I would find myself getting triggered by what I was seeing because this is someone that I know in real life, or at least I did, right? So I'm seeing these posts with that filter, and I'm thinking, this is not matching what I know about you at all. And God, I just got so triggered by it. So I would have thoughts about this person almost daily based on what I was seeing. It would linger, you know, I'd bring it up in conversation with mutual friends. And at some point, I had to acknowledge that I was doing this to myself. This is someone who wasn't even in my actual real life anymore. I was literally just following out of curiosity. So I unfollowed and problem solved, right? I actually hadn't thought about her until I sat down to write my notes for this episode. I think if she were still in my life and we had that contact, I might have just muted her just so I wouldn't see the content. But for me, that was just an exercise in not allowing myself to be confronted with this thing that I knew was going to set me off. There was no purpose for this. It's really just an exercise in being honest about what no longer aligns with us. And this doesn't have to be heavy, guys. I mean, maybe you used to be into fitness and you have all of these fitness things in your social media algorithm that you just don't care about, but you're getting inundated with it. And it's just more energetic clutter that you're sifting through. As we grow, when we shift and our circumstances change, we're going to outgrow things. We're going to outgrow business strategies that we once believed in and followed, coaches, certain communities, maybe specific kinds of advice. And for social media in particular, although I don't want to focus this just on social media, but as an example, you know, the algorithm is paying attention to all of it, what you consume, what you engage with. You're basically telling it, I want more of this. And then we start getting flooded with it. So if you're already feeling a little insecure about something, triggered by something, and the algorithm keeps handing you more of it, those feelings are going to compound. Let the quality of what you follow grow as you grow. Even when we're not actively listening to something or watching something, our body is, our nervous system is. So if you feel like you always need to have something on in the background, we have to be conscious of what that something is. Like, do you have law and order SVU running in the background or peaceful mellow music? That's a big difference in the energy that you're going to be absorbing. It's so tempting and easy to fill every empty space with input. And this is especially common for those of us who tend to overthink. Because if we have a lot of silence, we're going to sit in our own thoughts, right? So we fill that silence. And then we wonder why we have a hard time accessing our intuition or our creativity. I struggle with that a lot. So a little routine that I have is I go on my morning walk with a motivational podcast. It's about 15 minutes long. So I listen to that. And then when it's done, I try to just not have anything on. And what usually happens is that, you know, as I start thinking about my day, I'll start getting podcast ideas, ideas for other projects I'm working on, because I've created that space. There's nothing pulling at my attention. I'm just outside, trees, birds, all the things. And I'm not sure that I would get those ideas in that way if I didn't create that space intentionally. My go-to, if I do need something on, I put on reruns of the office because I've watched the whole series probably five or six times all the way through. I know the episodes, I know what's coming. So it's never gonna stop me and pull me away. It doesn't even really enter my head. For me, it's like my peaceful instrumental music in the background. Unless it's one of those more triggering episodes like Scotts Tots or uh Prince Family Paper, like I hate those episodes. But for any other episodes, I'm not absorbing or processing anything new. That is that kind of peaceful reprieve for me. So we just want to have that discernment. Like, what is the background stuff actually doing to you? This goes deeper too than just that literal background noise because sometimes the background noise in our lives is the newsletter we never open, the account we scroll past every time, or maybe the person we're following out of obligation. It might not feel like a big deal, but all of that still takes up space. And the kindest thing that you can do for your nervous system is to unsubscribe. Now, listen, I'm hesitant to unfollow or unsubscribe from things that my friends make. I feel bad, I want to support them. But again, how is it affecting your energy from day to day? And there are low-key ways to handle it. So for social media, you can mute someone's posts or stories. You're not unsubscribing from them, you're just not seeing it. You could set up a filter and send that newsletter straight to the trash. And I know that sounds insane that we would do these workarounds, but look, if it helps you to not spiral with guilt, those are options. So it's worth taking a look at. You know, what are you following purely out of obligation? Unless you're following me out of obligation, keep doing that. But truly, who are the voices that make you second guess yourself? You know, the ones that give you a little hit of anxiety that get you in your head. And I don't mean people who challenge you. Being challenged is a good thing. Sometimes that little flicker of anxiety is just because you know you want to be doing the thing and you're not. So obviously have some discernment there. But the creators, the podcasts, the newsletters, the people you've outgrown, the voices that really make you doubt yourself or trigger yourself in some way, those are the ones we have to get better about releasing because it is just clutter, it's noise and it's not serving you. We don't owe anyone access to our attention. So here's what I want to close out with: just a little experiment for the next week. After you intentionally consume something, whether that's, you know, social media post, a podcast, an episode of a show, consider how you feel. How do you feel immediately afterwards? Do you feel more spacious, more grounded, more connected to yourself? Or do you feel more anxious, rushed, or maybe convinced that you're not enough? Do you have anxiety that you need to be doing more? Your nervous system is giving you data. You don't have to judge it, you don't have to do anything dramatic with that data, but you need to listen to the data. I think that a lot of deeply feeling people are naturally inclined to listen to everyone and everything else except themselves. But we have to really clear that clutter to create that space. So just be on the lookout for those sneaky energy shifters in the soundtrack of your life. Again, the podcasts, the people, the newsletters, your background TV programs, Instagram accounts, because your attention is creating the emotional climate that you live in every single day. And sometimes the only thing that needs to change is the sound in the room. All right, if this episode resonated with you and you're realizing that you need a little more support in hearing your own voice, that is exactly the kind of work I love to do, both for your personal life and for your business. I'm gonna leave links in the show notes below if you'd like to explore that further. Alright, thanks for listening, and I will chat with you next week.