 Hi it's Bridget. Welcome to Sunday Morning Coffee with Bridget. It's nice to feel you today. You know as empaths, as just human beings, as people right now, there's so much energetic relationships happening. We're able to connect with each other energetically. I just want you to know that, especially right now with the heightened awareness of everything on the planet. People agitated, people irritated, people annoyed, people, people, people, people, people, people. This is absolutely a true statement. Nice to feel you today, literally energetically. So as I am feeling you, I actually, I've been processing so much of my own stuff. Yes, I am doing the work because that's what you want, right? As an intuitive life coach that's actually willing to do her work to come on a podcast and talk to you about topics that are life-related as though I'm an expert, a subject matter expert. Well, guess what? I'm right here, right next to you in the trenches, getting my hands dirty because I am living it. So I have been doing my inner work and part of that is embodiment, working with my body, understanding how the body holds trauma, how the body is an incredibly important part, essential part of the spiritual work that I do, the psychic work that I do. And that just takes the whole concept of empath and heart-based person way deeper. And I'm really doing my best to show up fully and be present for the process whatever is unfolding. So I am glad to have you with me on this journey of life. And as cheesy as that sounds, as cheesy as that sounds, you know it's true. It's nice to have support. It's nice to know you're not alone and you're not. Even if you feel lonely, you are not alone in a good way. So last week I shared with you my Melody Beatty book, It's Meditations, Daily Meditations on the Path to Freeing Your Soul. The book that I read from last week was Journey to the Heart. Today I'm going to use the language of letting go, daily meditations on codependency by Melody Beatty. So Melody Beatty's work is very much, from what I gather, it's related to relationships, particularly codependent relationships and often things that are found in like addictions and such. But also with all the hot topics nowadays of understanding different personality types and such and personality disorders and things like narcissism and such and attachment styles and just there's so much that's coming into the mainstream. That used to be something that psychologists and psychiatrists addressed and dealt with. And now people are getting really in tune and curious about relationships and understanding each other more deeply. And this whole concept of codependency is something that shows up all the time, right? Anyway, she's done a lot of work in that and she's got a lot of books. So if you're interested, check out her work Melody Beatty, B-E-A-T-T-I-E. I'll put her link, I think. I think I'll put a link. It depends, you guys. Come on. I have to go and get the link and bring it back. I'll put a link if I can. The language of letting go, daily meditations on codependency. I'm literally just going to pick up this book and I'm going to just flip to a page and we're going to see what's there, okay? We're just going to, and it's daily, daily meditation. So it's like a whole year's worth of stuff. So literally every day it has dates on it. Actually, you know what? Let's look up the date. So it's a holiday weekend here. It's spring, it's April. Let's see. It's April 16th. So let's look that up. See if I can find. Let's just do the one for April 16th. Although I know when you listen to this, it'll be April 17th. Most likely. Most likely. It might not be. I mean, if I get inspired, I might record something live tomorrow. We'll see. Oh, no, this is a perfect one. Ready? Are you ready? Are you ready? Are you ready? Taking care of ourselves, April 17th. We often refer to recovery from codependency and adult child issues as self-care. So we often refer to trauma, my friends. We often refer to trauma recovery as adult and when we're adults as self-care. Self-care is not, as some may think, a spin-off of this me generation. It isn't self-indulgence, okay? It isn't selfishness. Did you hear that, you guys? In the negative interpretation of that word, we are learning to take care of ourselves instead of obsessing, obsessively focusing on another person. We're actually learning to take care of ourselves. We're learning self-responsibility instead of feeling excessively responsible for others. Ah, codependency. This is totally a thing that empaths have. We all are like this. We're learning responsibility for ourselves instead of feeling excessively responsible for others. Self-care also means tending to our true responsibilities to others. We do this better when we're not feeling overly responsible. So you do have some things, right, that we have to do and we are in relationship and that we should do but we overdo. Self-care sometimes means me first but usually it means me too. It means we're responsible for ourselves and can choose to no longer be victims. Self-care means learning to love the person we're responsible for taking care of ourselves. Did you get that? Self-care means learning to love the person we're responsible for taking care of ourselves. We do not do this to hibernate in a cocoon of isolation and self-indulgence. We do it so that we can better love others. We learn to let them love us. Self-care isn't selfish. It's self-esteem. Oh my gosh, that is a quote. Self-care isn't selfish. It's self-esteem. Get your journal out. That is a really profound to me and that's a big one. So here's an affirmation. Today, God help me love myself. Help me love myself. Help me let go of the feeling of excessive responsibility for those around me. Show me what I need to do to take care of myself and be appropriately responsible to others. Wow, that's a big one. So big, you guys. I never thought of this as codependency. I guess I never really looked into the definition of what codependent means. I always saw this. I see this over and over and over again. I've been working with clients for 18 years, okay, as an intuitive life coach and as a psychic, right? And I always see people who are so heart-based, who are so genuinely caring and compassionate, that will go to the mat for you, that will give you a kidney if they barely know you. That will really be the ones, these are the ones that are always the volunteers at school. They never say no. You can rely on them. They are totally responsible, completely loyal, very, very, very much. I'm going to help you out. I'll help you out kind of a thing. And yet what's happening is the reason why they're helping, helping everybody else is because they don't want to deal with their own stuff. They don't want to deal with their own self, their own life, their own feelings, their own emotions. So instead, they focus on other people's emotions and life. Mothers often and parents will often do this in their kids, focus on the kids' lives. You've heard the concept of living through your child. Yeah, that's what this means. It means focusing so much on them, so you don't have to feel your own stuff. And I think to some extent, I believe, really truly believe everyone does this. I've done this. I do this. It's simply a misunderstanding from a psychic perspective and energetic perspective. This is how I see this. It's a misunderstanding of how much we love and care. We have such big, full, huge, compassionate hearts that our nature is to be in service, to want to express and share that big, huge, compassionate, loving heart with other people. Yet, we tend to, on the flip side of that, not recognize that when we have feelings and emotions that are disruptive to us that are uncomfortable to us that take us off our center point, it really affects us. Like it really affects us. And so what we try to do is avoid that, avoid feeling a wobble. That's one of my, one of my cultures would say, a wobble. We try to not pay attention to those feelings inside of us that could take us off our center that could make us feel bad, because our, our nature is to feel good, to feel full and compassionate and loving. When that is just your makeup, your DNA, when something is different than that, it feels wrong. It feels bad. It feels heavy. It feels dark. It feels icky. It feels like it shouldn't be there. But the truth is, we have to spend time loving ourselves and caring for ourselves in such a way that when we are experiencing difficult emotions, that we are willing to be present for ourselves just as much as you're willing to be present for your friend who is going through a loss or grieving, or just as much as you are willing to be there with your child when they had an experience with a bully, just as much as you are willing to be there for other people, you have to be willing to be there for you, even in those dark, heavy, uncomfortable emotion times, and the times of awareness of feelings that are not your beautiful loving and truest nature, it doesn't mean you're bad and those feelings aren't wrong. Those feelings are information to help you to know yourself more, to help you to know yourself more deeply, to help you practice your compassionate, loving service to yourself. And that's what self care is. It's service to yourself, loving compassionate service to yourself. And if we can practice, have a practice which is a relationship with ourselves, caring for ourselves means spending time with ourselves doing things that nurture us and support us and uplift us like reading a book every day, maybe you love to read so you sneak a chapter in here and there. Maybe it's maybe you love to bike. So it's getting on your bike and riding a couple times a week. Maybe it's it's it could lead it could quite literally be anything and even even something from a small little pattern that you have like when you wake up in the morning, you take your essential oil bottle and you dab some on your fingers and rub your hands together and you smell it. And that lavender that rose goes right that sun goes right into your your right into your body and just fills you up with hope and love and kindness. Like that's been my new pattern recently of self love is annoying to myself. I put some essential oil on my fingertips and rub them together and smell it in the morning and maybe tap some on my neck or my chest or my back wherever I need to feel and receive that. It can be that simple, really. And so this is something we all need to be aware of and all need to do. So you have a pattern of helping others being so much in service to others and not yourself one because of the avoidance of the negative or harsh feeling emotions or what we deem as bad or heavy emotions, right? We don't want to feel bad. So we focus on other things. And it's so much easier to help other people to let other people feel bad. And in a kind of in a way we relieve ourselves of feeling bad. Because we have something else that's more important to focus on at that moment, right? So we still have experience with those bad feelings, the grief, the trauma, the guilt, the sadness, the sorrow, the anger, etc, the betrayal, whatever it is. We're still witnessing that and somebody else and we're still having connections to those feelings, but in more of a safer way kind of we have our gloves on kind of thing. And so we've kind of talked herself into this is how I this is who I am. This is how I walk through the world. And in addition to that, there's a piece about value self worthiness and value that is extremely, extraordinarily important here that I have seen over and over and over again in a pattern. And most people that have this do not recognize it. So I'm going to tell you and I'm going to ask you to be kind with yourself. If you do recognize it. When we're in service to others, we get recognition. We get the accolades, we get the approval, we get the love, we get the thank yous, we get the appreciation from other people that we didn't get when we were a little kid, as we were growing up as a teenager in our awkward stage, when we were in school, working our butts off barely passing a class, we did not always get affirmation. There wasn't always somebody there. All of us did not have parents that were like, Yeah, you're so great. You're awesome all the time. Okay, okay, not all of us have that. Okay. And even if you did have that chances are you had times in your life where you didn't have that there was not somebody there for you. Giving you reminders of your value of your worthiness, your love ability, that you're lovable, that you're good, that you're smart, that you're beautiful, that you're wonderful. Not always, always there, because there's a lot of messages to the contrary of that as you grow up from the time you're, you know, a baby all the way through young adulthood into adulthood, lots of different states and stages in your life. And so it would make sense that there would be this need at some level for valuing yourself based upon other people's perception of you. It's a natural human thing to have this from what I've seen and experienced. Again, I'm not a psychologist. I mean, I've taken classes. I'm not a psychologist. So the clinical parts of this go researcher, right? Go read the books about it. The psychic, energetic and intuitive parts of this, I got you. Okay, value is something and worthiness is something tied to everyone. It is a collective, like what some would call a collective wound. It is a collective work in progress. It is a collective assignment. Let's say that for all students here. It's a collective assignment. Okay, everybody has this to some degree. And you by you being the heart base, compassionate, empathic person you are working with other people, helping other people showing up for other people. There is some part of you that really is seeking some validation. You really want to be validated that you are a good person and you're doing it by being in service to others. This isn't a bad thing. This is what helps. This is why we have helpers in the world. This is why people are supporting each other. This is why we have nurses and teachers and people who are literally in social workers. People are literally in industries to help other people. This is not a bad thing, but this is something you need to be aware of because if you are constantly, if the only source of your value and the reminder of your value, your beauty, your strength, your your awesomeness, your value as a human only comes from other people, that's a huge problem long term, because you need to be the source of that value and the source of that value is your heart and your soul, your spirit, and that is where the God lives inside you, the universe is inside you, the universal consciousness, the voice of your intuition, your spirit, that's where it comes in handy. That's why a relationship within yourself with your heart, allowing the emotions that are not so good to be present with you, trying to soften the judgment and the fear around those such emotions is extremely important and your spirit, your intuition can help you with that. Things like meditation, things like yoga, things like EFT or tapping, which is emotional freedom technique. Look it up. There are so many things you can do to nurture and care for yourself, to honor this relationship within yourself. Then when you are in service to others, when you get that validation, it's just icing on the cake, baby, icing on the cake. Woof, good Sunday morning coffee. What do you think we should call this one? Self-care, self-aware? I don't know. I'll have to ponder it. I'll have to feel into it, my friends. All right, again, this came from the language of letting go by Melody Bady. Hey, thank you so much for listening. I love the podcast. I have to tell you, it just fills my heart to do this. I love this. I love talking with you like this. I hope your spirit has been inspired today through this conversation. I hope you've gotten some insights, maybe some curious points here that you might want to journal about. I'm always a fan of the journal. There are links below, by the way, to the journals that I use. I use a specific brand of journal that I absolutely love and they're beautiful, lots of variety. So I need to assert that beautiful journal space. Of course you do. I hope that I've filled you with hope today and inspired you to live your life. It's your life after all. It is. It's yours, right? It really is. You get to live it and just live it. Thanks for listening.