Episode 3 - When Giving Everything Leaves Nothing for You _Transcript
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Dr. Julia Bowlin: [00:00:00] The problem was never that I gave too much. Giving is not the issue here. Love by its nature gives. The real problem is what happens when there's no me left to do the giving.
Dr. Julia Bowlin: Hi there. I'm Dr. Julia Bowlin, and you're listening to Mindset Medicine. This is your weekly dose of personal awareness medicine. So take a deep breath and let this episode meet you where you are. This month we have been asking a question that doesn't get asked very often. Well, not out loud anyway. And the question is, is, "Who am I without the labels?"
Dr. Julia Bowlin: We looked at the plans that other people made for our lives. We looked at what happens when we stop waiting to feel ready. And today we're gonna go somewhere just a little bit more tender, because there's one label that most of us wear [00:01:00] oh so much too comfortably. And here's the thing, we don't even check it and recognize it that it's a label, because we've been doing it for so long.
Dr. Julia Bowlin: This month we've been asking the question that really doesn't get asked very often. Well, not out loud anyway. The question is, is, "Who am I without all of my labels?" And here's the thing, we've looked at the plans that other people made for our lives in the, the previous episodes. We've looked at what happens when we stop waiting to be ready, and today we're gonna look somewhere maybe just a little bit more tender, because there's one label that most of us wear so comfortably we don't even clock it as a label anymore.
Dr. Julia Bowlin: The one who shows up. The one who everyone counts on. The one who gives and gives and gives some more. The one who feels less like a role and more like, "Well, this is just who I am." Which is exactly what makes it so hard to [00:02:00] see, because it's built into the fabric of who we are in some of us. Not everybody's that way, but today is for that one, when we keep giving and giving and we got nothing left.
Dr. Julia Bowlin: So last week I promised we'd talk about love, real love, and what happens when giving everything to everyone starts to leave nothing for us. So here it is. There's a version of love that gets to be called devotion, and most of the time that's exactly what it is. It's not something complicated, nothing really to examine, just love doing what love does.
Dr. Julia Bowlin: But there's another version, one that looks identical from the outside. Same late nights, same 'of course I don't mind,' same instinct to make sure everyone else is okay before we even ask if we are. And that version isn't devotion anymore, even though it still answers [00:03:00] to that name. I didn't know there was really a difference for the longest time, and I don't think most of us do until we're standing in the middle of it wondering why something that started so naturally and instinctually started costing so much of who we are, what we are, whether it's time or money or sanity.
Dr. Julia Bowlin: So this one's for the person everyone counts on. Not to tell us we're doing it wrong, just to look honestly without flinching at when I say, "I don't mind," can quietly turn into, "I don't matter anymore." And this happens in one ordinary day or moment at a time. We just keep giving sometimes and giving, and suddenly we realize, do I even matter anymore?
Dr. Julia Bowlin: So when Ricky, my late husband, and I were coming up to the end of medical school, he was a year ahead of me, which meant he matched in his residency first. [00:04:00] Residency match is its own strange beast. I'm gonna tell you. If you've ever sat through one or had a family member sit through a matching, imagine every hospital in the country ranking you or you ranking every hospital, and then one day an envelope tells you where the next four to seven years of your life could potentially be going.
Dr. Julia Bowlin: There's no negotiating. There's no let's talk about it. You just find out. So here's the deal. All across the United States, medical students pick out their top hospitals they wanna go to, and all across the United States, hospitals pick out the top residents they want to come, and then there's this weird lottery thing and that matches everybody, and it's just...
Dr. Julia Bowlin: it's scary as hell. So Ricky matched into a program. He was a year ahead of me, and I remember sitting with that news and feeling something that surprised me a little. I was fine, genuinely [00:05:00] fine. I was scared as I'll get out to move to a big city like Chicago. I really didn't have a city that I was attached to.
Dr. Julia Bowlin: I didn't have a specialty that only existed in three places. Mine, family medicine, was everywhere. So when it came time to think about where I'd apply, I looked at where he already was, and I built my life and my plan around his trajectory of his career. I built my life around him. It didn't feel like a sacrifice, actually, and I really wanna be really clear about that because it's important to what comes later.
Dr. Julia Bowlin: It felt like love. It felt like the most natural thing in the world. Of course I would go where he was. Of course my plan would bend to fit him. He didn't ask me to. I just did, quietly, easily, the way you'd shift your weight to make room for someone on a park bench. I just did it. There wasn't a moment where I sat down and thought, "I am now choosing him over myself."
Dr. Julia Bowlin: It was smaller than that. [00:06:00] It was a hundred small decisions that all pointed in the same direction, and every single one of them on its own looked like love. That's the part nobody warns you about. The turn doesn't announce itself. It doesn't come with a sign that says, "This is the moment you start disappearing."
Dr. Julia Bowlin: It just looks like devotion every single day until one day it might not anymore. Here's the thing about that first decision. It wasn't the problem. One decision never is. The problem is what happens after, because once I'd shown that I would bend, bending became the expectation. Not because Ricky sat me down and said, "This is what you need to do."
Dr. Julia Bowlin: He never asked for it. He never did that. It happened for me quieter than that. Through repetition, every time I deferred to him because I really didn't care, it became a [00:07:00] normal thing for me to defer, and every time it was normal, it just became a little more easier. Because honestly, until I really had a master decision, it just was something I did and something he became used to, and it became a little more invisible in my needs to express what I wanted.
Dr. Julia Bowlin: And that's how the patterns work. Whether we're talking about a marriage or a Tuesday morning routine, the brain doesn't need one big decision to build a habit. It just needs the same small choice made enough times until the choice stops feeling like a choice at all. It just starts to feel like it's part of our identity.
Dr. Julia Bowlin: Not I am choosing to go along with this, but this is just who I am in this relationship. So years went by for me, and going along with things, his schedule, his preference, the shape of my life that revolved around his career stopped feeling like [00:08:00] generosity, and it started feeling like my job The job that nobody officially assigned to me, but the one that I showed up for anyway every day without being asked.
Dr. Julia Bowlin: And here's where it gets complicated, because it's not like anyone was a villain in this. I really wanna be clear. Ricky wasn't demanding it. I wasn't resentfully complying. It was love at first, doing what it always does, except now it was running on autopilot, and autopilot doesn't check in to see if the passengers still agree with the destination.
Dr. Julia Bowlin: So the first few times I did speak up, this is like decade into our relationship, the first few times I did speak up, really speak up about something that truly mattered to me, it didn't land the way that I expected. It wasn't that Ricky didn't wanna hear it. It was he had [00:09:00] never had to hold a version of me that had a voice like that, that was being firm and autonomous.
Dr. Julia Bowlin: Because we built something together brick by brick, where one of us just kinda led and the other followed smoothly, easily, and without friction. And a structure like that doesn't just make room for when the second voice comes in that shows up that's not built in that structure, right? So it was shocking to him, and it was shocking to me because I didn't realize how little I'd been speaking up until I wanted something that really wasn't a big deal, but I wanted it.
Dr. Julia Bowlin: So we had to rebuild, and rebuilding is loud, and it's uncomfortable, and it didn't happen in an afternoon. In fact, it led to a separation, but we did do it. We did work through it. I learned how to speak appropriately my needs out loud. He learned to recognize that I had a right [00:10:00] to feel differently than he did.
Dr. Julia Bowlin: And here's what took me a long time to understand. Devotion was doing two jobs at once, and I only ever noticed one of them. The first real job was I loved Ricky. I still do. That part was never, ever fake, and I don't want anyone hearing this to think that my love wasn't genuine, because it absolutely was.
Dr. Julia Bowlin: But devotion had a second job there too. It was covering for something. Every time I called it devotion, I didn't have to ask the harder questions underneath, which was, where did my voice go? Not gone forever, just quiet. Quiet enough that I had stopped noticing the silence. And when I finally started speaking up about things that mattered to me, decisions I actually had opinions about, it wasn't received as growth.[00:11:00]
Dr. Julia Bowlin: It was received as disruption. And not because Ricky wanted me small, he didn't. But we'd never built a version of us that had room for two full voices in the room. We built one voice and one echo. And an echo that suddenly starts talking back doesn't feel like an echo anymore. It feels like something's broken And I wanna be careful here because this is the part that's easy to get wrong.
Dr. Julia Bowlin: Finding my voice didn't cause what came next. What came next happened because the relationship as it existed then couldn't yet hold the shift. And those are two very different things. One says, 'I did something wrong by speaking up.' The other says, 'Something that had been built a certain way needed time and maybe distance before it could be rebuilt [00:12:00] differently.'
Dr. Julia Bowlin: And I didn't know in that moment which one was true. I only found that out later. But I'm getting a little ahead of the story because this episode isn't how it ends. It's about how it started. How something that began as genuine love offered freely can turn into a woman standing in her own kitchen wondering exactly when she became the last person on her list.
Dr. Julia Bowlin: And I'm talking about me. And I'm sure many of my listeners can resonate with that. So let me pause here for a second because what's happening right now isn't random. I say that all the time. It's not random. If it's ever felt strange that the same word devotion could describe both the healthiest love and the quietest disappearing act, that's not confusion.
Dr. Julia Bowlin: That is actually how feelings work. We tend to think of a [00:13:00] feeling like love as a solid thing sitting inside of us waiting to be discovered, but that's not quite what's happening. The brain doesn't pull feelings out of a drawer fully formed. It builds those feelings in the moment out of whatever's going on at hand, past experience, current context, what we've been told a feeling is supposed to look like in our past.
Dr. Julia Bowlin: So this is devotion, quote unquote, isn't a fact the brain discovers. It's a conclusion that the brain assembled using the ingredients that were available at the time. And if the main ingredient over and over and over is just going along with things The brain will build devotion out of that. So for me, just going along with things became devotion.
Dr. Julia Bowlin: It doesn't reach a purer version. It just sits there with that. So that's [00:14:00] why speaking up that first time for me didn't feel like relief. It-- I was scared. I was actually shaking, and he-- keep this in mind, he never was abusive, right? But I was scared because I felt like I was betraying him, betraying us, betraying the structure we had built, not because it was wrong to have a voice, but because my brain had spent years constructing love out of silence, and a new ingredient, a voice, didn't fit the recipe that my brain and our relationship already knew.
Dr. Julia Bowlin: And this wasn't a flaw in me, and it wasn't a flaw in Ricky. It was just a construction built the same way, brick by brick, that any belief gets built, which means it never got fixed. It wasn't the truth about who I was in that relationship. It was just a pattern that my brain had assembled, and Ricky, [00:15:00] out of the only materials that we had been given.
Dr. Julia Bowlin: So maybe, maybe there's a feeling somewhere that's been labeled one thing for a long time, and for me, it was devotion, loyalty, being easygoing, going with the flow. And now, looking back, that's worth a second look for anybody who's experienced this. Not to tear it down, just to notice what has actually been built over time out of that belief system.
Dr. Julia Bowlin: This isn't who I am. It was a pattern my brain constructed one moment at a time. It might not be who you are, but your brain may have constructed over time through submission or in the name of devotion or in the name of love. And once I could see it being built, then I could start choosing what to build it out as next.[00:16:00]
Dr. Julia Bowlin: And that's how we made our shift in our marriage. And here's the deeper shift, and it's not what most people expect. The problem was never that I gave too much. Giving is not the issue here. Love by its nature gives. The real problem is what happens when there's no me left to do the giving, when every bit of the energy goes out and none of it comes back in, not because anyone's stopping it, but because I stopped expecting it to.
Dr. Julia Bowlin: Think about a phone battery for a second. A phone can give a lot out of power. It can light up a room, run for hours. It can help you find your way when it's dark, but it only works if it gets plugged back in sometimes. And nobody looks at a dead phone and says, "Well, it just gave too much." No, we say, "It needs to be recharged."
Dr. Julia Bowlin: That's it. That's the whole idea. For years, I [00:17:00] was the phone that never got plugged in, and I didn't notice because I was still lighting up the room for everyone else. I just didn't realize the battery was running on nothing. And for a long time, I thought the fix was simple. I need to give less, hold something back, like maybe I should just dim the light on purpose, so I wouldn't run out of energy.
Dr. Julia Bowlin: But that never felt right either, and here's why. 'Cause it's really not about how much I give. It's about whether I still exist as a separate person while I am doing it. And here's another way to picture it. Think of two people rowing the same boat. If only one person is rowing and the other just sits there, the boat is still moving, but it's slower, and one person gets exhausted.
Dr. Julia Bowlin: Love isn't supposed to work like that. It's supposed to be two people rowing, even [00:18:00] if one rows a little harder one day and the other another day, but it's supposed to be together, and the goal was never for me to stop rowing. It was for there to still be two of us in the boat. So I conceded, I submitted, and maybe a lot of us do that, and that's the real shift here, not giving less.
Dr. Julia Bowlin: Something closer to this. It's a voice coming back. It's not a threat to love. It's part of what makes love real in the first place. Two full people rowing together, not one person rowing and one person just along for the ride. And I don't think devotion and having a voice are opposites. I used to. Now, I think they need each other because love without a voice isn't really love yet.
Dr. Julia Bowlin: It's just an agreement. And sometimes we call something, [00:19:00] quote, "just being nice," or, quote, "This is just who I am," when really it's standing in for something we stop saying out loud. Like me agreeing to a restaurant I didn't even wanna go to maybe five times in a row and just calling it easygoing. Or maybe you or somebody else saying, "It's fine."
Dr. Julia Bowlin: It's really about a decision that may have been bothering us, but because saying otherwise feels like creating too much trouble. That sentence, "Oh, it's fine," there's a lotta weight behind that statement, so every time you say, "Oh, it's fine," you better check in with yourself. I'm encouraging you to do that.
Dr. Julia Bowlin: Or maybe letting somebody else pick a movie, the plan, or the vacation, or the whole shape of a Saturday every single time, and telling ourselves, "Eh, we don't really have a preference." And keep in mind, maybe sometimes we don't have that preference. That's real, too. But sometimes saying, "I don't care," is doing a job it was [00:20:00] never meant to do.
Dr. Julia Bowlin: It's standing in for, "I don't care, but it's not worth saying anything." That's worth noticing, folks. Not because there's anything wrong with being easygoing, 'cause there isn't. But it's worth noticing because the phone battery doesn't complain when it's dying. It just goes quiet, and by the time the phone shuts off completely, nobody remembers exactly when it stopped charging So here's the question we're sitting with.
Dr. Julia Bowlin: Is there a place in the life right now where we might be calling it love or being easygoing or being easy to get along with that might actually be a voice that has gone quiet? And for anyone newer to this show, I'm about to jump into the unicity moment. This is a part of every episode now where we slow things all the way down.
Dr. Julia Bowlin: It blends a little hypnotherapy, a little nervous system reset, and just a [00:21:00] little space to breathe, space to feel something instead of just thinking about it. That's my goal for you. I would like you to start being present in these concepts without having to process it in your brain, and it's not a trick.
Dr. Julia Bowlin: It's not therapy. It's just a few quiet minutes built into the episode on purpose. What we're about to do is a guided experience, an invitation to slow down and turn inward. You are always in control. You can open your eyes at any time, adjust your position, or simply listen without participating. There's nothing you have to do.
Dr. Julia Bowlin: Just receive what's useful and leave the rest. And I also wanna be clear about something. This isn't a substitute for therapy or medical care. It's a moment of reflection, not treatment. And if anything that comes up feels more than what you wanna sit with alone, that's a good moment to pause and reach out to someone that you trust, such as a licensed therapist or a friend, a [00:22:00] colleague.
Dr. Julia Bowlin: It's always the right call to reach out to somebody. And if today isn't the day for you to turn inward and it doesn't feel safe for you right now, that's completely fine too. You're welcome to simply listen or just come back another time. If you're driving or operating any machinery, please do not close your eyes during this section.
Dr. Julia Bowlin: You're welcome to listen and stay present on the road or whatever you're doing, or even just save this until another time where you can be still. Whatever you're doing right now, that's the right place for this. Whether you're sitting or walking or driving with your eyes open, all of it works. There's nothing to get right here, just a body, just breathing wherever it happens to be.
Dr. Julia Bowlin: So let's start with one breath in, intentional, in, I should slow down too, and out 'cause I tend to talk fast. I don't know if you've ever noticed that. And when you're ready, if you're ready, not to change anything, not to just do anything intentional, just notice [00:23:00] where you are here. And maybe your shoulders drop a little, and maybe your jaw unclenches just slightly.
Dr. Julia Bowlin: Not with trying, just let it go. Nothing to force, just noticing what happens when nothing is being asked of you. In this moment, nothing, just be. And let's take another big breath in and be present and out through your mouth
Dr. Julia Bowlin: Some people find it helpful to picture somewhere outside, maybe a porch, maybe a quiet path, maybe just an open field with nothing demanding, nothing in it, just a beautiful place. And wherever it is, notice what's around you. Maybe there's a temperature flowing on your skin, like the sun or a breeze or the cool of [00:24:00] an early morning.
Dr. Julia Bowlin: Maybe a sound far off, such as wind moving through, moving through the trees or through the terrain that you are at. Maybe there's some water nearby, or maybe it's just quiet, the kind that has its own texture in and of itself There's no wrong version of where this place is. Whatever shows up, it's the right thing to show up right now Somewhere in that place, there might be a voice.
Dr. Julia Bowlin: Not loud, not dramatic, but maybe a voice that's just present the way it's always been, even in moments when things are quiet Maybe it sounds like a preference that got skipped along the way. A small, "I'd rather not," thought that never got said out loud [00:25:00] Maybe it sounds like a want that got quickly filed away as that's not worth mentioning Maybe it's not words at all, but just a feeling low in the chest or in the stomach that's been sitting there patient the way an old friend waits without keeping score It might show up as a single sentence.
Dr. Julia Bowlin: It might show up as an image, a door, a chair with a room for one more person, a hand that's been open for a while. There's no right version of this, and whatever shows up is the right thing
Dr. Julia Bowlin: And if nothing shows up clearly, that's all right too. Sometimes the voice is still deciding whether it's safe to speak, and that's its own kind of answer, [00:26:00] and it doesn't need to be rushed
Dr. Julia Bowlin: Whatever came up in that moment, there's no need to explain it or fix it or decide what it means right now. It can just sit there alongside everything else, like a guest at a table, not something that has to perform Maybe there's a small acknowledgement available. Not a promise, not a plan, just something like, "I hear you.
Dr. Julia Bowlin: Voice, I hear you," and that's enough for today
Dr. Julia Bowlin: Slowly, whenever it's ready, your awareness can come back to the room Becoming aware of the chair or the seat or the ground underneath you. Let's take [00:27:00] one breath in
Dr. Julia Bowlin: And out And when you're ready, gently open your eyes if they were closed at whatever pace feels right for you. And there's no rush to come back into this day. Just gently return, carrying whatever showed up, however big or small it was And however that voice showed up today, whether it was quiet or faint or familiar or brand new or maybe didn't show up at all, yet it's never actually gone.
Dr. Julia Bowlin: It's just waiting for a little room to be made into something you can acknowledge. And today, a little room might have been made[00:28:00]
Dr. Julia Bowlin: Here is what this episode was really about. Not love going wrong, love going quiet one small moment at a time until a voice that used to speak up didn't anymore. And I don't have a neat ending for this part of the story today. Some things just don't wrap up in one episode. This one ends in the middle, in the hard, the uncertain part before anyone knows how it turns out.
Dr. Julia Bowlin: And that's okay, because that's just how this one unfolded for me. And next time, we're going to talk about a different kind of a loss. What it's like to walk away from something we love, even when walking away was the right call. It's not the same story, but it does rhyme, and this all comes together, I promise, at the end of July.
Dr. Julia Bowlin: It's all gonna make sense. And before I go, if any part of this stirred something up for you, I'd love to hear from it. [00:29:00] Reach out. Find me at juliabowenmd.com or on any one of my social pages. Okay, I read these things, right? And if you need more information, sign up for my newsletter. I'll be happy to send you any up-and-coming live events, which I'm hoping to start restarting in the next six months, 'cause I've put them on hold for a couple years.
Dr. Julia Bowlin: And for most of you know that I did that because my husband was passing. So I'm starting to ready to get back to my live events. Here we go. Thank you so much for spending this time with me. And until next time, may you be happy, be healthy, and be fulfilled.
Outro: Thank you for listening to Mindset Medicine with your host, Dr. Julia Bowlin. To learn more about Mindset Medicine, go to www.juliabowlinmd.com and connect with Dr. Julia to find out how our team can help you [00:30:00] today. Join us again next week for more expert tips, tools, and strategies to become healthier, wealthier, and wiser in your personal and professional life.
