How to fill your cup up so you can serve and give from an overflow, rather than running on empty & being Prone to Burn out.
After sharing a previous article on how to embody the Proverbs 31 woman, I had a request for a part two with more tangible tips, so I thought I would share another post on this topic from the perspective of being a Christian woman, a wife, and a holistic health practitioner who not only runs her own online business, but also volunteers in her local community and has successfully recovered from burn out by embodying what I teach.
If you are a Christian woman with a desire to serve her family & others, and you are not actively prioritizing your wellbeing, at some point you will be at risk of burn out, compassion fatigue, and chronic health issues related to stress.
There are many reasons for this, but here are four I will cover today:
Holding on to the emotions/sensations of others
Lack of nourishment leading to a decreased physical capacity to serve
Lack of delegation leading to overwhelm
Depletion due to unexamined energy leaks
Let’s dive into how to support each of these:
Develop a practice of frequently releasing what is not yours.
Ever left an encounter with someone, whether it is your child or someone you are holding space for and felt physically drained, exhausted, or heavy afterwards? It is likely because you have gift of being highly sensitive and attuned to others.
However, with this gift, comes a burden: a tendency to hold on to and carry what is not yours. And Jesus invites us to release those burdens because they are not ours to carry.
How?
The first step, is noticing and naming what is yours vs theirs, and what needs to be given to Jesus. Many times as women we try to BE Jesus for someone, but we are not called to BE Him, we are called to abide in Him & point others to Him. Bearing one another’s burdens involves helping someone carry their burdens, but does not mean you take it on solely as your own.
Instead, you carry & release it to the One is meant to hold and destroy it: Jesus. Remember Psalm 55:22
“Cast your burdens on the Lord and He will sustain you.”
There is a difference between releasing a burden intellectually, vs an embodied release. An embodied release involves your mind, body, and Spirit.
What does this tangibly look like?
It looks like developing the awareness of somatic empathy and taking measures to discharge emotions/sensations you feel you have taken on, especially if you are highly sensitive. Somatic empathy is the ability to physically feel another person's sensations or emotions as if they were your own.
We have been designed with interoception, which is a sensory system that allows you to perceive your body's internal state, such as hunger, thirst, pain, heart rate, and body temperature. We have also been designed with mirror neurons which allows us to pick up on non verbal communication that creates a physiological connection.
This can be experienced as a gut feeling, nervousness, tearfulness, or even shared physical pain, like picking up someone's heightened heart rate or muscle tension as they speak. Many people do not realize they have the capacity to hold on to the sensations of others, and it leads to them carrying something that does not belong to them.
Left unnamed and untended to, it can wreak havoc on your nervous system and fuel anxiety, compassion fatigue, burn out, and feeling as though you have limited capacity to be around others. You will choose a narrative that follows these internal sensations and live accordingly.
In light of this, what are your outlets?
If you have none, eventually your emotional capacity “cup” will begin to leak & sometimes cause you to feel constantly on edge, overwhelmed, anxious, or as if you need to isolate.
Here are some helpful outlets:
Start with learning about the art of personal mapping & build a menu of your unique needs, which I teach inside my 12 week nervous system course. It is hard to know the difference between what they are carrying and what you are, unless you have taken time to get to know yourself, your internal felt senses & narrative.
Examples of menu items after mapping:
Pandiculation & somatic movements. These help release tension and down regulate your nervous system.
Develop a daily humming practice. Humming down regulates the nervous system, releases tension, & improves your mental & health.
Practice breath prayers, progressive muscle relaxation & or biblical mindfulness techniques.
Self massage or booking a massage. Touch helps release tension & stress.
Write down burdens/emotions on paper and burning it. This helps discharge the sensations that follow certain emotions.
2.Make nourishment a priority
It is a commonly taught that Christian women should “pour from an empty cup,” but what if Jesus is actually inviting us to serve from an overflow, not depletion? Just because you “can” do something, does not mean you should or that it is sustainable and ideal.
Making sure you are physically nourished, by focusing on blood sugar balanced meals and choosing nutrient dense food, helps you have sustainable energy and a great capacity to hold more.
One simple shift is making sure your breakfast contains at least 15-20g of protein, balanced with a healthy fat & fiber. I have more helpful nutrition shifts available inside my wellness guides!
Depletion leads to stress intolerance and feeling as though you are always “maxed out.”
Nourishment increases the capacity of your physical strength “cup.”
3. Learn to delegate:
Get to know the strengths and giftings of the members in your congregation, community, or family & start delegating effectively by inviting people to use their gifts.
Sometimes we think only we can perform a certain task, and then become overwhelmed when too much is asked of us. Or we do not want to burden someone with a task. But as members of the body, there are so many people with so many gifts that often go overlooked or simply stay stagnant because no one asks them or challenges them or disciples them to use their gifts. If we go back to our image of the merchant ship in my previous post, a merchant ship is more effective when it is buoyant.
What causes a ship to lose its buoyancy? Too much weight. If the ships weight exceeds the buoyant force, it sinks because it can no longer displace enough water to support itself.
Sometimes as women, we try to do too much by our own power and are uncomfortable delegating and we start sinking due to the weight of the tasks we attempt to take on. Thats where delegation can come in handy. Delegation serves both us and them.
Delegating is biblical, we can look to the example of Moses in Exodus 18 when Jethro told him he needed to stop trying to lead on his own and train other men to do so.
We also can read that the Proverbs 31 was not doing everything by herself. In vs 15-16, we see she had servants.
This can apply to motherhood, marriage, health, finances, cleaning, cooking, and more.
What tasks can you delegate to your husband or children, rather than trying to be and do everything for them? There is a great book on this concept called “Hunt, Gather, Parent.”
Who can you hire/delegate to?
If your finances are an issue and you cannot hire, explore bartering.
When I work in low income areas, people often trade skills for services. (Health care services for a home cooked meal, house cleaning for babysitting, etc).
4. Examine your leaks & protect your attention and energy:
Where are your current energy leaks & drains and which ones can you plug up and patch?
These can be physical, emotional, or Spiritual and often times they when named they can be plugged or pruned.
A cup that is leaking will eventually run dry, rather than provide an overflow.
Leaks can manifest as:
Trying to do too many things at once
Being nice vs kind (I have a helpful post on this!)
Ignoring your body’s signals to slow down
Too many notifications on your phone
Overextending yourself without replenishing
A leak can also be found in your mineral & nutrient status, especially if you have not taken time to replenish after a stressful season or postpartum. Working with a skilled practitioner 1:1 can be incredibly helpful.
Final tip: practice regular attunement & inspection of your cup in each season of life.
In the book of Ecclesiastes, we learn about the principles of “seasons” and how there is a time for everything. Some seasons of life are going to be more hectic than others, but that does not mean we have to run on empty.
The Proverbs 31 was prepared for various seasons (Proverbs 31:21), and we can prepare (or recover) too, but it takes intention and reflection. Make it a practice to prayerfully sit down and reflect on current seasons, past seasons, and future seasons, and tune into what has been working and what needs to change. I pray you found this article helpful!
P.S Do you long for a space that helps you care for your mind, body, and spirit—while staying deeply rooted in Christ?
A space where there’s no pressure to keep up, only freedom to move at your own pace…
Where wisdom is clinically sound, evidence-based, and biblically grounded, and the overwhelming burden of research on labs, supplements, and protocols is done for you…
So you can feel equipped to steward your health, confidently care for your family, serve others, and begin reversing chronic symptoms through a root cause approach?
I created a space just like this with YOU in mind.
Join us inside the Aligned and Renewed Wellness Collective.
