Generosity Is Easy, Receiving Care Is Hard...Here's Why

The whole point of living in true connection with others is the social exchange of giving and receiving love and care. Many of us don't have any problem with the giving part - we do that freely. But when it comes to being the recipient of that gift? Not so much, and it manifests in many ways.   You could be the caregiver struggling to carve out space to care for yourself.   Or you're the friend not sure exactly how to be there for someone in a vulnerable time.   Perhaps you're the care-getter feeling uncomfortable with needing others. Or maybe someone did something nice for you and you're putting yourself under intense pressure to reciprocate.   In all these instances, we run into the difficulty we have with the concept of care. The thing is: the river of connection has to flow for connection to flourish. Any resistance to care actually stops the flow and robs us of the richness of aliveness.   Why do we have such a hard time receiving care? How do we give care without depleting ourselves? In this episode, we talk about why caregiving is so emotionally complex and how we can get past it.    Part of the richness of living is the giving and the receiving of the abundance we experience when we're living in love and flow. -Katie Hendricks   Things You'll Learn In This Episode    -Offer presence and care When someone has experienced a loss, a common thing to ask is how we can help them. Does this actually create more stress in a difficult time?    -Taking care of yourself when you're the caregiver When you're in the role of supporting someone else, it's really easy to play the hero and overlook yourself to the point of depletion. How do you make space to pay attention to yourself?    -The truth about being cared for How we feel about receiving love and care has a lot to do with whether or not we feel lovable. What steps can we take to feel worthy of the support of others?    -Nature isn't transactional People have a hard time receiving love and care but in nature, the flowers don't refuse the pollination of bees. How do we embrace the fact that receiving love is just as important as giving it?    About Your Hosts   Kathlyn Hendricks, Ph.D., BC-DMT*, is an evolutionary catalyst and freelance mentor who has been a pioneer in the field of body intelligence and conscious loving for over forty years. Katie has an international reputation as a presenter and seminar leader, bodifying the core skills of conscious living–authenticity, response-ability and appreciation–with conscious enthusiasts from many fields. She is the co-author of twelve books, including the best-selling Conscious Loving, At The Speed of Life and Conscious Loving Ever After: How to Create Thriving Relationship at Midlife and Beyond. Katie has been a successful entrepreneur for over forty years. She specializes in turning concepts such as commitment into felt experience and igniting new actions that emerge from the inside out. Her unique coaching and leadership programs have generated hundreds of body intelligence and relationship coaches in the U.S. and Europe. She co-founded the Spiritual Cinema Circle and the virtual Body Intelligence Summit. Katie has appeared on over 500 radio and television programs and traveled well over one million air miles as the ambassador for the work that she and her husband Gay Hendricks have developed.   Sophie Chiche is a seasoned coach and consultant who has traveled the world working with thousands of people and dozens of teams. With a passion for fully expressed living, Sophie coaches, and facilitates group sessions to help people and teams remove what gets in the way of them living their most meaningful lives.Not only does she work with clients to design the life they want, but she's also developed methods, mindsets shifts, and healing modalities to create it elegantly. Born in Paris, raised in Barcelona, and lived in LA for 30 years, Sophie now lives in the middle of nowhere Arizona, where she rides her Harley with her boo, Wall. And plays a lot of pickleball.   Check out this episode on our website, Apple Podcasts, or Spotify and don't forget to leave a review if you like what you heard. Your review feeds the algorithm so the show reaches more people!