Are You Holding Space or Holding the Energy?

Holding space and holding the energy are not the same thing. One is a gift you offer, and the other is a habit you're probably not even choosing consciously.

Holding space means you're present. Someone's going through something. You stay steady. You observe without merging into it. You show up, you listen, you care — and then you go home and let it go. That's regulated empathy.

Holding the energy is something else entirely. It's absorbing someone's stress until it becomes your stress. Replaying the conversation at 11pm. Carrying their urgency into your next meeting. Feeling responsible for fixing what isn't yours to fix.

If you're taking on the emotional weight of every client's anxiety or every difficult conversation's lingering energy, you're not running your business from your own center - you're running it from someone else's nervous system. That directly impacts your ability to make clear decisions and show up with authority.

The four practices I come back to: pause and regulate before responding to a dysregulated person. Ask yourself in real time: Is this mine? Is this current? Is this my responsibility? Stop fixing as a way of managing your own discomfort. And when a conversation ends, let it end… visualize handing it back vs. carrying it into the next room.

Sensitivity is the gift; absorption is the habit. And habits can be unlearned!