Sunshine Witchski, a psychic medium, soul healer, high priestess, Reiki master, author, and podcast host. Wow, she's very talented. Known as the pink-haired sober witch, Sunshine has walked through her own fire and come out the other side with a powerful framework for helping spiritual practitioners recover their magic, reclaim their energy, and step fully into their purpose. Whether you're feeling invisible, exhausted, or like something unseen is still blocking your next level, this conversation is for you. Welcome to Break Free from the Burnout, where we blend science and energy to help conscious entrepreneurs clear what's holding them back and rise them into their true power. I'm your host, Dr. Anastasia Chopelas, physicist turned energy healer, and today's guest is someone whose stories and gifts are going to resonate deeply with this community Welcome to the show, Sunshine. I'm so happy you're here. Oh, thanks for having me, Dr. Anastasia. I'm excited to be here. Yeah. So, so many of the healers and coaches in our community are working incredibly hard but still feel stuck or depleted. From your work- Mm-hmm with clients, what are the deeper energetic or spiritual patterns you most commonly find underneath that exhaustion, the ones that go way beyond just doing too much? Mm. the number one pattern that I would say I find is the pattern of addiction, right? And I, and I don't even mean just, like, substance use, right? People end up… I claim I'm a recovering alcoholic and workaholic, and so people will literally burn themselves out just because they are caught on the addictive pattern of doing. Yes. Just doing. Yeah. Right? In fact, you can be addicted to gaming. You can be- Mm-hmm … addicted to watching YouTube videos. You can be addicted to eating. You can be addicted to, any kind of substance that is actually causing withdrawals. I was addicted to coffee, so. Yeah? Yeah, addiction is, a problem because it's a way to numb yourself out from life, right? It… Yeah, and, and I would say not even just numb yourself from life, but keep you disconnected from spirit, right? Keep you- Yes … disconnected from your, state of genius, right? Yes. you'll have these high performers. You'll have entrepreneurs. You'll have people that are, like, destined to do amazing things, right? But they are so focused on the doing that they are not taking the pauses to connect back and say, "Am I doing the right thing? Am I doing the thing that's aligned with my highest vibrational path? Am I doing the thing that is gonna take me to my next level of genius? Am I doing the thing that is going to make the biggest different and the biggest impact in the world?" I'm guilty of it too. I remember very, very, very clearly, probably one of my most, sheepish, like, lessons, which was probably only, I guess, three years ago Of this for myself, right? Of getting caught in the doing and, and checking off the to-do lists and never pausing to ask spirit if I, if that was really where I was best being of service. Yeah. Well, the doing is an addiction in itself. Mm-hmm. Because we're human beings, not human doings. Yeah. So first be that, then do it, rather than the other way around. Yeah. Right. So you work with a lot of people who are highly sensitive or have psychic gifts. How does that level of energetic sensitivity contribute to burnout in a way that more conventional advice completely misses? And what does real relief look like for someone wired that way? Yeah, I think, you know, folks that are very highly sensitive, you may not even identify as highly sensitive, so I'll, I'll, I'll share. You know, these are folks that may also identify as being empathic. These are folks that when around other people, they just, they feel, they feel differently. And I think this really contributes because if you're not highly aware of how sensitive or empathic you are, and you're trying to do the thing or, even just be what you're, you, you feel like you're meant to be, the moment you get things like, folks that are naysayers or folks that disagree with you or folks that step into your path and are masking, right?'Cause I find that's a very common thing, where people are surrounded with a bunch of people and they're mask- the, all of those other folks are masking, showing up in the way they think that they should be showing up. Oh, yeah. As the, entrepreneur, as the person that's trying to, like, do the right thing and are highly sensitive, you start picking up on this, right? You start finding that you're always masking. You start finding that you're doing things, not out of your own, like, authenticity or integrity, right? So we just, when we're highly sensitive and empathic and we're not conscious of it, like we haven't brought it out into the light and it's still lingering in our shadows, we can be much more susceptible to just operate under a prescription somebody else has given us rather than what we truly are a- aligned and meant to be doing. And I, I watch it over and over again, you'll ask folks. I, I, I mean, I've sat there and had people literally working with you one-on-one and asking them, like, "Why are you doing something?" Or like, "Are you happy doing this?" And they have no idea why they're doing it, and when they're… Like, I've watched the tears break down when they're like, "No, I'm not. I'm not happy with this." Yeah. I've been in situations where I was driving home from work and I had a great job, but the rest of my life was a mess, and I just wanted to just keep driving past my freeway exit and just drive out of my life. And being, and so I am both empathic and highly sensitive, and I can feel people's emotions as soon as I walk in the room. And if they're upset, it feels like I get itching powder all over me. Mm. And if they're happy, it's, very soothing. the thing that I've tried to do, and other people might identify and you might identify with it, is to keep people in that happy state so you end up twisting yourself in a pretzel just, just so you don't get invaded like that with their energy. 100%. I mean, I believe that the reason why so many highly sensitive and empathic people also suffer from people pleasing is that- Mm-hmm … exact reason, right? I've had this conversation over and over again. It is easier sometimes for us to try to control other folks, right? Control making sure they're happy, making sure they have their needs met, making all of these things only to truly be trying to control our own discomfort. Yeah. So you're known for your work with s- with shadow work and transformation. For a healer or coach who's burned out, how does leaning into the shadow rather than pushing through or staying positive actually accelerate their recovery and help them reclaim their power? Yeah. this goes a little bit back to what I was saying. If you are on this constant path of just doing and, like, literally acting like the Energizer Bunny, right? Um, that means that you may be avoiding all of the signs or what I'll even say the symptoms of the burnout, right? And you might not be pausing and asking, like, why, like, like, why, why all of a sudden, why do I have indigestion for the last three days? Why, why can't I sleep? Why am I having a hard time falling asleep, right? You just kind of push through it. And so when we pause and we start to ask the difficult questions like, why am I doing this? What is this really serving me? where might I be missing something, right? When we can pause and start to ask these deeper questions, that's us being willing to step into the shadow. And this is where we may start to recognize things like- Mm-hmm… I'm not supposed to be doing this. This isn't making me happy, right? Mm-hmm. This is burning me out, or I'm just doing this because my father held me to such expectations, right? My mother, always told me I'd never amount to anything, you know? We, we start to explore these things and We can listen to like our, our, our body, uh, and I'll say our body tells us more than probably anything else in this world, right? Our body can literally speak to us and, and lay claim to some truths that we can be drastically avoiding. It's- Yeah… yeah, it's, it's in the body. I, I was always surprised, like even when I was in college all those years ago, I was always surprised how many people chose majors because they said, "My mom or dad wanted me to do this." And, I'm getting like I'm getting messages from the other side right now, but the thing that I did was I decided when I was seven what I was going to do. I knew I was- Hmm … gonna be a scientist. And, you know, I was in the second grade and, and adults would ask me, here I am this little bitty kid, and they'd say, "Well, what do you wanna be when you grow up?" And I'd always say, "Scientist." They're like, "What?" And that's what I did. Yeah. Yeah, and then- Yeah, no… yeah, and- I, I agree, I agree with you wholeheartedly in that one, I've always disagreed that we ask children what they wanna be when they grow up, and we expect them to understand how, like what that answer really means Right? I'm 46. I still don't know what I wanna be when I grow up. I just wanna be, like, happy and, delighted and fulfilled and loved. Oh. Right? Fulfilled is the key, is the key. Yeah, so I, I was your age when I became more and more awakened. So I started my awakening at 30, and then in my 40s, so I'm 73 now. So all of those experiences between then and now have guided me quite well. Mm. And so the… What is it? There's a book out called The Courage to Be Disliked. Hmm. I don't know if I've heard of that one, but that sounds like a good one. Yeah. Yeah. So it's said that most problems are due to relationships, and, my thing was in my 40s I'd go, "So Why should everybody like me? I don't like everybody." I just use logic 'cause I'm a very logical person. I just use logic to talk myself out of things and help me shift my view. So, so we were talking about overwork and busyness, and a lot of people wear their busyness like a badge of honor. Yeah. What's really going on energetically? We talked about how there is avoidance and disconnected from spirit and their true… So what would be the first step toward addressing the root rather than just the behavior? if we're talking about that energetic of busyness, like this underlying shadow of feeling really like we're not worthy of rest Right? That to me, like we're not… it makes me think about I tell people, like the universe does not, the universe like isn't out there and saying, "You know what I really want for everyone is a hard life." Right?"I, I really want everyone to have a, a lot of difficulties in life." Right? That's not what the universe wants, but yet we have these un- like unconscious beliefs that we're not worthy of rest, that we're not worthy of ease, that we, that we have to work hard, that, and, and especially in our Western culture. Yes. Especially in our Western culture, right? Like, you have to work hard in order to play. Like literally next week I'm doing this whole three-day workshop on joy, right? And, and I'm talking about this. and especially recovering, you know, addicts, right? Like especially any of us that are in recovery from whatever that may be, we just, we struggle to feel truly worthy of a beautiful and easy life, right? Like we have to, we've gotta do more in order to earn it. Yeah. the earn was the big word is. Yeah. That to me is the unconscious belief. That's the energetic that exists underneath the busyness, underneath- Yeah … the burnout. And I think that a lot of it is you have to earn being lovable, you have to earn being loved, and that's just not how it works. You're either loved or you're not. Yes, and there's also the unconscious like someone else's love is, is greater than the love we have for ourselves, right? I'm, I'm only worthy of loving myself if others love me. Mm-hmm. but yeah. the burnout and the busyness and this just unconscious belief that I, you know, I ask all the time for the universe like, um, you know, I, I want a life of ease. I, that's truly what I want. So if that's what I desire, right, if I want things to feel easy in life, guess what I've gotta do? I've gotta choose the easy path. I've gotta choose to not overwork. I have to choose to not burn myself out a lot of the people that I work with, once they discover their purpose and they live in their purpose and they feel very fulfilled, then what's work doesn't feel like work. It feels like a pleasure And that can energize you in such a way, like I can work a lot of hours as long work technically. I can work a lot of hours, but I don't feel drained by it. I agree wholeheartedly with that, right? they say, if you're doing what you love, you'll never work a day in your life, right? I go back to the fact that I, I identify and I, I'm, I'm very aware of the fact that I'm also a workaholic. And so the thing is, is when I do, when I'm working a lot, what am I not doing? Yeah. Right? Am I not engaging with my loved ones? Am I not engaging with my friends? Is it, am I not sitting there and just indulging in the most ridiculous fiction book that I have ever read? Right? You know? Am I… Like, so this is where I agree wholeheartedly with that. Like, I could sit and work 15, 16-hour days and just be, like, loving it, every bit of it. Yeah. Right? But, but you also have to read a trash novel once in a while. I definitely have to read a trash novel every once in a while. Right? You know, I… It, and so that to me is I, I, I go back to again where I think people get onto this path of doing, right? Mm-hmm. And so even though what I'm doing is something that I love, have I l- have I lost the connection to the being? Yes. I love that question. Have I lost connection to me as a being? Yes. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Beautiful. So a lot of our listeners have a spiritual practice, but it's often the first thing to go when life gets overwhelming. How do you help people shift from treating their practice as optional self-care to making it the actual foundation of their, basically their wellbeing- Yeah … what it's built on, and maybe their business? I love this 'cause I've had, I've had this conversation with a handful of people recently that we are, we are spiritual beings, and when we look at that, we truly accept that as a tr- we believe it as a truth, like wholeheartedly- Mm-hmm then we can start to see every single thing that we do as a spiritual practice. Everything, right? Yeah. We often think that, "Oh, my spiritual practice has to be an hour on the mat. I've gotta, you know, I've gotta do an hour's worth of yoga and do, and, and in Shavasana, and I, you know, I have to do my meditation and my journaling." But, like, I, I… And I've had conversation with Spirit about this recently. Um, I've been doing a garden. And so I noticed about two months ago that I hadn't been doing my normal morning spiritual practice. And I sat there and I had a conversation with Spirit and I said, "I feel bad about that." And they said, "But why do you feel bad about that? You're spending every morning in the garden. Do you not think that is just as much of a spiritual act as sitting and writing?" And I went, "Wow." Is, is preparing my morning coffee or tea not just as much of a spiritual act as meditating? Is cooking a healthy, nutritious, balancing meal not just as spiritual as reciting my mantras? That to me, when we start to look at everything that we can do throughout the day as being driven by spirit, from our showers to our meals to, to the work that we engage in and do, we start to not just have a spiritual practice- Mm-hmm… but we start to live a spiritual life. I love that. I love that you put it in this, these terms because it's so true, because self-care is honoring this that you got from spirit, and honoring this keeps us in integrity, and honoring this that we've been given by taking a walk outside, by showering. I do salt showers. So I use salt to remove the poopy energy. there is a whole series of things that I do daily, and it's all about self-care, and it doesn't have to take a long time. Like, I, I never, I can't- No … meditate for an hour. Just, like, not in me. I'm too ADD for that. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. we've been doing a meditation challenge in my, in my coven, and, like, everyone's saying this is the hardest one we've ever done, and I think it's because, you know, we often think of, of, again, this spiritual practice as needing to be this, like, exalted thing. Like, I, I, you know, uh, should be like a monk, spending an hour in silen- No. And I'm like, so how about you just kind of meditate and are mindful as you do your laundry, as you do your cooking, as you wash your dishes? Well, even- Right … just taking two deep breaths, like just sitting there. Correct. Mm-hmm. And just- Yep… come into yourself, and that's put your mind in the right place. Yep. Yeah. Yep. So you just talked about covens. So you talked about the power of intentional community as- Yeah… critical to healing, and many healers and coaches operate in isolation, which can quietly fuel burnout. What does true energetic community look and feel like, and how does it actually shift someone's field? I have a very strong belief, as well as many people in recovery space, that isolation leads towards addiction, right? That when we are isolated, we are much more likely to be in a place of pain and suffering, right? and convince ourselves of, like, so many things, right? So many kind of, like, things in our mind. And so, you know, when we step into community, I, I… And it's-- I've gotta kinda paint this picture. You know, I see it in my head as a picture. You know, when we're one individual and we're just operating just individually by ourselves, you know, and we've got things that are troubling or bothering us, or problems or s- or, you know, challenges or whatever it is that we're facing, I kinda see it all as this, like, big, gigantic storm, like, all of this static that goes on. But when we step into community, right? And you've got somebody that maybe is not. They're in a good place right now. They're, they've found some peace. They're happy, right? It kind of dissipates it. We become part of this collective consciousness, right? This group consciousness, this community consciousness, where we, in and of ourselves, can start to share, right? And not in a way of codependency, not in a way of, energy vampiric type of, of nature, but in a way that we no longer need to carry our burdens by ourselves anymore. And, and this, in and of itself, so we can start to see that we're not alone, That isolation starts to fall away, and our heart chakra, this is where we connect to people in this. Like- Oh, absolutely … our heart shak- Yeah… our heart chakra just starts to feel warm. And when, and when it's, when it is in a place where that's hard for us, we can see the mirror, we can see how other people are loving themselves. We can start to feel what that love feels like. humans just in and of themselves, and I don't, it does not matter to me where your soul may have originated before here. When you have incarnated on this earth as a human, you are given this energetic suit and this physical suit, and you are absolutely going to benefit from the connection, you know, that we have to the heart. Yeah. We, we're, as energetic beings, we're designed to connect in at least 11 different ways. And I have to say that when I was going through my difficult marriage to my ex, I did feel isolated and I felt like I was going crazy. And then I stepped into Al-Anon, which is friends and family of alcoholics. This was in Germany. I had to speak German in the group. As I walked in to my first meeting and they said, "Well, what brought you here?" And I s- I couldn't even get the words out. I said, "I have two young children, I've been married for 10 years, and I don't know what to do." And I was going crazy, but the thing that was interesting is there were 16 people around this big table, and they all told their stories, and their stories were my story. Yeah. And so I didn't feel alone or crazy anymore, and that made the whole difference. And then I could talk- Oh, God … about it. Made the whole difference that we were all- Yeah … experiencing the same things, the same emotions, and we were completely different types of people. I mean, I was the only scientist in the room, right? But everybody else had all kinds of different, uh And that's where I learned energy healing. One of the ladies invited me to a Reiki class and- I love that… and I discovered that I could move myself and started helping others- Yeah … and then relating it to quantum physics, which was one of my topics. So yeah, so that group was the most amazing thing that happened to me, so I can imagine getting in a group of like-minded, and when I bring healers together, like I just did a webinar this afternoon and there were six healers in the room, and then we all started talking about our shared experiences, and that was just delicious, right? Because most people when they talk to healers or psychics, they're always, like, a little on the skeptical side. and that's, that's e- exactly I think why the work that I do has started to see such a phenomenal response is because people that identify as a witch, right, have always been ostracized, and then folks that identify as addicts They've always been ostracized. And now you've got two groups where both of these sets of individuals- Mm-hmm… have always felt like they're weird or strange or crazy or misunderstood, and yet in the community and in the coven, in this collective consciousness that we've created, nobody feels that way. Yeah. That's, and so w- you come in a group like that and you feel completely accepted, completely understood. You know you're not crazy. I was just looking up, because I'm preparing for, I have also an event next week, and I was preparing for it, and I was looking up, so what does Wikipedia say about alternative healing methods? And they call them- Mm all kinds of n- unpleasant and unflattering names. Like, it's quackery and… But yet I met a psychic medium who I was supposed to have three questions prepared for her. She was doing this group a favor, and so we'd all approach her individually. And I just walked in the room and she just told me what my questions were and what my answers were. without me saying a single word. I didn't say anything. So she, her thing is that she helps the FBI solve one case a week. Mm. Because she talks to the people that have passed, and- Mm… they tell, they give her hints Uh, I mean, th- there are a lots of us that are out there doing really good work like that. Yeah. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yep. So when, when someone's been depleted for a long time, there's often an identity crisis on the other side of healing, like who am I without the struggle? Who am I without the pain? Who am I without the illness? Who am I? So do you and how do you guide people through that rebuilding themselves and reconnecting with their true power and purpose? I think the first thing, that I do when I work with folks is we really sit and witness the grief Right? You know, people wanna run, uh, into the who am I? Who am I without the pain or the struggle or the drugs or the alcohol, And that happens in time, We often don't know that answer until we're willing to, Live without the pain. Live without… Make choices that are leaning us towards, you know, pain-free. Le- make choices that keep us away from the alcohol, the drugs. But in that process, we have to be willing to grieve who we once were. Mm-hmm. That version of us had purpose. Mm-hmm. It did. That version of us taught us, Mm-hmm. That version of us probably gave us more lessons than, any textbook or- Yeah… class or course has ever given us, right? It's just like all the difficult relationships. You got something beneficial out of them even though they wanted to dump that turkey. Well, what attracted you to them in the first place? Yeah. Yeah. So, you know, when we can sit in the grief and we can acknowledge what we've received from that version of ourselves- Mm-hmm… we can also start to see with more that we were making that led us to the pain, led us to the suffering. And now we get to make a different choice. Now we can make a choice that leads us towards the transformation. And now in those choices we start to feel more confident and start to get a better understanding of who we are without it. Yes. I agree. So I love your take on things. You've given us so much of your beautiful wisdom, Sunshine- Thank you and your energy to the community today. And this conversation has been a real gift for me, and I hope for everybody who's listening. So for everybody listening, if you recognize yourself somewhere in today's episode, whether it's overworking, the sensitivity, the shadow you've been avoiding, or simply that quiet sense that something unseen is holding you back, trust that. Do you have somewhere to send people to connect with you? Yeah. It… Absolutely. I try to keep it really simple. You can visit the website www.soberwitch.life. everything that I do, the podcast, the radio shows, the books, everything is available there. A- as well as, you can connect with me, directly off the site. Okay, perfect. So I will make sure to put that in the show notes. I love that. If this episode spoke to you, please share it with a fellow healer or coach who needs to hear it. The community grows when we lift each other. Until next time, keep clearing, keep rising, and remember you don't have to carry what was never yours, and you don't have to do it alone. I'm Dr. Anastasia Chopelas, physicist turned energy healer, and this is Break Free From the Burnout