Founder Letter: When It's Hard to Receive: Opening the Heart

How Can We Learn To Receive?

Dear Rosies, 

In recent weeks, I’ve sat in circle after circle of women who speak the same refrain: “It’s hard for me to receive.” The words arrive wrapped in exhaustion, overwork, and a sense that the only safe posture in life is to keep giving. When the conversation deepens, the specifics emerge: receiving makes them uncomfortable, they feel indebted the moment a gift is offered, they rush to reciprocate, they worry they’re a burden, they flush with embarrassment.

It is striking how common this is. The reluctance to receive, for many, has become a nearly invisible architecture in our inner world.

And yet, in contrast, I have also witnessed women who sit in their center like a still pool, open and joyful. They seem to draw gifts and abundance without effort. For them, presence alone is an offering, and life responds accordingly.

Why the difference? What are the inner mechanics of this resistance to receiving—and what becomes possible when we soften into the receptive heart?

The Inner Architecture of Not Receiving

Psychologists have long studied patterns of receptivity and their connection to attachment styles, early conditioning, and cultural norms. Insecure attachment—especially in its anxious and avoidant forms—often includes a discomfort with unearned care. For someone whose early caregiving was inconsistent, receiving can unconsciously feel unsafe: the gift might be withdrawn, or come with hidden expectations.

From a cognitive perspective, reciprocity is deeply wired into human social behavior. Behavioral economists have shown that humans, across cultures, tend to return favors quickly—a norm that helps maintain cooperation in communities. But when this reflex is fused with gendered socialization—where women are praised for selflessness and shamed for “taking too much”—it can distort into compulsive overgiving.

Neuroscience also offers clues. Receiving activates the brain’s reward circuitry, but if that circuitry is coupled with heightened amygdala activity from past relational stress, the pleasure is laced with anxiety. Instead of savoring, the nervous system braces. The body says: “This is dangerous.” And so the architecture is built: cultural conditioning, early attachment wounds, and the nervous system’s vigilance, all conspiring to make receiving feel unsafe.

The Hidden Benefits of Not Receiving

If the pattern persists, it’s not because it has no payoff. Often there are subtle, even unconscious, rewards. Overgiving keeps us in control;when we are the givers, we decide the terms. It shields us from vulnerability, which true receiving always entails. It can preserve a familiar identity: I am the strong one, the capable one, the one who doesn’t need help In some cases, the refusal to receive also protects us from intimacy.

Accepting a gift or care requires a softening of boundaries and an acknowledgment of interdependence. For those who fear abandonment or engulfment, staying in the role of giver allows for closeness without too much exposure.

From a spiritual lens, these are protective adaptations, not moral failings. In nondual traditions, all impulses—whether toward openness or contraction—are movements within the One. They arise, serve their purpose, and dissolve when they are no longer needed.

The Principles of the Receptive Heart

In tantric and nondual teachings, receptivity is not passivity. It is an active, luminous openness, a capacity to let life move through us without obstruction. The receptive heart doesn't grasp or defend; it abides in trust. To sit in receptivity is to understand the truth of interbeing: that giving and receiving are not separate acts but two aspects of the same flow. When a flower opens to the rain, it is not “taking” from the sky; it is fulfilling its nature.

Research on gratitude and wellbeing supports this. Studies show that people who allow themselves to fully receive care, compliments, or tangible gifts experience increased oxytocin levels, enhanced social bonding, and a greater sense of life satisfaction. The very act of receiving well is itself a form of generosity, as it allows the giver to experience the joy of contribution. 

Moving from Resistance to Openness

Without fixing or forcing, we can begin the process of gentle release, starting  with simple awareness. Over time, the nervous system learns that openness is safe, even pleasurable.

• Notice the body’s response. The next time something is offered—help, praise, a meal—pause. Observe the micro-reactions: the tightening in the chest, the impulse to deflect.
• Place a hand on your heart and breathe into that space. Reframe receiving as a gift to the giver. Let the person offering know that their act touches you, that you feel their care. This shifts the internal narrative from indebtedness to shared joy.
• Begin with the small. Accept a compliment without deflection. Let someone open the door. Drink in the moment without adding, “I’ll get the next one.”
• Anchor in abundance. Nondual practice invites us to rest in the awareness that we are not separate from the source of life’s flow. Receiving is not depleting another—it is the universe meeting itself through form.

Living in the Rain of Blessings

When we become more receptive, life changes texture. The world becomes a place of mutuality rather than transaction. Gifts both tangible and intangible begin to appear everywhere: the unexpected kindness of a stranger, the softness of morning light, the way the body exhales when it feels held. And here is the paradox: as we open to receive without condition, our giving deepens. We no longer pour from depletion, but from the overflow that comes when the heart is continually nourished.

The women I have seen living this way are not “lucky” in any superficial sense. They are deeply rooted, steady in their self-regard, willing to be seen in their need and in their joy.

They know that their very presence is a gift, and that to receive fully is to affirm life itself. In this way, receiving becomes its own quiet activism—undoing centuries of conditioning that measured a woman’s worth only by what she gave away. It is a return to balance, a remembering that we are not meant to be only the rain, but also the earth that drinks it in.

To your radiant, receptive, rested and restored heart. 

Christine

Christine Marie Mason

Founder, Rosebud Woman

Host, The Rose Woman Podcast