79. Let Your Feelings Guide You: How to Understand Your Emotions So You Can Make Better Decisions

Dr. Vanessa Calderón: What if you had this incredible, magical, divining rod with you a hundred percent of the time? It was always available to you, always around, and it would always guide you in the right direction. That's what we're diving into today. Come on in, let's get started. Welcome to The Authentic Path. I'm your host, Dr. Vanessa Calderon, Harvard-trained physician and healer. I integrate science and ancestral wisdom to support you in creating the success you desire in all areas of your life. I'm so glad you're here. Let's get started. Hey friends, welcome back. I'm talking about something today that I think can be really controversial, especially in the world we're living in, or depending on how you were raised or how you were trained. And I'm talking about emotions and essentially letting your emotions or your feelings be your guidepost, be your compass, let you know if you're moving in the right direction. Instead of What we're thinking instead of the rational, the pros and cons list, all of the things that we were taught. So, what I'm going to talk about today is what this means, why we're not very good at how do we start doing it, and then a couple of things to watch out for if you decide that you want to practice this. Okay, so where did this come from? So I was recently asked by one of my coaching clients, how do they know if they stay or if they go in medicine? And their question was really, do I continue to practice at all or do I cut back? And this doesn't have to be f for medicine specifically or healthcare. It could be for wherever you are in life. Do you stay in a relationship that's or do you leave the relationship? Do you stay in a city or do you move? Whatever it is. And my my answer to her was essentially informed by experience that I had, but also a lot of information that I know about what tends to be actually true for us. So, for brief background, before I actually started my residency training, I feel like I had many careers before. I was a social justice activist. I w I had done a ton of work in health policy. And I remember I was I was getting a dual degree at the time. I was finishing my medical degree and getting a master's degree in public policy at the same time. And it was time to submit my applications for residency for the match. And before I submitted them, I sat. Down with my husband, who at the time is my boyfriend, and we sat down together and I said, Hold on a second, I need to decide if I actually want to practice medicine. I've done so many other things. I have so many other interests. Is medicine actually something I want to do? And what I allowed to guide me at the time was how I felt. And what I said to myself is, Well, how is it that I feel when I'm with a patient? And that feeling felt joyful. It felt so beautiful. It felt like this. Really sacred relationship that I got to create with my patients when I was when I was delivering direct patient care. And so I decided because it brought me so much joy that yes, I was going to enter the match, I was going to go ahead and apply to residency. And I'm so happy I did because it was amazing. Now, fast forward many years into the future, because I've been practicing emergency medicine now for 16 years, and I still continue to practice and I love it. But along the way, I took a two-year break. And I didn't take a break because I wasn't feeling good. I didn't take a break because I was burnt out or stressed. I took a break for another reason that I'm gonna come back to in a second. So I'm gonna tell you why I took a break, what was happening, and this is sort of My introduction as to why it's so important to understand and listen to your feelings. So the reason why it's so important to listen to what your body is telling you, the emotions that your body's telling you, your feelings inside of your body, is because the most true thing that will ever be true for us is what we are experiencing in the moment. What do I mean by that? So, as we all know, we tend to think a lot. Thinking usually is thinking about the past or thinking about the future. So when we are thinking, we're either trying to plan ahead so that we can be prepared, or sometimes we're anxious, or we're thinking about the past because maybe something didn't go right, we're feeling guilty, it could maybe even be nostalgia. So thinking takes us out of the present moment. It takes us out of this space right now, today. And the thinking of what we're thinking, none of that has happened, or it's already happened. It's either already past or hasn't even happened yet. So the only true thing is what's happening right now in this moment. And the way that we can connect to what's happening right now in this moment is to connect to what we're experiencing inside of our bodies. So one way to do that is to ask yourself, what's true for you in this moment? And for you to stop and just check in: what's true for me in this moment? I remember many years ago I did this beautiful retreat. It was called a sacred woman's circle. And Our facilitator, if we were gonna get up, if we were gonna share, if we were gonna talk, she would always start with that question, What's true for you in this moment? And she had asked me that. And here I am thinking, I'm so smart, I'm a doctor. What's true for me in this moment? And I was feeling fullness in my lower tummy. And I I the story I said is my bladder is full. So I said, she said, What's true for you in this moment? I said, My bladder is full. And she said, No, no, no, without the narrative. What are you experiencing in your body? And so I said, my lower abdomen feels uncomfortable. She's like, okay, what else is true for you? And then I was able to tune into other parts of my body and just connect with my body. So when we can connect with our body without the narrative, is what's true. So checking in with, ooh, I have an ache in my left shoulder, or I'm having discomfort in my chest, or my stomach doesn't feel good, whatever it is for you. So that is a way to reconnect to our body. And when we can start reconnecting to our body, we can start connecting to what our body is sensing, what our body is feeling, and then eventually what our body is emoting, the emotions, the energetic experience of what our body is experiencing. For various reasons, however, we are not very good at this. In fact, this, I feel like The more education somebody has that I work with, the harder it is for them to reconnect to their bodies. And this was so true for me. I feel right now like so connected to my body. I've done so much somatic work. But I remember when I first started doing this work, I had no idea how disconnected I was. I was so on the other side. I was so cognitive and heady. I intellectualized everything. Everything had to have a narrative, a story, an explanation, a why. I had no idea how disconnected I was from my body when I started doing this work. And I want to just say that transparently and honestly, because if you feel disconnected, it doesn't have to keep, it doesn't have to continue to be that way. You can start practicing reconnecting to your body. It's a practice like everything else I teach. Everything is a practice. And so when I started connecting back to my body, what I started realizing is: holy smokes, I am so disconnected. Why? Why are we so disconnected? So most of us are gonna be really disconnected from our bodies based on what we were taught, either implicitly or explicitly, whatever you were taught about emotions. Maybe you were taught that emotions are gonna make you they're gonna invalidate you. They're gonna make you less credible. That's super common for women. Don't be so emotional, you're not gonna be credible. If you're a man, you you we all know the social programming that exists. You know, you gotta be strong, you can't be vulnerable, don't show weakness, all those types of things. And what's so shocking about this is that social programming runs deep, my friends. It is strong. Some of the most emotionally intelligent, connected dudes that I know still struggle significantly with this, even though they've done a ton of work, even though they're wide open, even though they're they like understand the importance of this. They it's still really hard because social programming is is hard. It takes a lot of practice, a lot of work over and over and over again to essentially liberate yourself from that programming. I remember as a woman one time. Well, I am a woman, but I remember one time I was I was asked to be on my my my kids were in preschool during COVID. And I was an ER doc and I was running my hospital's incident command center. And so the principal of the school, the owner of the of the preschool called me and said, Do you mind being on a committee of parents? We need someone that's an expert, whatever, to help us decide what we do about COVID and schools and whatever, all those things. I was like, sure, of course. Anyway, so I get on, and there's a couple of other parents. one of them is a dude who also happens to be a teacher. We're talking about wearing masks, and these are like two, three-year-olds, anywhere from two to five-year-olds. And I said, if the kids can keep a mask on their face, it's a good idea to have them wear a mask if they can keep it on. Of course, it's hard. They're two years old. Who knows? They're gonna be pulling out the mask. And this is at the very beginning of COVID before we had a ton of information. And that's how I answered. And the guy said, Wait a second, before you get so impassioned, we should have some data. And Something about that triggered me. I wasn't sure what it was. And then later I realized he had used impassioned as a way to discredit my comment. And being too passionate, being too emotional is a way that women have gotten discredited a lot. and anyway, I I share that because no wonder we're so disconnected from our emotions. Like, look at the way the world look at the look at the way, look at what the world has taught us. So If you were taught that emotions are gonna make you less tough, they're gonna make you vulnerable, whatever it is, it's gonna be hard for you to connect to your body. And some of us carry a burden that was passed down to us from our ancestors, a burden of grief or sadness that they have not had the, they didn't have the luxury to process because they had to keep going and keep going and work harder just to survive. And so we carry that grief and sadness in our bodies. And we think that hold on, if I reconnect to my body, am I just going to become a puddle of sadness? If I allow the grief to move through me, am I actually strong enough to let that move through me? I have held space for circles of people who have come from unoppressed people or who have held so much grief or trauma in their lineage. I've held space for them and watched them process the grief and the sadness and the rage. And it is the most beautiful healing experience. And it's also it's deep. And so I guess I'll tell you, you are strong enough to process it, especially if you're being held by someone who knows how to hold space for you. And so it's hard for us to sit with and reconnect to our bodies if we're afraid that it's going to be too much for us. I'm not going to be able to deal with it. One other thing that I see a lot in doctors, especially if you are working in a super high paced Environment where maybe you're seeing a lot of trauma or a lot of crises, ER, critical care, trauma surgery. What I often see as sort of a common theme over and over again is that there's always another patient to see and there's always someone else to take care of. So there's no time to tend for what it is that we're feeling deep inside. And sometimes it feels easier to just keep going than to stop and pause and feel what you're feeling. So I want to start there because I wanted To name why we're so disconnected from our feelings, from our emotions, from our body, because it's so much more common than we think. And to start making space for what we feel means that we also have to not invalidate what we're feeling. When we're feeling sad, we don't get to stop and say, I shouldn't feel sad about that, I shouldn't feel angry about that. It means we say, ooh, I'm feeling sad or I'm feeling angry. And it means that we get to listen to the emotions, to the sensations in our body. so how do we start to reconnect with what we're feeling inside? So there's a couple of ways to do this. There's a way to do this by naming emotions, and there's another way to do this by reconnecting to what your body is feeling. So I'm gonna sort of combine the two because I think it might be a simple way to start if you've never if if you're super disconnected from your body, or if you sort of know your body a little bit, I'm just gonna combine the two. So When you're getting started with this, most of us don't have a huge vocabulary for emotions. And so if you don't have a huge vocabulary for emotions, I coached a physician leader who was a man. And I remember him telling me, I don't actually feel anything. He would say, I don't feel anything to, I mean, isn't it normal? I mean, has something wrong with me? I don't feel anything. And I'm like, tell me how you felt when you saw your baby born. And he got a little teary eyed and I Tell me how you felt when your mother died. Tyri eid again. And one was like teary eyed from gratitude and love. And another one was from like love and grief. And so there is an emotion inside we just don't often label because we try to continue to move forward. We try to be strong. So if you are someone who doesn't have a huge vocabulary for emotions, that's okay. You can start with the simple emotions: happiness, sadness, fear, anger. For a lot of women, I'll also add guilt because we feel a tremendous amount of guilt, men too, for sure, and shame. So happiness, sadness, fear, anger, guilt, shame. Start with whatever feels like, okay, yes, that feels like something I can label. And then eventually you'll be able to grow and be able to feel other emotions like peace or what joy feels like in your body. And peace and joy may feel foreign, or you might think you know what they feel like. But usually all we know is what we think they're supposed to feel like. We think peace or equanimity is supposed to be certain things. And so we defined it in our heads, but we haven't practiced actually embodying that feeling. We don't know what joy feels like in our bodies. We don't know what peace feels like in our bodies. And that is the practice. It's growing, growing our ability to feel different emotions in our bodies. So the first thing you want to do is start by just Committing to noticing and labeling what you're feeling. So it could be as simple as, okay, I'll give you an example. A huge go-to emotion for me. And my gosh, the more and more I coach physicians, this is like the biggest go-to emotion for all of us, though we don't know it, is shame. We call it perfectionism, or we call it like, you know, I just want to do a good job, or I just don't want to fail. But what we're really afraid of is shame. I don't want to be ashamed that I'm not good enough. I don't want to be ashamed, you know, and so shame was a big one for me. And the way it would show up is I would get a pressure in my chest. And so what I started to do when I committed to practicing and reconnecting to my body is every time I felt a discomfort, I would notice a discomfort. I would sit with it, and then I would name whatever emotion was coming up for me. So I would say, okay, I have a pressure in my chest. I would just sit with it, and then I'd say, okay. What is this? And I would wait, and then I'd say, this is shame. And then I would just say, This is shame. This is shame. And the thing about emotions, and in fact, the literature and the data supports this, is that emotion is an electronic charge. And that electronic charge, that energy, will move through your body in about 90 seconds. It doesn't take a long time to move through. And if you can label it, it actually decreases the charge of the emotion. Some people think that if we label it, it's going to get harder for us to process. No, what makes it harder is when we attach a narrative to it. This is shame. I shouldn't be feeling shame. Why am I feeling shame? What's causing me to be ashamed? I'm such a bad person. That is going to make it worse because now you're adding a metacognitive level to it, and it's going to make the emotion, the charge of the emotion stronger or harder. Instead, what you want to do is just label it, name it, and let it pass through you. This is shame. In episode 17, by the way, I teach a process called the ABCDs of processing heart emotions. And I go through a very simple process for the hard emotions that you tend to feel a lot. So go back to that episode if that's something you want to practice. But essentially, right now, all we're learning to do is to reconnect to our bodies, reconnect these emotions, reconnect to our bodies. So that's one way to do it: labeling it and naming it. If you're feeling a discomfort in your stomach, same thing. Maybe hand over the stomach, notice what you're feeling in your body. Ooh, I feel a discomfort in my stomach. this is guilt. This is guilt or whatever it is. If you're feeling frustration, like for me, I feel frustration, anger, rage in my chest. I feel discomfort, I feel guilt, I feel that in my stomach. So you're gonna start to notice where you feel these emotions, and then you can start to label them, name them, and let them pass through you. And the more you connect to the to your body, the more you'll start to be on top of what it is that you're experiencing and feeling. And when you can be on top of what you're experiencing and feeling, You can even just wait and notice, huh? Does this experience bring me joy? joy feels too foreign for me. It feels too far. It feels too big. I can't latch on to that. If that's you, that's okay. What you want to turn to instead is like, does this bring me, does this feeling make me feel expansive or restrictive? Restrictive feelings are going to be feelings like shame, guilt, frustration, anger. Expansive feelings are going to be the opposite. Joy. Love, compassion, those things make me feel good in my body. The other ones not necessarily. So that can be a compass for you because then you're going to start to notice this actually doesn't feel good in my body. So maybe this is a no, maybe this is something I want to be doing, or this feels really good in my body. So why am I having so many thoughts about it? Okay, so that's how your emotions can be a compass for you. You start to reconnect to your body, you start to label emotions. And you'll start to notice what it is that your body is allowing, teaching you, or showing you because your body is this incredible divining rod, it will guide you if you reconnect to your body. It is so wise. Many indigenous traditions believe that we have the conscious brain, which is like five percent of our brain, and that is what we're aware of. But 95% of our brain, 95% of the way that we make decisions, of the way we process, move through the world around us. Is subconscious or autonomic. And that part of us lives in our bodies. That lives in our bodies. And so the body can be like your subconscious brain if you reconnect to your body. It is so powerful. It's an incredible tool. I feel so grateful because I have been practicing reconnecting, reconnecting, reconnecting to my body that I can feel at such a deep level. And I remember once talking to a he was a Buddhist monk who had been. practicing meditation and all these other things and feelings. And he had he'd gone to theology school before. And I was talking to him and I said, man, like, you know, back to like what's the purpose? Like what like for you, like what is the purpose? What's the objective of being here? He's like, feel have have more and more experiences, feel deeper and deeper and deeper. And the other day I went to a musical, I went to a live theater. It wasn't necessarily a musical, but it was live theater with my family. And the it was It blew my mind. It was so good. It's called Mexitus, if you've heard of it. M-E-X-O-D-U-S. Look it up. It's amazing. And the subject matter was pretty heavy. and the music was incredible, and the the actors were just so awesome. And I caught myself just right there with them, feeling everything. And I was like crying and laughing and having all of these emotions. And I was like observing myself on a meta-level, being like, my God, like I'm so grateful that I can feel so deeply. To be able to experience life at this level of feeling, of like being so present and so empathic, so connected. It was so beautiful. And that is what I want for anyone else who wants it. If you want to be able to feel at that level, just imagine how much deeper your relationships will be, like how much deeper you can love and be loved, how much deeper you can experience. Like you're sitting out and watching a sunset, like. How much deeper you can experience that sunset. That is, that's magic. I just think that, gosh, what a beautiful way to go through life. So that's what I want for you. And that's sort of where this comes from, this episode. So I want to just talk about two other things before we wrap up. One is I said in the beginning that I took time off of medicine. I took two years out of practicing emergency medicine. I was still seeing patients via telehealth, but I wasn't in the emergency department anymore. And the reason why is this. I started having, I would go into the emergency department. And when I was there, I would start having this weird left wrist pain. And I would work my shifts in a row. So two or three shifts in a row. And I would get it at the beginning of that, those likes that cycle, the first day of three. And by the second day was really bad. And I would have to wear a left wrist brace when I had get home. And so I just assumed it was ergonomics that there must be something wrong with the with the printer or the computer, whatever. And I'm like, weird. I've never had this problem before. And it's the same exact hospital where I've worked, nothing's changed. boy, whatever. I must be getting old, is what I told myself. And I would get off shift, and about two to three days later, the pain would go away. So I was like, maybe the maybe the brace helped. Anyway, so that kept happening to me. And after maybe the third or fourth time it happened, I knew that it was not ergonomics. I knew that my body was sending me a message. And at this time in my life, I was had already done a ton of somatic work. I'd already reconnected with a lot of the indigenous medicine that's in my lineage. I'd already apprenticed with indigenous healers. And I know that the body talks to you through these messages. And the question is: do we listen? Are we gonna listen when the body talks to us? And so I knew that I was getting a message. And to be honest, I didn't want to listen because I was afraid of what it was gonna tell me. But I also like to practice courage. So I'm like, okay, divine. Guides, whatever, whatever you want to call your connection to divine, God, source, universe. I said, okay, divine, I'm here. I'm listening. What's the message? So I'm driving home from the emergency department the day I decide to listen, and I'm stuck in traffic, thankfully, because boy, did I start crying. The message was I needed to take a break. I needed to stop practicing emergency medicine to make space. And I felt that so deeply in my body. And I loved emergency medicine. Plus, it was a huge identity of who I was. And I was good at it and I enjoyed my relationship with my patients. And so I felt a tremendous amount of grief and sadness. And I also know that I get these calls from Divine and I listen. I listen because I want to be led. I want to be divinely led. And so I decided to listen. And so I came home. It was around the holidays, I remember. And my husband was making I think he was baking cookies with the kids and I and he looks at my face. He's like, What? What's going on? And so I pull him aside and I tell him, I'm like, okay, it's time. I'm gonna have to take a break from medicine. And he's like, What like core clearly it's like a huge shock. Anyways, so he's so supportive and loving. He's like, Okay. And and as soon as I did, as soon as I took that break from medicine, my life got so full with so many other things. I was national director of well-being for this large national physician organization. I was doing, you know, my coaching business, all this other work that I've been doing, this podcast, which I love so much, all of these things, and my life just got super full with all these other things. And I continue to grow. And a couple of months and maybe a year in, I wasn't sure that the break was going to be forever. And now I know it wasn't because I'm back in the ER. And I a couple of maybe like a year in, I said, okay, like I miss it. I miss patient care. I miss the emergency department. And I asked God, divine, I said, if I meant to go back, give me, give me an opportunity. Show me, you know? And I did. I got an incredible opportunity. So I'm back in the emergency department and I'm so happy. and I've just been able to create a life where I'm able to make space for all of this, and it's such a beautiful gift. So that is what's possible. When you reconnect to your body and when you create a conversation, a dialogue with the deep divine wisdom that lives inside of you. Because again, your body is this incredible divining rod. It's an incredible tool that's available to you, that's with you a hundred percent of the time. You treat it well, you love it. That's why we say our body is sacred. That's why we say our body is a temple, because it is, it's a divine tool, it's a divine temple and it's available to you all the time. Okay, one last thing before we wrap up, because there are a couple of things that I think are really important to name here. One is just because something feels hard or uncomfortable in your body, it doesn't mean you shouldn't do it. Because sometimes that discomfort is a sign of courage, because courage doesn't feel good by the way, it feels really uncomfortable. And discomfort is what is required for us to grow. So if something feels uncomfortable, it doesn't mean stop. It just means pause and observe. investigate what is it that I'm feeling and why. The other thing that's really important to note is don't be afraid of what your feelings are telling you. If you're feeling rage, anger, that's okay. Rage can be so sacred. Rage is such a sacred messenger. Those emotions are not the problem. Those emotions are just messengers that are being sent to us for something deeper. Like what are we feeling rage about? Usually it's an injustice, a deep sadness that we have that we get to process and move through. I have coached so many women through rage and anger. And I say women specifically because, you know, just societal cultural programming, we're taught to be kind and nice and polite. You can't feel rage, you can't feel angry, you can't be a mad woman. That's crazy. You have to be polite and put together and you have to be compassionate. And so rage and anger are never a problem. And we don't want to invalidate them when they show up. Then we're invalidating ourselves. We're telling ourselves that our feelings don't matter. Of course, your feelings matter. Same thing with frustration. Those things are not the problem. They're just messengers for what's underneath. And a couple of other things because one of the things I said earlier is if you are noticing that you're not at all connected to your body or you don't have any feelings, I want you to notice that. Just notice that because sometimes the message is that I'm feeling. Disconnected, that I feel apathy, that I'm feeling sometimes it's dread. So notice if the feeling is disconnection, if it is apathy, and if that's what you're noticing, that's okay. It's not a problem. You can reconnect to your body. It's available to you. It's always available for you to reconnect. If you want help doing that, that is what I do with clients. So please reach out to me. I would love to support you on that journey of coming home to yourself, of coming home to your body. So If it's disconnection, if it's apathy, that's okay. There's a way home. What else? a few other things that I want to name. One is if you are noticing a lot of frustration when it comes to your job, that is not a sign to quit. Because I started this episode saying the question I got was, do I stay or do I go? And the answer is let your body guide you, let your body be a compass. But that doesn't reflexively mean that if it doesn't feel good, I must have to quit or it must be time to go or cut back. No, again, those are just signs. They're messengers for you. So if something is feeling if you're feeling resentment, get underneath that and see why I am feeling resentment? What is underneath this? Because sometimes it's not a problem with the job. It's a problem with the way we have been approaching the job. It's a problem with with the beliefs, the identities that we have. Maybe it's because you're not setting enough boundaries. Maybe it's because you think that when other people tell you you're not good at your job, you believe them. When you have all this objective data over here telling you that you're pretty excellent at your job, but you have so much imposter syndrome that that one person over there must be right. So, point is that if something doesn't feel good, you you don't reflexively respond or react to that. You thoughtfully respond by pausing and asking, what is underneath this? Why is it that I'm feeling resentment, frustration, anger, rage? What is this, what is this emotion here to teach me? What is it here to tell me? All right, sweet friends, we covered a lot. I hope you found this episode helpful. I will see you next week. Adios.