Hey guys. Welcome back to the podcast. I'm Amanda. I'm Laura and I'm Kendra. And before we get started today, I wanted to give a shout out to one of the people who left us a podcast review. It's soda elm, E L M like the tree.
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Amanda: So today we are going to talk about feeling feelings.
Kendra: Dun dun dun!
Amanda: The hardest thing for me!
Kendra: As everyone sighs.
Laura: Yeah- and I'm afraid some of my feelings might overflow as we talk about feeling feelings.
Amanda: Oh no.
Laura: Hope that's okay.
Amanda: Oh yes. Oh, yes. We're gonna start saying, “oh, yes.”
Laura: Okay, so we're just gonna start by talking about, kind of what doctors do with feelings. We are very cerebral people and use our brains a lot. And so we tend to learn to dissociate from our feelings. A lot of our feelings actually sit in our bodies. We have these physiologic responses to thoughts we have. And our bodies, in a really real way, feel the things that are going on in our brains.
And we've been trained so much through our, you know, through our studying to become able to go to medical school and to study in medical school, to become physicians. And our training in the wards and in residency to ignore our own physiological needs. That this, this is what we do. This is natural. So we do not pay attention to our bodies. So we kind of shut them down, and we just live in our heads. So we might ignore our hunger cues. Ignore cues to go to the bathroom. We value the thinking we do in our brain more than the wisdom that our body is trying to offer. Saying, “Hey, can you, can you maybe take care of me too?” And you know, we might say, “Aint nobody got time for that. I don't have time to feel. I don't have time to feel stressed. I don't have time to feel sad. I don't have time to feel angry, irritated. Sometimes I don't even have time to feel happy,” and our bodies cry out against us.
Sometimes when we are ignoring feelings that we have, we try to DISTRACT ourselves. We try to avoid feeling that feeling by doing other things. It might be overworking. It might be going to Taco Bell, as some of us like to do. It might be binging Netflix. It might be drinking. It might be other things that we use to push those negative feelings down. And we might keep people that we want to have in our lives away, we might avoid being around them.
We are conditioned through our medical training to avoid our emotions unless we feel like they're good for us. Like they're positive. Really even as humans, especially women, are conditioned that way, to avoid anything that looks like an extreme emotion, anything that is not positive or happy or just moderately sad there we're conditioned to- and I'm chief among those who just really, I really try to push those things down.
I have a story about this. I was at Disneyland with my kids last summer, and it was evening, so it was mostly dark. And my 11 year old wanted to go back to the back of the park. We had not gone to ToonTown at all. I don't know why he wants to go to ToonTown. It's just, it was our first time in Disneyland and instead of Disneyworld, and he just wanted to see it all. So. We're walking back there, and I feel this crunch under my foot, and I thought I had stepped on like an empty water bottle. And that's what it felt like. It was just like this crunch. And my teenage son behind me said, “that was a rat.” And I, it's like, “oh my gosh. Oh my gosh!” I, the horror! But immediately, immediately, I start saying, “It's okay. It's okay. It's okay.” And I just start walking forward, “It's okay. It's okay.”
Like I have worked in the emergency department for over 20 years and seeing the worst kinds of trauma. I can think of two incidences in the ED that were more traumatic than this rat. Like I was full of horror, but here I am like immediately I'm. I'm like, “No, it's fine. It's fine. It's fine. It's fine. It's fine.” And…
Amanda: Meanwhile, the little Laura inside, you was like, “No, it was gross!”
Laura: It was horrible! I just crushed Remy! But like I turned around. So I walk probably 50 yards, take like 20 deep breaths, and my kids were like, “What?!” And I turn around, and we start walking back, and there are three cast members standing there with a sign. They're like standing at attention with this wooden sign that says, “Restrooms this way.” And behind them on the ground is a little white napkin over my victim.
Amanda: Burial?!
Laura: Yeah! So like, my son who was behind me, said, “That rat committed suicide under your foot. Like he saw you coming, and it jumped out under your shoe.” Anyway, but it, you know, that's kind of a comical example, but stuff like that happens to us. Bad things happen to us. And, like, I mean, we see so many horrible things in the ER, if we felt all those feelings right then we would not be able to function. And so I think that's kind of where we get.
Amanda: So it makes sense why we've learned this, and we've honed it, and we're so good at it. It just ends up, if we never do process, these things can cause us problems later on. Right?
Laura: Yeah. So it's helpful to…I mean, it's probably partly why I have three autoimmune problems.
Amanda: Oh no.
Laura: Like, no, really like we push things down and our bodies are like, “Hey, no, we, I, I need to talk about this. I need to talk about this thing that happened.” And our brain's like, “No, I, I don't wanna talk about it. I can't. Cause I gotta do all this other stuff.”
Amanda: So. That's what this podcast is about. So let's start learning how to feel the feelings, right?
Laura: Oh, Laura gets to process her emotions now, the trauma. There's a blog by artofwellbeing.com has this great insight that says “As emotions go unseen, they often manifest as a profound restlessness, a non-specific anxiety. We get further and further lost from ourselves, which can make us feel sad about everything.” And I don't think we wanna be there.
And then Carla, Marie Manley, who's a clinical psychologist said- she's the author of Joy from Fear. She said, “even though all emotions can have a positive use, women are generally trained to avoid any emotions other than joy or a moderate degree of sadness.” She goes further saying, “Our feelings have a message that wants to be heard and understood. Feelings aren't good or bad is what we do with them that matters.” So.
Amanda: That was something. We had been reading The High Five Habit with Mel Robbins, and she goes into like how these traditionally taboo feelings like jealousy and guilt, they teach you something. It's something I'd never thought of before.
Laura: Yeah, they teach you. I love that. She teaches that- like jealousy, which is this undesirable behavior or undesirable emotion to most people. She says, no, that's actually what tells you what you want in life. That tells you that's the thing I need to go for. And I, I just think that's really cool. Embarrassment shows us things that we want to change. You know, there are just so many things that we can learn from our feelings.
Amanda: I like that idea that it's not positive or negative. It's what you choose to do with it. And that's, I mean, because you're taught- these, this set of feelings are negative. What if they're wrong?
Laura: Right.
Kendra: I think it's a leveling ground. I mean, if we started to look from a standpoint or perspective of what if they're all just neutral? What if, what if even, you know, embarrassment, dissatisfaction, jealousy? What if, what if we just in our mind thought, well, these are neutral, and you know, the direction that they, they choose to take me, like, I get that choice.
Amanda: What is it trying to tell us- profound?
Kendra: So, what can we do about all this? We've laid a good foundation about negative and positive emotions and feelings and, and all of the things. But how can we interpret some of the most common feelings that we would probably experience just about every day, or at least every day we go in for a shift.
So when a feeling arises, we have some options. Options such as: we can RESIST that feeling. So what I mean by that is, when you identify a negative feeling or emotion, and you choose not to deal with it. We can push it down, or we can resist feeling it. And so it becomes kind of pushed down and pushed down or closed up for a while. And the more effort it takes to push down, then when it finally erupts, then the feeling that you're feeling at that moment, whether it be anxiety or fear becomes HUGE. It's almost like an explosion. And the, the literal example we could think of is, we're in a pool and we have this big beach ball and you know how hard it is to push a beach ball underwater. You're using all of your effort and all of your extremities. You're trying to sit on it, lay on it, all of the things to push it down deeper and deeper. And then, just the slightest thing, that thing comes out of the water and explodes. So the effort that we use to avoid or resist feeling anxiety or fear or anger or disappointment, any of those. All the energy that is expended actually builds up, and then it becomes something like a, even maybe a small trigger to cause an explosion or overwhelming negative experience.
The other option we have is we can REACT. I think I'm a professional reactor. This is my trigger. You feel a feeling like disappointment or loss, but my go-to feeling is angry because it's safer for me. If I can feel angry, then I can blame, and I can hide. And so I'll go into the cave where it's safer, and I choose to be angry when really I'm disappointed because my kids didn't, you know, clean up their rooms like I asked. Or I'm disappointed because my husband said he'd be home at 4:30 and he's home at 9:00. Or I'm, you know, upset because, you know, I didn't get my shift covered, and I'm just disappointed or something like that.
But instead of feeling those feelings, I just get angry and just choose anger. It's easy. It's available at any given time. And I'm actually not coping. I'm just flipping that switch. So, um, reacting probably hits home with me.
The other thing, um, we can choose to do is DISTRACT. So this also known as buffering.
Amanda: That's me!
Kendra: Yeah. We've heard that term buffering. That's actually a distraction technique. So when those negative feelings or emotion arise, we flip on Instagram or Facebook and start scrolling to numb out. Or we turn on Netflix and watch 25 episodes of season one all in one night. Or we go through the taco bell drive through Amanda.
Amanda: Yep!
Kendra: And get everything on the super value menu and have it all eaten by the time we get home . And so it's any behavior that we can basically not think about or doesn't require any effort, but it distracts us from feeling that negative emotion.
And then the fourth option that we have out there is to actually ALLOW us to feel that negative emotion or feel that feeling or that experience that provokes a feeling or emotion. Jill Bolte Taylor- I like how she puts it- because she said this cascade of chemicals that you feel when an emotion or feeling is triggered, it only lasts 90 seconds. So if we can just hang in there for 90 seconds, allow, feel it, allow it to pass. And then make smart choice or, or an educated decision of, okay, what am I gonna do with this? Well, I've brought it in, I've felt it for 90 seconds and then take a deep breath and let, how about we own it? How about we decide what we're gonna do with that feeling or emotion. So it just kind of allows you to ride the wave. Um, it kind of allows you just to process, just like, hang out with it. Choose not to really make a decision in those 90 seconds, but then once those 90 seconds are up, then we have the power to decide.
So there's a few signs that we're still needing to process:
If we're still buffering, even though we feel that feeling.
If we're still doing those volcanic eruptions and reacting in anger.
If we're still ruminating or just stuck and our mind just keeps going over and playing that video reel over and over and over again.
We're still not there yet. We still haven't processed.
If we dissociate completely. So we're, you know, using the other things in our life to just “take our minds off of it.” We not only limit the painful emotions, but then we, then we start to learn how to limit our pleasure too.
So now we're not feeling our negative emotions and then we're also limiting the pleasure or, or happy emotions as well. And so, whereas that became some sort of reward before or hit of dopamine, now we don't even have that anymore. So we're still working through that process.
Laura: I was talking to another doc at work a couple weeks ago. He has a new baby. I work a lot in peds. And he was talking about how he's done this so much that he's noticed that his reaction to his baby is a little bit blunted. You know, he does not have that like overwhelming positive emotion because he's had to blunt his emotions so much at work. I just thought that was kind of fascinating.
Amanda: No, but how many times have you said, “I'm afraid to let myself get my hopes up.” It sounds useful. Right? You're protecting yourself. So I've noticed that in myself, that I'm afraid to let myself- not only do I blunt the negative experiences- but I also am uncomfortable with any extreme emotion. Even good ones, like feeling tremendous joy. Like I'm kind of like, “Okay, like let's, let's get a little bit steady” and like, especially hopefulness. Why wouldn't you let yourself get your hopes up. Doesn't that feel so good? And so, and so what if the bottom drops out later, you'll deal with it then, but you until then you got to have this tremendously lovely experience.
So it's not just negative emotions. It's positive too. And that is part of the problem with keeping the negative emotions away. Emotions are like a sine wave. So if you're blunting the bottom end of it, you're also kind of blunting the top too. And for a lot of people, we feel very comfortable in that very narrow range of emotions.
But you're limiting your human experience.
So let's go on to how to actually process a feeling. I'm telling you, I'm like in the infant diaper wearing stage with starting to let emotions back in my life.
Laura: Well, so before you just talk about that too. The idea- this blew my mind when I learned about this- but the idea that the only thing we really have to fear is an emotion.
Amanda: Yes.
Laura: And when we can't- because that's really what our experience is. And so if we can prepare ourselves to feel any feeling that comes to us. And for doctors, like shame is the worst one, and we don't want shame. But if we are prepared to feel the feelings that come to us, like our possibilities are limitless.
Amanda: Because why do you hold yourself back? You're afraid you're gonna feel humiliation or you're afraid you're gonna fail and then be embarrassed or something like that. If you learn to feel the 90 seconds of embarrassment and lean into it, you suddenly become completely unmanageably full of potential! No one can hold anything over you when you are someone who can experience shame and move through it. Do you see what I'm saying? We hold ourselves back because we're afraid that, “well, if I do that, then I might get humiliated.” Well, you might.
Laura: Well, and it,
Amanda: and if you can handle it.
Laura: Yeah. And it, but it goes back to, it helps I think to understand it evolutionarily. Like we did not wanna be separated from the pack because shame meant death. Like if we weren't with our people, we would die. Because we wouldn't have food or shelter if we were outcast, but that's no longer the case.
Amanda: Right. And our brains just have not caught up with it. So yes, absolutely. We're not angry at our brains for having this coping mechanism. It makes complete sense. But now that we're aware of it, like it's just like that Maya Angelou: Do your best until, you know, better once, you know, better do better or whatever, I'm butchering it for sure.
But we didn't know this, but now that we know that that's why it feels so- we're so petrified to feel that feeling. Like, okay. We live in a different time. We live in a different place. Most of us are not having any sort of problem getting food for ourselves or shelter for ourselves. We're not, I mean, honestly, people think that times are so violent right now, but like, honestly, compared to saber toothed tigers just roaming around, you're actually quite safe compared to that. You know what I mean? Yeah. So yes, excellent point. Like we understand why that happens, but it's just different now. And we can use our prefrontal cortex to make better decisions and we don't have to rely on our amygdala so much. But for us, I do want us to drop down into our body and actually, it's serving a purpose. And we get stuck when we are not allowing ourselves to feel emotion.
So let's, so there's four steps for how to process an emotion. And by the way, so there's a differentiation between an emotion and a sensation. A sensation is like hunger, where your body is telling your brain something. A feeling or emotion is where your brain is telling your body something. It's a vibration in your body that was generated from your brain. Okay- kind of the difference between there.
So the first thing we wanna want to do is NOTICE that you're having a feeling. Drop in, get out of your brain, drop into your body, and notice there's a physical response a lot of times. If you can sit with sadness or something. A lot of people will have like a squeezing kind of in the pit of their stomach. Sometimes joy is like a fluttering, like a fluttering movement up in your chest. Like just, I know this sounds crazy, but like we've been so separated from our bodies for so long. The next time you have a feeling, try to actually notice it and feel it in your body.
And then you can start- number two is once you notice that there's a physical response that's starting, then you can NAME IT. What am I feeling? What is this tightness in my chest that I'm feeling? Am I scared? Am I nervous? Do I feel shame? Like, what is it? Something about being able to name your emotion puts a label on it. It makes it not quite as scary when you can name what it is that's happening to you. And I'm so bad at this, that I'm like, I don't know what I'm feeling. So here I found a guide that we will attach to the show notes, a feeling wheel, that's been hugely helpful for me.
But if you can even just stop- some of my clients, a lot of my clients are physicians. We start with like, okay, are you feeling good or bad? Like, literally baby steps. Okay. They're like, no, okay, I can definitely decide this is a bad feeling. Okay. If the next five, if you can decide if you're: glad, mad, sad, afraid or ashamed. Ashamed is kind of the same as disgust. Those are your five primary emotions. The rest of those are like variations of those things. So glad, mad, sad, afraid, or ashamed. Ashamed is disgust. That can at least get you started. And then maybe, maybe, you know, go to our show notes and get a feeling wheel and start really trying to name what it is this- physical sensation in your body that you're having.
Now. Step three. Step one was noticing. Step two was naming.
Step three- we're gonna ALLOW it. Okay. Some of us are really good at resisting. That's the beach ball idea. So you're only familiar with when the emotion erupts out of you, right? That's not actually, if you had just allowed it, think of all the energy you put into holding that beach ball down. What if you just didn't have to do that in the first place and you just let yourself lean in for the 90 second chemical cascade and allowed the feeling to happen. That would save so much energy, and it probably would not be the explosion that happens whenever you can't hold the beach ball down anymore.
So our, one of our mentors, Brooke Castillo says most of us aren't really even familiar with feeling a feeling. We're only familiar with what happens at the end of resisting it. That's not the same as if you just allow it. So it's okay to compartmentalize feelings. Like it, it doesn't make a lot of sense, when you're in the middle of an ER shift, to have your little crying moment to feel the feelings that are legitimate. So it's okay to compartmentalize it. I don't know why I can't say that word. But as soon as you're able, as soon as you're in the safe place- let yourself go there. Let yourself process this thing. Do not judge. Jealousy, hurt, anger, humiliation. They’re normal emotions that you are supposed to feel as a human. They serve a purpose. They're not good or bad like we talked about. Somebody somewhere told us that they were, but what if they're wrong? What if they're just sent to tell us something? So try not to judge it. That's that metacognition where we watch ourselves feeling it. We notice it. We name it. We allow it, It takes a whole 90 seconds, according to science. Jill Bolte Taylor, is a neuroanatomist at Harvard, says the whole chemical response takes a whole 90 seconds before it clears out. When we get stuck in an emotion, it's because we've had another thought and reignited that cascade over and over and over. So there's nothing to be scared of, if you really did allow yourself to be absolutely livid for 90 seconds. At the end of the 90 seconds, usually you're in a completely different head space. You let yourself have it, and you've processed it. And many times you feel a whole lot better at the end of that 90 seconds than at the beginning. And try to actually experience it. When you're allowing it, step back. Where am I feeling this? Lean into it, and just feel the whole experience so that you don't have to stay stuck there.
Once you've allowed. You can DECIDE what you want to do. What is this feeling telling me, and what do I want to do about it? So you can resolve the problem. You know, if this is a discomfort, that's prompting you to make some changes in your life that you have control over. Maybe this is a sign. Maybe I do wanna have that discussion I've been avoiding. Maybe I do wanna make changes with the way I'm showing up in the world. Maybe I wanna make changes in my marriage or my work or whatever it is. If you have control over it, you can decide if you want to do something about it. And if you can't control something, you can decide if you want to choose a better way of coping with it, moving forward. You can decide radical acceptance if you want to.
So just to recap, to process a feeling, number one, notice it. Number two, name it. Number three, allow it. And number four, decide what you what you wanna do with this information.
And then that's pretty much it. And again, I'm pretty much in the diaper stage of this. So if you wanna comment and let us know how it goes for you, then that would be perfect.
Laura: I would add too- just a reminder about the not judging yourself for having the feelings. And the antidote for judging is curiosity. Just getting curious about why we are feeling the way we are feeling, and when we're feeling emotions that we don't like, getting curious about it is super helpful to kind of get to the bottom of… especially when we have extreme reactions to things that are really pretty benign, you know, what, what is it that is being triggered here? There's something deeper to this, and getting curious and having compassion for ourselves and remembering that we're doing the best that we can with the information we have at all times. That's what we're doing.
Kendra: So I love this because you know, actually this is kind of step one to showing up for yourself. And you know, it's a big deal to actually, you know, choose to accept and then choose to decide. And you know, for once, this is you know, a baby step towards really showing up for yourself and really starting to love yourself and who you are and what makes you amazing and brilliant and have so much to offer.
So we love that you joined us today. We're excited to take these baby steps with you, to grow out of this infancy stage and move forward with feeling our feelings. So until next time you are whole, you are a gift to medicine and what you do matters.
