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Happy Monday and welcome to your
mental Health Mini. 

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This week's guest is Jay Fields 
and we are talking all things 

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emotional intelligence. 
The reality is, is early in our 

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life, we get these blueprints 
for what it means to be a good 

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person and what it means to 
relate and what we do with 

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emotions and that sort of thing.
And so whatever you saw modeled 

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in your home growing up is what 
most people tend to do, even if 

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what they want to do is 
something different, will 

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default to it. 
So in my family, emotions were 

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something to be figured out, 
like we'll figure out why you 

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feel that way and we'll fix it. 
self-sufficiency was a strong 

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value in my family. 
So it'd be like, you can do 

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this, you can get through this. 
As opposed to like, Ouch, that 

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must really hurt. 
Like, I totally get how you 

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would feel that way. 
As an adult, my default is to go

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to figuring it out or telling 
myself like, it's not that big a

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deal. 
You can do this, you're strong. 

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And it's not that those two 
things are bad. 

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They're absolutely great, but 
the first part that's missing 

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for most people is resonance. 
A grown up saying your feelings 

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make sense to me. 
You're not crazy. 

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I've felt those two before, and 
I'm here. 

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Or you're strong. 
Look at all the ways you've 

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gotten through things in the 
past. 

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This is resilience in building 
that. 

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But without that first resonant 
place, eventually the person 

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gets the message. 
My feelings must be weird and 

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off because I'm having this 
experience that feels super big 

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to me. 
And the people who love me and 

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care for me don't seem to think 
it's that big a deal because 

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they're not meeting me and 
seeing me in it. 

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I must be weird. 
And these emotions must be out 

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of proportion. 
And so we get even more 

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untrusting of our inner 
experience. 

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And that's where kind of those 
patterns of people pleasing or 

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being coming in mesh with other 
people happen because you no 

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longer trust that your inner 
experience is appropriate and 

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you're looking to like, connect 
with someone else's outer 

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experience to be OK. 
What can we do about this? 

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The first step is to start to 
have some connection to your 

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body. 
When I'm talking about becoming 

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more aware in your body, I 
recommend that people find a 

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felt resource. 
A felt resource is anything in 

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your body in the present moment 
that you can experience is 

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either pleasant or neutral. 
So for example, feeling my feet 

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on the floor is pretty neutral 
for me. 

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If you can find in the present 
moment something that's either 

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neutral or pleasant and you're 
having an unpleasant emotion, 

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you now have two things 
happening. 

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You have two layers of 
experience. 

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You have the heat and the 
tightness of anger. 

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You have the neutrality of my 
feet on the floor. 

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And what that does is it makes 
it so that that heat and anger 

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don't overtake you or flood you 
so much that you go numb because

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you have this other layer. 
The way I like to talk about is 

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this is true. 
This is also true. 

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It's true that I'm angry and 
feeling overwhelmed. 

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It's also true that I can feel 
my butt in my chair. 

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So my whole experience is an 
awful. 

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And then from there, naming it, 
if you can name it, literally 

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brings together the part of your
brain that can understand your 

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experience with the part of your
brain that's having the emotion 

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and that's integrated for your 
brain and then helps your 

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nervous system to regulate. 
And if you know what the feeling

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is, then it's about offering 
self empathy. 

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Of course I feel sad. 
Of course I feel anxious. 

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Of course I feel elated. 
And that's your way of saying I 

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make sense to me because our 
brains don't like dissonance. 

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Our brains don't like when your 
body feels like you're really 

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freaked out and you're telling 
yourself it's cool. 

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But if your body feels freaked 
out and your brain goes, it 

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makes sense to me that you're 
freaked out. 

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You put it in context and of 
course your anxiety makes sense.

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Doesn't mean you like it, 
doesn't mean you want it, but it

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means it's not dissonant. 
What I tell the people that I 

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work with when we first start 
doing these exercises is that 

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what it's doing is it's 
basically you creating a felt 

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sense of being related to 
yourself, creating a 

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relationship to yourself, that 
you become trustworthy to 

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yourself. 
You become trustworthy that you 

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will validate yourself and your 
feelings. 

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From there, you build 
self-confidence, you build self 

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worth, you build again that 
sense of trust, and from there 

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that's the foundation of 
changing every behavior. 

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If I have trust in myself that 
I'm going to show up for myself,

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if I have a big hard feeling, 
I'm more willing to disappoint 

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someone else versus try to 
please them at my own expense. 

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Embodied self-awareness can feel
like a big, hard, scary thing to

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do when you're feeling that lack
of connection to yourself. 

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But doing it helps everything in
your brain to go, oh, this is 

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OK, you just have to start 
dipping your toe in the water. 

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Trust that your brain will come 
along with you right now. 

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The stories you tell yourself 
about it are like, whoa, this is

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going to be hard. 
But all the Physiology is there 

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to support you in it, especially
if you're kind to yourself 

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through the process.