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Shawna Rodrigues [: 00:00:00

Do you think of yourself as logical? Is it a trait that you are particularly proud of, something that you think is positive? Definitely something that I have been proud of and tried to work hard at being. However, lately I've tried to consider what it might be the opposite of. And then I was introduced to the concept of intellectualizing and wondered if being logical was also possibly just another frame of intellectualizing and that perhaps the opposite of all that is feeling, which I do see as something important that sometimes you don't do enough of. That is what we're going to explore today. I'm glad you're here for the conversation. Welcome to the Grit show where our focus is growth on purpose. I'm your host, Shawna Rodrigues, and I'm honored to be part of this community as we journey together with our grit intact to learn more about how to thrive and how to get the most out of life. It means a lot that you are here today.

Shawna Rodrigues [: 00:01:13

As you listen, I encourage you to think of who may appreciate the tidbits of knowledge we are sharing and to take a moment to pass this along to them. Everyone appreciates a friend that thinks of them and these conversations are meant to be shared and to spark even more connections. I was supposed to have this episode done possibly a month ago, at least a month ago. I'm supposed to be on leave. I'm supposed to be taking care of myself, getting ready for surgeries, prioritizing my health. The logical thing was that to make a plan regarding when things would be recorded, when they would be done, when I turn them in, get ahead of schedule, get it done, it's very, very logical. However, my body, my mind, everything else wasn't necessarily going along with logical. How many times have you made a very logical, very good plan and found yourself not able to stick with it as you had hoped? I have been so even keeled and logical about dealing with breast cancer.

Shawna Rodrigues [: 00:02:26

Very good at putting things in perspective and making plans, intellectualizing, being logical, it is a trait we aspire to, right? We want to be logical. As a woman, one of the worst things you can be accused of is being emotional, especially if you are a professional and trying to make your way in that world. You're constantly trying to be as logical as possible. And it's interesting because if you've been around, you know, I have a master's degree in social work that had a clinical focus. I've done therapy with small children, I've worked with families. And interestingly, my forte has never been experiencing emotions or expressing my feelings. Isn't that funny. I loved working with children, helping them take those strides that perhaps I was never given the opportunity to be good at giving them that space and that place to identify emotions, feel emotions, work through emotions.

Shawna Rodrigues [: 00:03:31

Working with parents about giving their kids the space that was okay for them to have strong emotions and giving them the skills to navigate them, but fully experience them, to see them as a tunnel you had to go through instead of something you got stuck on or something you pushed down and buried. And yet I was so far down the track that I don't even realize sometimes when I am pushing down those emotions. I think most of my doctor's appointments, they were very surprised that I never shed a tear. And I navigated them so smoothly and logically and ask questions. That's what I do. I ask a lot of questions. It helps with being logical. So when it comes to having obstacles in my life, I tend to go to my head, not to my heart, not to my body.

Shawna Rodrigues [: 00:04:22

It was possibly part of the reason why it took me so long to find the love of my life. Right? Because that's not always governed strongly by logic and intellectualizing. I really enjoyed a post that I saw recently on social media. There was somebody talking about intellectualizing instead of feeling and the differences between the two and the need for us to feel things. I actually recorded an episode for the additional subscription portion of this podcast that is about my journey with cancer, being honest. And in that episode I talked a lot about feeling and meaning to feel some things and having bad days and having hard days. So this is almost the companion episode of talking about being logical and intellectualizing instead of feeling and experiencing and how those things come together and some things you need to feel and let yourself make decisions in a different way. And luckily, I have a lot of people in my life that handle things differently and I get to see how they handle it and how that influence sometimes, which is so helpful because my default is to be logical and intellectualized.

Shawna Rodrigues [: 00:05:37

And perhaps that's something that you deal with as well. And one of those symptoms or signs of that might be that you're very close to having your time off and you can't believe all the things you haven't gotten done. Even though you thought you planned so well, it was because you were doing it all with logic and intellectualizing. And even though you thought you were planning for you needing space, you had no idea how much space you'd need because this is not something you've ever dealt with before, and you had no concept for how much you would need to be able to feel things and how much your ability to complete things would be stalled out by the overwhelm. And how a doctor's appointment at 2pm would wipe out your entire day because of how exhausting and overwhelming they might be. And that a task that seemed very, very achievable of doing recording introductions for re release of episodes and. And recording a handful of episodes would be very simple. It's two days worth of work and you had a month and a half to accomplish.

Shawna Rodrigues [: 00:06:58

It should be no problem at all. And yet it was just something that wasn't getting done because there were so many other things that you were having a hard time getting done. So many other things to try and process. It's been surprising how hard it has been to get things done because I was trying to logic it all. I was trying to tetris it all into the what I should be able to do and what made sense. And this stuff isn't just logic and intellectualizable. Is that a word? Intellectualizable? I'm curious what this can turn out to be in the transcript. It's beyond that.

Shawna Rodrigues [: 00:07:39

And synthesizing these things and making them digestible takes giving yourself lots of space and lots of room. More than you imagined. Like I thought I was giving myself lots of room and lots of space and it still wasn't enough. Have you ran into that? Or you thought you had enough room and enough space for something and it wasn't enough. I have those conversations with folks about when I was doing billable hours when I was a clinician and I was always impressive with how high my billable hours were. Again that logic and lectualizing about how I can maximize them. And the expectation was 20 hours of a 40 hour week. And I would consistently have 28 to 32 hours.

Shawna Rodrigues [: 00:08:25

And part of that was because of the way that we did things. And I would work things in a way that that was possible. So it wasn't actually always the hours worked because there were certain things you got credit for hours. And I was able to complete them more quickly at that stage in my career, in that age and the projects I was working. So it wasn't always face to face hours that it was reflecting for the spillable hours. So that was part of my formula to make that work. And it was also that logic and intellectualizing. And I think that that's part of the challenge.

Shawna Rodrigues [: 00:08:58

When people are good at business and good at things they can do that, the manipulating of numbers and make that work. But they aren't giving the Room for the other piece of what needs space. And being good at that work, being good at being present with people and having productive sessions and getting the outcomes you wanted is having that space. And we all need space. And so we don't need to intellectualize everything and reduce it to numbers and erase the space. We need to give ourselves more space and more grace and more room for the unmeasurable and the unseen and the things that we just can't account for because we don't know about them until they appear. And it's important as we move through life that you leave room for that. And part of that is the feeling and the experiencing and the being present and in the moment, instead of just trying to logic our way into that next space and that next place.

Shawna Rodrigues [: 00:10:01

So that's what I'm hoping for you and for me is the ability to have more of that space. And we get there by giving ourselves grace when we don't make room for it and find ourselves needing it, that we can carve it out and ease into it. And I feel like that's helpful. And it can be a hard lesson when we haven't given ourselves room and we're required it, we're requiring it. We need can be a little harder for us because then it is harder to breathe and harder to enjoy it versus when we've made room for it. And I know in the time after my surgery I've made room for it. And I'm sure I've made mention that I've needed to keep in mind that I've been fighting cancer and healing myself since before they even told me it was there. It was part of me and part of a battle I didn't know I was fighting.

Shawna Rodrigues [: 00:10:54

And having that space and room is something that should always be there. All of us are fighting battles, battles we may or may not be aware of yet. And it's always important for us to give ourselves space and grace for those things. And then if we're doing too much logic and too much intellectualizing instead of feeling and leaving room for feeling and experiencing, that can stifle us and can drown that out a little bit. And I just came off of two rough days, or bad days, as you might call them. And it's interesting because today should have been a really bad day with some of the things that came at me in a whirlwind of medical stuff that was happening. And interestingly, those two soft days helped prepare me for today. I feel like that having two days where I was allowing myself to feel emotions and figure out where I was at and what I was going through.

Shawna Rodrigues [: 00:11:53

Made it easier to step in today because I process those emotions and cleared the slate a little bit and let myself feel those things. Because you need to feel things. You need to tap into what it is you're feeling, whether it's loss or anger or fear or anxiety, whatever it is, you need to give your space to feel that. And that's why there's such valuable practices of things. Like we had Dawson Church talking about doing things like meditation and EFT and different practices that help you, like tap into your body and tap into that feeling so that you're tapping into that somatic piece of things and not just staying in your head. Because there's so much of our world and our society, especially if you live in the States, if you live in the United States, is that logic being in your head and not in your body and not feeling and experiencing things? And what happens when you intellectualize and you let logic rule and get stuck in your head and don't give space for other things, you get cut off. And that's definitely what I've been experiencing. And that symptom for me was me thinking I could do so much more than I could.

Shawna Rodrigues [: 00:13:10

Me expecting to do so much more than I could. So when you feel yourself pushed up against that wall of all the expectations, maybe you have been expecting too much and logicking a little too much and intellectualizing a little too much. And it's time to settle into your body and start feeling things and pay attention to that side. So I'll link to that episode with the Dawson Church. He has such a way about him and a way of talking about things. It was so delightful and give you an opportunity to listen to his take on things because he's much more experienced at school done it than I am. I'm still learning and stumbling along the way and expecting too much of myself and not being in the moment enough and constantly learning how to let go of more. Letting go of things I didn't even know I could let go of.

Shawna Rodrigues [: 00:14:02

So thank you for being on this journey with me. I appreciate you and I'm glad you're here. Thank you for showing up today. I value the time we shared together today. Thank you for making time to be here and to continue taking steps towards growth and bringing more ease into your life. I'd love for us to stay connected on Instagram at @shawnapodcasts or @the.grit.show. There's even a link in bio at @the.grit.show where you can send me an email to let me know what you thought.

Shawna Rodrigues [: 00:14:40

Today's episode. Hearing from you helps to make the effort that goes into producing these episodes worthwhile. After all, you're why I'm here. And since it's been a while since you've heard this, you are the only one of you that this world has got. And that really does mean something. I hope you realize that I'll be back again soon. And I hope you're following along or subscribed so that you'll know and be here too.