Emotional Wellness Affects Your Intuition | Episode 140: Syd the Expert
Strengthening your intuition and creating emotional wellness go hand in hand. Following your soul path is the ability to decipher your emotions apart from your intuition.
In this episode of the Carrying Connected Conversations podcast, Syd shares her expertise as a spiritual mentor around all things intuition. She explains why your intuition is blocked and how it’s important to understand your emotions if you want to live intuitively. Ang brings in a great understanding of fear and trauma and how they can keep you in a negative pattern, never breaking out of your comfort zone. Syd offers a better understanding of why you want to listen to your intuition and what it means to live in fear versus living in trust.
Press play to gain insight into your own intuition and why your emotional wellness may be blocking you from feeling your intuition.
You can continue reading about the conversation Syd & Ang had on the podcast through the transcript below.
Ang: Hello and welcome back to another episode of Carrying Connected Conversations. This is Angie chatting at you and chatting right at Sydney. I love this so much, recording in person. We’ve been away for too long and now we are recording all these episodes in person. Today’s episode I am super excited about because it’s all about Sydney’s expertise in intuition and emotional wellness. Oh my goodness, I already have so many things I want to say. It’s not up to me to say it all, it is up to the expert to introduce this topic. Before she even does, let’s check in with her and let’s even see what she wanted to chat about intuition and emotional wellness in the first place.
Syd, how is it going today?
Syd: Hey hey hey! I am doing so good! It’s this feeling of thriving. I don’t know if you feel that in your life, I know you have a much busier life than I do. I really feel this energy of thriving and it feels so good that we are able to be in person and experience life together.
Ang: Yes!!! I love it, I love it!
Syd: So jumping in, you asked me why. Why did I want to bring this topic forward about intuition and emotional wellness? I think the reason why I thought it was really important to talk about intuition and emotional wellness, in my last expert episode when I spoke about Spirit Guides we touched a bit on intuition. For myself, bringing todays’ topic forward is really important because I think a lot of people don’t understand how your level of emotional wellness or emotional intelligence actually affects your ability to feel and trust your intuition.
If you are someone who wants to live intuitively. If you are someone who knows you have an intuition and you know your intuition guides you, and supports you in life, and directs you on your soul path. You get these gut instincts or intuitive feelings and you want those feelings to be how you make decisions in your life, you have to have a certain level of emotional wellness. If you don’t then you’re completely missing out on how your intuition can support you.
Ang: I like how you used the word emotional wellness. I use the word emotional intelligence a lot, but I think we are talking the same language. It really is understanding how those emotions lie within you in order for you to best respond. Specifically today’s topic we are talking about how it helps you tap into your intuition. As we chatted last month in your expert call we got down to the point where everyone has an intuition. It’s not that some people are more intuitive, I mean yes this is true, but it’s not to say that one person has an intuition and one doesn't.
Syd: Correct. Correct. The intuition is our 6th sense and we all have that ability. SOme people might say it’s “woo woo” and some people might not believe it. We all have a psychic ability and that is our intuition. SOme people don’t even realize that their intuition has been blocked their entire life and that’s why some people believe they are not intuitive. They have been creating, or not even creating because they don’t even know it’s happening, but they have resistance and blocks from feeling and trusting their intuition. They may even be taught these things.
Before we continue I want to point out my perception of emotional intelligence versus emotional wellness.
Ang: Ooooo I actually love this because I did bring that up before.
Syd: Perfect. This is perfect.
Ang: Yesss!!
Syd: I think emotional intelligence is something that people hear a lot about. Emotional wellness maybe people haven’t really tied those words together before. I think emotional intelligence is exactly as you were saying. You understand emotions. You can pick up your own emotions and when you are in a high high versus when you are in a low low. You can even sense other people's emotions. You can see when someone is angry. You have emotional intelligence. You are intelligent when it comes to emotions.
Whereas emotional wellness to me, like we talk about mental wellness or physical wellness, it is the act of caring for your emotions. It is the act of not just recognizing when you are in anger or frustration, but having the ability to guide yourself in a supportive and nurturing manner through that emotion. That way you can end back at peace or joy, or wherever you want to be. Emotional wellness is you being able to guide yourself emotionally with wellness, your well-being at the forefront.
Ang: I really like that you did break that down because whenever I think of emotional intelligence I think about understanding what emotion I am in or someone else’s emotion. There is obviously work along the way and I think you hit the nail on the head with what that work is, emotional wellness. Especially when you compare it to physical wellness, because I am the body expert, it makes so much sense.
I want to ask you, because you talked earlier about your intuition being blocked. I can make an assumption of what that means, but I want to hear it form you. What does that mean and how can you know to unblock it?
Syd: Perfect! I really like this because I came to today’s conversation with three things in mind that I wanted to talk about. These three things are actually three different ways your intuition can be blocked based on your emotions. To start us off, I want to ask you a question Ang. Can you detect, for the listener as well, when you’re in an emotional wave?
Ang: Yes.
Syd: When you are in a high high or a low low?
Ang: Yes! I said yes fast because I’ve been working on it.
Syd: The reason why this is important, in my line of work I tie in human design with my client work. I learn what each client’s human design is. I believe 70% of the population is an emotional authority, I may be wrong. 70% of the population has to understand emotional waves and if you don’t it’s okay, you still have plenty of time to learn.
One of the ways that your intuition can be blocked is if you’re in a high high or a low low. You more easily feel your intuition or your gut instinct when you are in a neutral state of emotion. I am going to correct myself, it’s actually 50% of the population that is an emotional authority. Still, that is half of the population.
One of the ways your intuition is blocked is when you are in a low emotion versus when you are in a high emotion. The emotion is taking over all of your senses and you can’t actually feel your intuition or your gut instinct because your emotional wave is so strong in that moment.
Ang: That makes so much sense. I learned a lot of stuff about stress, trauma, and all the things when I was working with my therapist. Not knowing that you’re blocked happens when you are not aware. When you don’t have that focus or that hyper focus of what you are currently feeling in the heat of what you are feeling. Like you said, we have high highs and low lows. If you are not able to pinpoint what that is and when we are in it, it’s harder to recognize when we are in it.
Even though I said yes I do know my emotions when I have high highs or low lows, there are still times when I am in the peak high or peak low that I forget it for a brief moment until after the fact. Creating more awareness in the moment can help you so you aren’t blocking yourself. It makes so much sense.
Syd: Exactly. I think a lot of people think that their intuition or gut instinct is guiding them when they are in a high high. They are on top of the world and feeling really good. The problem when you are in a high high is that everything is a yes. It’s not your intuition that is guiding you, it's actually your emotion. If you are wanting to more strongly feel your intuition and trust your intuition, you have to create emotional wellness for yourself. Like I already explained, emotional wellness is being able to guide yourself through your emotional wave back into a neutral state. Once you are in the neutral state of peace, contentment, satisfaction, we aren’t eager and excited, we aren’t frustrated and angry, we aren’t stressed, worried or in a state of doubt, we are just in a neutral state. This is when it’s a lot easier for you to tap into your intuition and see how it’s guiding you.
Ang: I love that.
Syd: The second way I think is important to understand how your intuition might be blocked is similar to what you were saying already Ang when you were talking about trauma and being hyper aware. If you ignore or avoid feeling your emotions you won’t be able to feel your intuition. This is because your intuition and your gut instinct are a feeling. The more emotional intelligence you have and the stronger your ability is to create emotional wellness for yourself, the easier it becomes for you to feel your intuition and trust your intuition.
If you are ignoring your emotions, if you are avoiding feeling them. The way I like to describe avoiding feeling them, we always say brushing them under the rug, really what you are doing is overthinking. You are avoiding your emotions by overthinking the situation and overanalyzing everything. The second way you avoid your emotions is overstimulating yourself. You are overdoing it. You are taking action on everything. You are doing all of the tasks on your to-do list, you are running around your house like a chicken with it’s head cut off. You are doing all the things because you are afraid of stopping and feeling those emotions.
Ang: That is so true. How I see it is when you are brushing things under the rug, you are trying to avoid or suppress, or ignore those feelings, really all you are doing is ignoring who you are as a person. It’s like you are completely disregarding that who you are here today is valid. The more often we lead ourselves to invalidity, in not being valid, let’s go with that.
Syd: Not validating yourself.
Ang: Ya, not validating yourself. It really hides yourself from the rest of the world and it creates such a disconnect. It makes it harder for you to show up authentically as yourself because you are ignoring yourself as you are. If anything you are in a constant state of needing to compare, needing to impress, and focusing completely outside of yourself just to accommodate. Again all you are trying to do is accommodate yourself by not seeing yourself by ignoring those emotions.
Syd: Exactly. Exactly. There are so many different roots as to why you avoid and ignore your emotions. This is something that I love to dig into with my clients because I am here for the deep shit. I am here to break those patterns and break those cycles and create new supportive patterns.
Ultimately, exactly as you are saying Ang, if you are ignoring and avoiding your emotions it’s because you are not validating yourself. The reason why you are not validating yourself is probably because you were taught you are too sensitive, or you are too emotional. When we are taught thos ethings from a young age, we try and shove that shit to the side because we don’t want to be too much of something. Basically, you need to be willing to tap into your body. That is how you feel your emotions. You step out of your mind and you tap into your body and allow yourself to feel. Through that ability of shifting out of your mind, you end up actually strengthening your ability to feel your intuition. Your intuition resides in your body. You have to step out of your mind.
The third block I wanted to talk about, or the third reason why your intuition is blocked, is because of fear. We all know and love fear don’t we?
Ang: Love hate. Love hate.
Syd: Now the question I put to you is, do you know your fears? Often people do, but maybe not in the way that you actually need to. I think fear has become so strong in our lives that it has actually begun to control us. We are afraid of looking at our fear. It’s the same reason why we are avoiding our emotions, we don’t want to feel them because it’s difficult and painful and it hurts.
Sometimes we have to feel the painful emotions in order to stop holding onto them. The same with fear. Sometimes you have to look under the bed to realize the fear in your mind is actually way bigger than what the problem is in reality. Whether you have a fear of lack, a fear of the unknown, a fear of judgment, a fear of abandonment, it doesn’t really matter. Your fears are coming from your subconscious belief system. I don’t want to get into it because there are so many different ways your subconscious beliefs can be created. Generational beliefs, past emotional pain, trauma, thought pattern, experiences you’ve had. There are so many different ways your belief systems are created and it’s subconscious. The moment the fear comes up it triggers your subconscious belief. Ultimately it is the belief that you are not safe. That is what a fear is, believing you are not safe.
The stronger your fear is, the less you’ll be able to trust your intuition. Often your intuition is actually guiding you out of your comfort zone. When you are in the moment of fear, in the state of fear, our entire body and subconscious mind is saying, “we’re not safe, we’re not safe, we’re not safe”. Why the fuck would you want to step out of your comfort zone if you feel like you aren’t safe? You won’t. You won’t. So the fear wins. Whatever it is that you intuitively felt, however your intuition was trying to guide you, you are not going to follow it. You are going to stay in the same cycle and the same pattern of the fear controlling your life. All because of the subconscious belief within you that says you are not safe. It is way stronger than the courage to step out of your comfort zone.
Ang: Agreed. Even fear can bleed into, as you and I both know, the fear of the unknown. Generalizing to the unknown. Fear is because we don’t know. We don;t know. It’s so much more challenging for us to step out of the things we do know in order to create change in our lives.
Syd: Exactly. You are exactly right, the unknown is the basis of so many of our fears. All because we don’t know what’s around the corner so we think it’s easier to be afraid of what’s around the corner. Something that I’ve learned for myself, and I bring into all of my client work, but I also really focus on in my group program, is remembering that we can live from fear or we can live from a space of trust. I am not saying you are trusting everyone outside of you.
Ang: No. It’s about trusting yourself.
Syd: Yes, I am saying you trust yourself and you trust the ability that you have, so when you walk around that corner and you see a lion, you trust your ability to make a judgment call in that moment of how you are going to proceed.
Ang: Ya, run. Haha!
Syd: But if you walk around that corner and there actually isn’t a lion there, but instead a bag full of money.
Ang: Mhmm.
Syd: Or the love of your life.
Ang: Mhmmm.
Syd: Right?! You could say all the terrible what ifs and it comes from fear. This is because we live in a society that is so fear focused and fear driven. Your intuition is saying you are more than enough and you are able to experience a life where you thrive. You are able to live out your purpose and you are able to lead yourself with joy, love, and trust and faith. But, when fear pops up you’re not going to trust your intuition. You are not going to trust the voice of your soul. You will end up staying in that same cycle. If you’ve been living the same thing over and over and over again and you are getting tired of it, it’s because your Spirit is asking you to break free from the fear and start trusting your intuition.
Ang: It’s like a spiritual plateau.
Syd: Yup.
Ang: Right?! We talked about a fitness plateau last week in my expert call and you are saying a little bit differently. It’s the spiritual plateau because we all reach a certain limit and it’s a matter of us pushing outside of that. The only way to do so is by focusing on the emotional wellness aspect and it will help us increase our relationship with ourselves. In reality this is us being able to trust intuition. We can’t trust it if we don’t try to actively change the thought pattern or the things we are doing. Routine is what reaches the plateau. The constant change and adaptation is what will ultimately lead us to success in our emotional wellness and as well as strengthening our intuition.
Syd: Exactly.
Ang: Oh I love this Syd.
Syd: I think maybe some people are thinking why would I want to listen to my intuition? Why would I want to follow my intuition? Why would I want to live an intuitive life? I believe that you came here, you Ang, me, and you the listener came here to live a life, to live a certain life. Your soul, your Spirit, your Higher Self, whatever you want to call that, is leading you to create that life. Your intuition is the voice of your soul, it is your internal compass that is guiding you from your soul. There is a reason why when you intuitively feel something you say, I can’t explain this. I just know this. Your soul just knows it and your soul isn’t going to give you a logical explanation.
The reason why you follow your intuition is to live the life that you came here to live. To pursue the purpose that is calling on your heart and soul, to follow the passions that light you up, to bring more love, compassion, support and light into the world. If that calls on you, then you want to live an intuitive life.
Ang: You know what’s funny? For our listeners that are not as spiritual inclined, let's put it that way, a good way of looking at this is to think about that big move you just made. The big leap you had to take to take this next job that you are currently holding, to do a move across the country or go to school for that certain thing. There is something inside of you that said, ya I want to do this. Maybe it’s the love of your life that you found and there was something about this person that was telling you to pursue to follow. That is you actually listening to your intuition. That is what got you to where you are today, when you had to make that decision. If you are constantly ignoring that decision making process from an intuitive standpoint the further and further you are getting away from yourself. You are pushing all of the things that you once knew to be true to the side because you think you already have that job, you already have that love of your life, you already have things, so why do you need to keep pursuing your intuition and connecting with yourself. You are here to say it's because you are going to block yourself the more often you don’t look at it more specifically from an emotional standpoint.
Syd: Yup. Yup.
Ang: I love this. Syd, before we wrap up today's episode is there something that you think is very important? Whether we already talked about it today, or something along the lines of intuition and emotional wellness, you think it’s important for not as spiritually inclined people as well as very spiritually inclined people, that they need to know.
Syd: Ya definitely. I think we’ve talked about this before, but everything is energy. If you are taking action from fear, then you are taking action from the energy of fear and that is only going to produce more fear in your life. If you are taking action from stress, you are in the energy of stress and it’s only going to produce more stress in your life. If you are taking action from worry, doubt. If you are ignoring your emotions and taking action from a space of feeling pressured, rushed or forced, you are only calling in more of that energy. When you choose to listen to your intuition and follow your intuition, what you are saying is, I want to bring more light into my life. I want to bring more support, I want to bring more love, I want to bring more peace. Yes, your intuition is guiding you out of your comfort zone at the same time, your intuition guides you so you can be your most true authentic self. So you don’t have to lead from fear, so you no longer have insecurities and self doubt. If you want to live a peaceful life, a joyful life, a blissful life, a life where you thrive, then following your intuition, following your soul, following what calls on you, is the path. The more often that fear pops up and doubt pops up, you hold yourself in that cycle, in that repetitive pattern of fear. I am telling you that you can unblock yourself. You can let go of these blocks, release this resistance. You can more easily trust your intuition, feel your intuition, strengthen your intuition and live from that peaceful state of knowing you’re on your path. If you ever have questioned whether or not you are on your path, when you follow your intuition you will know that you are on your path. If you are very spiritually inclined, you most likely have had the thought, “how do I know I’m on my path?” “How do I know this is the path for me?””How do I know this is the direction I am supposed to be going in?” Well, when you listen to your intuition and strengthen that, you will know. It will be a feeling that brings fulfillment into your life.
Ang: I love this. Wow! Thank you so so so much Syd. That has been so insightful, especially that last tip you provided that everything is energy and choosing which energy you want to be in and bringing more of whatever you want into your life by making the conscious decision. This has been absolutely amazing. I do believe that another expert chat should happen about your subconscious belief system, we briefly touched on it but I had some questions pop up that I would love to hear a little more from you Syd. If that is okay.
Syd: Yes!
Ang: We can totally do another episode on that. I love that and I am sure our listeners will love it too. Thank you again Syd for sharing your expertise on everything around emotional wellness and your intuition. It has been an insightful conversation and very thought provoking for our listeners. Our listeners can ask themselves where their emotional intelligence is or where are you on your emotional wellness journey. How strong is your intuition? How are you tapping into that intuition? Do you need to be tapping into it more, and are you listening to it versus your emotions? These are very thought provoking questions that our listeners can benefit from.
You also mentioned that they can work with you. If the listener wants to work with you 1:1 or join your group program Spirit of Air, it’s all about strengthening your intuition and your spiritual well being that is a great spot to start. Of course you can always listen in every single week, we drop a new episode on Mondays. From now until next week we are going to send you all the love, light, courage, strength and whatever you need to get you through the rest of the work week. Don’t forget to hit the rating button and thank you again for listening everyone.
Chat to you soon. Bye!
Syd: Bye everyone!