Latest / I Do, Part 2 / Can You Really Trust Your Gut? One Doctor Says No, Unless You Do This First!

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Can You Really Trust Your Gut? One Doctor Says No, Unless You Do This First! · I Do, Part 2

• 0:02
  Speaker 1: Hey there, folks.
• 0:02
  Speaker 2: It is Saturday, September 19th. We hear it all the time.
• 0:06
  Speaker 2: People tell you, trust your gut. We got stats on
• 0:11
  Speaker 2: whether or not you should trust your gut. Welcome to
• 0:15
  Speaker 2: this episode of Amy and TJ. Before you break it down,
• 0:19
  Speaker 2: simply put, just give us a general idea.
• 0:21
  Speaker 1: Should we trust our gut?
• 0:23
  Speaker 3: Well, sometimes yes, sometimes no, but it's not something you
• 0:27
  Speaker 3: can consistently rely on, period.
• 0:30
  Speaker 1: Do not trust your gut. consistently. So is this, might
• 0:34
  Speaker 1: as well flip a coin?
• 0:35
  Speaker 3: Basically, there is a way to take what your gut
• 0:40
  Speaker 3: is feeling, relax your body, and then make a calm decision.
• 0:43
  Speaker 3: People are too quick to trust this rush to your stomach, literally.
• 0:48
  Speaker 3: And there is a chemical reaction, a hormonal reaction that
• 0:53
  Speaker 3: you are feeling. And there's a reason behind it, but
• 0:56
  Speaker 3: there's also a reason why you can't fully trust it.
• 0:58
  Speaker 2: Because it sounds like you're just running on emotion. I
• 1:01
  Speaker 2: think we're not supposed to do that.
• 1:02
  Speaker 1: Exactly. Is that what you're describing?
• 1:03
  Speaker 3: So a doctor, yes, who studies gut feelings for a
• 1:07
  Speaker 3: living wrote an article in Washington Post.
• 1:10
  Speaker 2: What school did he go? Where do you become a
• 1:12
  Speaker 2: doctor of gut behavior?
• 1:14
  Speaker 1: What is he doing?
• 1:14
  Speaker 3: Well, he's a neuroscientist.
• 1:16
  Speaker 1: A neuroscientist? Yes. Neuro? Yes.
• 1:18
  Speaker 3: And so gut feelings are a neurochemical signal.
• 1:22
  Speaker 1: Gut.
• 1:23
  Speaker 3: That leads to a change in your stomach's electrical rhythm.
• 1:27
  Speaker 3: That is exactly what a gut feeling is. But they
• 1:30
  Speaker 3: say when you look at the statistics, because they've done
• 1:33
  Speaker 3: plenty of studies about gut feelings, and they say, bottom line,
• 1:39
  Speaker 3: they should not be blindly trusted. I actually have stats
• 1:42
  Speaker 3: that's really interesting about how they actually came up with
• 1:46
  Speaker 3: this statistics. They actually talked to emergency room doctors who
• 1:51
  Speaker 3: had to make like immediate decisions. They're constantly having to
• 1:55
  Speaker 3: make rapid life or death decisions, right? So they did
• 1:59
  Speaker 3: some studies evaluating these emergency physicians. They found that by
• 2:03
  Speaker 3: relying on your gut feelings, it only led to the
• 2:05
  Speaker 3: right diagnosis in 54% of cases. Look, I guess that's
• 2:09
  Speaker 3: a little bit better than the majority, but still 48%
• 2:13
  Speaker 3: of the time or 46% of the time, I'm terrible.
• 2:15
  Speaker 1: Your gut was wrong.
• 2:16
  Speaker 3: Your gut was wrong. And so that was one of
• 2:18
  Speaker 3: the biggest, aha, wow. And it is, it's emotion so often.
• 2:23
  Speaker 3: And you have to really be able to recognize this.
• 2:25
  Speaker 3: So they described it like this. You meet somebody at
• 2:28
  Speaker 3: a party and you want to like them, but something
• 2:31
  Speaker 3: feels off and you don't really know what it is.
• 2:33
  Speaker 3: You can't pinpoint it, but you just get this like
• 2:35
  Speaker 3: bad feeling. And so we'll call this like, Ooh, I
• 2:38
  Speaker 3: just had a gut feeling. And then we all say, Ooh,
• 2:41
  Speaker 3: you know what? I don't know why, but I'm not
• 2:43
  Speaker 3: feeling that. I'm walking away. Bad energy. I've definitely felt that.
• 2:47
  Speaker 3: Have you felt that before?
• 2:47
  Speaker 2: I'm not a big gut guy, but yeah, I get
• 2:50
  Speaker 2: what people are talking about when they say that.
• 2:52
  Speaker 3: They say what happens is people who make quick judgments
• 2:55
  Speaker 3: based on their gut feelings often are misjudging the emotions
• 3:00
  Speaker 3: of the other person. And so if you actually employ
• 3:04
  Speaker 3: a systemic way of thinking, again, taking the emotion out,
• 3:07
  Speaker 3: you're going to have a much better chance of reading
• 3:09
  Speaker 3: someone because your emotions are trying to evaluate their emotions
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  Speaker 3: and you're just almost never going to know.
• 3:17
  Speaker 2: Okay, we're saying evaluating another person, but sometimes people are
• 3:20
  Speaker 2: making gut decisions about all kinds of things, not necessarily
• 3:24
  Speaker 2: having to do with relationship. What are you supposed to,
• 3:27
  Speaker 2: I'm waiting to get to that part. What am I
• 3:29
  Speaker 2: supposed to do with the feeling I have?
• 3:31
  Speaker 3: Okay.
• 3:32
  Speaker 1: That gut feeling.
• 3:33
  Speaker 3: You have to recognize why you're having it.
• 3:35
  Speaker 1: Why you're having it.
• 3:35
  Speaker 3: All right. So they say the science of a gut feeling,
• 3:38
  Speaker 3: it's stress, even prior memories that will literally cause part
• 3:44
  Speaker 3: of your brain. It's called the amygdala. That's the emotional
• 3:48
  Speaker 3: processing hub, okay, of your brain. That's the part of
• 3:51
  Speaker 3: your brain, we were just talking about this with Betsy,
• 3:54
  Speaker 3: that is formed in the first few years of life.
• 3:57
  Speaker 3: And it's how it basically receives and feels love and
• 3:59
  Speaker 3: it's protecting you and it's all of these things. And
• 4:02
  Speaker 3: it releases a molecule. It's a corticot... I can't do this.
• 4:08
  Speaker 3: It releases a hormone, okay? And that hormone surges through
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  Speaker 3: this nerve and it's the main communication highway between your
• 4:16
  Speaker 3: gut and your brain. And literally, your brain is processing
• 4:21
  Speaker 3: this emotion and it sends it straight to your stomach,
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  Speaker 3: which makes it either feel... Like it can trigger spasms
• 4:27
  Speaker 3: in your colon, which is why you feel queasy or
• 4:30
  Speaker 3: you urgently have to use the bathroom. Like people get
• 4:32
  Speaker 3: gut reactions where they have to run to the restroom
• 4:35
  Speaker 3: or they suddenly feel nauseated or they suddenly feel queasy.
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  Speaker 3: That is literally your brain that is processing emotions through
• 4:44
  Speaker 3: stress and through prior memories or prior experiences. And you
• 4:49
  Speaker 3: just get this rush of hormone that actually makes you
• 4:53
  Speaker 3: feel something.
• 4:54
  Speaker 2: How does it, I guess oftentimes it can be positive
• 4:58
  Speaker 2: or negative.
• 4:58
  Speaker 3: Yes. And they said that because it can be butterflies
• 5:03
  Speaker 3: on the first date because you just saw somebody who
• 5:06
  Speaker 3: you have the hots for and all of a sudden,
• 5:08
  Speaker 3: literally on a molecular level, you are feeling this excitement
• 5:11
  Speaker 3: and this rush. But it's also the same exact mechanism
• 5:16
  Speaker 3: when you are caught telling a lie and you get
• 5:19
  Speaker 3: busted and you're in trouble and someone's your mom or
• 5:22
  Speaker 3: a teacher's yelling at you, you get that pit in
• 5:24
  Speaker 3: your stomach and you feel like your stomach's tied into
• 5:26
  Speaker 3: a knot. Those are the same hormones causing very different
• 5:30
  Speaker 3: physical reactions in you. And so you can't necessarily trust
• 5:34
  Speaker 3: your body sometimes. One of them feels wonderful and the
• 5:38
  Speaker 3: other one feels terrible. And they're the same mechanism. Isn't
• 5:41
  Speaker 3: that wild? And they say because of that, you can't
• 5:47
  Speaker 3: trust your gut. Your gut is not an oracle. Your
• 5:49
  Speaker 3: gut is not telling you what you should do.
• 5:51
  Speaker 1: People swear by the gut.
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  Speaker 3: You don't actually know what your body is responding to
• 5:56
  Speaker 3: and you don't know why it's having that response.
• 5:59
  Speaker 1: People swear by the gut. You have to trust your gut.
• 6:03
  Speaker 1: Gut instincts.
• 6:04
  Speaker 2: People say it all the time. I just have a feeling.
• 6:08
  Speaker 2: People live by that. I guess that's fine.
• 6:10
  Speaker 1: That's okay. But if You got a 50-50 shot. Yes.
• 6:13
  Speaker 1: And that's just as good as anything else.
• 6:15
  Speaker 3: All right. So what should you do when you get
• 6:18
  Speaker 3: that gut feeling? The expert who studies this for a
• 6:22
  Speaker 3: living says treat that gut reaction as a stop sign
• 6:27
  Speaker 3: and not a traffic signal. Like it's not telling you
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  Speaker 3: to go, to slow down.
• 6:33
  Speaker 1: Stop.
• 6:34
  Speaker 3: It's not telling you that you've done something wrong. or
• 6:36
  Speaker 3: that something is really, really right. It's telling you to
• 6:39
  Speaker 3: slow down, stop, take a beat and look around and assess.
• 6:43
  Speaker 3: Like if you're getting that rush, just imagine that to you.
• 6:46
  Speaker 3: We all know what that feels like. Don't immediately act.
• 6:50
  Speaker 3: Don't immediately make a decision. Don't immediately... choose something, stop
• 6:56
  Speaker 3: and assess. Like take a moment. So look at it
• 6:59
  Speaker 3: as a stop sign. I thought that was really, really cool.
• 7:01
  Speaker 3: And they say that way you're actually interrupting the vagus nerve,
• 7:06
  Speaker 3: that thing that goes from your head to your gut,
• 7:08
  Speaker 3: and you're actually stopping it and you're letting everything calm down.
• 7:11
  Speaker 3: These are hormones surging through your body that don't necessarily
• 7:16
  Speaker 3: make you make the right decision. Isn't that so interesting?
• 7:19
  Speaker 1: Are you a gut girl?
• 7:22
  Speaker 3: I have in the past, um, I, yes, I think,
• 7:26
  Speaker 3: I don't necessarily solely rely on that, but I listened
• 7:31
  Speaker 3: to it and I have regarded it in that moment.
• 7:34
  Speaker 3: But I like the idea of not necessarily trying to
• 7:36
  Speaker 3: interpret it because you don't really know where it's coming from.
• 7:40
  Speaker 3: It's actually just maybe a signal for you to stop
• 7:43
  Speaker 3: and look around and analyze. They actually say you can
• 7:46
  Speaker 3: try to slow your breathing by focusing on extending your exhale.
• 7:50
  Speaker 3: And if you actually feel anxiety, like you've got this
• 7:52
  Speaker 3: gut feeling and you don't know what's going on, They
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  Speaker 3: say you take a bag of ice cubes or frozen
• 7:57
  Speaker 3: veggies and put it over your face as you hold
• 8:00
  Speaker 3: your breath for 15 to 30 seconds. And they say
• 8:03
  Speaker 3: it will literally reduce your anxiety and calm your nervous
• 8:07
  Speaker 3: system down. And it will help you actually get a
• 8:11
  Speaker 3: regular rhythm back to your gut. And you'll be able
• 8:13
  Speaker 3: to make a better decision. Put ice on your face.
• 8:17
  Speaker 3: Have you ever heard of that before?
• 8:19
  Speaker 2: I haven't heard of most of the things in this
• 8:21
  Speaker 2: episode so far.
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  Speaker 3: I just thought that was so cool. And this is
• 8:25
  Speaker 3: coming from somebody, again, who studies just what happens to
• 8:30
  Speaker 3: your body, the science of a gut reaction, and what
• 8:33
  Speaker 3: to do when you get that feeling. And this can happen. Look,
• 8:36
  Speaker 3: I remember when I first started going live, did you
• 8:38
  Speaker 3: ever get nervous?
• 8:40
  Speaker 1: Oh, I always got nervous.
• 8:41
  Speaker 3: I thought I was going to faint. I thought I
• 8:44
  Speaker 3: was going to have to run to the restroom. Like
• 8:45
  Speaker 3: it was just overpowering. And I remember like, yeah, you
• 8:49
  Speaker 3: have to breathe. If I had a bag of ice,
• 8:51
  Speaker 3: I probably would have put it on my face. But
• 8:53
  Speaker 3: what was that trying to tell you? Don't do this danger.
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  Speaker 3: You could do something really stupid. If I had trusted
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  Speaker 3: my gut when I was that scared, I actually felt
• 9:00
  Speaker 3: like I couldn't speak. I probably wouldn't be sitting here
• 9:03
  Speaker 3: today doing what I'm doing. I chose to go against
• 9:07
  Speaker 3: my gut reaction, which was telling me Stop, you're about
• 9:10
  Speaker 3: to make a fool of yourself.
• 9:14
  Speaker 1: See, is that, let me try this on.
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  Speaker 3: Okay.
• 9:19
  Speaker 2: Do people listen to their gut only when it's nudging
• 9:22
  Speaker 2: them the direction their mind is already telling them to go?
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  Speaker 3: Right?
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  Speaker 2: You didn't listen to your gut because you had a dream.
• 9:28
  Speaker 2: You had a desire. You had a goal. You had
• 9:31
  Speaker 2: a passion. You had a career. You know, and the
• 9:34
  Speaker 2: gut's telling, I'm not going to listen to you gut.
• 9:38
  Speaker 2: How much does the mind really still have a play here, Robes,
• 9:43
  Speaker 2: in that do people, and I hear people say it
• 9:46
  Speaker 2: all the time, that they actually make decisions, like big
• 9:48
  Speaker 2: life decisions based on gut.
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  Speaker 1: What is wrong with you? I can't comprehend that.
• 9:55
  Speaker 3: But the point being is they're making those decisions, and
• 9:58
  Speaker 3: if they can only recognize that that gut feeling might
• 10:01
  Speaker 3: be coming from some past trauma, or from some past experience.
• 10:05
  Speaker 3: And they don't realize that that gut feeling is actually
• 10:08
  Speaker 3: coming from a completely different place and is actually screwing
• 10:12
  Speaker 3: with your interpretation of what's actually at hand. So that's
• 10:17
  Speaker 3: part of it. That's the whole point to stop, to
• 10:19
  Speaker 3: get curious, to ask yourself, wow, why do I feel
• 10:22
  Speaker 3: so strongly? It can't just be like woo-woo, like the
• 10:27
  Speaker 3: universe is speaking to me. No, there's something in your body.
• 10:30
  Speaker 3: There's something in your brain. There's something in your memory.
• 10:32
  Speaker 3: There's something in you that is giving you this warning
• 10:35
  Speaker 3: and it's worth looking at. It's worth examining, but don't
• 10:38
  Speaker 3: make a decision solely based on that because you actually
• 10:41
  Speaker 3: don't know the source of it. I thought that was
• 10:43
  Speaker 3: so interesting. All right. When we come back, this same
• 10:47
  Speaker 3: doctor also said, you know what? Your gut feeling can
• 10:51
  Speaker 3: also be right. And they're going to tell you when
• 10:54
  Speaker 3: you know, and when you should actually follow your gut.
• 11:08
  Speaker 3: Welcome back everyone to Amy and TJ. So don't you
• 11:12
  Speaker 3: feel like you're understanding where your gut feeling may come from,
• 11:16
  Speaker 3: what to do about it, and why not to necessarily
• 11:19
  Speaker 3: immediately trust it, to examine it, to get curious. But
• 11:22
  Speaker 3: now the same doctor is telling us, you know what?
• 11:25
  Speaker 3: You got to remember that your gut feeling can also
• 11:27
  Speaker 3: be right. And one of the ways you might be,
• 11:31
  Speaker 3: or you should actually lean into the feeling your body
• 11:34
  Speaker 3: is giving you when it's persistent. when it's a nagging sense,
• 11:38
  Speaker 3: when something doesn't add up and you just keep getting,
• 11:42
  Speaker 3: so you've not immediately reacted, but every time the situation
• 11:46
  Speaker 3: comes up or every time it's persistent. And so what
• 11:49
  Speaker 3: you do is you start asking more questions. You start
• 11:54
  Speaker 3: requesting to just keep examining why. And sometimes that instinct
• 12:01
  Speaker 3: they said has turned out to be life-saving. Sometimes people,
• 12:04
  Speaker 3: you know, people, my gut knew, I knew not to,
• 12:07
  Speaker 3: I will tell you, I've had feelings before where something
• 12:10
  Speaker 3: just feels like it's telling you not to cross the
• 12:13
  Speaker 3: street or to take a step back or to, and
• 12:16
  Speaker 3: all of a sudden a truck ran, runs a red light.
• 12:19
  Speaker 3: I've had that happen. That could be coincidence. But I
• 12:22
  Speaker 3: remember in that moment feeling like it was a gut
• 12:24
  Speaker 3: feeling and to trust those spidey senses, they call it, right?
• 12:28
  Speaker 3: But it is when it's nagging and it's lingering and
• 12:32
  Speaker 3: you take a beat and it's still there. There are
• 12:35
  Speaker 3: moments where they say you should trust your gut. Have
• 12:38
  Speaker 3: you ever, do you have a moment where you can
• 12:40
  Speaker 3: look back and say, hell yeah, I'm so glad I
• 12:42
  Speaker 3: trusted my gut on that one?
• 12:44
  Speaker 1: I don't. Wow.
• 12:46
  Speaker 2: Maybe just on the spot I can't remember something. Surely
• 12:48
  Speaker 2: along the way I'm just not a gut guy. You
• 12:51
  Speaker 2: know this because I overthink and plan and go through
• 12:55
  Speaker 2: scenarios and steps and on almost everything big and small
• 13:01
  Speaker 2: to the point of annoyance of the other people in
• 13:03
  Speaker 2: the house. So I'm just not, I'm thorough. I don't
• 13:07
  Speaker 2: look at something, oh, I got a good feeling about
• 13:09
  Speaker 2: that one.
• 13:09
  Speaker 3: You never say that. Actually, just hearing that come out
• 13:12
  Speaker 3: of your mouth is so funny. And look, the doctor
• 13:14
  Speaker 3: also said this. I thought this was interesting. We all
• 13:17
  Speaker 3: remember the time we had the gut feeling where there
• 13:20
  Speaker 3: was a payoff. Like, see?
• 13:21
  Speaker 1: See?
• 13:22
  Speaker 3: I knew it. But you don't remember all the times
• 13:26
  Speaker 3: that your gut feeling was wrong or steered you in
• 13:28
  Speaker 3: the wrong direction or actually flagged nothing whatsoever. We forget
• 13:33
  Speaker 3: about those, but we remember, like I'm telling you, I
• 13:35
  Speaker 3: remember the time where I had a feeling, I took
• 13:38
  Speaker 3: a step back and boom, a truck ran a red
• 13:40
  Speaker 3: light and I thought, holy hell, that was my gut
• 13:43
  Speaker 3: saving me.
• 13:43
  Speaker 1: And then after people tell that gut story, they say, yeah,
• 13:46
  Speaker 1: my gut is never right. So I always listen to
• 13:49
  Speaker 1: my gut. They save my life.
• 13:51
  Speaker 3: Absolutely do say that. And look, the point being, they
• 13:54
  Speaker 3: say it's what you typically do after you realize you
• 13:57
  Speaker 3: have a gut feeling. It's what you choose to do
• 14:01
  Speaker 3: after you take that beat. If you ask the right
• 14:03
  Speaker 3: follow-up questions, if you dig for more detail, that's what
• 14:06
  Speaker 3: actually leads to the outcome where you could say, aha,
• 14:10
  Speaker 3: my gut, I knew it in my gut. But actually
• 14:12
  Speaker 3: it's oftentimes what we do after we get that feeling,
• 14:15
  Speaker 3: the questions we ask, the curiosity we show. before we
• 14:18
  Speaker 3: make a decision, and that does usually lead to the
• 14:21
  Speaker 3: best outcome. So maybe pay attention that something is happening
• 14:26
  Speaker 3: in your body, but it doesn't necessarily mean what you
• 14:29
  Speaker 3: think it does. It could mean danger, it could mean excitement,
• 14:33
  Speaker 3: it could mean nothing at all, but you only will
• 14:36
  Speaker 3: figure out if it's something that can be trusted if
• 14:38
  Speaker 3: you give it a beat, if you give it a moment,
• 14:41
  Speaker 3: if you don't rush to make a decision based solely
• 14:45
  Speaker 3: on this chemical reaction happening in your body. You've never
• 14:49
  Speaker 3: really ever done something based on a gut feeling, babe?
• 14:52
  Speaker 3: Not once?
• 14:53
  Speaker 2: You know, I annoy you all with how much I
• 14:56
  Speaker 2: think through and make a plan for the simplest of things.
• 15:01
  Speaker 3: Were you born that way?
• 15:02
  Speaker 1: I don't know, babe.
• 15:04
  Speaker 2: I looked through several car companies before I picked the
• 15:08
  Speaker 2: right one. I look through, baby, you see me do
• 15:11
  Speaker 2: this all the time. I'm just that way. I don't
• 15:16
  Speaker 2: go with an instinct or a good feeling.
• 15:17
  Speaker 1: Nah, let me look this through.
• 15:19
  Speaker 2: So no, baby, you are not instinct. You weren't some
• 15:23
  Speaker 2: feeling or something. No, it was a lot of thoughts went.
• 15:27
  Speaker 1: Into all of this.
• 15:28
  Speaker 3: You know, it's funny. No, I said this to you.
• 15:31
  Speaker 3: I look up quote of the days for our morning
• 15:32
  Speaker 3: runs that we have on Mondays through Friday. And there
• 15:35
  Speaker 3: was one quote I found a while ago. And you said,
• 15:38
  Speaker 3: why won't you believe it? You're an overthinker. You've acknowledged that.
• 15:42
  Speaker 3: I've obviously seen that in you plenty, but it says,
• 15:46
  Speaker 3: believe an overthinker when they tell you they love you.
• 15:52
  Speaker 1: You should be sitting pretty. You know how much thought
• 15:56
  Speaker 1: I've given to this?
• 15:58
  Speaker 3: I know.
• 15:59
  Speaker 1: Because my gut's been telling me something else. No, I'm kidding.
• 16:02
  Speaker 3: No, it's good. You've been getting curious. You've been getting curious.
• 16:05
  Speaker 3: That's always a good thing, everybody. And we hope you
• 16:09
  Speaker 3: enjoyed listening to us. We always love you having you
• 16:12
  Speaker 3: along with us on this Relationship Saturday. I'm Amy Robach
• 16:16
  Speaker 3: alongside TJ Holmes. We'll talk to you soon.