Beyond ADHD A Physicians Perspective: Self-compassion with Dr. Vanessa Calderon (ER Doc certified Professional Coach and Resiliency Expert)

Dr. Vanessa Calderon: Once you realize that there are two things happening every day of your life. There's the truth. What's the actual truth. And then there's everything else and everything else are your thoughts. And when you don't have awareness into everything else, the thoughts it's like the matrix. When you have the blue pill or the red pill, the point of it is that you're either living a life in your head.

Where like you're just living in your thoughts or you're living in reality. Self-compassion is not a soft skill. Self-compassion is one of the hardest, most impactful skills to cultivate. It's the one skill that's gonna open you up to allow love to come in, but also for you to love others more. If you want to do something that's hard, I challenge you to start practicing self-compassion.

Dr. Diana Mercado-Marmarosh: Hi, welcome to Beyond ADHD, A Physician's Perspective podcast. I am your host, Dr. Diana Mercado-Marmarosh. I'm a Family Medicine doc, with ADHD, practicing in a rural setting in Texas. I am a mother to two very energetic toddlers who are three and four years of age.

And in the past year, I have undergone radical transformation after discovering ADHD coaching, and life-coaching. For the past decade, my typical day consisted of having 300 charts backlog, a graveyard of unfinished projects, and a lack of time awareness. I didn't realize that I was not filling my own cup. I was running on fumes. The last year I figured out the secret; learn to stay in your lane. So now my mission is to help others develop systems that tap into their zone of genius. So they too can reclaim their personal lives back like I have.

I am so excited today to have a very special friend, Dr. Vanessa Calderon, she's a board certified ER doctor with over 20 years of experience in leadership and of course serving her community.

And she is a life and executive coach for many, many leaders. And she's gonna tell us about this today. So I'm so excited. Would you tell us a little bit about yourself, Dr. Calderon.

Dr. Vanessa Calderon: Of course. Thank you for having me, Diana. Hi everyone. It's so nice to be here with all of you in this community. So yeah, as Diana mentioned, I'm an ER doc by training, prior to my life.

As a physician, I was a healthcare activist and social justice activist. So I did a lot of organizing work, grassroots organizing work, which led me into leadership because once I started my career as a physician, I realized I wanted to affect change on a systems level, not just. On the one-on-one patient level.

However, patient care is still a passion of mine. I love the one-on-one patients that I get to take care of in the hospital, but I started doing leadership work very early on in my career, and it became, you know, chief resident in residency ever since residency, I was doing leadership work. And immediately after that, when I started as my first year attending, I was doing an admin fellowship in leadership. And it became a department chair about a year after residency and had been doing department chair, medical director work. And in fact, about a few years ago, I turned down a chief medical officer role because I decided that my passion really was in teaching and inspiring and empowering other leaders to stand up and lead, which is why I transitioned into executive coaching.

Dr. Diana Mercado-Marmarosh: Awesome. And so throughout your life, and as you've been doing with all this. What have you noticed has been like one of the key things to get you to this like leadership roles? Is it confidence? Is it like being fearless? Like what have you noticed and what can support that confidence?

Dr. Vanessa Calderon: Yeah. You know, it's really interesting. I think there's two things. Yes, absolutely confidence, but there's another big one, which is having a sense of belonging. I think, Early on. I was the type of person that I never needed permission to be in a room. I never needed permission to raise my hand. I would show up to the meetings and I would sit at the board table.

I wouldn't sit in the chairs in the back and I don't know what it was inside of me that I never felt like I didn't belong, but I realized that it's not. A super common feeling. And when I started coaching other women, I realized something that a lot of women needed was that confidence that they actually belonged.

And, you know, as you, and I know because we're both coaches, that sense of belonging is a mindset. You need to build that before you step into the room and once you have it and you're in that room. It allows you to show up with that executive presence. You can sit at the room, you can sit tall with your back straight up.

You can speak confidently when you do raise your hand to speak. And it's not like you're not gonna feel insecure. You definitely will, but you always show up like you belong in the space. And that I think led me to continue to raise my hand to. Speak up for myself to highlight the work that I had been doing when I had created a project or a program.

So that was really beneficial. And I will say that as I've been doing this work and have sort of matured in my experience, what I've learned is that. That got me really, really far, but what continues to take me further, but now from a space of, cuz one thing didn't mention is, you know, I'm an Enneagram three.

So if you know your Enneagrams three is the high achiever, it's the person that never feels satisfied with what, where they are. And their biggest downfall is that they achieve from a place from like a wounded place like that. It's never enough. Like I'm never enough. I have to keep achieving. And for me it's a common story.

I grew up, you know, as a brown Latina, I grew up with so many inferiority insecurities. Like I wasn't smart enough. I wasn't good enough. I'm, you know, a daughter of immigrants. And we had a lot of scarcity stories around money in my house. And so I had a lot of these scarcity stories. And so achieving for me, I think was easy because I love to achieve I'm disciplined.

I'm committed. But also I was coming from a wounded place earlier in my career where I needed to keep doing it and faster and faster, which is no, you know, no surprise that I became a department chair so quickly, but I also burned out in my career really early on, which happens to a lot of Enneagram threes or hyper achievers.

And so when I came back from that. I realized I wanna continue to contribute to the world and I'm still really ambitious, but I wanna take care of myself and I don't wanna put myself in spaces where I'm gonna burn out or makes it easier for me to burn out. And I realized that the link between continuing to achieve from a place of sufficiency, as opposed to a place of scarcity, which is where I was coming before is really self-compassion.

And being able to love myself along the way and know that it doesn't matter if I don't achieve that next goal, I'm gonna be okay. Whereas before I was so afraid to feel disappointed.

Dr. Diana Mercado-Marmarosh: Everything you just said, like a hundred percent resonates with me. And I think that self compassion that you just described has been the hardest and most rewarding thing that has happened for me.

Like I, everything you just said, like I, a hundred percent resonate with the fact that, you know, being a minority and coming from like immigrant parents, like that's totally me. The only thing you didn't say is that you have ADHD, which you don't, but I think. The fact that I had that on top of it always made me feel like we had the opposite experience.

You felt like you belonged regardless. I felt the opposite. I felt like I didn't belong, but once I was in there, like, I couldn't be quiet. Like I had to say what was wrong. And so I made myself belong. even though in my mind, I had this internal drama that, who am I to speak up? Because of my ADHD, I spoke up and I just couldn't help myself.

And like I had to call bullshit everywhere. I saw that there was something wrong, either for my colleagues or for myself or whatever. And so I was very compassionate for everybody else, but I didn't have self-compassion. And that was the hardest thing, because that was my inner critic wanting to be good enough to be in the room.

In masking that they didn't know how much or how hard I was working to try to be there. And every time I go through the exercise of self-compassion with like my clients, or even with myself, none of us, none of us. And I don't know if it's like a physician thing, because I even done it with male clients and they still don't understand what I'm talking about.

It's like something foreign. Like you said, when you step into self-compasion and you actually start to embody it, we're so good at giving advice. Like, we can give you advice for everybody else, but we can't apply it for ourselves. And when you ask them, well, what if I just told you all that, that you just said, what would you tell me?

And like, their face just like sinks because they're like, oh my God, why can't I do that? Like, it makes so much sense. Right? And when you tap into self compassion, like you just said, your confidence sky rockets, because all of a sudden you accept yourself as you are. And like you said, you're not proving anything to anybody else.

Like you're just measuring yourself against yourself instead of yourself against whatever society has told you, you have to keep up with. Right. And like you said, sometimes we don't realize that because we just wanna keep improving. And it's not from a place that I wanna improve because I just wanna improve.

But it's because from it's it was from a place before, because if I get there, then I'm worthy enough or I belong in this room or blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. But now that you have this, self-compassion, you know, you always belong in the room and it's such a different feeling when it's from a place of acceptance because, you can't help, but to be confident because you're at peace with where you're at that day. Right?

Dr. Vanessa Calderon: Wow. Yes. That last thing that you just said, which is you are at peace with where you are, but also you are at peace with who you are a hundred percent. Yes. And let me tell you, you know, in the beginning of my journey, even though I felt like I belonged, I still was super insecure and I still have a ton of insecurities, but the big difference, now from before, because you know, I've been on this journey towards loving myself, rediscovering myself and creating that self-compassion for myself for, I don't know, at least, Seven years or so, but I've been in leadership and out there doing the work for, two decades. And so I just have to say that even though I'm on this journey, it didn't even become real or feel real to me probably until like, The last year or so.

And it was about the same time that I went hardcore and launched my business because when you become an entrepreneur and you're out there putting yourself out there all of the time, every deep insecurity, you have shows up to the very surface and it's out there for the whole world to see. and you have two choices.

You can hide behind overworking and continue to do that and continue to hustle and, you know, try to make everything perfect. So nobody judges you and work harder, harder, harder, or you can just let, go and love yourself and say, Hey, this might not be perfect, but it isn't for me, it's for the people that I'm serving, you know?

So it doesn't matter. And. I think once I decided that I was gonna be all in on the journey of being an entrepreneur and it's not like I was leaving a hard life, I had an incredible life as a physician leader and I loved my job and I still love being a clinician. I love being an ER doc. Before, when I was a department chair, I was sitting on med exec.

I had a fantastic job, a great lifestyle, a ton of time for my family and my kids. So it's not like I was running away from anything. I was fully choosing to do something else because I was ready to be in service in a different way. And when I decided to do that in it, and. It's not like it was easy, you know, it's not like you go into this and like flowers and rainbows and unicorns.

You're a success every night, it takes work. It's like a whole new skill set that I'm building we're building. Cause I know you're on the journey too. And a lot of my old insecurities were coming up. A lot of my old stories were coming up and that's when I learned, wow, I really need to love myself. Like I need to double down and I.

And I actually have a little quote right here in front of me on my computer that says I'm all in on you. Hey Vanessa, I'm all in on you. Like, I love you so much. I'm all in on you. And on the right of me, I have a little baby picture of me that is adorable. You guys can't see it, but Diana can see it. If I show her a little picture there and I have this little picture of me framed because.

You know, my inner critic is just as loud as everybody else's. And I think that the more you do the work of self-awareness and the more you do the work to grow, you start picking up on your inner critic so much louder. Well, you didn't even realize that was your inner critic, cuz you didn't have the awareness to separate those two things.

And now that I'm at a space where I can separate those two things, I realize, wow, my inner critic was really loud. And so now when it shows up. I just don't make space for it. You know, it still shows up. It's not like it doesn't, it still shows up, but I just catch myself and I say, Hey, I'm not gonna say that to myself today.

I'm all in on me. You know, I love myself. And so I, I just highlight that because it's a total journey, you know, and for me, it's gonna be a journey for the rest of my life. And one of the things that I think is so amazing about the journey of self-compassion is that the more you learn to accept yourself and love yourself, ultimately, what he does is it opens yourself up to receive the love of everybody around you, people around you that wanna be supportive, that wanna be helpful, that wanna lift you up.

You're able to be open to that, whereas before you were just so closed, And the other thing that's really beautiful is you are able to love at such a deeper level. And for me, what that means is I'm able to be in service at a deeper level. And my whole mission in life is to be in service to others. My mission in life is to empower others, to be their best selves.

You know, I've always lived a mission driven life, and even now my mission is to be in service. And the more that I love myself, the easier it is for me to be in service to others.

Dr. Diana Mercado-Marmarosh: Yes, everything you just said resonates again so much when we decide to step out of our comfort zone, like you said, not because you didn't enjoy what you were doing, but just because your soul is calling you to serve in a different way and how else it is to empower those professional people around you, who might be hurting because again, they haven't discovered what self-compassion means because nobody's told them. And because we all walk around thinking that we are a hundred percent our thoughts and some of our thoughts, we have never, ever questioned because they're facts in our brain. Like I'm too slow or I'm too disorganized or I'm not good with money, whatever thoughts come in your, into your brain, in your brain.

They're always like a fact. And you can sit there and tell me like three examples, how to support those thoughts, because they're a fact, right. But. The funny thing is that whatever we focus our brain onto, you're gonna discover evidence for it. And sometimes, you know, those thoughts. Could just be miscued right.

Like they're not really a fact, but your brain has a allowed your told you that they are. And sometimes we somehow think that to be strong means to do everything yourself and not to ask for help. Right. And so we don't realize that self-compasion just, like you said, You wanna be of service, but just like you're giving you wanna be receiving because if you don't, then the universe is not gonna help you because you think you got it all together.

Right. And what if you got even more help when you were in the right energy and you were taking care of yourself and you rested and I keep saying it, and I sound like a broken record. We are in self neglect if we're not really taking care of ourselves. I mean, it's not just self care. Like it's self neglect.

If you're not sleeping, if you're not eating, if you're not asking for help, like all those, tie back to self compassion, because you don't realize how much it is to take care of yourself and the thoughts that you're having could change. And, and that your circumstance, sometimes the circumstance, you know, is something that would just happens.

And, and it's how you interpret it. Like some people see it as good or bad. But it's always your thought about the good or bad and the beautiful thing about coaching and the beautiful thing about having these discussions with people who want to work smarter instead of harder, is that once you tell them that yes, your past happened.

But how do you wanna remember your past? You get to reinterpret it, however, it makes sense to you and they look at you, like you're weird. And you're like, okay, well then go walk around and carry that monkey for as long as you want or leave it there and see what it taught you. Right? Like, again, it it's how you look at it.

When you're able to see that your thoughts are not you and you can separate them. And like you said, you are willing to be all in on you. And sometimes we're a little silly and that's okay, because life is not meant to be a hundred percent serious. and, you know, it's so important to have these discussions because I don't think we slow down enough to feel and see if you just ask yourself whatever you're thinking, is it serving you or not?

Can we put it down and can I think something else that might be empowering? Like I, I heard a chord the other day saying like human human beings are so silly. They set up their own limitations. like, isn't that funny? Like, it's true. Right? Like we limit ourselves and sometimes it sounds silly, but like being a doctor is kind of safe in the sense that you have guidelines and you have.

Best evidence and da, da, da, da. And so you kind of like hide behind that. You're like, well, this I'm doing it right. You know, X, Y, and Z. And then you go to like the business part of it. And there's like, no rules. All of a sudden you have to do it. Like, however, whenever. And you're like what I have to decide, but how we always wanna know how right.

And they're like, Who cares about the, how you make it up as you go. You're like, no, that's not safe. And like you said, it brings up all our insecurities but at the same time, it lets you be aware that what if you did trust yourself? Like what if you did get it right? And so it goes back to finding that self compassion and being.

Willing to fall flat in your face, because maybe that's the more evidence that you needed or the more data that you needed to keep moving forward. Right?

Dr. Vanessa Calderon: Absolutely. There's so many good nuggets in what you just said. One of the things you said that I think for me is just so interesting. It's like this idea once you realize that there are two things happening every day of your life, there's the truth. What's the actual truth and then there's everything else and everything else are your thoughts. And when you don't have awareness into everything else, the thoughts it's like, you know, the matrix when you have the blue pillow, the red pill.

The point of it is that you're either living a life in your head, in your dreams, almost as cloudlike living words, like you're just living in your thoughts or you're living reality and an exercise that I've been using a lot, especially over the last few weeks, is this exercise of what is my truth. And I use it when something just like quickly triggered me or like something brought up something in my head, I'll ask myself, what is my truth in this moment?

And I just ground myself in that space because the only truth is that I can feel my feet on the ground. I can feel the air going in and out of my nostrils. I feel a little pressure in my chest, you know, or I feel my stomach kind of nodding inside. That's the truth. Everything else is just a thought, you know?

And so I ground myself in that because it's really important because what happens when you get triggered? For example, someone says something, they kind of trigger you it's they say something and then you make it mean a bunch of stuff in your head. It's your old subconscious thinking patterns, your habits. Right? So one of the things that's so important, I think, especially bringing this back to self-compassion and that exercise about what is my truth in this moment is that. Especially, you know, I have this morning journaling exercise where every morning I get up, I just ask myself one prompt, which is one of my thinking.

I let it all out. And then I get to see the old stuff that comes up because we all know the benefits of positive thinking. But of course our brain doesn't go to that as a habit. Because we have the negativity bias, right? Our brain goes to the negative more. And when you get to see all your thoughts on paper, I then choose what I actually wanna believe.

I see, like my only truth in this moment is that I have a pen in my hand and I'm sitting down right here. What do I wanna believe today? And then I get to choose the thoughts that will serve me. And that right there is how you create the reality. Of your dreams, you create the reality of your dreams by choosing the thoughts that serve you.

And for me, you know, I create the reality of like, I'm gonna be all in on me me. I'm gonna love me. No drama necessary. When I have a task, for example, this is a big one for procrastinators. Why do we procrastinate? We procrastinate mainly because we're afraid we're avoiding something. And what we're avoiding is not the task.

What we're avoiding is what that's gonna bring up for us, like what that's gonna make us feel like. And so for a big one, for me, for example, I often avoid things that I feel like I'm not gonna be good at, or I avoid things that I feel like I don't know how to do yet because I'm avoiding the feeling of overwhelm.

I don't wanna feel overwhelmed and I don't wanna feel sometimes I don't wanna feel like a beginner, you know, like, oh, I don't know how to do it. I'm gonna have to spend all this in my mind. I make up these stories. I'm gonna have to spend all this time researching to get it just right. And of course I'm a recovering perfectionist.

And so things need to be done, not just done, but done right. And so I'm avoiding this feeling of overwhelm. And so one of the thought errors that I catch is. Oh, no, but I won't do it. Right. And so the way I support myself in that is I see that as a thought error and I get to create grace for myself and say, okay, like, what is it that you need right now, Vanessa, you need a hug.

You need love and you need to be reminded. There's no drama necessary. Like, yeah, that's gonna be a new task. Yes. It's gonna be something different and yes, you might feel overwhelmed and we'll meet that overwhelmed with compassion. You know, when you feel overwhelmed, we'll love ourselves through.

Dr. Diana Mercado-Marmarosh: So the procrastination, I joke around a lot because people with ADHD were like, we have too much time.

That's like way over there. So we'll like outta sight out of mind. Right. And if we don't have enough time, we're like, oh my God. And the funny thing is that we don't only procrastinate on the things that are really important to us. We also procrastinate on the things that are boring to us, but for two different reasons, the things that are very important to us.

If we don't get them, we might feel like a failure or we are afraid of the success either way. We're, we're gonna put it off because if it actually goes the way we want, all of a sudden we might be more busy and we have this like scarcity mindset around time. Right. Because we feel like there's never enough time.

And so sometimes we procrastinate, I think because of either we don't have a clear mind of what's gonna happen, which steps need to be taken, or we are trying to do everything at once instead of breaking it down, or if we actually do it, we are afraid that, oh my God, I'm gonna become so successful that this is not gonna work out.

I'm not gonna have time. Sometimes procrastination also means that maybe that was not like aligned or wasn't meant for you at that time. Right? It's, it's funny with the word procrastination, because some people don't know how to slow down sometimes and their body literally makes them. And so it's like, they're procrastinating, but it's also, like you said, it could be that you are on purpose or your brain is on purpose, trying to tell you to slow down, or maybe you are afraid that it's not perfect enough and therefore you don't hit submit.

But, I've learned to tell myself that, you know, a messy first draft is better than, than a perfect undone draft at all. Right? And so sometimes we just need to do things because then at least the intention is there. And then you can always ask somebody else for help to make it prettier to make it more acceptable, to get us to point B or C or whatever, but at least the jist is somewhere. If it's meaningful for you.

Dr. Vanessa Calderon: Yeah, absolutely. I agree that we all procrastinate for different reasons. And I think the most important thing is to be onto yourself. If you are someone that does it in an all honesty, everybody does it. So when I say, if you are someone I'm saying all of you, cause you all do it.

The difference is why do we do it? What's your reason behind it? And I know for me, it's because I'm avoiding a feeling and for many people, that's what it is, but there's also something called strategic procrastination where you strategically say, I have this idea. I'm gonna put it right here and I'm not gonna act upon it yet, but I know that the idea is there.

I see it every day. Like I do this sometimes and I'll put a little note card and I'll leave the note card about my bedside, for example. And every day my brain's going to work, thinking about it and figuring out like how I'm gonna make it really amazing. I'm not ready to execute on it yet. I wanted to keep mingling and what'll happen is as you're going throughout your day, you're gaining evidence, you're seeing things of how that's that idea's gonna work out. And then eventually when you're ready to execute, now you have all this awesome stuff inside of your brain, you know, that's ready to go. So I think, there's, there's different reasons why, I guess the important thing is to understand why you do it, but also is it's serving you.

So if your procrastination is not serving you and now you're in this, you know something to be called, like a negative, where you're procrastinating and it's not serving you now. It's time to reexamine. Now it's time to come to Diana and get coaching and figure out why am I procrastinating? So we sort of got off topic a little bit when we were talking about self-compassion and we spoke about procrastination, but I don't know if you wanna stay on this topic, but we could also jump back to self-compassion and talk a little bit more about like actionable ways that people can actually, you know, cultivate self-compassion.

Dr. Diana Mercado-Marmarosh: Yes, that'd be great. And I was gonna ask you if you knew, if there was a link between self-compassion and happiness or joy or anything of that sort.

Dr. Vanessa Calderon: Yes. That's a great question. Taking that second question first. Yes, there is a link. I mean, you can imagine right now, you know, my life as an example. In my professional career, when I was highly achieving, you know, I have a degree from Harvard, I was chief resident.

I have all these accolades behind my name and I was doing all of that and I was still feeling like I wasn't enough. Right. Like, I still had a super strong inner critic. I had a ton of insecurities. I had to keep achieving. And for me, when I was deeply insecure, some of the ways I would show up as arrogant, as opposed to humble.

And, you know, I like to think of actual confidence, confidence for me means showing up, trusting yourself. That's what it means for me and humility for me means having curiosity. Like being super curious and so humble confidence means trusting in yourself and being super curious, you know, knowing that you don't know everything, knowing that there's more to learn, but still being confident in who you are in that moment.

And the difference between that and arrogance is for me anyways, that arrogance is more of this like sort of fear based response. You're afraid of something. You're you think you're insecure, there's something else that's sort of guiding you. And so you think you need to put up this front. You know, where you show up, like, you know, everything and that's way different than humble confidence.

And everyone here that's listening knows somebody who shows up confident without arrogance and arrogance, you know, when they're really just afraid. And I know for me, one of my fear based responses, especially before, when I had really stepped into this work of self-compasion is, there were times where I was afraid, you know, and I would show up arrogant.

Like I wanted to seem smarter. I was super insecure. Remember the first time I got a department chair role, you know, I'm a five foot, a hundred pound Latina. And the people I was leading were people that had been practicing medicine for a very long time, much older, really tall white men. And I remember I had to sit at a department meeting and lead these people or counsel some of them that.

Doing things that I had to counsel them cause they were getting bad patient outcomes and a ton of insecurities would bubble up. I thought that to meet those insecurities, I had to show up as arrogant. And the truth is you don't like had I trusted myself, had I loved myself. Had I had the level of self-compassion I have now I would've been confident showing up with the humility that I needed, knowing that I'm confident in who I am and what I know I have this position for a reason, you know?

And so. Back to your question about how self-compassion and joy are linked really is when you love yourself, you can let go of all those fear-based stories, you know, all those insecurities and yes, of course, insecurities will always show up. As long as you have a human brain, you're gonna have an inner critic.

And the inner critic brings you insecurities all the time. What if you fail? What if you're not good enough? What if you know, and even the most successful think right now. I want everyone listening to think about who they imagine to be the most confident, successful person in the world. And I want you to know right now, as you're thinking about that person.

That, that person also has a super loud inner critic, just like yours. When they look in the mirror, they don't think they're good enough. They don't think they're smart enough. Sometimes. You know, I remember the story of, Barack Obama when he was sitting in the oval office at his desk and he looked up at the wall and he said, what the heck am I doing here?

Abraham Lincoln said at this desk, like, what am I doing? You know, and so I just want everyone to remember that, that we all have that and the more you can lean into self-compassion, the more you realize that you can love yourself in those moments and let go of the fear and really just lean into joy and just be proud of yourself, you know, from a place of humility.

Dr. Diana Mercado-Marmarosh: You know, the story that you just explained about Barack Obama sitting there and wondering what the hell am I doing here? Reminds me of Erica. She is a lawyer in our life coach school. She's actually the VP, yes. And she said, you know, We are our ancestors' wildest dream and it's crazy how we become who we become.

And then we don't like take ownership of it sometimes because again, our inner critic is there and it's so loud, right. And sometimes, like you said, our inner critic is just trying to protect us. Like nobody wants to be like, Ooh, how can I look like a fool today? Right. Like how can I make an ass on myself?

Nobody wants to do that. So it's meant to keep you safe. But at the same time, like this. Inner critic, because it's trying to keep you safe instead of like silencing it sometimes like just being like, okay, tell me what it is, Diana, what is it? And then you can like counteract it, whatever it tells you.

Just listen to it. Like you would listen to a friend, even though you're mad at that friend, you would listen to them anyways, like with the sore eye. Right. But you're still listening. And then maybe just saying, okay, I understand. I understand. I understand. But what if it could be this other way? Right. And what if this other way means I get to love you?

And I only get to love me and I get to accept me right. For me. And like the good, the bad and the ugly. And like, I think that's then how you show up, like you said, as in a humble humility where you know that yes, I belong here because I belong here. I'm choosing to belong here. Right? I accept all of me. I think again, it goes back, like you said, joy and confidence to that self-compassion.

And, and now tell me what are some ways that you practice self-compassion or how can other people practice self-compasion for themselves?

Dr. Vanessa Calderon: Yeah, so I practice self-compassion all of the time. So I'll share a few things that I think are tangible, that people can do. One is I really, 100% recommend if you're not already doing this to create some sort of morning journaling practice or journaling routine, just to really get clear on the thoughts that come out of your brain in the morning.

So my routine for example, is as soon as I get outta bed, I'll go to the restroom if I have to. And the very first thing I do, I usually get up before everyone else in my house is I sit quietly for 15 minutes and I journal, and it's incredibly important to do it in the very, very beginning, because that's when your brain is gonna share, show you everything, all your thoughts on default.

And what I wanna highlight for everyone listening is, the majority of our actions are taken by default 95% of what we do are taken by subconscious thoughts are patterned thoughts, who we become along the way, only 5% of what we do comes from conscious thinking. And so the work, especially all this like really important thought work and mindset work, what it's doing is it's rewiring your brain so that your new patterned thoughts, your new subconscious thoughts.

Are things that you actually wanna be thinking and doing, as opposed to who we were as kids, you know, the fears that we had when we were children, for me, for example, all of that inferiority that I was feeling, because I was a brown, you know, daughter of an immigrant, you know, not never feeling like I was good enough or smart enough.

So the very first thing I do is I get up and I journal. And when I'm journaling, I see all my subconscious thoughts and I choose what I wanna think on purpose that really serves me. And that I think is one of the most important practices of self compassion is choose your thoughts that will serve you.

Thoughts that really show you grace and love. And then the other thing is there's this really amazing researcher who I absolutely love on self compassion. Her name is Dr. Kristen Neff, and the way she describes this is this, she reminds us that human beings are mammals like all other mammals. And there's three things that human beings really love.

And you can imagine this by thinking about a baby. So how do you, how do you comfort a child? You swaddle them. So, one thing you do is you keep them warm human beings love to be kept warm. So when you're showing yourself self-compassion, if you're in a space where like you're feeling disappointed or sad or you're feeling rejection or whatever it is that you're feeling to love yourself in that moment, maybe all you need is a warm blanket or something cozy around your shoulders.

What else do, what else do babies need? What else do mammals need? We, we like touch human touch. So the hug or the kiss on the cheek that babies love. So I love to show myself self-compassion by doing two ways, in terms of touch, I give myself an actual hug. I'll put my arms around my shoulders and I will do that all the time when I'm being coached, when I'm sitting by myself.

And the other thing I do is I put one hand on my heart. Sometimes I put both hands over my heart and just really sit there for a moment and just love myself or one hand on my heart. One hand on my belly and just feel myself, breathe to ground myself. But another thing people love to do is you hold your hand, just put your two hands together and just hold your hands for a little bit and just love yourself in that moment.

Okay. So the first is warmth. The second is a human touch. And then the third thing is a soothing voice. You imagine when you swaddle a baby and you're holding them up to you, what do you say to them? You give them that soothing voice and that's what gets them to calm down. And so do that to yourself. How can you provide that soothing voice for yourself?

And so I literally talk to myself and I have no problem doing it now. And I'll say, Hey, what is it that you need, Vanessa? What is it that you need? Okay. Yep. I love you. Like, I hear you. I hear that. You need love. Okay. I love you today. Or I'll write myself a note sometimes when, like I receive like a really, like a really nice evaluation of some sort or someone just like reviewed my podcast or someone just gave me really positive affirmation.

And I'll read that and old me would read that and be like, oh, it's so nice that they said that delete go on with my life. And one of the things that we need to do to really remodel our brains, and this is neuroplasticity in action is the way you remodel your brain to tilt it towards positive is you take in that good with just as much time, that you would the bad stuff. Cause what do we do with the bad stuff? We sit, we ruminate without we like, think about how there could be wrong. You get super defensive sometimes. Or you start trying to talk about like how you can do it better next time. But when the good stuff comes in, you let it roll off your shoulders.

And that's, that's normal human behavior because the human brain is like, you know, it's like Velcro for the negative, the negative just sticks, but it's like Teflon for the positive. The positive will just roll right off. So one thing that's really important to do is to help the positivity stick. And so when I get a positive affirmation, I'll read it out loud.

And if it really makes me feel good, like I did this for a performance review, six or eight months ago, I got a performance review and it was awesome. And initially I wanted to push it away. How could that be true? No, maybe they say that to everybody. And I was like, whoa, what are we doing here? Let's sit and take it in.

And then I wrote myself a letter. Dear Vanessa. I am so proud of you. Listen to what they said. Like you really affected their lives. Look at these evaluations. You're always scoring this high. I'm so proud of you. And that for me was my own sort of soothing words. And so I encourage all of you to think about how you can use one of those three super easy things to show yourself love when you really need it.

And I used to only use self compassion when I was down, like when I was feeling sad or disappointed, or when I was. And now I realize I've shifted my brain to a point where I use it all of the time. I separate my thoughts, another really important practice, like I mentioned earlier, and this is a lot of inner critic work, but when your inner critic starts showing up, The first thing I do is I ask myself, what is the truth in this moment?

Cause that thought is not the truth. And when you do that, what you're essentially doing is you're bringing awareness to that moment, which turns off your amygdala. So your amygdala is your fear center and that's where your inner critic is coming from. All your fear is coming from those faces, but when you turn it off and you bring awareness to that moment, then you can shift your brain.

Okay, this is the truth. What do I wanna believe?

Dr. Diana Mercado-Marmarosh: Yeah, that's so good to help you ground yourself and to practice those things. I think, like you said, when I started a morning routine, that was the start of changing how I was thinking and being intentional and being mindful of what are the two or three things that I wanna accomplish today.

What are the two or three things I wanna feel today? What are the two or three things that I want to help myself? Right. And so. It's so important when you do it that way, because you, again are being intentional. Like you said, there's a golden hour, you know, in the morning and, actually the hour right before you go to sleep as well, where you shouldn't be on your phone, because then you go to sleep, you know, in a reactive state and you wake up in a reactive state, you touch the phone again.

When you on purpose are deciding how to calm yourself down, to relax, to sleep and what you're gonna do throughout the day. You're going to be a lot more aware of what it is that you're wanting to do instead of just being reactive all day. You get to be on purpose, deciding your life, how you want to do.

And so I'm so glad that you are doing this work to help others really step into their own self-compassion because that really is gonna boost their confidence, boost their joy, and obviously smash the inner critic and it smash that imposter syndrome. Right. So tell me where can people find you if they wanna work with you?

Because I mean, it, it sounds like, you know, this is very powerful work that you're providing.

Dr. Vanessa Calderon: Yeah. Thanks so much for asking. So, there's two ways people can find me. The easiest is just to find me on Instagram at @Vanessamd, or at VanessacalderonMD.com you know, I created this actually free guide that's awesome. That talks about all of this type of work. And so people can find that really easily at vanessacalderonmd.com/guide, and it's a five step guide that really teaches you why we do certain things like for a lot of us, it's people pleasing. Like why do we people please, and how do create boundaries and how to see no without guilt and that,

just that practice alone, frees you up to create so much more time to do the things that you love. And so for a lot of the people that I work with and that I help learning those skills and it's five super simple steps that you can start using right now. And then once you get good at it, you use it over and over again, you stop saying yes to things that just don't make sense, you know, or you go back and say, I do really wanna speak at that conference, but I don't wanna do it for free you, and then you go back with the confidence to ask for money, to get paid, you know, and all of a sudden they say yes, and now you're speaking at the conference and you're getting paid and it's a win-win. And so you, anyone can download that guide. I created it for free. And it's, vanessacalderonmd.com/guide. It's the ultimate five step guide to stop people pleasing.

Dr. Diana Mercado-Marmarosh: Awesome. Thank you so much. One more question. Where do you see yourself in three years from now? What are you doing for fun?

Dr. Vanessa Calderon: For fun. That's a good question. I was about, you know, when you said, where do you see yourself in three years from now? My eneagram three brain was about to tell you all my successes, you know, like where I see myself in my business. But for fun, we are gonna move. I currently live in California, but we're leaving the state. And so we're moving out of state. And in three years I see myself traveling with my husband and my two little beautiful cuties and exploring the world internationally.

You know, we've held off a lot because of COVID and our kids were young for a long time. And then my mom got sick and we. Are itching to travel. We both used to travel a lot before. And so, it's time to expose our kids to put backpacks on their back and rent a car and you have to try to eat the food wherever we are, you know, no matter what. And, that's what we'll be doing for fun.

Dr. Diana Mercado-Marmarosh: You know, I've talked to my husband about this and he used to think I'm crazy, but he, you know, the more you talk about it, the more it becomes like it's almost there, right? You can taste it. Like I'm telling him that in my ideal world. And I think we're in the same wavelength where, you know, maybe the summers, we just pick a country and we, there were there the whole summer and you get to learn and study and live the culture and do everything the whole summer, every summer, you know, at a different place. Why not? I mean, that's how I think we grow west people when we just get immersed in it. Right. Like you just take what you like and let go of what you don't and keep. Leveling up. Right.

So that's so fun. Awesome. That sounds so good. I'm pretty sure we'll be traveling somewhere sometime together. I love travel too. So one more last question. And this is the one that I say, okay, my listeners have ADHD and sometimes, attention goes somewhere. So let's say they just started paying attention right now, they didn't listen to everything else we said before. What would be the one sentence or two sentence you would want them to take away when they think of today's episode?

Dr. Vanessa Calderon: I want them to take away this, that self-compassion is not a soft skill. Self-compassion is one of the hardest, most impactful skills to cultivate.

It's the one skill that's gonna open you up to allow love to come in, but also for you to love others more. So. To be in service more. And for a lot of us, you know, especially if you're physicians, we are wired to heal and we are wired to be in service to others. And we have a tremendous capacity to be in service to others, but we cannot do that well or to the fullest when we have not first filled our own cup.

And so the one thing I will say is if you want to do something, that's hard, I challenge you to start practicing self compassion.

Dr. Diana Mercado-Marmarosh: Yes, like you said, that was one of the big things that really started to heal me and allow me to start speaking from a place of a healed wound instead of an open wound. And, it was such a powerful thing.

So thank you so much again, for sharing with us, all the important things that you're doing in the world. And I can't wait to see all those fun pictures and, continue to see your business blossom.

Dr. Vanessa Calderon: Thank you. It was so wonderful to be here with you

Dr. Diana Mercado-Marmarosh: As someone who understands that time is our most valuable asset. I am so honored that you have shared your time with me. Please click the subscribe button and join my Facebook group: Beyond ADHD, A Physician's Perspective so that you never missed an opportunity to create time at will. Do share this podcast with your friends they too can can learn to live life and stay in their own lane.

Link to my website to register for October 2022 Cohort (waitlist):

Transformation Physician Group Coaching

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Email: overachievewithadhd@gmail.com

 

About Dr. Vanessa Calderon: 

ER Doc and a certified professional coach and resiliency expert. She helps BIWOC physicians stop feeling overwhelmed, anxious and disorganized. And, live their life with intention and purpose, and create wholehearted success they can be proud of. 

Website: vanessacalderonmd.com

PDF Guide: 5 Step Ultimate Guide To Stop People Pleasing

Instagram: instagram.com/vanessacalderonmd/

Facebook: facebook.com/vanessacalderonmd