You're Emotional...But Are You Emotionally Intelligent?

Ever wonder why we're so afraid of our feelings? The Era of Emotions has dawned, and it's revolutionizing how we understand leadership, connection, and what makes us uniquely human.

Emotions are our operating system—fear, grief, love, shame, anger—the features, not flaws, of being human. Yet most of us were never taught emotional literacy. We learned to run from, repress, suppress, vent, or explode our emotions rather than understand them. This avoidance creates profound ripples—anxiety, stored trauma, depression, identity confusion, and broken trust.

The sobering truth? Unprocessed emotion becomes transmitted emotion. Even when you think you're hiding feelings effectively, everyone in your energetic field absorbs them, especially children. This accumulation eventually becomes trauma that extends beyond individual suffering into our collective experience. War, environmental exploitation, and societal divisions all trace back to emotional illiteracy on a grand scale.

Emotional calibration—becoming what I call "the DJ of your internal world"—means learning to modulate your emotional landscape rather than silencing it. You're not turning the music off; you're mastering sound engineering, creating a mixtape that honors all parts of your emotional experience. This requires developing the capacity to pause and ask: What am I feeling? Why is this emotion here? What is it teaching me?

As artificial intelligence expands, our emotional capacity becomes our most distinctly human attribute. Emotions are our sacred technology—how we communicate with each other and the divine. The invitation before us is to stop fearing our emotions and start training them, with the mission of raising future generations that won't need to recover from what we were too afraid to feel.

Ready to transform your relationship with emotions? Listen now and discover why your feelings aren't the problem—avoiding them is.

Transcript

Welcome to Heaven on Earth

Speaker 1 0:05

Welcome to the Heaven on Earth podcast , a world where you study the story you were born into and redesign it into the story you choose . A world where you can have Heaven on Earth right here , right now , no matter the past . For me , heaven on Earth is a holistic experience , leading with the heart , engaging with mind , body and spirit . It's mindful , fostering calm and secure attachments as we rise into consciousness . It's an earthly journey where we sensually embrace dynamic living . Welcome to the Heaven on Earth podcast , where psychotherapy meets spirituality and where I take a multi-dimensional approach , which means that we bring together healing , wholeness and human leadership . Hi , I'm Claudia Cattarucci . I'm the podcast host , I'm a psychotherapist for over 25 years here in Washington DC , I am an empath leader , I'm a heaven on earth coach and I'm the creator of the Dynamic Re-Evolution Curriculum . Those are a lot of words . So just to disclaim and make it very clear that this is not a religious space , even though it sounds like one , but it is a sacred space . In this way we go deep , we anchor all traditions in with wisdom and with psychological spirituality , or what I coined , psycho-spiritual . It's basically the intersection of psyche , soul and psychology . So we're going to continue with the big theme of the era of emotions , which I think is what is starting now the era of emotions . It's timely , it's turbulent , it's a tender journey into , basically , the role of emotions in our lives as individuals , but also as a collective , and why I believe that emotional intelligence isn't just a skill set . It's the leadership frequency of our times , and so this is a good moment to plug that the second edition of the Empath Leader book is coming out , and , even though the base is the same , you're going to find some differences in it , for sure , those of you who've already had the first edition . There's several changes , but , most of all , how divinely aligned it is to what is happening today , in 2025 , and what we're seeing in leadership and what we are requiring in leadership . So it's almost like the first edition was the first draft , and my coauthors and I shout out Charles Martinez , amanda Flaker , carmen Berkeley Anderson and Felicia Ortiz Shout out to them who have written this book and who are part of this journey that we're taking in sharing it with the world . If you're new here , welcome , welcome home . And if you've been following me for a while , go grab your PhD on me journal , grab your tea , put on your comfy socks and let's dive right in . So let's start here .

Speaker 1 3:44

Being emotional is different from being emotionally intelligent

Emotions vs Emotional Intelligence

Speaker 1 3:52

. Can we please lovingly and gently shatter that myth ? The way that looks like is that sometimes , let's say , you've repressed your emotions for a long time and you meet someone who is highly emotional , so you might think this is someone who's emotionally intelligent . Not exactly , and this is what we're going to get into today . For sure , all human beings have emotions . We are born with this operating system , our emotional operating system . We have fear , grief , love , shame , anger , and on and on , anger and on and on . These are the features by the way , not the flaws of being human . They are features From a scientific lens .

Speaker 1 4:53

Emotions are biochemicals that flood our body . They are biochemical responses to stimuli . From a psychological lens , they're actually drivers to behavior , to attention , to memory . Yes , believe it or not , emotions are part of the memory operating system , which is why a song will take us right back to that moment and what we were feeling at the time , and through , for example , psychospiritual lens or metaphysical lens like the law of attraction . Thank you , abraham Hicks . Emotions are a vibrational compass . They give us messages and , by the way , I think the idea of emotions as messengers , translates across all of these fields psychological , biological , spiritual , holistic . Basically , emotions show us how aligned we are with ourself , with our source , with what feels good , what feels bad . This is a trick , though . Humans don't come with a manual , which means that most of us are navigating this internal landscape without a roadmap , without a GPS , although when we learn it , we realize that our emotions is the GPS . More on that later .

Speaker 1 6:25

So let's do a rule out method . In psychology or in medicine , you see a bunch of symptoms and you start to rule them out to see what the underlying issue might be . So let's start with what emotional intelligence is not . It is not . Running . Repressing , suppressing , venting , spewing , exploding Are all of these behaviors human

What EI Is Not: The Avoidance Myth

Speaker 1 6:53

, of course , but intelligent , no . So let's walk through it . Running leads to chronic anxiety . Repressing is trauma stored in the body . Suppressing equals depression . Masking is identity confusion and imposter syndrome . What's venting ? It's drama , looping and enmeshment . Exploding leads to relational rupture and often to broken trust . Spewing is all about emotional flooding and disconnection . Therapy offices are full , full , full of the aftermath of this whole list . It's normal , it's human , but it has really profound ramifications .

Speaker 1 7:43

Now I'm going to say this really gently , so hear me gently Unprocessed emotion , no matter how well you hide it , becomes transmitted emotion . Anyone in your field will pick it up , especially our babies . Don't think you're not passing your emotions on , because you're silent about them . And if there's too much accumulation of these emotions it eventually turns into trauma , ripples of trauma . This is why emotional literacy is one of the cornerstones of this podcast , of the Empath Leader book and of Dynamic Re-Evolution . We're not messing around with really becoming the masters of our emotions .

Speaker 1 8:43

So let's talk about the myth of avoidance and maybe what you were taught . You were maybe taught or have internalized that avoiding emotions is the smart thing to do , is what's best for the family or the community . This isn't just you . You it's many cultures and many family systems . Many part of that might have been like stoicism is strength . Right , don't show what you're feeling . Have a flat affect , mask it , hide it . Don't show them you're jealous . These , these are examples . Don't cry in public , don't get angry , because that's embarrassing and that might translate into many cultures that silence is dignity . It's elegant .

Speaker 1 9:36

Embedded in this myth is that the fastest way out of pain is to outrun it . Way out of pain is to outrun it , outsmart it . But you know where I'm going . I'm here to tell you you can't outrun what's in your bloodstream as an operating system . It's in you .

Speaker 1 9:56

Avoidance actually weakens us because it's going to ambush us . It shows up when we avoid things on the individual level and on the collective level . Listen , it makes us afraid of life and afraid of ourselves . We become fearful when we avoid and when avoid it's because we are fearful . Part of this is the belief that life obstacles are something to avoid , and one of the ways that I like to teach it is that obstacles life obstacles are there to be honored . Life obstacles are there to be honored . They're there to be understood . There are beautiful lessons that lead us to wisdom , that our wounds are the gift , that we are here to understand and move through these obstacles , sometimes crawling , and move through these obstacles , sometimes crawling , sometimes spelunking with guides , with people next to us that can help us in order to up level into the next version of ourselves , the next version of you .

Speaker 1 11:16

Difficult emotions rage , vengeance , envy , jealousy , shame , guilt , vengeance , envy , jealousy , shame , guilt , disgust

Emotions as Messengers and Allies

Speaker 1 11:30

how about that ? One Disgust has a lot of messaging , a lot of messaging , terror , even stubbornness . Stubbornness is a resistance to something we're resisting hard . These feelings are not here to harm you . They're here to grow you , grow you . So if you don't pause the sacred pause to ask what am I feeling ? Why are you here ? What are you showing me ? What are you teaching me ? How can I handle you right now ?

Speaker 1 12:07

If we don't do that , then those emotions become an accumulation of an emotional tower that begins to wobble Because remember , it's like the shadow , jung's shadow it is amassing , it is accumulating like a tsunami that starts as an earthquake on the bottom , in our deep unconscious , and then , once it hits the surface , those towers well , you know what happens to towers they collapse . So those emotions are an accumulated , a massive accumulated amount of unprocessed energy . That tower collapses over your job , your relationships , your body , your children , your lineage . Think of it . Think of it right now . Think of your own family . Whether the emotions were processed or exploded or addicted away Someone was drinking too much , using too much , abusing they show up . That's what amassed emotions are . So it's not intelligent to believe that you can outrun your emotions . Although we understand it as a defense mechanism , we do understand them and in psychotherapy we try and understand those behaviors to our emotions . That's exactly what we do . It takes a lot of courage to transmute our emotions , but strangely , ironically , paradoxically , we become more courageous because we do it . That's where the true alchemy is . Why do we struggle ?

Speaker 1 14:00

Some of you , many of you , are avoiding emotional literacy because you were never taught it . I wasn't taught , I learned along the way . You weren't taught . We're not teaching this until now , this until now , until now . Maybe you come from a family that masked , didn't model emotional literacy . That wasn't even a phrase . Maybe you come from a family that shamed crying or all they did was cry all the time , so you learn to never cry because the house was already flooded in tears . Maybe you come from a house that equated anger with danger , and that's true , because emotions that are not regulated with balanced behavior becomes danger . Maybe in your house the space for grief or fear wasn't allowed . Maybe you avoid emotions because you equate it with being weak , and maybe people called you weak . This is certainly true for men and maybe you come from a culture where just being over emotional all the time is the way to be , but that creates other types of ripples .

Speaker 1 15:20

Maybe some of you have been punished for feeling . You know the whole . I'll give you something to cry about . That was an actual phrase , and so it makes sense . You've armored up , you've put in all of your armor your helmet , your face mask , you shut the door , you said no , you can't come in . How about on the other end of the spectrum , if you don't have emotions or if you over emote , you can become reckless because those emotions have to come out . So we project , we blame others , we say it's you , you're feeling that we attack , we explode , we act without reflecting , we don't take the sacred pause and then we call it honesty , or this is my truth , and we do want to speak our truth , but we want it to come from a place that is balanced .

Speaker 1 16:16

Emotions , if not calibrated or regulated , can cause destruction , and we've seen it in all over our history books , all over humanity's history , and we're seeing it today . War , for example , is emotional illiteracy . On a much grander scale , on a collective scale , it's fear , powerlessness , pride and generational trauma . We see it in countries that have been fighting each other for decades , if not centuries now , or religions . So these emotions are acted out through destruction , destruction through vengeance . Just pick up the newspaper or , if not , just scroll , you'll find them Today . Why do we exploit our planet Unprocessed emotions ? It's really easy to see . We're not connecting . We are exhausting each other and depleting each other out of pure stubbornness .

Speaker 1 17:22

So let me offer you a reframe , and it's time for a

Becoming the DJ of Your Emotions

Speaker 1 17:27

reframe right now . Your emotions are an , they are messengers , they are a muscle and they are our allies . When you feel an emotional trigger , what you're doing is you're actually experiencing the residue of something that happened to you before . It's telling you listen to me , let's consider this again . That little signal , that message , is your nervous system trying to make you feel safe , even though the trigger might show up as an unsafety . It's just giving you a message that this has to heal .

Speaker 1 18:20

Emotions are part of a roadmap , part of a memory , part of a toolkit . Emotions are a warning system , my loves , and when you start asking what are you teaching me ? What do I need to know in this moment ? What do I need to know in this moment ? First , you're combining your intelligence with your feeling . Immediately , it begins to merge your executive functioning and your limbic functioning . Even your reptilian brain gets pulled in there . They all start to work with each other . So in that moment , you're not just surviving , remember . You're actually transmuting and the way that I see it , transmutation is the alchemy we do on the inside and once that happens , we can actually transform the external behavior . The external behavior , remember Ote , observe , transmute , transform , evolve , because once we transform , we are moving into our next level of evolution . That is true for one human , you , and for the entire collective humanity . This is how you build self-trust you . This is how you build self-esteem , because you can trust yourself . This is how confidence grows .

Speaker 1 19:48

I had to pause my recording because my dog barked and I just let me just take a little pause and a little moment here . Listen , I produce my own podcast and I'm not a producer and I'm not an editor , and I know some of you have mentioned to me that my edits are quite drastic and dramatic . And you're right . You're right . I'm just trying to get over perfection , the need to be perfect , and I want to encourage others to not be perfect . That's part of my life . Mission is you don't have to be perfect . I'm not perfect . I'm I'm really good at what I think about , but I'm not good at editing or producing . So just know that sometimes my edits are dramatic and but you know what ? I encourage you to get out there and do your thing and not have to be perfect . So let me continue , because this is a really , really , really . It is just such an important point .

Speaker 1 20:48

What we're most afraid of is what we're going to feel . What we're going to feel if we tell that person I love you . What we're going to feel if we decide to take a path that our family didn't mean for us to take . What we're going to feel in front of an audience like this , if we're imperfect , in front of an audience . What we're going to feel in the future is what terrifies us . What we're going to feel if we confront our trauma , the pains in the past scares us . But

The Era of Intelligent Emotions

Speaker 1 21:27

if we start to do it , the first waves are very intense , of course , because we've not done it . So those first layers of emotions , unprocessed emotions , are intense . Right , we walk around nauseous and we don't know how to throw them up . Basically , that's quite graphic , but that's how it goes . That is why we need coaches and guides and therapists and good friends who are also doing the work recovery groups , support groups , this podcast , so many podcasts . We need a row mat guides to help us do this work . But once we start doing it and we see that we survive , we see that we get help , we see that we survive , we see that we get help , we see that we get support .

Speaker 1 22:28

No-transcript . We start to have courage when we have confidence . It's those I did it moments that I talk about all the time , which is what little kids need to feel I did it , I did it and get this . The more you confront your triggers , your past , fear of the future , fear of saying I love you , fear of saying fear of the future , fear of saying I love you , fear of saying I hate you , the more we go in and do this alchemical , transmutational work , the more courage we have , the more confident we are walking around in the world . Because we say you know what ? I might have a feeling about starting a podcast . I might have a feeling about falling in love . I might have a feeling about being the one who breaks my trauma lineage . I might have a feeling , but it's okay , because , as I say and it's my quote , it's my quote in the middle of the empath leader book and I'm about to put it on a mug You've done harder , my love , my love . You've done harder . And you're not doing this alone , we're doing it together , together , together . So , yes , you'll be afraid and , yes , the first waves of emotions that we're transmuting are hard , but it gets easier and you get more courageous . In the Empath Leader book I hold , I contend that the emotional process that you do becomes your leadership compass . You become the leader , the courageous , confident leader of your life because you've done the emotional work . Plus , it helps you connect with all the rest of humanity because you know what these feelings feel like .

Speaker 1 24:43

Okay , let me continue . I'm going to use a clodism , which is emotional calibration . Is you becoming the DJ of your internal world ? Is you becoming the DJ of your internal world ? You are DJing , and if you saw my last podcast , please go ahead and look them up . I make the difference between emotional calibration and behavioral regulation . So emotional calibration is the transmutation , because you start learning which volume right . You start learning how to manage the static inside of yourself . You become the DJ of your emotional landscape . That's a cloudism . Shout out cloudisms . Emotional intelligence is when you become the DJ of your emotional life , bam . So you're not here to silence the music , right , the music is part of us . You're here to create a mixtape . You're here to master your sound engineering . You're here to master the mix of emotions inside of you .

Speaker 1 26:08

So , yes , some feelings need to be processed in private , for sure , for sure , and in private you might do it with a guide . When you're more ready , you can share them in community when someone has passed , when you're trying to heal from an addiction , when you need support , when you want to keep a mindset like my , wealth from within community , we believe in trauma rising and holistic healing and that it is our birthright to have prosperity . We believe in working multidimensionally . All of that is because we do this in community . Some we need to work somatically . We dance it out , we move it out , we open our hips , we do child's pose , we get on the ground , we shake , yes , we process our emotions through our body because that's where it's stored , that's where it originally got memorized . Again , this is emotional artistry .

Speaker 1 27:26

I say in the book that the empath leader , by healing themselves the empath when they heal themselves , or the human , you , you , you who are listening to this when you heal yourself , you become an emotional artist and we , you and me together , are going to become the feeling whisperers of the era of emotions , of the era that's coming up , because we see what is happening out there . This is what I mean by leadership leadership in your home , in your families , with your friends , of your own life . So let's bring it home , let's bring it back to now , let's bring it to this moment in history , 2025

Closing Thoughts and Book Preview

Speaker 1 28:07

. I'm calling this the beginning of the era of emotions , and I believe that it started in 2020 , when we all had to go inside and face ourselves . And maybe I should call it the era of intelligent emotions . Yes , that's better , because we've had emotions . Mammals have emotions period from the day we were born . But this is the era of emotional intelligence .

Speaker 1 28:36

We are awakening to the great truth that empathy is power , regulation is leadership . Get this , get this . That emotional intelligence is evolution and with the expansion of AI , with the rapid growth of AI , it's our emotional coding that makes us human Machines will be able to calculate for sure and be very helpful . They cannot feel . Emotions are our sacred technology . It's how we talk to each other and how we talk to source . This is an invitation to stop fearing them and let's start training them . And , yeah , how about a grander mission of raising a generation that does not have to recover from what we're too afraid to feel ? So this is our work , this is our leadership work , this is our sacred work . This is our sacred work . This is our psychological work , this is our evolutionary work . This is what this podcast is all about . That's why I wrote the empath leader . This is why this series exists .

Speaker 1 29:48

So , wherever you are right now in your car , in your kitchen , walking your dog I hope that you are reminded that your feelings are not the problem . Avoiding them is . Let's love your emotions , let's use them wisely . My loves , let's leverage them . Yeah , let's transmute , let's transform . Let's transmute , let's transform , let's evolve , let's become the DJ of the soundtrack of a more humane world . What does humane mean ? We just love , honor , respect that we're human , that we're human , and part of that is knowing and honoring our emotions . The era of emotions , intelligent emotions , is here and you , my love , are on the guest list . Thanks for journeying with me , for being on this path with me , and again , stay tuned , because the second edition of the book is coming out and I always want to shout out my coauthors . I want to shout out Jenny , who's our marketing agent , who's doing amazing work , and I want to shout out you , you that for some reason , you are here listening to this and you're either inspired to pick up the book or you have already . Let's do this , let's do it together .