Relearn to trust your gut

The Overthinking Trap
Overthinking, to be completely honest, feels like a curse right now. My life is rather simple now, yet my mind makes it complex. I feel compelled to stop and pay close attention to every detail, lest I miss an important cue, overlook a necessary step, or forget something truly vital, like a doctor’s appointment.
This habit of constantly over-analyzing everything has even seeped into my dreams—a new development, as I never used to remember dreaming at all.
I was always a procedure-oriented person: I'd analyze a situation, devise a detailed plan to fix it or accomplish the goal, and execute. Now, this procedural thinking, on steroids, has invaded most areas of my life, even my sleep. I'll wake up multiple times in the night, mentally working through a problem, even when it’s not a real problem.

The Lottery Nightmare

Let me give you a perfect example. One night, I was indulging in a common fantasy: What would I do if I won the lottery? I imagined buying a luxurious motorhome, hiring a driver, and spending a year traveling up and down the coasts of the United States to find the perfect place to live.
The fantasy was fun—until I started diving into the exact how-to. I fell asleep and woke up no less than three times that night, obsessing over logistics: Where would the driver sleep? Is the RV big enough for two private bedrooms? How many hours should we drive per day? Is eight hours too much? Should we cap it at six? How many times will we encounter a gap of more than six hours between major cities?
It spiraled out of control. My fun fantasy turned into an exhausting mental maze.

The Realization: Trusting Myself

It dawned on me that the reason that fun little dream turned into a nightmare was a lack of trust in my own mind. I used to be much quicker and sharper, and feeling a loss of that capacity created anxiety. I realized I had to re-learn to trust myself, and I’m still working on that. This YouTube channel is one of those steps.
Thus, Episode One: Trusting Your Gut

This realization is why I’ve been overthinking the very topic of this first episode: What am I going to talk about? How do I start? Will it send the right message? The only answer was: "Oh my God, shut the hell up and just record something."

So, I decided to talk about something that happened shortly after my strokes, which proved to be critically important: Trusting my gut.

I’m not suggesting you act frivolously, but if you’ve done your due diligence, looked at the facts, and that gut feeling persists, then you need to act on it.

The Medical Turning Point

After spending that first 18 months with my previous doctor, I expressed a concern to a family member: I didn't think my doctor was doing a good job with continuity of care—a term I had recently learned—and he wasn’t looking at my overall health picture. I was shocked when I was rudely told, "That's your responsibility, not theirs."
Feeling belittled and not trusting my own judgment enough, I took that advice. I shouldn't have. I delayed making a change for another few months. Finally, after a few more worrying situations with my medical care and some distance from the destructive family member, I made the imitating decision to switched doctors. That decision was very difficult, but the best one I have ever made. My new doctor was incredible.

Without exaggeration, she immediately sent me to a number of specialists—pulmonologists, neurologists, cardiologist, vision, and cognitive tests and multiple physical therapists and more. All those appointments, eighteen different blood panels, CAT scans, MRIs, and few more that I’m forgetting at the moment changed my entire world.

That’s when they discovered I had experienced not one but two strokes. Not only were they two different types one bleed and one clot but they were on two different sides of the brain, one on the left and one on the right. They also learned more about my diabetes, blood pressure, and cholesterol, which all needed drastic adjustment. This intense, comprehensive look at my health as a whole provided insight into how my brain now functions and why, for instance, driving had become so overwhelming, as well as a few other challenges. It was a hell of a ride, and thankfully, it’s just now beginning to slow down, with many more answers.

I do not want to dramatize this, but it is the honest truth: If I had not listened to my gut and disregarded that self-serving statement made by a "family member," I truly believe I would not be alive today, or at the very least, I would be in much, much worse shape.
That one decision changed my entire medical and mental path, and I did it on my own once I trusted myself and my brain enough to do it.
So, this episode, Episode One, is about this: Do your due diligence, but learn or relearn to trust yourself. Trust your gut.