Last month I spoke extensively about our intuition and how we can tell if it is truly guiding us, or if our past traumas misleading us. Let’s take a look at what our intuition, or gut instinct, really is.
Our intuition is our immediate understanding of something. We can’t really explain why we understand something a certain way, we just do. It is an inescapable, strong feeling of what we know in our heart is right – even if it doesn’t seem to make sense logically or there is evidence to the contrary.
I place a lot of trust and faith in my ability to just know what the right path for me is. But, like everything, our intuitions aren’t foolproof. There are some things that can interfere with what our intuition is telling us, and that is typically unhealed trauma.
There are four things that can mislead us: overthinking, getting caught up what we “should do”, seeking external validation and confirmation bias. Confirmation bias is easily the trickiest one and you can read more about it here. But these four culprits can really mislead us and trick us into believing we are following our intuition.
Remember, when we are coming from a place of trauma, we are operating from a place of fear. This makes sense because any kind of trauma is going to have fear attached to it. But fear has a way of distorting how we see things. And if we aren’t mindful, this distortion can infiltrate our feelings and convince us that those fears are really our intuition or gut guiding us.
Dr. Judith Orloff, author of Emotional Freedom, breaks down the difference between reliable intuition and irrational fear:
Signs of a Reliable Intuition:
- Conveys information neutrally, unemotionally
- Feels right in your gut
- Has a compassionate, affirming tone
- Gives crisp, clear impressions that are “seen” first, then felt
- Conveys a detached sensation, like you’re in a theater watching a movie
Signs of an Irrational Fear:
- Is highly emotionally charged
- Has cruel, demeaning, or delusional content
- Conveys no gut-centered confirmation or on-target feeling
- Reflects past psychological wounds
- Diminishes centeredness and perspective
You can read her full article about this here.
Take the time you need to really learn about what your intuition is really telling you. We all have traumas that will pop up and try to interfere with our gut feeling from time to time. They key is to acknowledge those traumas and distinguish what is coming from a place of trauma and what is really coming from our gut.
