What is Intuition?
Our senses allow us to observe and understand the world around us. I have heard that intuition is a 6th sense, a “gut feeling.” For me and others, there is a struggle with trusting a feeling without the benefit of evidence or logic guiding our decisions. Does our 6th sense work in conjunction with our other senses? When do we follow our gut? When do we make decisions informed by logic?
In an article, “Why Trusting your Intuition Is more Complex Than You Think.”-Elaine Mead (psychcentral.com), Intuition is defined as:
(noun) “the ability to understand something instinctively, without the need for conscious reasoning.”
Instincts are based on our subconscious understanding of the world around us, which develops without our trying.
The article, continues “We thrive on finding patterns in the world around us, people, relationships, essentially within every single infinitesimal factor of life. We do this with very little conscious thought, but it’s continuously happening. When making decisions or facing challenges, our minds will ruthlessly search through our data, searching for the patterns, and attempts to figure out the safest way for us to proceed…When we get an ‘intuition’ for something, it can quite often be attributed down to our mind’s identifying a pattern, no matter how tiny.”
I think this is important to highlight. Our emotional responses come from a place of our own truth and understanding of the world. For example, I may see a dark alley and decide not to walk through it and determine that I was following my instincts because I am feeling fearful and reacting to the emotion of fear. Another explanation might be that logically, my knowledge and experience lead me to believe that crimes are less likely to occur on well-lit streets. It is hard to say whether it is instinct or logic or a combination of the two that keep me out of the alley.
In my practice, clients describe scenarios where it seems like they use logic to rationalize a behavior or action. For example, I have a client who desperately wants to move into an apartment. COVID hit and he had to apply for unemployment. He was told that he would return to work when it was safe to re-start employment. He told me, “I can still move; my unemployment pays me enough to pay for rent.” When unemployment stops, I should be back at work and it will be fine.” But I also heard his ambivalence, “I don’t know if this is smart. I feel like I should make sure that I still have my job, even though they told me I can come back.”
What are we noticing in this example? The client really wanted to move into his apartment and began to rationalize why it would be okay. However, experience has taught him that during times of financial uncertainty, he may want to limit making big decisions. Due to COVID, he was not able to return to his job and is thankful that he followed his instincts. The logical thought of limiting decisions in uncertain times led to the emotional response of fear. I would say that fear was the emotion that guided him in the right direction.
Our emotions are messengers and huge protectors. The more I think about instinct and following that “gut feeling, ” I believe it works when logic and your emotions are aligned, when you are logically making a decision AND it also feels right. If you were making a logical decision and something doesn’t feel right…I suggest exploring that.
I think some things to analyze would be to explore why we make decisions. Are we making a decision because we think we “should?” Why do we think we “should?” Were we given advice to do something and we are just doing what we were told? Do we want something so badly that we are ignoring all of the signs to make a different decision?
I read that when making big decisions, it may help to be in solitude for a period of time to work out your thoughts and emotions.
I posed the question to my instagram following, “What is intuition?” (Thank you to all those who responded). There were several people who commented that for them, their intuition is tied to their spirituality. I think that intuition can be tied to our spirituality- that are spiritual beliefs help guide us. My overall point is that intuition may not be some “random” emotion. It is common to struggle when considering making decisions on a “hunch.” After exploring this topic, I think it can be empowering to realize that your instincts are coming from a place that stems from your truth (based on knowledge of yourself, the world, and your spiritual guidance). We can’t fight our instincts (our emotional responses), even if we try to rationalize them away. Our emotions are valid messengers and we can feel empowered to explore what they are trying to tell us.