I'm going to start trusting my intuition over others' claims for the first time in my life
icon: "nascent (a painting by Michael Whelan of a person with long flowing hair and large breasts sitting naked and cross-legged inside a green egg, which is being held against the sky by giant translucent blue hands with pointy nails)"
So today, at age 33, I realized I have never even tried trusting my intuition. After I realize something is a mistake I can easily remember feeling 'off' about someone or something but I never trust that feeling. I always assume that somehow, perceptions external to me are more correct. When my intuition disagrees, I try to get enough data to silence it. My first assumption is that my feeling is wrong. If the thing I am getting a sense about only affects me, I may trust it, but if it affects someone else I always distrust it.
Part of it is because it feels arrogant to me to say, "This person says X about their feelings/behavior/desires but my intuition says Y. I will trust my intuition and act as if they are wrong." Instead, I dismiss my intuition and act as if they are correct, and this almost always turns out to be a mistake. People don't know themselves. I was married to someone who told me over and over how much they liked and admired my ideas, behaviors, and self-understanding until we broke up and then they were like "oh actually I think it's wrong to be queer, pagan, polyamorous, or genderqueer, and I have thought that this whole time." I think the truth was in between, as they didn't have a firm opinion, but my intuition that they weren't fully sincere was correct. It galled me that I sensed that they weren't wholehearted yet dismissed my sense, over and over until I didn't even notice the twinges. There have been other shocking and painful instances of things like this. Sometimes I get completely numb and lost because I am dismissing so many twinges.
Another part is that there is no good way to communicate about this. If I feel like someone doesn't know their own motives and that is what I am basing my decisions on, I can't notsay that if they ask why. But I can't really say it either because there is no way to say it that doesn't sound cruel or dismissive or (at best) super arrogant.
I'm just going to wade into the thorn-bush though because I need to stop ignoring my own feelings and trusting other peoples' interpretations of situations above my own. If it feels wrong to me, I need to honor that. I may be entirely wrong about someone, but I need to be able to make that error instead of constantly erring on the side of self-betrayal. I need to be willing to be disliked, to be considered judgemental or even mean. People thinking ill of me is better than me crushing my own internal barometer. If I get a feeling about someone's motives, I am going to act as if it is correct. If I can, I will check with them first to be sure I have all the information: but if the same feeling comes up over and over, I'm going to trust it.
I'm going to start asking myself questions like "is it the best choice for me to invest in this person?" "do I feel sure this person knows what they want?" "Am I feeling a 'yes' on this or just the absence of no?" and I'm going to trust that even if I am wrong about the actual cause, I am making the right choice about the effect. I will ask myself also (as usual) "do I have a fear or insecurity that might be causing this?" and even if the answer is yes, I will not dismiss my feeling (but I will factor that in).
I was going to say I never get intuitive feelings about people, but then I realized I do, when I do sex work. There's men I just plain stop communicating with because they make me feel unsafe--and that's only through e-mail communication. If e-mails make me feel unsafe, there's no way I'm going to subject myself to their physical presence.
My intuition also saved my mother's life about ten years ago.
I was out for dinner with friends after the last day of the school year. We were at a pizza place literally across from my apartment--I could see our balcony from the table we were eating at.
Out of nowhere, I had this intense feeling that I had to get home. I excused myself and bolted across the street and upstairs to our apartment. I found Mom screaming on the bathroom floor and called 911.
She'd had a brain aneurysm start to rupture.
She was taken to the local hospital, then air-lifted to Vancouver for surgery. She spent the entire Summer at Vancouver General Hospital due to complications, and I stayed at a family friend's place here in Nanaimo during that time.
Miraculously, she's recovered almost completely--certainly beyond what one would expect from what happened to her. Mom has some physical weakness [mostly unable to carry much weight] and has some memory problems, but I'd still call that a 9/10 recovery.
It was my first time ever having to do that for Mom, though.
I can empathize with mental health stuff getting in the way of listening to oneself. Old coping mechanisms from childhood are what make it so hard for me to take my own warning signals seriously.
My spouse had great intuition, mine was lousy.
Another part is that there is no good way to communicate about this. If I feel like someone doesn't know their own motives and that is what I am basing my decisions on, I can't notsay that if they ask why. But I can't really say it either because there is no way to say it that doesn't sound cruel or dismissive or (at best) super arrogant.
This has crossed my mind too and the best method I've found so far is just to say that it doesn't feel right for me. Which I know is very vague but at least it's truthful (in that it's about one's own feelings) without explicitly saying I don't believe you or I don't think you know yourself.
I usually complain about people not meaning what they say, and I sometimes even force myself to accept as true and genuine what people say. But deep inside I know when they just have no idea what they're saying/they're just empty words.
I have such a habit of doing that forcing-myself-to-believe thing, ugh. Gotta unlearn it!
That's why I value people who actively reflect upon themselves, their motives, feelings, and behavior, so highly.
It can be hard to admit to oneself this sense of something being not right with another person, if that other person is really important in one's life. There might be tough consequences linked to trusting that feeling instead of going on believing their words. But it's probably worth it, right?
And the more you trust your gut, the more reliable it becomes, I think.
So true, and a thing I need to keep in mind!
I've been getting better at asking and answering that too. Sometimes I still second guess myself, but it's been getting better with practice.
Oh, I have a similar thing going on, waiting for a sign that knocks me over while ignoring the million gentle pokes. *shakes head* I'm starting to get a bit better though!