Trust Yourself

Dr. Lisa Marie Bobby: This is Dr. Lisa Marie Bobby, and you’re listening to the Love, Happiness & Success Podcast. 

[I Know I Know I Know by James Parm plays]

That’s James Parm, and the song is called I know, I know, I know. That’s what we’re talking about today, you guys, is how you can know and trust your intuition. Or here’s the hard part—know when to not trust your feelings because they are, in fact, anxiety, and not intuition. This is a very, very difficult thing to tease apart. But this is something I think we all struggle with. And we have had a number of people—thank you so much if this was you—get in touch through Instagram @drlisamariebobby or @growing_self on Instagram, and through our website growingself.com to ask exactly this question: how do I tell the difference between anxiety and intuition? 

We’ve actually had this question come up in different variants. People asking, “How do I tell if I’m having a healthy thought that’s based on something that I should listen to, and trust, and take guidance from? versus Is this my own kind of tendency to worry about these situations? Am I overthinking unnecessarily? Or is there actually something for me to be worried about?” These are really tough things to wrestle through. But I am going to attempt to help you with this on this episode of the Love, Happiness and Success podcast. 

So if you are one of the people who has gotten in touch recently, with this question or another, thank you so much. I try to really make these podcasts in alignment with what would be most helpful to you. If you are listening to this for the first time, or are a new listener, and would ever like to get in touch, you’re welcome to do this. You can track us down at growingself.com, send an old-fashioned email, Instagram, Facebook, all of the usual outlets. We’re all ears. 

Anxiety or Intuition

All right, so let’s just dive into this topic. Okay, this is a tough one. Have you ever been in a situation where you are getting vibed by someone, or like it’s a new person? Maybe you’re dating a new person, or getting to know a new person, and you’re sort of having a weird reaction to them but you don’t quite know why. When you look at what is actually happening on the surface, it sort of doesn’t add up. They’re not doing anything wrong. They’re not saying anything wrong. Nothing has happened that you’re aware of. But nonetheless, you are having this kind of gut feeling about someone, and you’re not sure if you should pay attention to this. Or if it’s just you thinking weird thoughts, and having anxiety that you shouldn’t listen to. 

I have to tell you, I think that when I talk to clients in—I mean—individual therapy, life coaching clients, but even like couples counseling, and relationship coaching clients, this question comes up more more often than you would think. And because I think that many people really struggle with this. And the difference between intuition and anxiety can be quite tricky to sort through. Let’s just kind of look at this from two different angles here. 

First of all, what is true? Undeniably true is that we all have ideas, interpretations, perceptions, about what’s happening that are only our conscious thoughts after they have been filtered through our set of life experiences, our core beliefs. This is true for everything. I mean, things that make us feel upset or apprehensive, but even totally random stuff too. I mean, you know what I’m going to have for lunch today? My opinion about some of the color shirt that someone is wearing.  I mean extremely benign things that are of absolutely no consequence at all. 

There’s a lot that we sort of take in without even realizing that we’re taking things in, and that we do have opinions or life experiences or judgments on some level. But that we’re not even consciously aware of because that’s something interesting to know about the way our brain works. We have discussed this on other topics, but that there’s so much information around us every day, all the time, constantly. From physical sensations, to noises in our background, to things that we see, things that we hear, things that we could be doing. It is literally impossible for the human brain to consciously hold all of the information we’re receiving all of the time. We sort of have to be selective about what we choose to pay attention to and what we don’t. Otherwise it would just be overwhelming. We’re constantly getting barraged with information. Most of the time, again, we don’t have any reaction to any of this information at all because it’s just not important. 

But there are times when things trigger us. We are in situations where all of a sudden, we start to feel threatened, or uncomfortable, or worried, or suspicious. At that time, we then have to make a conscious decision about what do I want to do with this feeling. Is this something I should take action on? Is this something that I should do, like a manual override and keep going? I talk to people a lot about this especially in the context of dating or other relationships. But even like in career coaching situations, and I’ll tell you why in a second, but that’s really what we’re what we’re talking about today. 

When it comes to relationships, there is information that’s coming at us on all these different levels. There’s oftentimes a difference between what our emotional minds are sensing or noticing, what we term intuition versus, like, our conscious thoughts about “this is why I’m doing that,” “this is why I have decided,” “this is a person that I’d like to get to know better or not.” Our conscious mind is seeking factual information. But there are other parts of our brain that do not operate on factual information the same way, but are still quite reliable sources of information. It can be really challenging, I think, to figure out when do you trust that? When do you not? 

I am just a full transparency. I mean, I’m like everybody else. I have had this situation happen to me these days, when I am confronted with that. I have a nagging feeling or thought about a person, but it doesn’t quite add up. I have to figure out, “Okay, what do we want to do with this?”  

Recently…Well, I should say over the last couple of years, in my role here at Growing Self—so you know, I’m the founder and clinical director. But I also participate in decisions about who we want to add to our team, like as a new therapist, or coach, or couples counselor because we’re super, super selective about who we work with. When we’re interviewing people, they have to have like criteria in terms of their education, and the schools that they come from, the types of therapy that they practice, or their coaching education.So to kind of get in the door, they have to have all the stuff, the pedigree. 

But when—even that, our bar is pretty high for that, and most people honestly don’t make it further. But then there’s this other thing where we’re talking to prospective therapists or coaches, and they seem nice, they seem personable, they seem competent, they seem like they probably do a good job. But then, there’s just this weird feeling. Sometimes not even a feeling when I’m with them in the meeting. Although I’ve had that too in the first meeting. We had numerous interviews with people. But the first or second time that I’m getting to know them. Even after that first meeting, it’s like, there’s this weird aftertaste like I’m sort of left with this feeling. It’s almost like an energetic feeling, although I hesitate to use that word because what I’m talking about here is not like some woowoo, Hocus Pocus, psychic thing. This is just different sources of information that all of our brains have access to. But it’s like not intellectual conscious information doesn’t mean that it isn’t valid. 

The way I often experienced this, it’s like, there’s this weird, just sort of troubled—like, “I don’t know” feeling. And that feeling is often in direct contrast, because when I kind of scroll back through the situation and the things they said, and their answers to questions like it was absolutely appropriate, from an intellectual rational point of view. It all added up. They had great qualities, objective, they lead, they would be a nice addition to the team. And it’s like, “I can’t figure out why I have this feeling,” and it drives me crazy. Because then I’m sure you can relate to this—you’re put in a situation where you’re like, “Okay, do I give this person a chance? Do I kind of go into this more deeply with them? Do I try this and see how it goes?” 

I’m also sort of wrestling with myself around the troubling feeling that I have, like an artifact of my own life experience? Do they remind me of someone that I had a bad experience with? Am I sort of projecting some of my weird anxieties onto them? it isn’t true that I am thinking or feeling things that are not actually in alignment with reality. So what do I do if I listen to this feeling that I feel troubled and then it isn’t linked to any sort of reality? Then, I have missed an opportunity to potentially work with a very cool new person who would do a great job and be fabulous. Or do I trust this feeling and listen to myself and say, “Thanks, but no thanks. I’m sure you’d be a valued member of some other team, but this isn’t going to be the right place for you.” you’d be surprised at how often this happens. And I know that as you’re listening to me share this, you can relate. I know you can because it happens to all of us. 

If you are in a relationship with a significant other, particularly if you are dating and out there, like meeting new people and trying to get a sense of who people are. Or even with friends, family members—we’re all sort of like what is happening here. Again, trying to sort through: what’s me? What’s my stuff? What are my trust issues? We talked a couple weeks ago about trust issues, and relationships, and that is such a real thing. 

If you have trust issues in relationships, you will frequently routinely feel kind of doubting, and mistrustful of people who are not doing anything wrong because it’s what you’re sort of carrying around with you from one relationship to another. But then there’s also the converse is that—this is what makes it so confusing. Even if you have trust issues, it doesn’t mean that you might not have a spidey sense feeling about someone that you shouldn’t listen to. I think it was Kurt Cobain, the late great, “Just because you’re paranoid doesn’t mean they’re aren’t after you.” That’s where it gets so confusing, I think for everyone, is like to figure out, what do I listen to and what do I can’t? 

Again, like just going a little bit deeper into this idea because this is actually one of the things that can help you, slash, all of us sort through whether or not we’re having feelings that we should trust, or override. Whether it’s anxiety, whether it’s intuition, is that if you have an anxious attachment style, or an avoidant attachment style, for that matter, you will, just by virtue of the way you typically feel around people, be kind of vigilant for signs that other people might be up for something. You might have worries about people’s commitment to you. Whether or not you can trust them, whether or not they are going to be reliable, worthy partners for you.

It will be sort of your tendency in relationships to get activated over things that too—Like somebody else standing right next to you looking at the same situation would be perceived as being a fairly neutral thing. They would not have the same kind of emotional reaction, or sort of instinctive reaction that will feel very much like intuition. They won’t have that same thing that you would because you tend to not trust people as easily. You tend to feel a little anxious in relationships, or have trust issues. It’s very, very important if you want to have a better sense, I guess, because it’s never possible at the end of the day to know for sure what’s anxiety, and what’s intuition. But to become very aware of your own patterns. 

That kind of self-awareness knowing “I routinely feel this way in my interactions with many different people. I’ve felt this way before and it’s turned out to be nothing,” is really important information for you to have so that you can be thinking about that, “I’m having this feeling about this person, is this part of my usual MO?” Is this what I do? Because if the answer to that is yes, there’s a good chance that this is related more to your anxiety than it is an actual specific thing related to this person, that you should do something about. Again, there is no way of knowing. You can frequently feel anxious about other people, and feel that way with a new person, and they are actually untrustworthy. So again, I’m going to give you more like tips and strategies to help kind of parse through this. But like, there’s that. 

Intuition vs Anxiety 

But step one, if you want to tell the difference between anxiety and intuition, notice your own internal dialogue, particularly in situations that are fairly neutral. You are out to lunch with someone—again this is like in a hypothetical world when any of us are able to go out to lunch with friends. Your person goes and goes to refill their soda out of the machine, and doesn’t ask you if you want to refill. Does that trigger you? Do you attribute a lot of meaning to that? Do you label this person as being selfish or not caring about you? Or do you feel anxious, and get activated, and want to talk about that? Is that part of what you do? Not that there’s anything wrong with that. But it’s like, knowing, “Oh, yes, this is a thing for me.” 

If you tend to have an avoidant attachment style, you will tend to kind of pick other people apart. You know whether or not you do it out loud, but you’ll sort of have this running commentary in your mind that kind of criticizes other people. And notice if, slash, when that shows up—if it sort of shows up a lot of the time, and makes you feel certain ways about people, just your knowing that that’s a tendency, is 80% of the game. When you can be able to…if you’re having funny feelings about people that you will know, “Is this unusual for me?” Because that can be one indication, this is actually an intuition thing, or your mind is giving you information that you should pay attention to. What we’re talking about here is…let me let me just back up for a second, because in case I didn’t really talk about this clearly. 

Feeling or Thinking 

We all know things that are true without knowing why we know that they are true, which sounds very confusing. But again, going back to this idea that there are different sources of factual information that are received by your brain without the benefit of conscious awareness or thought. But just because we’re not thinking about them, or they’re not—we’re not perceiving them as intellectually accurate data points, doesn’t mean that they’re not true, and reliable, and valid and that they need to be paid attention to. 

Because, again your brain is doing all kinds of processing that is outside of your conscious awareness. If we were consciously aware of everything that our brain was doing, your head would drop off, it’s just too much. So, even when you’re not having conscious thoughts about, “Hmmm. That looks like a nice person because she just sort of nodded her head, and tilted it a little bit, and smiled at me. She’s making sort of affirming noises, that means that she’s like, connected with me. She’s interested in what I’m saying.” That is not actually an internal dialogue that you’re having most of the time. What is happening is that your brain is absorbing all of these tiny, tiny little details, particularly when it comes to people because we are highly evolved social animals.

Your brain has so many hardwired systems baked into it that are there for the purpose of assessing social connection. Are other people dangerous or not? How do I stand with this person? And there’s all this sort of neurological machinery that is only there to read faces, notice gestures, I mean, the tone of somebody’s voice. These are all things that get absorbed, and sort of computed without being a conscious thought in your head. Your brain is just doing this all the time. So because this is happening, we can be gathering a ton of valuable information about people, about situations, about relational dynamics, about whether or not somebody is telling the truth, or is trustworthy, all of these things that are never consciously noticed and registered by that conscious part of your mind. 

How they do come into informing you is through a feeling. You feel good about someone without consciously knowing why. Or you feel badly about someone without consciously knowing why, because it has not been a conscious part of your brain that has been gathering this information. Now, there are people who have written extensively on this topic, about different layers of your brain, and how to take influence, and guidance from all of them. 

One of my very, very favorites on the subject, and I would encourage you to read it if you’re interested to learn more about all of this, and it’s an amazing book. Anyway, the book is called The Gift of Fear. The author is Gavin de Becker. He talks about using this kind of subconscious, highly-aware part of our brain to protect ourselves from dangerous situations. The Gift of Fear is like a scary book, in some ways. I mean, he’s talking about how to understand if you’re in the presence of a predator, or somebody who wants to hurt you, so that you can stay safe by trusting your intuition, which is this primal part of your brain that understands things that your conscious brain doesn’t. 

He also talks a lot about how we have a tendency to take messages from our intuition, aka more primal evolved parts of our brain and that our conscious brain can discount them, discredit them. I think that’s something that we all need to be aware of. 

What we’re talking about in this podcast today is certainly not at the level that Gavin de Becker is talking about, like basic safety issues. We’re really talking about how to trust your intuition and sort of a garden variety relational situations. But here’s one quote from the book that I think would be really helpful to our discussion today. The quote is, “What many others want to dismiss as a coincidence or a gut feeling is, in fact, a cognitive process. It is faster than we recognize and far different from the familiar step-by-step thinking that we rely on so willingly. We think conscious thought is somehow better. When in fact, intuition is a soaring flight compared to the plodding of logic.” 

What he’s referring here to is this more elemental part of your brain that is so highly-attuned particularly to other people, knows things in what feels like a flash. It bypasses conscious thought it’s like you don’t even know why you know something, but all of a sudden, you know something and it is just the truth. When it comes to things like fear,if you feel afraid, you do not have to ask anybody questions. You do not have to figure out why you feel afraid. I would implore you and if you read this Gift of Fear book, you’ll arrive at the same conclusion: to act on that feeling every time if you feel afraid. Trust it, and figure out the rest later. Don’t don’t wait. Don’t linger. Don’t try to justify your feelings of fear if you feel afraid, it’s okay. 

That is actually—when we’re assessing couples, and it is not a specialty here at Growing Self—but domestic violence is a thing in relationships. Again, we don’t provide that kind of counseling. If you’re in a relationship where you are being hurt, or your kids are being hurt, you need very specific kinds of help. We don’t do that here. I would encourage you to get into the hotline.org. It’s a website with more resources that can help you. 

One of our screening questions when we suspect that there might be something like that is going on, is that we try to get two people apart and simply ask, “Do you feel afraid of your partner?” And when people say yes, nothing else matters. We don’t need to parse apart. Okay? Well, exactly what happened and what was said? And it doesn’t meet the level of criteria to be considered that we’re done. If you feel afraid of another person, you act on that. Irregardless of your history, irregardless of your reason why, your feelings of fear should always be trusted, until proven otherwise. Right? 

Now, again, the thing that makes this really confusing is that while you should always trust—it is also true. That if you have been in relationships in the past where you weren’t safe with other people, particularly if you grew up in a volatile family where safety was not something that you could count on. You are going to be highly attuned to whether or not you’re safe with other people. Small signal, you’re going to be incredibly perceptive. You may have a tendency to override what you know, and form attachments to people who are unwell because it feels familiar and because it feels like, what you know. So expect that you will have a highly attuned spidey sense, and you will have a tendency to override that. 

Self Development

When you are in relationships with healthy people who are there to have a secure, safe, trustworthy attachment with you, it will feel uncomfortable.You may feel not, like, afraid for your life. But you will probably feel triggered by things that healthy people with healthy boundaries are doing in relationships because you’re not used to it. Again, this goes back into what I was saying previously, that part of being able to parse apart, what is my intuition versus what is anxiety is having done a lot of work on yourself. So that you know, “These are my patterns. I have had bad experiences with people in the past, and so because of that, this is how I habitually feel.” 

It takes, I think, a long time in therapy to understand that and kind of make peace with that past because when you feel uneasy with people, or worried if you can trust them, it doesn’t always mean that something bad is happening. Particularly if you’d have a difficult history because of that filter. If you generally struggle to feel okay in relationships, and trust people, and often find yourself needing to work on managing anxiety. When you recognize that for what it is, you become much better able to regulate those thoughts and feelings so that you can stay connected to people in a healthy way. That will be the work, is getting to know what you usually do and figuring out how to manage that so that it’s not disruptive to your relationships. So there’s that. 

Individual Therapy

There may be some of you resonating to this right now. If you want to do more work in this area, honestly, like therapy, or sometimes coaching. But honestly more often therapy is a good way of kind of getting into, “Have there been experiences in relationships that made me feel a little afraid of other people, or made me not trust people that maybe are trustworthy? What is my history?” 

So it’s really like, “Is my history consistent with me having stuff to work on in that area?” My goodness, who isn’t? If you’ve been in a relationship that wound up being hurtful to you, if you were bullied as a kid if your parents were not ideal, there’s gonna be stuff, and that’s not that there’s anything horribly wrong with you. It’s part of the human experience, and it’s part of our responsibility to be aware of what our crap is so that we can take responsibility for it, manage it, work through it, or… 

When I say work through it, what I mean is, you know that it’s not always possible to make those old artifacts go away. We cannot banish them from our experience, but what we can do is become extremely familiar with them. So that way they don’t get to break crap in our lives as adults. Right? So it isn’t that you’re never going to feel apprehensive in relationships, it’s that you’re going to be able to say, “I know that I often feel apprehensive in relationships, and here’s what I know.” And that you have strategies for being able to manage that so that even if you have anxious feelings, you can still be the person that you want to be in your relationships, and have healthy relationships. You don’t wind up pushing away, or hurting other people because of your own anxiety because that’s a risk, as we’ve talked about on past podcasts. 

Trust Yourself

But here’s the other thing that may may make you feel better, or may make you feel worse, is that while we can carry habitual anxiety or mistrust into different situations with us, there is also a thing that is true, which is that it’s very, very easy to discount feelings of apprehension, or misgiving, or “No. I don’t know about that person. Kind of a bad feeling, or a hunch,” very easy to talk yourself out of those feelings when you should, in fact, be listening to them. 

Going back to the Gift of Fear book, just another quick quote here, “With judgment comes the ability to disregard your own intuition, unless you can explain it logically. The eagerness to judge and convict your own feelings, rather than honor them.”. That is the other side of this coin is that we all have access to this sort of subterranean part of our brain that is providing us with highly reliable intuition and information and the work isn’t, “Okay, this is just me in my anxiety.” The work is figuring out, “How do I give myself permission to listen to this without brushing it off, without doubting myself, or talking myself out of it?” This is really important because it happens. It’s happened to me personally. 

Going back to my story about when we’re hiring people, or seeking to connect with new counselors on the team here at Growing Self. There have been a number of times over the years, I’m less likely to do it now because of the work that I’ve done. But a number of times over the years where I have had a not good feeling about someone, and the only way to describe it is like—the sort of dread, or apprehension, or not wanting to schedule another meeting with them. Not wanting to interact with them is the only way that I can describe it. But intellectually, I had that same experience of like, “No, she has amazing training. I mean, I don’t think we’ve had a candidate who’s had this kind of training, and all the experience that she’s had. We’ve been looking to connect with somebody good, who’s licensed in this state for a long time. Her references had good things to say about her. So I’m just, This is just my crap. And I’m going to override it.” Not always has it come to fruition. 

There are a couple of times when I had a not so great feeling about someone it turned out to be fine. But I tell you what, nine times out of 10 when I have overwritten that feeling, I have come to regret it. It wasn’t immediately the other shoe didn’t drop until sometimes a year or two out. But when it did, I was like, “Oh, I knew it. I knew it.” If you think back to situations in your own life, where you wound up getting hurt, or disappointed, or trusted somebody that maybe you shouldn’t have from that—the place of hindsight. If you’re really honest with yourself, I would bet you a cookie that you would have that same conversation that you would be like, “I knew it. When I first met her, I knew something was off. I had that little sense, talked myself out of it, and then X,Y, Z happened.” We’ve all been there. How do you get familiar with that experience, and pay attention to it, and learn how to trust it? This is true in little ways, and in big ways. 

As a marriage counselor, I have been in on three occasions, there have been three because they were so distinctive. But on three occasions, I have worked with couples where one person has been persistently anxious, fearful, that their partner is doing something that they shouldn’t be doing. In all three of these situations, it was people in the either in the aftermath of an affair, it was two of them. In one of them, it was in the aftermath of a partner who previously had a substance use disorder that they’ve since gone into treatment for. So in all three of these situations, I had one person who was like, “This doesn’t feel right. I’m not safe. I don’t trust them.” In the context of their partner, saying the right things, doing the right things that we had talked about, and objectively not giving any evidence that they were continuing with an affair, or using substances, or anything like that. To the point where the people who were so worried about their partners, or was actually like, “I need you to take a polygraph test because I feel like I’m losing my mind. I need to take a lie detector test because I am having these thoughts and feelings but you’re telling me that this isn’t true, and I don’t know what to believe.” 

I will tell you that on every single one of those occasions—all three—if somebody was like, “No.” And you say a lie detector test because this is how crazy I feel. Every single one of those times, it emerged that the people were actually doing exactly what their partners were afraid that they were doing. I will tell you that two of the people refused to take a polygraph test, they never did. The one who did take the polygraph test passed it. Sociopaths are people who have convinced themselves that they’re not doing anything wrong, or don’t really feel remorse, or guilt in the way the rest of us do. They will pass a polygraph test. So that’s that’s only one of the reasons why white polygraph tests are not admissible in court; it’s because they are not always accurate barometers of the truth. But nonetheless, the true story did emerge over time. Every single one of those people who was like, “I do not trust you. I don’t know why I don’t trust you but I don’t”, were right. 

I have also been in situations where I’m working with an individual client, either in therapy or coaching, and part of what they’re trying to work out with me is the fact that they’re in a relationship, and they are having an affair. They are cheating on their partner and I—no judgment right there. They’re here with me in therapy or coaching because they’re trying to get clarity around what they want to do, and that is valid. This is a safe, non-judgmental space, no matter what is going on. Right? 

But irregardless, working with individual clients who are cheating on their partners, or doing other kinds of things that their partners would be very unhappy with if they knew about. They’re telling me that they’re working very hard to conceal this from their partner. They’re being absolutely aboveboard. They’re covering their tracks. Their partner has no information. But their partners are still having these weird emotional reactions. They’re getting upset. They’re accusing them of things. They’re being suspicious. They’re being emotionally, kind of clingy with them. My clients are like, “What’s wrong with them?”  What I tell them is what I will tell you, which is that, “Yes, your partner doesn’t have all of the factual information but they can feel the truth of the situation. They know what is happening even though they don’t know. They still feel the truth and you can’t hide that,” which is disturbing for my clients. So we’re trying very hard to conceal things sometimes to know is that they can’t actually hide. 

That their partners are having anxiety, and apprehension, and suspicions about the relationship based on other sources of information besides what they rationally, factually, know. Yes, you will be pleased to know that one of my goals is always to help my clients achieve congruence, to bring it out in the open, and allow their partners to make fully informed decisions about whether or not they would like to continue that relationship under these circumstances,that does have to be a goal. But that’s not where we start. But I think it’s important to have these in mind. 

Again, this is so hard because if you tend to have trust issues in relationships anyway, what I just shared with you probably scared the heck out of you. That there are situations where people in relationships feel very suspicious, they are actually being lied. There is gaslighting happening, and they have to figure out do I trust my partner? Or do I trust the way that I feel? 

So how to tease this apart? Again, if you are very, very, very well aware of your own patterns in relationships, that’s a big part of the battle. If, in every single relationship you have ever had since the time that your partner had an affair, and you didn’t know, and it was totally traumatic. If ever since then you worry a lot, that is a good indicator that it could be anxiety. Unless you haven’t done the personal growth work around, “What led me to choose a person that I had that kind of suspicion about to begin with?” Or “Is there something in my pattern around the kind of partners I choose that I’m habitually, either not noticing warning signs in relationships, or if I’m making choices, sort of seeking a personality type?” We’re going to be talking about narcissists. Soon, my friends. But like, “Am I attracted to narcissists, who would be more likely to do these things to me? I mean, it requires a lot of self-awareness to know that so that you can make informed choices based on what you know about yourself as opposed to what someone else is telling you.

Anxiety Support 

The way that we figure this out, is often through a lot of personal growth work. Again, therapy is a great vehicle to come in, and say, “I’m feeling anxious in my relationship, and I can’t figure out if it’s because there’s something bad actually happening to me, or if this is my old stuff.” Even coaching I think can be helpful around getting clarity around what you know about yourself and whether or not this situation is in alignment with what you usually do and what you usually think and how you usually feel, or whether or not this is an aberration. 

Also, another strategy to kind of get that clarity is not just through like, rationally, “Okay, is something bad happening? Did something bad happen?” Because that is not always in alignment with the truth. What you know is not always the same thing as what that intuitive part, that automatic part of your brain knows. But to be able to kind of talk through it with a neutral third party who does not have any skin in the game. So it’s not your mom, it’s not your best friend who kind of hates your boyfriend a little bit anyway. But somebody else. You could say, “Okay, this is what’s happening. This is my history. What do you think?” Have somebody look at that and be like, “No, that doesn’t actually sound weird to me.” Or, I can’t tell you how many situations I’ve been in where I have had an individual client come to me with exactly that question. “I think I need to work on my trust issues. Let me tell you what’s happening in my relationship”. And I’m like, “Oh, my God.” I will—I’m annoyingly honest. So I will say “Based on what you’re telling me, It sounds like you maybe do have some things to be worried about. How could you find out for sure, whether or not those things are happening, and the relationship that isn’t just asking your partner about it.” 

If you’re worried that they’re not being honest with you because to my ear, this sounds consistent with somebody who’s up to something. So it’s like, looking at it with somebody else who is neutral. That is actually another one of the strategies that can be really helpful if you’re trying to figure out, “Okay. Is this my intuition talking to me?” Is like, I don’t know, there was a movie that came out years ago. I think it was called A Brilliant Mind. It had Russell Crowe, and he was a math professor who struggled with schizophrenia. Part of the way his illness presented itself was that he would see things that weren’t there. There was this cute little moment at the end of the movie after he had done a lot of work, where he saw one of the characters that he often saw when he was in the grips of his illness, and she sort of pulled aside a student in one of his classes and he’s like, “Do you see somebody standing there?” The student was like, “Nope.” He was like, “Okay, just checking.” But it’s sort of like that. It’s like, can you borrow somebody else’s brain to say, “What do you think about this? Am I making something out of nothing here?” 

I have to tell you, what I have learned to do for myself, at Growing Self, when it comes to how we find really high-quality therapists, or marriage counselors, or coaches to work with is that we do interviews as a team now. So it’s not just one person having to make sense of all of this. Before anybody starts with us, we have a series of interviews, but also at least one where there are multiple people on the team with that person. Then after that, we can compare notes like, “Did you have a little bit of a weird feeling about that person?” Or even prior to that have made it okay, for anybody who interviews somebody to begin with to say, “I have a weird feeling about this person.” And the response is, “Tell me more.” 

It’s very interesting because what I have often found—and I found this with dating coaching clients—I found those with therapy clients. Somebody has a weird little gut feeling that I learned they aren’t sure if they should listen to or not. It doesn’t make sense. But then like, when we sit down, I’m like, “Okay, tell me why. If you had to give that little feeling in the pit of your stomach, a voice, what would it say?” And we just let it talk without any judgment. We’re not criticizing it. We’re not trying to evaluate, whether or not it is true. It’s just like, free associate for the next five minutes. 

What I hear people say, is really like factual information that this deeper part of their brain had been picking up, making associations, lining up all these little dots. And when they verbalize it, it’s like, “Oh, yes. Then you know what, she was a little bit late to that first meeting. Then she had this weird pause when I asked her about the case that she found hardest,” or whatever it was. “But as we talked through it, it’s like, oh, no, there was actually stuff there. But I didn’t really know at the time, what I was picking up on until I’m telling you about it right now.” 

That is very often the case with counseling and coaching clients too. It’s that they have a feeling they’re like, “Yes. I’ve been kind of texting with this guy. But I don’t think I want to go out with him. But I don’t really know why because he checks all the boxes. He seems really nice, but I just have this feeling.” And I’m like, “Okay. Well, let’s just—how does that feeling make sense for a minute?” And when people give it a voice, it’s like, “Oh, yes. Let’s actually not pursue this.” 

That’s the other side of this coin that I think, the same sort of process of self awareness can offer, is that when you have had intuitive feelings about people—first of all, flush it all the way out. Why does it make sense to kind of get in the habit of learning how to not talk yourself out of it, or criticize yourself for it? Or if you have—I have a tendency for the intellectual part of my brain to—if I have a gut feeling because I’m a thinker. I’m an idea person. So I’m like, “Okay. Well, let me tell you 57 reasons why that’s not true, why I shouldn’t listen to it.” I’ve done a lot of work on myself, just knowing that I have that tendency that I try really hard now to not do that and sort of elevate my intuitive ideas that don’t really make sense. Like, how do I practice trusting those more? 

Also, another great exercise that can help you with this is to scroll back in your life and be like, “Okay, what were the times that I knew on some level something wasn’t quite right, and I didn’t listen to that?” Or maybe you did listen to it but that it wasn’t justified. Like in time, all the information came out, and that you’re apprehensive, or uneasy feelings about someone were spot on. Asking yourself questions like, “How did that feeling show up for me when I know I should have trusted it, but I overrode it?” Because it’s not a conscious thought. It’s for many people, like almost a physical feeling. 

What I have learned for me, again, that it’s like a feeling of dread, or like kind of wanting to avoid someone. The sort of like, if somebody starts to make you eat something that’s like, a little bit gross. You’re like, “No.” It’s this visceral sort of feeling. But I had to get acquainted with what that feels like for me. Iit may feel very, very different for you.  I’ve had clients where it feels just sort of like this cold feeling, or they’re around somebody, and they sort of feel like crying and they don’t know why. I mean it can show up in many different forms. But it’s figuring out what the language of your intuition is. 

I will also tell you that one of the differences between intuition and anxiety, where anxiety is often very familiar, it’s your MO. It’s like all and it feels like worry. Right? When you know things about people or situations that are coming from that intuitive part of your mind, it often feels like, or is experienced, like a fully formed thought out of nowhere that is not attached to anything else. You’re just sitting at the breakfast table, eating your cereal, not thinking about anything staring at a wall, and all of a sudden, it’s like, “Oh, my God. This is happening.” There’s that you’re getting a transmission sort of quality to it. That’s a sign of intuition. 

Similarly, dreams—I have dreams about all kinds of things. Most of them have absolutely no basis in reality, thank God. I’ve never been actually chased around by a giant rabbit yet. But you know, we’ll see. But I have had dreams and I’ve noticed that there’s like a special quality to these dreams, though. I have—over the years—learned how to recognize message dreams from other just random brain processing kinds of dreams. In my world, they are often related to business. 

I actually have had the experience on multiple occasions of having had issues happening in my business, Growing Self Counseling and Coaching, that were operational or related to people that I was working with. It were never a conscious thought in my head until I had a dream about it. Then I went and investigated it. It was like, “Oh, this thing is happening.” I had no idea. It was like—and I do not believe that I am psychic. I believe that that deeper part of my brain was just sort of like paying attention to little random things that I consciously was not, and it added them all up, and it offered. “Here’s the sum total of all the things that I’ve added up for you, Lisa, in the form of a dream.” Or is this, sometimes just sort of these thoughts out of nowhere. 

So feelings that are different from anxiety, feelings out of nowhere, thoughts, dreams. Then also, when you do have the opportunity to talk through why it does make sense. What comes out, if you don’t judge yourself? Because, again, if it is an intuition and something trustworthy, when you do give it a voice, your intuition will make perfect sense. As you lay it all out, it’ll be like, “Oh, yes. I do actually need to listen to this.” 

So I hope that these ideas have helped you just kind of get a sense of what’s anxiety, what’s intuition. If we were to recap, self-awareness with anxiety—when you are feeling anxious, what tends to trigger you? Why does that make sense? How does it show up? Is this a pattern for you? Also intuition,when you happen right in the past, how did you know? What do you do when you try to talk yourself out of stuff that maybe you should stop? Also what feels different? The intuition is going to be different from usual anxiety most of the time. Having tools in place that will help you sort it through, does this make sense for me to listen to? Is this anxiety that I should probably override? Giving yourself ways to open the door for intuition. 

I have shared with you some of the strategies that I used to tell the difference between anxiety and intuition and some of the things that I do with my clients. But you know what? I also think that we should crowdsource this one. If you have things that you have learned over the years have helped really, you tell the difference between anxiety and intuition, like what those ringers are? I would love it if you would share because I don’t want this to be just about me and my ideas, because this is so unique. I think that particularly with this question of how to trust yourself, I think that we develop more confidence and ability to trust ourselves when it’s actually confirmed, when we can kind of compare it to what other people do. 

So be part of this conversation, come over to growingself.com/trust-yourself. growingself.com and trust yourself with a hyphen there, and share your story, times that you have trusted your intuition, and it worked out. Maybe times that it was actually anxiety and how you were able to figure out the difference. I think that being able to compare and contrast our different experiences will be a lot of fun.

So join me, growingself.com/trust-yourself. I will be eager to see what you share, and I’ll be back in touch with you next time for another episode of the podcast.