The single most common denominator in the trouble people have is that they don't know what they know, they do not trust their own senses, ignore their better judgment and try to silence that too-small inner voice. It is more typical than most of us imagine for people to shrug and say, "I dunno," when asked how they feel about something or someone. Patients look at their therapists cross-eyed when they're asked to "track a feeling through their body."
Intuition is our shortcut to truth. But it depends greatly on body sensations-gut feelings, not reasoning. Unfortunately, our culture relies heavily on linear thought processes, relegating intuitive leaps to something the "little woman" does, something more often associated with fringe elements of society. Western society demands logical thinking, backed-up by hard evidence provable in court. That is well and good, leading to one level of truth. But there is another route that, on the surface, often appears illogical and eludes formal analysis. Intuitively, we will know that something is right, good, bad, etc...It wouldn't hold up in court, because we do not know how we know. We'll just "know."
There have been changes, though. Starting with the Think Tanks at IBM in the Sixties, Intuition has been re-written with a capital "I" and has become a dear friend of big business, especially over the last decade or so. The WSJ has reported that intuition training at DuPont has generated 100% increases in productivity and new product development time has dropped from three years to three months.
Leslie H. Wexner, CEO of The Limited, has said, "I never conduct formal research. I trust my intuition. It's like taste. I can't describe it." People with the most to lose-and win-depend on their intuitive capacities for their final tallies, often over-riding opinion polls, statistics and standard protocols to do what they know, deep down, is the right thing to do.
INTUITIVE GOOD SENSE In studies done with businessmen, it was revealed that the most successful ones used a combination of logic and free intuition. Being intuitively wise involves more than just "a feeling." It blends creative leaps with good judgment and basic common sense. There are times we may have to ignore what ordinary experience and other people tell us we "should" or "ought" to do/think because the intuitive sense of a situation is so strongly in opposition. However, a rapturous reliance on feeling or any one sense alone can lead us terribly astray.
A story is told about a psychologist who trains a flea to jump when it hears the word "jump." The psychologist pulls off one of the flea's legs and he still obeys the command. This continues with the psychologist removing one leg after the other and the flea following orders, until, one day, the insect, legless, doesn't jump. So, the psychologist induces, "When a flea loses its legs, it can no longer hear."
Almost any therapist working in this area will stress the need for balance. Intuition is based on feeling, but comprised of more. We need to be thoughtful at the same time that we need to learn to listen to ourselves. Not knowing what we know is essentially denial of one form or another. And when we don't see, won't hear, can't acknowledge something that's right in front of us, we get into trouble-or worse. We show exquisitely bad timing, enter into hopeless relationships, take the wrong assignments, run up enormous charges, make terrible investments.
HOW DO WE KNOW? 1. Use Your Head. "Wisdom," it has been said, "is a firm grasp of the obvious." Don't be afraid to judge, discriminate, use past experience, get reality checks from trusted friends or associates.
2. Use Your Senses. If you smell smoke, there's a fire. Somewhere. If the handle is hot, what's in the pot, no doubt, is hot, too. If you hear a scream, something hurts someone. If it tastes bad, spit it out. If you see a bus coming at you, move. If your stomach erupts, something doesn't agree with you.
People ignore their senses all the time. They double-guess themselves, saying, "nah, can't be." But, it can. One woman ignored the distension and discomfort in her abdomen for three months. Those were a critical three months with a building ovarian cancer. One young person walked down a dark street talking himself out of the fear that crept along the back of his neck. He was mugged.
Most of the time, we have an investment in our denial. We want to believe we're fine, because we're scared of finding out we're sick or that something is wrong. We want to believe a partner when he or she says, it's fine, even though we know it's not fine. We want to think of ourselves as courageous and unstoppable (especially when we're young and male), but we put ourselves in danger.
There are millions of ways to acquire information. Sometimes it's pheromonal (hormones, scents), sometimes it's subtle visual cues. Sometimes it's the almost imperceptible shift in tone or color of a person's face or his vocal pattern that alerts us to a potential problem. At times it's the things we can't consciously pinpoint that tell us something is "up." Dogs, cats and other animals seem to be able to sense a coming earthquake. We still haven't figured out how they do that. Could it be shifting electro-magnetic fields?
J. Acosta is a writer and practicing clinical psychotherapist. She has written two books: THE WORST IS OVER (2002, Jodere) and THE NEXT OSAMA (2006). Her third is due to come out some time next year and she is currently in the middle of her fourth.
She has her practice in New Mexico with her canine therapeutic assistants. She has worked with anxiety and fear in patients for twenty years. She has watched it, felt it, wrote about it, and helped heal people from it. As a result, she has learned a few things about fear, particularly that growing epidemic she calls VIRAL FEAR.
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