“Go with your gut,” is a piece of wisdom that has been passed on for generations. Perhaps it worked well for our parents, and their parents, because well, their lives weren’t as stressful as ours. But, for our always-slightly-anxious generation, this dictum is frustrating. You see, oftentimes, when we should have a gut feeling about something, we are plagued by catastrophic thoughts that we’re not sure is our instinct, or just fear. But, there is a way to tell the difference.
Your gut feeling is a culmination of a process which we call instinct. Instinctive knowledge is knowledge that we accumulate from experience and learning, of our own as well as, sometimes, from observing others. This basically means that our gut feeling is ultimately rooted in evidence, in that it is an evidence-based hypothesis that we make about something in our life. When we go through experiences, we learn things, and we store these lessons in our “gut,” which is where the enteric nervous system is. The term “gut feeling” is quite literal, because it comes from our ENS, which is in the intestine. Now, when we are confronted with a situation where the patterns and dynamic are similar to a past situation, and spell danger, our gut says something is amiss. The gut feeling is not an assumption that exactly this is wrong. But, more a silent whisper that says, “Something’s up. Watch out”.
Now, when we feel fearful in a situation, it can be confusing to differentiate it from gut feeling because usually our fears also come from something that has happened in the past. To differentiate between the two, ask yourself this: WHAT ABOUT THE PRESENT SITUATION IS MAKING ME FEEL FEARFUL? If it is irrational fear, then you will not be able to answer this question. At the felt level, fear can cloud our mind and be paralysing, whereas our gut feeling feels like it gives us clarity, and can – if we listen to it – make us feel stronger.
Listening to your gut is not something that you can just decide to do one morning. It’s a skill you have to develop. Once you start paying attention to your inner voice, you’ll find that your gut feeling or your instinct is more like a quiet, comfortable, neutral knowing, whereas fear is loud and insecure, and feels more like overthinking. Gut feeling stops at “I feel this,” whereas fear goes “I feel this, and oh my god, I bet this is happening. I can’t do this. I have to make it stop. Fuck this shit. I can’t believe it. It must be this way. It can’t go right. Nothing can ever go right… ” You get the drift.
There are two key factors to start building the habit of listening to your gut – calm your mind, and build body awareness. Your body reacts to everything you go through before your conscious mind does. If something is a gut feeling, your body will not go into a frenzy, but if something is a fear, your muscles will tighten, breath will shorten, palms might get sweaty.
The thing is, we do know everything – even the difference between gut feeling and fear. We just have to learn to listen to ourselves!
