9. Emotional Work - Intuition

Emotional awareness, honed over time into intuitive wisdom, is our birthright.

Intuition is the evolved human cousin of the animal instinct – it is our guide and protector, our inner guardian angel. Intuition is instinct plus intelligence, which comes from life experience. While exercising intuition activates multiple regions of the brain, its metaphorical home is in the emotional body, where the physical and energetic bodies meet. In the modern world, with its rules, norms, expectations, concrete jungles, and screen saturation, one’s intuition is often weak from atrophy. But with continued use and practice, like any muscle, it grows in power and accuracy. To be most effective, your intuition requires emotional and mental clarity, which comes from being safe and free enough to feel present emotions, as well as accurately examine your current conditions, past experiences, and possible futures. If the conditions are not right, you have experienced chronic stress or trauma, or you are simply out of practice, your emotional awareness may be blocked, and your intuition will be fuzzy as a result. Like a radio antenna or WiFi signal, if the pathway between source and receiver is obstructed or overloaded, the transmission fails.

So, to improve your intuition, dig deep. Reflect on situations you have faced in the past. Recall how you felt – safe or unsafe? loved or unloved? – whether you listened to your gut, and what happened because of it. Look for damaging habits or patterns that came from forgetting or ignoring your intuition. Make a conscious effort to recognise similar situations as they are unfolding, so you can choose a different path. Practice being honest with yourself, and eventually with others who care, about how you are feeling. In the short term, employing some grounding techniques might be useful if difficult emotions come to the surface while practicing this reflection. Longer-term, you may need the support of a trauma-informed therapist who can establish the protective container and positive relationship needed for you to learn to do this safely.

Take intentional action based on your knowledge of past experiences and your sense of the current situation. See if the actions, and their consequences, serve to make you safer, happier or more content. If so, your intuition is growing stronger – you may wish to keep a log to help you reflect on causes and effects, and celebrate wins where your intuition has successfully guided or protected you through a challenge. Explore whether you would benefit from introducing additional healing practices that get you out of your mind and into your body, where the deepest knowing lies (1). Your system may need some tuning up, which will be explored in the final part of this chapter.

Consider your intuition a compass. It can indicate a way out of the woods, but will not determine your exact path: map-reading is a separate, but related skillset that also requires development. Recognise also that having the time to reflect and develop this level of self-awareness is a privilege not extended to those whose life conditions require that they lie about, deny or obliterate their feeling natures to survive, or whose early caregivers did not support them in understanding and regulating their emotions, often because they themselves never learned how. Addictions to things like alcohol, drugs, sex, food, porn, power, and attention – while understandable as adaptive coping mechanisms for stress and emotional pain – can throw even the best compass off course, and numb us to the messages our intuition brings. If this was, or is, your circumstance, the process of learning to honour and follow your intuition may be particularly difficult, but do not lose heart. This is an ongoing practice which many of us share, where even small improvements add up to meaningful life changes. Emotional awareness, honed over time into intuitive wisdom, is our birthright, as natural to us as our breath and our senses. It is meant to serve us in the same way.

(1) For those with histories of trauma who may find traditional mindfulness practices or body-based awareness difficult, here are some alternative resources:

· Trauma-Informed Mindfulness: A Guide | Psych Central

· 4 Minute Trauma-Sensitive Mindfulness Exercise | Dr David Treleaven

· Healing Racial Trauma through Somatic Anti-Racism Practices | Mariya Javed, MSW, LICSW, LADC