“Trust Your Gut”
“Your Brain can play tricks, your Heart can be blind, but your Gut is always right.”
Common wisdom says to trust your gut, but what information are we really getting from our gut? When we talk about a gut feeling, we are talking about one of three things: intuition, instinct, or impulse.
Intuition is understanding something without conscious reasoning.
Instinct is a body-driven behavior that is not based on reason or individual will.
Impulse is a strong and sudden urge to react to a situation.
What is the common denominator between the three? There is no reasoning, no consciousness, and no awareness with any of these. So where does this lead us? We need to understand why gut feelings can be dangerous.
Impulse
Impulse is the most dangerous of the three gut feelings because it is directly driven by the Snake Brain as an urge, which has the same root as the word “urgency”. Urgency is synonymous with not having time so the Snake Brain will act based on reflex swiftly and automatically, with a one-step approach. The first thing that pops into my mind when I think of “impulse” is an impulse purchase. How many of us have purchased something on impulse and, with enough time, thought, “That was a really wise decision!” Not often (vacation souvenirs come to mind… or Vegas drive-thru weddings).
In the case of trauma, impulses are particularly dangerous because the Snake Brain is highly biased towards safety, but to the Snake Brain, what is familiar is safe – after all, you haven’t died going through that same situation over and over yet, despite the fact that it’s a horrible situation. For example, if you survived a highly authoritative and punitive parent, being with an authoritative and punitive partner feels very familiar. The abuse situation (or a repetition of it) gets interpreted as “safe” because you know you have survived it before. The Snake Brain makes the pseudo-logical assumption that because you survived abuse so far, you will be able to continue to survive it. And survival is all that the Snake Brain is in charge of. It does not know, nor care, what happiness is. So an impulse as a gut feeling is the most dangerous situation because it can so easily misguide you while making you feel very sure about your “decision”.
Instinct
Following your instincts is to follow a program installed by nature, it’s biologically wired. But just because instincts are wired, doesn’t mean you can’t use your Sage Brain to override those instructions.
Instincts fall into three general categories: self-preservation, sexual/attraction, and social adaptation. Instincts manage things like our behaviors around hunger and thirst, coupling and sex, rivalry and sociability. The urgent feeling to act is not as immediate as an impulse, so being aware of when you want to act “instinctively” can help you make sure that following those feelings is the wise decision.
Say we’re at a brunch buffet and there are bottomless mimosas. Instinct would have us eat and drink just as much as we could in an effort to hoard calories for survival, but we need to think through whether that’s actually to our benefit (it’s not, as most likely we have calories readily available for consumption at almost all times). We all know bingeing is going to make us feel sick, but most of us have done it (okay, I’ve done it). We’ve also (collectively) probably resisted making inappropriate advances towards someone we find attractive, or held our tongues when we’ve been in social situations and someone has made an offensive remark.
These are some examples of the times our Sage Brain has tempered our instincts. If you just follow your instincts, the good feelings created by acting quickly will soon be counteracted by the bad feedback from your environment if those instincts were contextually inappropriate.
Intuition
Intuition is the best type of gut feeling; it is the least dangerous because it creates the least urgency. Intuition is based on observations or experiences you’ve had – usually around social dynamics, body language, or facial expressions – where your mind hasn’t lifted the details into your consciousness. These are the patterns the Snake Brain recognizes, but that the Sage Brain still hasn’t registered and contextualized.
For example, car salespeople usually have a very good intuition for which customers are actually going to buy a car and which ones are just browsing. We browsers (ahem) think we’re doing a good job pretending to be serious customers, but they know not to spend a lot of time on our inquiries. Good matchmakers (professional and amateur!) also need to have a strong intuition for which pair of people will get along, not necessarily having to do with anything specific in their official profiles.
This is why intuition sometimes works miraculously and sometimes not at all. If you can make the connection to your consciousness, you can work a situation out; if your knowledge stays subconscious, it often is fractured and of limited use.
Conclusion
Our gut is on our side and trying to help us, but we need to develop a better relationship with the feelings it produces. Impulse, instinct, and intuition can come in handy, but they are not as trustworthy in a tight spot as we like to think. Oftentimes there is a catch that needs our conscious attention, and the safest thing to do would be to engage our Sage Brain so that it can bring reason, consciousness, and awareness to our assessment of a situation. You’ll be better off for it.