Are You Letting Your Intuition Guide You or Your Trauma Mislead You?
This is undoubtedly a powerful question and yet one that most people will never consider in their day to day decision making. In fact, most of us won’t realize when our own trauma takes over and forces us into a decision — in a flash your conscious mind reminds of you of your past pain and disappointment and tells you, “Don’t do that. Remember that time when….” Or my personal favorite and go to, “I’m not good enough. I’ll never be able to do that.” All the while your subconscious mind (commonly referred to as our “gut”) is trying to encourage you to step into the next level of yourself — to be courageous in a moment of purpose.
This battle rages on day after day and the reality is that most of us are making decisions based on avoiding pain rather than seeking pleasure and purpose. Why? Because it is a shit ton easier to stay where we are, blame the bad things that happened to us, so we can avoid pain rather than put ourself out there in the face of a challenge and grow from it.
Having said that — I understand many of us have had serious trauma in our lives. I am not here to tell anyone their trauma is BS. I am definitely not here as a therapist or self proclaimed expert in helping people get over their trauma. You should seek help from a qualified coach or therapist if you are indeed suffering from past, current, or even the future perception of trauma (yes, people do that last one - they are the dooms day, “what if” people).
What I would like to do in this blog is show you how not overcoming your trauma could be affecting your quality of life — especially if you’re using those traumas as a filter for your decision making. Some of you may not even be aware you’re doing this.
How do you know if your trauma is misleading you? How do you know when you should listen to your intuition?
Let’s break it down.
Quality of Life
There are 5 elements that most powerfully impact your quality of life — your identity, having a compelling future, what you focus on, your physical state, and the language you use. These come together to create the meaning of your life. Let’s break them down so you can better understand why trauma (which is usually based in fear) may be holding you back.
Identity: Identity shapes every choice you make — from who you love, where you work, what you will/won’t believe or attempt, and how you view the world. Essentially, your identity is how you define yourself. If you are identifying as a person who is the sum of all the trauma you have experienced, guess what you will probably experience more of?
Compelling Future: Guiding your actions, both now and moving forward, is the vision you create for your life. This vision propels you into the future and acts as filter for the things you say, “Yes,” to and more importantly, what you say, “No,” to. Oriana and I talk extensively about having a life vision and why it is so important in constructing a compelling future. Your vision should stretch you into becoming the next best version of yourself. The next best version of yourself is hard to reach if you’re using trauma as filter.
Focus: Where your focus goes, energy flows. What most of us don’t realize is that when we are so hyper focused on what it is we don’t want, we actually invite more of that into our lives. An example of this would be the white water rafting guide pointing at the fallen tree and saying, “Don’t hit that.” What happens is your attention will be on the fallen tree and because you’re focused on it, you typically head right for it. Change what you’re focusing on and you will invite more of it into your life.
Hint: your focus is closely related to your vision. Compelling vision = something to focus on
Physical State: Are you taking care of your body? You only get one — are you nurturing it? Are you working on cultivating a stronger body through breathing, hydration, exercise, mindfulness/meditation/prayer, eating correctly, etc. On a deeper level, what physical state do you make decisions from? A slumped over, low energy state or an upright, empowered one?
Language: What kind of self-talk are you using? Is it empowering or is it deprecating? Your conscious mind pays close attention to all that is going on around you — the tv, social media, the news, etc — and it makes decisions about who you are compared to what you see. So when you perceive someone to be smarter, prettier, or more accomplished — do you compare yourself to them and think:
“I wish that was me.”
“I could never do that.”
“They sure are lucky.”
“I’m not smart enough to do that.”
“No one would care or listen if I tried that. They’ll think I’m crazy.”
The words you use to describe a feeling or experience define that feeling or experience. You can intensify any positive or negative emotion or experience just by changing the words you use to describe it.
The way you talk to yourself can be your biggest asset of your biggest downfall. Choose your words wisely.
Trauma & Triggers
Some people’s paths lead to pain and other’s lead to lasting pleasure. The problem is that most people don’t know what is shaping or directing their path. Once you understand and appreciate your own path, you have the power to anticipate versus react.
For example, some of us were fighting for the love of one parent versus another. Let’s say you’re mother was the primary person you received affection, grace, and encouragement from, but your father was rigid and often non-affectionate — maybe he always pushed you to be better but never gave you credit when you did something right.
What this potentially does to you is makes you believe that you have to work extra hard to get admiration from men. Or maybe because you were never good enough for your father, you aren’t good enough, period. Those feelings may either force you to take on too much in order to prove yourself or it forces you to shut down because you believe no matter how much you work it’s never going to be good enough.
Here’s another example: You go through a bad relationship (could be personal or business) and it ends in heartbreak or money lost. At this point (in order to avoid future pain) you develop a set of rules (also known as barriers) for your next interaction with a potential partner. You come up with a list of do’s and don’ts as it relates to your next potential relationship.
The problem with this — we don’t take a look at ourselves and contribute to our growth, so that we become better people. We expect others to be different while we stay the same.
These thoughts and feelings become the model of our world — and anytime we’re faced with the feeling of “not being good enough,” we are triggered into remembering what it was like to grow up with a father like that, so we make a decision about how we will move forward at that point based on that trauma. Or we remember was it like to not be loved or listened to or respected, so we adopt the mindset of never allowing someone else like that into our world, but we neglect the changes we need to make in ourself relative to that trauma.
I think we can all agree that this is not beneficial and it further perpetuates our own suffering and unhappiness because we are seeking acceptance from a place of FEAR. We expect others to accept that we have triggers that govern our lives and they should be aware of them as to not “trigger us.” This belief system is a fallacy — you are responsible for your triggers, not other people.
Everything that happens to us gets filtered through a system we rely on to sort out how we’re going to respond, often without us realizing it, triggering what we end up doing. But, if we’re conscious and aware of where that stems from, we can change it and change our reaction to it.
Intuition
Intuition or that “gut feeling” comes from a place inside of your brain called the limbic system. This system is NOT void of emotion. It feels. It is the reason why people can not analytically explain why they “love someone.” Have you ever tried to do that? Actually say why you love someone or something and you just come up with, “I don’t know. I can’t explain it. I just feel it.” That’s your limbic system or your “gut feeling” speaking. It is also referred to as your heart — not the one beating in your chest, but your spiritual heart.
Your neocortex is the analytical part of the brain. It process and thinks and determines and computes and often times, over analyzes.
These are the two systems that are at battle during crucial decision making. And guess what, you’re gut feeling is usually the right one. The problem occurs when we feel an initial answer inside of us and then we start to give ourselves all the reasons why we shouldn’t go forward with it. For example: How you ever had friend ask you to help them move? Your initial INTERNAL reaction was, “No, I really don’t want to.” But then you start to think to yourself about all the things they’ve done for you and how they’ve helped you out and how you would be a shitty friend if you said no, so you end up saying, “yes.”
That is a classic battle between these 2 systems. Here’s the issue — some of us are so engrossed in our own traumas that we have completely shut ourselves off to our own intuition. We rely solely on the false analytic perceptions of our head and in doing so we ignore our heart.
Our heart knows we are made for more. Our heart connects us to our vision. Our heart can become a better filter for how we interpret our world. Here’s the scary part and this is why most of us steer away from it and listen to our head — what the heart wants often causes us to stretch ourself and become the next best version of ourself — which is scary.
It causes what’s called cognitive dissonance. Cognitive dissonance is that moment when a person's behaviors and beliefs do not align. If you’re holding onto some trauma based beliefs about yourself and the heart comes knocking—you’re faced with a decision — stick with what is familiar (the illusion of safety) or lean into something new.
This battle will always be about change. Every wants to grow, but few people want to change. Your intuition requires FAITH.
Conclusion
Fear and faith are both made up emotions.
Fear means our beliefs run wild without direction.
Faith means you choose what to believe in. What you choose to focus on will grow.
You are the sum of all your conditioning, so RULE YOURSELF!
Stay Edgy-
Daniel Tribby, ATC, CNP
Co-Founder, The Edgy Entrepreneur
© Edgy Entrepreneur, LLC. • 51 E. Jefferson St. #3292, Orlando, FL 32802 • www.edgyentrepreneurs.com
