Intuition vs Fear

I got this great message from Judith Orloff MD today in a e-newsletter. It was so great that I wanted to keep an excerpt here where I'd know where to find it.

How To Tell Fear From Intuition

Signs of a Reliable Intuition
•Conveys information neutrally, unemotionally
•Feels right in your gut
•Has a compassionate, affirming tone
•Gives crisp, clear impressions that are “seen” first, then felt
•Conveys a detached sensation, like you’re in a theater watching a movie

Signs of an Irrational Fear
•Is highly emotionally charged
•Has cruel, demeaning, or delusional content
•Conveys no gut-centered confirmation or on-target feeling
•Reflects past psychological wounds
•Diminishes centeredness and perspective

For comparison’s sake, I’ll share radically different examples of how I use the above criteria. One morning I got two calls from frightened patients who both claimed to be hearing voices. Truly a typical day in my office! The first came from Bill, a schizophrenic who’d been skimping on his meds. Bill’s inner “voice” kept haranguing him, insisting he was a bad person, that his food was poisoned, that his son was being raped again by the grandmotherly babysitter. Believing these “delusions” (false beliefs unsubstantiated by fact), he was absolutely unhinged. So Bill kept calling the cops, who sent a squad car out twice, but found no threat. Tolerant but tiring of this, the officers warned that if he contacted them again, they’d haul him off to a psychiatric hospital. My other patient, Jean, had been coping with despair about her brother suffering from end-stage AIDS. Jean’s inner “voice” said to immediately fly to New York to join him, though he’d recently been stable. True of authentic intuitions, it came through clear-as-a-bell, oddly matter-of-fact and followed the typical progression of being “seen first,” then felt.