Intuition
Different people describe and view intuition in various ways. In an online interview, author Thomas Condon writes, “Intuition is a lot like dreaming. We don’t know how we do it, but we do it. Intuition is knowing something, but not knowing how you know it. Intuitive knowledge comes to us spontaneously and directly, without the use of reason or logical thought …”6 Scientists often view intuition in a different light, seeing it as a biological reaction to stimuli, similar to the flight or fight response. Marsha Linehan, founder of Dialectical Behavioral Therapy, compares intuition to what she calls Wise Mind, a mind in balance between emotion and rational logic. In classes, participants have compared intuition to their gut, a sense or knowing, a sixth sense, a belief that we get talked out of, inner self, deep self, the voice inside your head/heart/gut/soul, true voice, or the person under all the social static or noise. A class participant shares their ideas about intuition:
6 www.awakening-intuition.com
Intuition is this sense you have. It’s like you know something that you may not know you know. Which is why I think it is so easy to get talked out of trusting it. It may not make sense. Like you get a weird or off feeling, but there isn’t any “evidence” to justify your feeling so you ignore it. I think we have to learn to trust it even if we can’t “prove” it.
I believe intuition is all of these things and involves three basic components: sensing, knowing, and feeling. Someone might sense that they are being followed as they are walking home and become scared. The sensation that signals fear (tingling in the head, a knot in the stomach, or heat in the face—it’s different for everyone) is prescribed meaning because of the context and story we tell about the situation. In the above example, the context is walking home and the sensations signal danger and the subsequent feeling, fear.
While the awareness of being followed may be inherent or biological, the meaning is socially constructed. In a different context, say walking through a crowded campus, the same sensations created by the awareness of being followed might be interpreted as excitement because the person is expecting their friend to meet them. In both cases, the sensations triggered by becoming aware of being followed are the same (tingling in the head, an impulse to turn around), but the interpretation is different, thus so is the subsequent feeling. Sensations located on or in the body are what we typically identify as intuition, but they are only one part. Perception is the meaning we ascribe to a sensation and what guides and prompts us toward action. Perception is the meaning assigned to a situation or interaction, and is based on context, social constructs, and personal experiences. In other words, people are taught how to interpret sensations through social learning.
Personal space is a good example. Personal space is a social construct. Different cultures have different ideas of what personal space is. Even the term “personal space” is Western, locating the self at the center of a particular social space. When someone says they felt like their personal space was invaded and it made them feel unsafe, they are typically referring to sensing, knowing, and feeling. There is the biological response of the sensations that signal their personal space has been invaded (tingling on their skin, tightening stomach muscles, a reflexive pulling back), the interpretation of these sensations based on social learning and personal experience, and then finally the feeling associated with the interpretation—in this case, feeling fearful or unsafe.
In the United States, we culturally expect much more personal space than in many other countries. Growing up in the United Sates, one is exposed to all kinds of messages about physical, social, environmental, personal and interpersonal space. While there are differences among subcultures, the overall mainstream norms are formed through socialization, social systems, structures, and even architecture. We absorb norms about space that feel “natural,” often not even noticing it until we are exposed to different norms. In other cultures, however, someone standing close by would not trigger the same biological or physiological responses.
Finally, perceptions are also shaped by personal experience. If someone grows up in a physically demonstrative family with cultural messages about personal space and touch that value physical closeness, they may have very different boundaries around being touched than someone who grew up with messages that physical closeness is a private matter. Individual experience also comes into play. If someone is very comfortable with close, personal space but has been sexually harassed by a coworker, boundaries around hugging acquaintances may change. Biological and physiological responses, sensations, and perceptions of what it means to be hugged by a coworker, informed by social learning, are also impacted by personal experience.
Social Conditioning Affects Intuition
A sensation triggers a biological/physical/automatic response in our bodies. We interpret or know the sensation based on personal experience and social learning. This is the thinking or knowing part of intuition. Both of these help identify feelings and the feeling helps us decide how we want to respond. Sensations, while located primarily in the body, are also affected by social conditioning. We are taught how we should perceive things.
If people trust their intuition without being aware of how it has been socially constructed, they risk using it in ways that uphold stereotypes, misinformation, and systems of oppression. In my experience, it is fairly common in self-defense and boundary-setting classes for participants to ask, “What do you do if a stranger approaches you?” This question often arises during discussions about trusting one’s intuition. In classes, people have stated that they are learning to trust their intuition and that it kicks in when a stranger approaches them on the street. Class participants who are exploring which boundary-setting or self-defense skills to use may feel extra sensitive to this scenario, wondering, is it better to stand one’s ground or walk away quickly? I tell them there is no single answer. Intuition must be tempered with an understanding of how social constructs and personal assumptions affect us.
It’s easy to suggest to class participants that they feel empowered enough to trust their instincts and respond accordingly. This may involve walking away, not making eye contact, setting a boundary, or using body language to effectively communicate their boundary. Yet understanding how social constructs inform intuition requires us to explore a bit more before simply trusting our intuition. In the scenario above where people are asking how to respond to a stranger approaching them on the street, it would be helpful to investigate what their intuition is telling them. Is it telling them that this stranger is dangerous? That they should be afraid of this person? What is the fear based on? Is it only because the person is a stranger? What is the stranger doing that signals danger? Anything? Are people afraid because of what the person looks like?
Many class participants have shared a fear of men who appear homeless and approach them on the street and often ask for spare change. When questions about how to respond in these types of situations arise, I encourage people to imagine what the person is doing and what they imagine the person looks like. Are you afraid because the person is a large, unshaven man with a dirty jacket? Is it because he is muttering or shouting? Or appears to be drunk and carrying a bottle that could be used as a weapon? Is it because he is walking toward you? If so, what is it about how the person is walking toward you that signals danger? Would you have the same psychological and biological sensations, and subsequently the same feelings, and ascribe the same meaning to the feeling if someone in a business suit walked toward you in the same way? Why or why not? Would you have the same intuitive response if a young girl approached you in a similar context? Is the person doing anything that you can identify as signaling a threat? If not, one should wonder whether intuition in this case might be based on a stereotype that strangers in general, and people who are perceived as homeless in particular, are viewed as dangerous.
It is worth considering how the discomfort someone feels from an approaching stranger whom they perceive as homeless can also be a reflection of the
dehumanizing social messages about homelessness and people struggling with housing rather than an actual danger. The social constructs that stereotype homeless people as dangerous or threatening ignore the reality of violence against homeless people, people who are much more likely to be victims than perpetrators. “Cities often focus on cracking down on panhandling or sleeping outside as a way to push homeless people out of sight,” says National Law Center on Homelessness and Poverty (NLCH) Civil Rights Program Director Tulin Ozdeger. “The numbers show the need for a different response—training police to help protect homeless people and deliver needed services, not to lock them up in jail.”
In order for intuition to be an effective boundary-setting tool, it is important to consider “gut feelings” as well as evidence, facts, and factors of social conditioning. If we are taught through media and social constructs to be afraid of people, particularly men who appear homeless, we might experience an “intuitive” sense of fear when passing a male who is panhandling on the street, even if all he’s doing is holding out a cup and calling out to us. We need to ask ourselves whether our fear is truly our intuition or is it born from social conditioning? This approach asks people to not blindly trust intuition, but to really get to know it—make sure intuitiveness is grounded in emotional experience, as well as what is actually happening. Is the man doing something other than simply panhandling that makes you feel fear?
The media and social constructs also send the message to fear black people in general, and black men in particular; this socially constructed fear has now become ingrained as Jennifer Eberhardt and her colleagues suggest:
Simply thinking of crime can lead perceivers to conjure up images of Black Americans that “ready” these perceivers to register and selectively attend to Black people … these associations are important not only because they can lead perceivers to make mistakes occasionally but also because they can guide, generally, how perceivers come to organize and structure visual stimuli to which they are exposed.7
In other words, the link between African Americans and crime has become so thoroughly conditioned that these associations occur regardless of individual values or beliefs about crime, violence, or racial disparity. This is not intuition. This is an example of how fears are, in part, socially constructed.
7Eberhardt, Jennifer E., Phillip A. Goff, Valerie J. Purdie, and Paul G. Davies. “Seeing Black: Race, Crime, and Visual Processing.” Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. Vol 87(6), Dec 2004: 876-93.
Intuition is important. It is critical that people learn to listen to and trust their intuition, but it is vital that this is done mindfully. There are all sorts of factors that prevent people from trusting their intuition and learning to “trust our gut” is an essential skill. It is important that this skill be developed with an understanding of how all sorts of things, including racism, homophobia, classism, oppressive systems of gender, ableism, and ageism inform intuition. Intuition is a gift. It is important to nurture, listen to, and seriously dialogue with it because it can often be misconstrued or misinterpreted.
The Intuition Myth of Prevention
In classes, I have witnessed the false belief that if someone is tuned into their intuition, they can prevent something bad from happening. This belief is understandable. Fear of awful, unfortunate, and horrible events drives people to seek clear and prescriptive ways to prevent them. Unfortunately, the belief that having heightened intuition can help prevent bad things from happening not only puts judgment and blame on survivors (I should have seen this coming), it perpetuates the falsehood that intuition is the key to prevention. Intuition can be proactive and preventative, but not always. It can kick in as a response to something, or upon self-reflection, surface after an event. Intuition is not a superhero’s skill or a sixth sense. It is a practical tool that one can master. Like any tool, mastery takes time, it takes practice, and it involves making mistakes. The reflective loop helps us explore and deepen the capacity to critically listen to and use our intuition.
The Reflective Loop
The Reflective Loop is a mechanism used to explore intuition and boundaries. The loop involves the flow of communication or reflection between you, your support systems, the boundary itself, and the people you are setting the boundary with. As implied by the name, the loop is circular in that you can begin a check-in or reflective process at any point on the loop. The loop is also a holon, meaning the parts, while separate, also inform one another and comprise a whole. A holon is a system or entity (in this case a reflective system) that is simultaneously a whole and a part. Arthur Koestler coined the term holon in his book The Ghost in the Machine and author Michael Pollan more recently popularized the concept in his book An Omnivore’s Dilemma. Koestler defines a holon as a hierarchy of self-regulating, dependent, and interdependent parts that function in coordination with their local environment. In other words, there is no specific point from which to start, or a precise way to distinguish between or measure the cause and effect. In the case of the reflective loop, feedback and reflection inform the actions that change feedback systems, which inform relationships and boundaries in a myriad of multifaceted, and sometimes simultaneously and seemingly oppositional, ways.
When using the reflective loop, it is important that communication and contemplation on and between each aspect of the loop be nonjudgmental, non-shaming, honest, and connected to your values. The loop offers a way to get feedback and “reality checks” about your boundaries. Reality checks are a means to hold yourself accountable to your values and a way of being accountable for both the boundaries you set and how you set them. You may check in with your support system before, during, or after setting a boundary to explore a variety of aspects, including the motivation for setting it, the effect and impact of setting it, desired outcome or goal of the boundary, your emotional response, safety needs, and social and cultural considerations. Reality checks challenge people to explore events, situations, and interactions in non-shaming ways and encourage creative problem-solving that is rooted in radical acceptance, commitment to values, and personal wants and needs. A class participant shares an example:
My husband and I had just moved, and my mom came to visit her sister who lives nearby and was in the hospital. It was assumed my mom would stay with us. I didn’t want her to stay with us and I felt really guilty about it. My mom is pretty dependent on extended family members to help her with things; she can’t drive or get around on the bus and things like that. I was trying to figure out what to do. I talked to my friends, my husband, my sister, and then finally to my mom to figure out what might happen depending on different decisions I made—it was important to consider the impact, not only on my mom and other family members (which is what I have always done), but also on me and my husband. I had to learn to sit with the guilt and not react out of it. I ended up deciding to have her stay with us, but it felt good to go through the loop to help me so that I didn’t just make that decision out of guilt.
People can use the reflective loop system to identify and then get support for emotions that arise. Intense or distressing feelings may make people doubt their intuition or question their right to set a boundary. Sometimes people become defensive and angry or guilty and ashamed at prioritizing needs or setting a new kind of boundary. Or, people may be proud of setting a new kind of boundary and want acknowledgment. The reflective loop can be used to explore ways to renegotiate a boundary, to consider how to respond to emotions that arise, or to maintain a challenging boundary. Some questions to consider when using the reflective loop could include the following: Are you setting the boundary from a place of emotional integrity? Is the boundary consistent with your values? If not, why not? Is there anything you can do or want to do to make the boundary more in line with your values? What feelings, thoughts, and sensations arise when you think about setting or actually set the boundary? Are there particular reactions that bring up intense emotions for you? Are there any reasons you would want to change or renegotiate the b
oundary? Are there any conditions in which you would choose to not set the boundary? What impact do you anticipate the boundary having on you and/or the person/people you are setting the boundary with?
Checking Intuition
The loop can help ground boundaries in a critical and thoughtful framework. Following up on the earlier example, intuition may tell us that a man who appears homeless or who is panhandling and approaches us is dangerous. We may choose to act on our intuition by telling him to get away from us when he approaches us. We can then use the self-reflective loop to do a reality check and use our support systems to get feedback. Was my intuition based on stereotypes or real evidence that I needed to set a boundary? Was the man’s behavior truly aggressive, or was my perception of danger informed by fear-based prejudices? It is important to explore these aspects of boundaries in an honest and non-judging, non-shaming way. Judging and shaming are not helpful tools for reflection and personal growth.
Reflecting on our past actions may also allow us to formulate a plan for dealing with events in the future. Using the previous example, we may decide upon reflection that in a similar situation (a stranger approaching us on the street), if we perceive any aggressive behavior (loud voice, drunkenness, a possible weapon, etc.), we will quickly turn around and walk away. However, if we perceive no aggressive action, we might decide to practice looking the person in the eye, acknowledging their humanity, and be prepared to greet them and see what they asking for.
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