Trust Your Intuition, But Question Its Validity

How Parts With An Agenda Can Trick Us Into Thinking It's Intuition

I was an intuitive little child. I knew things I couldn’t have known rationally, got hunches I didn’t know how to make sense of, and had precognitive dreams that came true and scared me. Later on, as a medical student, I sometimes knew what was wrong with my patients before the medical tests could confirm my intuition. And as a classic empath, I could often “read” people’s traumas on their faces, as if their histories were written across their foreheads.

But my intensely academic, intellectual, rationality-based medical training largely erased my ability to feel into or even believe in my own intuition. Over time, I lost touch with it, and as I did, I also lost some of my safety and protection. I hadn’t realized that my gut feelings and spidey senses were what kept me safe from predatory people and situations where people didn’t wish me well. Medical training educated my brain, but it handicapped my intuition. I might have lost it forever had I not quit my job as a doctor and ventured onto a healing path that helped me get back in touch with my long lost intuition.

But I frequently got lost along the way. After losing touch with my natural intuition, something that masqueraded as intuition often showed up in its place after I started healing from my medical trauma. It would take me years to realize that some of my “parts,” parts that had an agenda or wanted to pursue a particular course of action, would fool me into thinking they were my intuition, when really, they were just tricky parts.

For example, I was studying Buddhism at the time, and I interpreted some of the teachings, whether accurately or misguidedly, as “Desire is bad.” Wanting things was to be avoided. Attachment to outcomes was a sign of not being enlightened. But damn if I didn’t still desire stuff!

So my parts that had genuine wants and needs often dressed up as intuition. But I had other parts that tried to convince me that I was neutral to outcomes, that I only wanted what God or Spirit or Source or intuition (the voice of spiritual guidance inside) wanted for me.

Then my cute little parts would set about looking for answers, both inside, via the voice of intuition, and outside, from synchronicities or other “signs from the Universe.” I found that my “intuition” often colluded with my desires. I also found parts of me that tended to ascribe meaning to events that were probably random coincidences, interpreting them as synchronicities that provided objective evidence that my intuition was accurate. In psychiatry, they call this “apophenia”- the tendency to perceive meaningful connections between unrelated things, or as German psychiatrist Klaus Conrad put it, “the unmotivated seeing of connections accompanied by a specific feeling of abnormal meaningfulness."

Is It Intuition- Or Desire?

My parts were very convincing during this phase of my healing journey. I sincerely believed that I was being guided intuitively to make certain choices that often ended with disastrous outcomes, which confused me to no end. My memory of intuition from childhood was the opposite. My intuition from younger years protected me, warning me about when to take heed and cautioned me against treading into dangerous territory or helped me discern who to trust and who to avoid. But this newfound intuition seemed to be getting me in a whole heap o’ trouble. What was happening?

I can now look back and see that all kind of cognitive biases were having a heyday in my inner world. The truth was that I wanted what I wanted- but I also wanted to be a good spiritual seeker who obeyed the teachings I was being exposed to. So my parts co-opted my intuition to help give me permission to simply want what I wanted- or avoid what I didn’t want- whether it was good for me or not. These parts that called themselves intuition thought they were protecting me by allowing me to have desires and attachments- and to have permission to make mistakes and let it be okay to f*ck up sometimes and make decisions I might later regret.

But were they intuition? Nah. Not really. They were parts dressed up in intuitive drag, but they were still cute little parts.

Is It Intuition- Or Are You Afraid?

I know I’m not the only one who gets tricked by parts who want people to believe they are intuition. Especially in spiritual communities, I met countless people who seemed incapable of making decisions that included both critical thinking and inner knowing. They would claim to be guided by intuition (“My intuition is that the Covid vaccination is not right for me). But then I’d see on social media that they had a part posting anti-vax propaganda all over the place. Were the sincerely getting an intuitive hit that the Covid vaccine was bad for them? Or were they terrified of the vaccine, made paranoid from reading all that propaganda- and using intuition as an excuse to justify defying public health guidelines, especially when spiritual communities so often demonize fear?

I remember ages ago inviting a girlfriend of mine to come on a writing retreat with me to Sea Ranch. She was a student in one of the ubiquitous “spirit schools” here in the San Francisco Bay Area, so she told me she’d have to check with her intuition first. I waited for days for her answer, since her intuition didn’t like to make decisions on a deadline, so I was patient. After waiting so long that I no longer had time to ask anyone to join me in her place, she told me that her intuition had finally come through loud and clear with a solid NO.

I respected her “no,” but something felt “off” about it. Years later, she ended our relationship because she said she just couldn’t handle being friends with a successful writer when she wanted so badly to have her own book published and it kept getting rejected by publishers. She later admitted that she had used her “intuition” to say no to my invitation because I had just gotten a six figure advance for my book Mind Over Medicine and was busy working on the manuscript- thus the reason for the writing retreat. She confessed that she’d been green with jealousy and wished it was her who had gotten a book deal, but she felt like it was “unspiritual” to be jealous of a friend’s achievements, so it was easier to just blame her intuition.

Is It Intuition? Or Are You Conflict Avoidant?

Rather than acknowledging her feelings and communicating with me in an honest way at the time, she used “I’m trusting my intuition” as a cover for conflict avoidant parts that just didn’t want to talk about how my book deal caused her to feel insecure about her own writing, so much so that she wanted to avoid being around me.

Years later, I was scheduled to teach an online course with one of the healers I was studying with as research for my Sacred Medicine book, who claimed that he had the direct 411 to his idea of God, which he called the Organizing Intelligence (OI.) He claimed to be able to tap into his body/intuition and ask any binary yes/no question to the OI- and get a perfectly reliable answer. We had already collected six figures worth of money from students who signed up for the class we were co-teaching (because his intuition/ the OI gave the class a big fat green light.) But suddenly, his intuition/ the OI changed its tune, and now the green light was a glaring red “No,” only days before the class was supposed to start.

It’s a pretty sticky situation to find yourself arguing with the OI- makes you pretty bulletproof if you claim to have the 411 direct to God- but I argued nonetheless. I had grown close to this guy and I knew about some of his traumatized parts, so I dared to call him out.

“Hey Swami, if you’re scared to teach this class or you’re having second thoughts or you just don’t think I’m the right person to co-teach it with you, that fine. Just say so. But don’t give me this bullshit about how your intuition changed its tune.” Once again, I suspected conflict avoidant parts were masquerading as intuition.

We never did teach that class, and it’s probably just as well, because that whole shebang was one big discernment fail on my end. But since these episodes, I’ve been on the lookout for parts inside of me that pretend to be intuition- and I’m equally eagle-eyed about spotting it in others when my actual intuition senses something isn’t quite right.

Is It Intuition? Or Are You Confused About Who To Trust?

I’ve had patients who only rely on natural medicine tell me their intuition is guiding them not to go to the doctor for medical attention- and then they die shortly thereafter from preventable causes of death.

I’ve had people with significant trauma histories tell me their intuition says they’re not meant to go to therapy- only to see them die of suicide.

I’ve seen people from narcissistic family systems claim that their intuition chose their new partner, only to watch them get vampirically sucked dry by the next narcissistic abuser.

I’ve seen trauma survivors claim that their intuition gave them a 100% yes to join a cult. Then I’ve seen their lives get destroyed.

Is It Intuition- Or Are You Trying To Manipulate Someone?

I’ve also seen “intuition” misused by narcissistic individuals positioning to manipulate me. I’m not exaggerating when I say that I’ve probably met a hundred so-called “intuitives” at conferences or in spiritual communities who claim that their intuition says we’re supposed to collaborate on a work project together, when really, they’re angling to get access to my mailing list so they can exploit the people who trust me and my endorsement- for personal gain.

I’ve met men who claim that their intuition is certain we’re meant to be an item, when really, they’ve targeted me as their next narcissistic supply and are trying to manipulate my leaning towards spirituality by using “intuition” to override my discernment and blind me to the red flags of narcissism.

I’ve had so called-psychics swarm around me like flies when they have an agenda they’re trying to push forward, all in the name of “intuition.” So beware. If someone else, especially someone in a position of spiritual authority, claims that their intuition is guiding you to do something that would benefit the spiritual authority figure but perhaps not you, double check to make sure your own intuition isn’t screaming just the opposite.

Real Intuition Protects Us

As Gavin de Becker explains in The Gift Of Fear: Survival Signals That Protect Us From Violence- and which I reiterated in my book The Fear Cure, intuition and fear are neighbors. If you lose the ability to feel afraid, you also lose access to intuition. Because intuition, when it’s spot on, can activate legitimate feelings of fear of danger- so you can walk the other way home- or steer clear of a predator. Gavin de Becker is a threat assessment expert. He’s the guy who gets called when the President gets death threats- to determine which threats are worth taking seriously and which don’t seem real. So he relies on intuition- and encourages those he’s tasked with protecting- to do the same.

That’s why spiritual teachings that demonize fear interfere with our natural intuition. That’s when parts might be tempted to jump in- to claim that intuition is the reason for avoiding doctors, for example, when really, you’re afraid of the medical system (understandably so.) Discerning the difference between the true danger that intuition might signal and the fear-based avoidance of parts that might masquerade as intuition because of past traumas is not an easy thing to differentiate.

When I remember what it was like to be a child in touch with my intuition, my intuition rarely if ever steered me into danger. If anything, it would grab me by the neck and yank me back onto the curb right as a car came out of nowhere and narrowly missed hitting me. It spoke like a whisper to let me know not to say yes when the teacher who was later prosecuted for molesting students asked me if I wanted to have some special alone time with him after school. My intuition told me the pastor was wrong when he said gays and Jews were going to burn in hell for eternity. It also predicted things I didn’t wish to be true, like that our next door neighbor’s healthy dog would die unexpectedly the day after I got the hunch and told his owner.

Updating Our Relationship With Intuition

These days, I’m both yearning to trust my intuition, like I did before my medical training indoctrinated it out of me. But I’m also skeptical of it. What helps is working with all of the parts that might trick me into believing they’re intuition using Internal Family Systems (IFS) to get to know what they want and need from me, as well as how they might masquerade as intuition. The more I get to know all of my parts, the more I feel my real intuition coming back online.

Like right now, I’m making a lot of big, important decisions based on a strong hunch that makes no sense to my rational mind. Maybe it’s still wounded parts that want to convince me to stay the course in a situation that my rational mind might talk me out of. Or maybe there really is a deeper knowing about something I can’t fully understand rationally.

I still believe in synchronicity, spiritual guidance, and following the signs from the Universe. But I also believe that discerning the difference between Self-led guidance and parts-led trickery is no joke. I take it all with a grain of salt these days, and try to learn as I go, by reality testing what happens down the road when I think I’m following my intuition.

All of this matters to me very much, because, as a doctor, I tell patients and health care providers all the time to follow their intuition. I encourage patients to trust their inner knowing- because we’re the only ones who can truly know what’s right for us as individuals. No matter how much a doctor can advise us based on large statistical probabilities, no individual patient is a statistic. As the statisticians say, we’re all an “N of 1.” And yet, many people are as confused by what they believe is intuition as I am!

So what are we to do? Ignore intuition and make all choices rationally, with critical thinking only? Trust intuition blindly, ignoring rational critical thinking?

Yes and no. It’s one of those paradoxes of healing I talk about in Sacred Medicine- “Trust your intuition AND apply critical thinking.” If they contradict each other, listen to all your parts. Sit them down at a conference table and let them all speak their piece. Bring Self to the head of the table and invite this wise aspect of your being to mediate between all the competing voices in your head and in your gut- with all their agendas, fears, desires, attachments, and past traumas. Let them know they all matter- and don’t ignore any of them or diminish what they might have to say, even if you think they’re being irrational. Instead, slow down. Listen. Wait. And consider all those voices when it comes time to make a clear Self-led decision.

In other words, as some of our parts might wish there was an easy way to guarantee that we’re making the right decision, there’s no easy short cut. The best we can probably hope for is to keep working with our parts using IFS- becoming intimate with parts that are scared to want, scared to trust authority, scared to be vulnerable, scared to not know- and then holding those parts close as we listen deeply to the still small voice inside that’s always there, underneath much louder parts who can drown out the true knowing.

If you’re like me and many others and you can’t tell the difference between your still small voice of intuition and the cacophony of a whole buncha parts, welcome to being human! It sure would be nice if we had the perfect 411 to God/ intuition/ the OI- especially if that 411 meant we’d never make mistakes or get hurt again. But life just doesn’t work that way.

My therapist says the more we are in Self (which I call my Inner Pilot Light), the more we notice synchronicity, the more flow we might experience, the more we can genuinely trust our own decision-making. But that journey to Self is a long, slow trip indeed.

Until then, enjoy the ride.