My gut worries just as much as I do
June 20, 2023 7:00 AM Subscribe
There's a lot of free-floating advice about trusting your gut or your subconscious or intuition or what have you. My question is, does this really work for people with severe anxiety?
I have Generalized Anxiety Disorder, which means I can pretty much find four different worst case scenarios for every situation. A very, very small percentage of these are grounded in reality, and almost none of it comes true. You'd imagine this helps calm me down or possibly be less tightly wound up about the next Bad Thing That May Happen, but you'd be very wrong. With this kind of perpetual headspace, how does one distinguish between paranoia and gut feeling? I feel like this would be a useful skill to have, especially if I could distinguish between something to pay attention to, and something else to dismsis as noise. But since I can worry about literally every facet of my life, the signal to noise ratio is...not great. Yes, already in therapy. Yes, will discuss with therapist as well.
How do other anxious people deal with this? I'd appreciate some perspectives in the matter.
I have Generalized Anxiety Disorder, which means I can pretty much find four different worst case scenarios for every situation. A very, very small percentage of these are grounded in reality, and almost none of it comes true. You'd imagine this helps calm me down or possibly be less tightly wound up about the next Bad Thing That May Happen, but you'd be very wrong. With this kind of perpetual headspace, how does one distinguish between paranoia and gut feeling? I feel like this would be a useful skill to have, especially if I could distinguish between something to pay attention to, and something else to dismsis as noise. But since I can worry about literally every facet of my life, the signal to noise ratio is...not great. Yes, already in therapy. Yes, will discuss with therapist as well.
How do other anxious people deal with this? I'd appreciate some perspectives in the matter.
I found the book, "Thinking, Fast and Slow", to be useful in pointing out the types of problems that can be addressed by intuition or fast thinking versus others that require analytical, slow thinking. I'm absolutely sure that I'm parsing a very complicated topic down into one sentence there. The wiki goes over some generalities as well as some potential issues with the author's research, but I still think that the concept of fast or slow thinking for different types of problems to be a useful distinction.
Perhaps that kind of logic will help your anxiety with trusting your gut in the cases where it makes sense to do so. Personally, I'm not a big fan of trust your gut which I think is code for trusting your instinctive jumps of logic based on your experience where ideally a slow analysis would result in much the same decision.
For my anxiety, when I am anxious about all the choices as well as not making a choice, this is a pretty safe bet that my anxiety is interfering: If I get pasta, I'll feel like I ate too much, if I get sushi, I could still be hungry, but if I don't stop to get food then I'll be lightheaded from not eating.
posted by RoadScholar at 7:27 AM on June 20, 2023 [3 favorites]
Perhaps that kind of logic will help your anxiety with trusting your gut in the cases where it makes sense to do so. Personally, I'm not a big fan of trust your gut which I think is code for trusting your instinctive jumps of logic based on your experience where ideally a slow analysis would result in much the same decision.
For my anxiety, when I am anxious about all the choices as well as not making a choice, this is a pretty safe bet that my anxiety is interfering: If I get pasta, I'll feel like I ate too much, if I get sushi, I could still be hungry, but if I don't stop to get food then I'll be lightheaded from not eating.
posted by RoadScholar at 7:27 AM on June 20, 2023 [3 favorites]
haha well my "intuition" has warned me that every plane I've boarded for the last 20 years is going to crash, so.
posted by fingersandtoes at 7:30 AM on June 20, 2023 [12 favorites]
posted by fingersandtoes at 7:30 AM on June 20, 2023 [12 favorites]
Sometimes I try to keep a record of things, so I can look back and see that my instincts about a given thing over time have been right, or wrong, or mixed...
posted by trig at 7:56 AM on June 20, 2023 [2 favorites]
posted by trig at 7:56 AM on June 20, 2023 [2 favorites]
It's going to vary from person to person and you learn which gut feeling is the one to heed from experience.
Sometimes when you have the fears you can name them "Oh that's just the I am going to die alone and homeless fear rearing its head again." If it is familiar enough to name, then there is a good chance, it's just the same old recurring anxiety.
Sometimes the gut feeling shades a bit into disgust or revulsion. If you are being introduced to everyone at the office, or reading the prospectus for the university you are about to mortgage your first born to attend, and you feel your lips curling back a little and your pupils shrinking, that is very worth paying attention to. Sometimes you can't put your finger on what it is that triggers the disgust, but it is a good cue that you are going to struggle to get along with the people you just got introduced to, or that those exciting courses in Business Management are going to provide you with absolutely no motivation to actually study.
Another thing to watch for, especially if you are ordinarily anxious and a worry wort, is the resolve not to think about it and to just forge ahead. "I'm going to take this apartment because it's perfect! I'm NOT going to think it isn't perfect! (or it will derail my plans)." The refusal to consider problems with the thought "I'll make it work somehow!" is probably going to be a bigger warning sign for you than the daily worries that dog you wherever you go. If you worry about allergens and your chemical sensitivities when you go to work, visit, travel and shop, NOT worrying about that when you inspect the prospective apartment is a warning sign. You should be just as worried as always, wondering if they shampoo the hall carpet with Limonene, or if you'll have a cleaning mad neighbour who will spray insecticide into all the vents, as opposed to feeling creepy and not naming what it is.
When you get that creepy feeling, you can go into close observation mode. What is going on here? Are there mixed signals? Are people smiling but their body language says something different? What would I be seeing or hearing if things were good?
But this kind of thing is different for everyone, and it takes practice to feel other alerts around the anxieties that suffuse your consciousness. Just as being anxious all the time can make it hard to appreciate things, it can make it hard to take warning signals seriously.
One thing that helps is to actually look at statistics and causes, if you can do so without paralyzing yourself. For example, having a gun in the house raises the chances that you will die from being shot, because the odds of being shot accidentally or deliberately goes way up. Having a gun in the house is much more likely to result in getting shot than it is to result in successfully defending yourself with it. Knowing stats like this can help you recognize that your terror of sharks is the generalized anxiety, and then learn to relate how that is a feeling of apprehension that is not externally generated. It's that damned old GAD.
And if you do get into a dangerous situation some day, you can try to figure out the difference in the feelings you had then, when you realised you were trapped in a subway car with some guys about to brawl, from the feeling you get in your fourth floor apartment when you get recurring images of sharks under the bed.
Also keep in mind that anxiety is usually worse at certain times - when you are hungry or tired, or out in public or whatever your triggers are. There are probably times when the anxiety signals are quieter than others. You might find that thinking about the situation that you are not sure of, immediately after watching an absorbing comedy movie makes you feel completely different, than when you think about it after a long bad day interacting with people, and it is just before bed time. If there is a difference it could be because the situation is only really worrying during anxiety peaks.
posted by Jane the Brown at 8:02 AM on June 20, 2023 [2 favorites]
Sometimes when you have the fears you can name them "Oh that's just the I am going to die alone and homeless fear rearing its head again." If it is familiar enough to name, then there is a good chance, it's just the same old recurring anxiety.
Sometimes the gut feeling shades a bit into disgust or revulsion. If you are being introduced to everyone at the office, or reading the prospectus for the university you are about to mortgage your first born to attend, and you feel your lips curling back a little and your pupils shrinking, that is very worth paying attention to. Sometimes you can't put your finger on what it is that triggers the disgust, but it is a good cue that you are going to struggle to get along with the people you just got introduced to, or that those exciting courses in Business Management are going to provide you with absolutely no motivation to actually study.
Another thing to watch for, especially if you are ordinarily anxious and a worry wort, is the resolve not to think about it and to just forge ahead. "I'm going to take this apartment because it's perfect! I'm NOT going to think it isn't perfect! (or it will derail my plans)." The refusal to consider problems with the thought "I'll make it work somehow!" is probably going to be a bigger warning sign for you than the daily worries that dog you wherever you go. If you worry about allergens and your chemical sensitivities when you go to work, visit, travel and shop, NOT worrying about that when you inspect the prospective apartment is a warning sign. You should be just as worried as always, wondering if they shampoo the hall carpet with Limonene, or if you'll have a cleaning mad neighbour who will spray insecticide into all the vents, as opposed to feeling creepy and not naming what it is.
When you get that creepy feeling, you can go into close observation mode. What is going on here? Are there mixed signals? Are people smiling but their body language says something different? What would I be seeing or hearing if things were good?
But this kind of thing is different for everyone, and it takes practice to feel other alerts around the anxieties that suffuse your consciousness. Just as being anxious all the time can make it hard to appreciate things, it can make it hard to take warning signals seriously.
One thing that helps is to actually look at statistics and causes, if you can do so without paralyzing yourself. For example, having a gun in the house raises the chances that you will die from being shot, because the odds of being shot accidentally or deliberately goes way up. Having a gun in the house is much more likely to result in getting shot than it is to result in successfully defending yourself with it. Knowing stats like this can help you recognize that your terror of sharks is the generalized anxiety, and then learn to relate how that is a feeling of apprehension that is not externally generated. It's that damned old GAD.
And if you do get into a dangerous situation some day, you can try to figure out the difference in the feelings you had then, when you realised you were trapped in a subway car with some guys about to brawl, from the feeling you get in your fourth floor apartment when you get recurring images of sharks under the bed.
Also keep in mind that anxiety is usually worse at certain times - when you are hungry or tired, or out in public or whatever your triggers are. There are probably times when the anxiety signals are quieter than others. You might find that thinking about the situation that you are not sure of, immediately after watching an absorbing comedy movie makes you feel completely different, than when you think about it after a long bad day interacting with people, and it is just before bed time. If there is a difference it could be because the situation is only really worrying during anxiety peaks.
posted by Jane the Brown at 8:02 AM on June 20, 2023 [2 favorites]
I am a very anxious person. I have two kinds of gut feeling.
One of them is the loud, shouty 'No no no' reaction which is driven primarily by fear when I am doing something that feels new and strange and requires courage. It feels larger than me, like a shouting in my ear. My life's biggest regrets come from listening to it. I hate it, it feels like I am my own worst enemy.
The other gut feeling is quieter. It's my 'yes' feeling. It's quiet because - unlike the no voice - it is not accompanied by contingency plans and ifs, buts or whys. Without launching into an entire autobiography, listening to my yes voice has led me to make the choices I look back on with gratitude. Some of them were costly and impractical but they were the right direction for me to take at the time.
What I TRY to do - and fail a large portion of the time - is listen to the yes voice and disregard the no voice. It's far easier said than done to do the latter, but I'm glad I've started tuning in to the former.
posted by unicorn chaser at 8:07 AM on June 20, 2023 [4 favorites]
One of them is the loud, shouty 'No no no' reaction which is driven primarily by fear when I am doing something that feels new and strange and requires courage. It feels larger than me, like a shouting in my ear. My life's biggest regrets come from listening to it. I hate it, it feels like I am my own worst enemy.
The other gut feeling is quieter. It's my 'yes' feeling. It's quiet because - unlike the no voice - it is not accompanied by contingency plans and ifs, buts or whys. Without launching into an entire autobiography, listening to my yes voice has led me to make the choices I look back on with gratitude. Some of them were costly and impractical but they were the right direction for me to take at the time.
What I TRY to do - and fail a large portion of the time - is listen to the yes voice and disregard the no voice. It's far easier said than done to do the latter, but I'm glad I've started tuning in to the former.
posted by unicorn chaser at 8:07 AM on June 20, 2023 [4 favorites]
I have both GAD and autism, so it's pretty hard to trust my "gut" because it basically only tells me about bad possibilities and is often confusing. Also, my literal gut is a mess physically so those sensations get confused with the more metaphorical decision-related signals. Every relationship (romantic or not) I've ever been in has given me "bad vibes" from the very beginning that I have to deal with. But on the plus side I have never really been scammed or taken advantage of and have successfully navigated several large life changing decisions without regret.
As I've gotten older I've gotten a lot better at figuring out what my body/brain are trying to tell me when I get a bad gut feeling, and I consciously go through the possibilities in order: first, am I having a physical issue that makes me feel awful? If so I deal with that as I am incapable of making good decisions when hungry or otherwise distracted. Then, is my bad feeling a flashback to some previous trauma that I've worked through before? If so I think through how the current situation is different and acknowledge the feeling without doing what it says. Lastly, is my bad feeling related to a specific risk that I am aware of? If so I think about if the reward is worth dealing with the risk and decide to go forward or not while keeping the risk in mind. By going through these possibilities, it helps resolve the bad feeling and it usually goes away.
If I have a bad gut feeling and I actually can't figure out why, that's when I really listen to it! When it was due to some risk I wasn't consciously aware of this has saved me several times. This definitely isn't what people mean when they say "go with your gut", but we get to choose how we deal with what our weird body and brains tell us so I do what works for me.
posted by JZig at 8:09 AM on June 20, 2023 [5 favorites]
As I've gotten older I've gotten a lot better at figuring out what my body/brain are trying to tell me when I get a bad gut feeling, and I consciously go through the possibilities in order: first, am I having a physical issue that makes me feel awful? If so I deal with that as I am incapable of making good decisions when hungry or otherwise distracted. Then, is my bad feeling a flashback to some previous trauma that I've worked through before? If so I think through how the current situation is different and acknowledge the feeling without doing what it says. Lastly, is my bad feeling related to a specific risk that I am aware of? If so I think about if the reward is worth dealing with the risk and decide to go forward or not while keeping the risk in mind. By going through these possibilities, it helps resolve the bad feeling and it usually goes away.
If I have a bad gut feeling and I actually can't figure out why, that's when I really listen to it! When it was due to some risk I wasn't consciously aware of this has saved me several times. This definitely isn't what people mean when they say "go with your gut", but we get to choose how we deal with what our weird body and brains tell us so I do what works for me.
posted by JZig at 8:09 AM on June 20, 2023 [5 favorites]
I might be unusual, but for me it's pretty easy to distinguish between my "gut" and my anxiety. My anxiety is more about execution - I know what I should be doing, and I just don't do it. My anxiety doesn't ever really tell me what to do. For example, I have a lot of anxiety around starting conversations with my wife about difficult, emotional subjects, because I worry they'll turn confrontational. But when I think to myself "hmmm, is this something I should talk to her about, or should I let it slide?", anxiety never really comes into play. It's gut-only, and my gut usually says "yeah, you probably should". The problem then is that once my gut has decided, my anxiety steps in and says "well, you can't talk about it today, because you need time to think about what to say, and you can't talk to her about it tomorrow, because tomorrow is her birthday, and then on Thursday you have a therapy appointment, which means there's not much time to talk before the kids go to bed, so it'll probably be Friday at the earliest, unless you make dinner plans with friends for Friday night..." At no point do I ever think "eh, it's not worth it, I just won't bring this up". Does that make sense?
posted by kevinbelt at 8:30 AM on June 20, 2023 [4 favorites]
posted by kevinbelt at 8:30 AM on June 20, 2023 [4 favorites]
There is no magical power to “gut feelings” or intuition. As an anxious overthinker, trying to get in touch with my gut when stressing over a decision usually results in…more anxiety and overthinking. The desire to know something “for sure” is, IMHO, another symptom of anxiety.
posted by vanitas at 8:32 AM on June 20, 2023 [4 favorites]
posted by vanitas at 8:32 AM on June 20, 2023 [4 favorites]
It means developing a more advanced relationship with your anxiety, which for me is a net positive. I have been working specifically on this because I'm just sick of that thing calling the shots and me acting like I have no choice but to obey. So I spend some extra cycles every day asking myself A LOT "Is this anxiety or is this an informed decision/behavior?"
Anxiety aside, I have quite good intuition to start with, in the sense of "clearly my brain is drawing certain conclusions from subtle available data" and "with a well-rounded understanding of how people/things behave, what's going to happen next is likely X".
Does this somehow magically make the anxiety go away? NO, I still do plenty of flapping and clucking, or deciding that my anxiety is so high I am not going to bother doing the better-informed thing, or I engineer a middle-ground that is lower-anxiety and higher-return, which for now I still count as a win.
I very often frame the intuition call as the "better option". Like, if you are asking me to assess a situation and tell YOU what to do - where my anxiety won't assume you're going to be eaten by hyenas as will immediately happen to me, I just want to reduce your real-world likelihood of hyena attack - I can pretty easily tell you what will return an optimal outcome. So I can say to myself "the better option is actually X." It annoys me to get suboptimal outcomes, and I am blatantly manipulating my own personality quirks here to get me to choose the actual best option.
Now, if you want to split hairs, "better" to me is still going to have my general comfort, laziness, and moderate standards in mind. I'm rarely making a decision meant to make me the most rich or powerful, or representative of a wild level of worldly ambition. (Mundane ambition, yes, like when I think I can get more than 4 chores done in a day.)
I do, as someone else said, try to focus on what my gut says is right rather than wrong, as it tends to be better at that anyway.
posted by Lyn Never at 8:53 AM on June 20, 2023 [2 favorites]
Anxiety aside, I have quite good intuition to start with, in the sense of "clearly my brain is drawing certain conclusions from subtle available data" and "with a well-rounded understanding of how people/things behave, what's going to happen next is likely X".
Does this somehow magically make the anxiety go away? NO, I still do plenty of flapping and clucking, or deciding that my anxiety is so high I am not going to bother doing the better-informed thing, or I engineer a middle-ground that is lower-anxiety and higher-return, which for now I still count as a win.
I very often frame the intuition call as the "better option". Like, if you are asking me to assess a situation and tell YOU what to do - where my anxiety won't assume you're going to be eaten by hyenas as will immediately happen to me, I just want to reduce your real-world likelihood of hyena attack - I can pretty easily tell you what will return an optimal outcome. So I can say to myself "the better option is actually X." It annoys me to get suboptimal outcomes, and I am blatantly manipulating my own personality quirks here to get me to choose the actual best option.
Now, if you want to split hairs, "better" to me is still going to have my general comfort, laziness, and moderate standards in mind. I'm rarely making a decision meant to make me the most rich or powerful, or representative of a wild level of worldly ambition. (Mundane ambition, yes, like when I think I can get more than 4 chores done in a day.)
I do, as someone else said, try to focus on what my gut says is right rather than wrong, as it tends to be better at that anyway.
posted by Lyn Never at 8:53 AM on June 20, 2023 [2 favorites]
Back when anxiety was a problem for me (to the point of agoraphobia) I made larger decisions by
So my answer to your question is yes, you can trust your gut instinct, but it requires a bit of filtering.
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 10:26 AM on June 20, 2023
- Writing down in explicit detail each issue along with the horrible outcomes
- Organizing it all by the probability of the issue occurring
- Looking towards the bottom of the list and choosing the least sucky outcome
So my answer to your question is yes, you can trust your gut instinct, but it requires a bit of filtering.
posted by Tell Me No Lies at 10:26 AM on June 20, 2023
I'm in long-term treatment for anxiety but certainly still on the high level of anxiety-having, and nah, I do not trust my gut. My gut is a liar and also very stupid. At most I might let me gut point me toward a potential question or concern, and then I tackle that with my brain and real data instead and figure out whether it's anything worth actually doing anything about. The hit rate isn't good.
posted by Stacey at 10:47 AM on June 20, 2023 [1 favorite]
posted by Stacey at 10:47 AM on June 20, 2023 [1 favorite]
Normal anxiety for me leads to procrastination and perfectionism. Gut feeling leads to dread and damage control.
To give an example, I met with two possible collaborators recently who could both help me with a project. I liked one and hated the other- I can tell working with her would be miserable. Now, I should write them both thank you notes. I'm hesitating on both and have some mental noise about both, but they type of noise is different.
For the one I liked, my hesitation is, "how do I write the perfect thank you note to make sure she knows how much I liked her, and keep the relationship open and full of potential?" I'm waiting to do it because ADHD/general perfectionism, but in the meantime I'm sort of assembling the possibilities of what to say and what info to include while I wait. My mental noise is still contributing towards the end goal of doing the thing. I'm just spinning about how to do the thing well.
For the one I hated, first, while I was talking to her, I had a gut feeling a few minutes before my brain caught up with me, finished calculating the percentages of how many subtly racially problematic things she was saying, and identified why I dislike her. My first inkling of the gut feeling was just that I couldn't inhale all the way because my stomach got tight. My shoulders raised up and I felt like my butt cheeks clenched so I was kind of perching on my chair. Then I noticed that my mind started racing as I started "managing" what I would say to her, not to make her like me, but to keep her from feeling defensive / noticing I didn't like her ideas. Now, writing back, my main hesitation is, "Ugh how do I be polite to this horrible subtly racist person so I don't burn a bridge, but also never have to see her again?" That feels very different from my usual "perfectionist" anxiety noise. I'm spinning about how to minimize damage.
posted by nouvelle-personne at 10:50 AM on June 20, 2023 [1 favorite]
To give an example, I met with two possible collaborators recently who could both help me with a project. I liked one and hated the other- I can tell working with her would be miserable. Now, I should write them both thank you notes. I'm hesitating on both and have some mental noise about both, but they type of noise is different.
For the one I liked, my hesitation is, "how do I write the perfect thank you note to make sure she knows how much I liked her, and keep the relationship open and full of potential?" I'm waiting to do it because ADHD/general perfectionism, but in the meantime I'm sort of assembling the possibilities of what to say and what info to include while I wait. My mental noise is still contributing towards the end goal of doing the thing. I'm just spinning about how to do the thing well.
For the one I hated, first, while I was talking to her, I had a gut feeling a few minutes before my brain caught up with me, finished calculating the percentages of how many subtly racially problematic things she was saying, and identified why I dislike her. My first inkling of the gut feeling was just that I couldn't inhale all the way because my stomach got tight. My shoulders raised up and I felt like my butt cheeks clenched so I was kind of perching on my chair. Then I noticed that my mind started racing as I started "managing" what I would say to her, not to make her like me, but to keep her from feeling defensive / noticing I didn't like her ideas. Now, writing back, my main hesitation is, "Ugh how do I be polite to this horrible subtly racist person so I don't burn a bridge, but also never have to see her again?" That feels very different from my usual "perfectionist" anxiety noise. I'm spinning about how to minimize damage.
posted by nouvelle-personne at 10:50 AM on June 20, 2023 [1 favorite]
I have GAD. It has taken years of daily practice to make a dent in it.
When my gut tells me beware, I tend to put up resistance. Sometimes that looks like intentionally ignoring that feeling (there goes that annoying, wrong, self-defeating anxiety again, eyeroll) or forcing myself to push through the fear because it makes logical sense (go, team brain!). This sometimes works in the moment and can lead to "good decisions" from an outcomes perspective, but it also makes my anxiety incrementally worse. Because resisting is not listening to my gut. My gut feels like it has to scream a little louder next time to get me to listen.
What I have been practicing is kindness and curiosity. When I have a gut feeling, if I can, I pause and allow myself to feel whatever tangled mass of gross emotions comes up. Not "shut up, gut, you're just anxious." Instead, kindly:"oh hi there, gut, you're trying to tell me something. Take your time, I'm here to listen." And curiosity like really being interested in whatever sensation comes up in my body, pleasant or unpleasant. People above have mentioned a cold rock in the stomach or lips curling--that's the type of feeling I mean, not "fear" or "shame" because identifying those is more of a thought process. This is not intuitive at all for me, because I've been practicing ignoring and pushing past my gut feelings daily for most of my life, lolsob. It takes me a long time of sitting with sensations in my body, and then a lot of repetition, before I've been able to tease apart what various gut feelings even feel like for me. To me, if "trust your gut" has any validity, it means it's worth doing this work.
The book Unwinding Anxiety by Judson Brewer has helped me. The author is a doctor, and has had years of experience as a person with anxiety himself.
posted by Former Congressional Representative Lenny Lemming at 11:33 AM on June 20, 2023 [1 favorite]
When my gut tells me beware, I tend to put up resistance. Sometimes that looks like intentionally ignoring that feeling (there goes that annoying, wrong, self-defeating anxiety again, eyeroll) or forcing myself to push through the fear because it makes logical sense (go, team brain!). This sometimes works in the moment and can lead to "good decisions" from an outcomes perspective, but it also makes my anxiety incrementally worse. Because resisting is not listening to my gut. My gut feels like it has to scream a little louder next time to get me to listen.
What I have been practicing is kindness and curiosity. When I have a gut feeling, if I can, I pause and allow myself to feel whatever tangled mass of gross emotions comes up. Not "shut up, gut, you're just anxious." Instead, kindly:"oh hi there, gut, you're trying to tell me something. Take your time, I'm here to listen." And curiosity like really being interested in whatever sensation comes up in my body, pleasant or unpleasant. People above have mentioned a cold rock in the stomach or lips curling--that's the type of feeling I mean, not "fear" or "shame" because identifying those is more of a thought process. This is not intuitive at all for me, because I've been practicing ignoring and pushing past my gut feelings daily for most of my life, lolsob. It takes me a long time of sitting with sensations in my body, and then a lot of repetition, before I've been able to tease apart what various gut feelings even feel like for me. To me, if "trust your gut" has any validity, it means it's worth doing this work.
The book Unwinding Anxiety by Judson Brewer has helped me. The author is a doctor, and has had years of experience as a person with anxiety himself.
posted by Former Congressional Representative Lenny Lemming at 11:33 AM on June 20, 2023 [1 favorite]
The free-floating advice of "trust your gut" is typically given by people who either don't want to really think about your problem or don't have any advice to give at the moment (even if they have good intentions). So it's a polite way of brushing people off while making them feel like they are smart and capable of making their own choice.
Not always, but often.
There are, of course, situations where if you have a bad gut feeling you could be right, or even if it's wrong it's better to investigate: in instances like avoiding a dangerous person or worrying whether your partner is abusing your child, etc.
And there are situations where your first "gut reaction" might be the one that is the correct reaction for *you,* like if you're bothered by something or excited about something, but thinking about it further (whether because of anxiety or just having more time to process) makes you change your mind one way or another... and that's also ok because now the new gut reaction is correct for you in that situation.
So basically, who knows. :)
posted by never.was.and.never.will.be. at 11:35 AM on June 20, 2023
Not always, but often.
There are, of course, situations where if you have a bad gut feeling you could be right, or even if it's wrong it's better to investigate: in instances like avoiding a dangerous person or worrying whether your partner is abusing your child, etc.
And there are situations where your first "gut reaction" might be the one that is the correct reaction for *you,* like if you're bothered by something or excited about something, but thinking about it further (whether because of anxiety or just having more time to process) makes you change your mind one way or another... and that's also ok because now the new gut reaction is correct for you in that situation.
So basically, who knows. :)
posted by never.was.and.never.will.be. at 11:35 AM on June 20, 2023
One thing that helps me distinguish is if it’s something I am chronically anxious about or not. E.g I always worry that I or someone I love will get into a bad car accident, and I have a doomed/scared feeling about every potential road trip, etc, so I try not to believe these feelings unless there is some objective reason to e.g bad driving conditions due to weather)
But I rarely have ‘gut instinct’ bad feelings about people. One time I did, the person (a neighbor) did in fact turn out to be a creepy/scary person who harassed me. So an instinct like that I tend to trust more.
posted by scorpion proof at 11:56 AM on June 20, 2023
But I rarely have ‘gut instinct’ bad feelings about people. One time I did, the person (a neighbor) did in fact turn out to be a creepy/scary person who harassed me. So an instinct like that I tend to trust more.
posted by scorpion proof at 11:56 AM on June 20, 2023
Anxiety for me is usually a bunch of ‘what if’, oh my god what if that happens, what if this happens, oh god type stuff.
Gut feeling for me feels more simple and matter-of-fact. ‘I think this person might be not great for me’, ‘oh huh… I think I don’t like this place’, that kind of thing. It’s almost like your opinion on something rising to the surface, whereas anxiety is a lot of fantasizing possible scenarios.
I think when people have, say, a gut feeling not to get into a car because they have a bad feeling about it and then it gets into a fiery wreck, that it really is pretty much just a fluke. I think gut feeling matters a lot more when you’re evaluating people, relationships, or that great example from penguin pie about deciding on whether to make a big move.
posted by caitcadieux at 3:03 PM on June 20, 2023 [2 favorites]
Gut feeling for me feels more simple and matter-of-fact. ‘I think this person might be not great for me’, ‘oh huh… I think I don’t like this place’, that kind of thing. It’s almost like your opinion on something rising to the surface, whereas anxiety is a lot of fantasizing possible scenarios.
I think when people have, say, a gut feeling not to get into a car because they have a bad feeling about it and then it gets into a fiery wreck, that it really is pretty much just a fluke. I think gut feeling matters a lot more when you’re evaluating people, relationships, or that great example from penguin pie about deciding on whether to make a big move.
posted by caitcadieux at 3:03 PM on June 20, 2023 [2 favorites]
Our intuition is where sexism, racism, and other prejudices live. That's why people "feel nervous" around the tall Black dude in a hoodie or write in a performance eval that the woman in accounting "isn't a team player" -- they don't want to articulate to themselves or others that they're influenced by prejudice, so they chalk it up to their "gut." If you feel like you're missing out because you can't trust your gut....please let go of that guilt. It's totally reasonable to interrogate your own hunches and decide often to put them aside. In fact, you're probably ahead of other people in noticing that your intuition is unreliable.
posted by equipoise at 4:01 PM on June 20, 2023
posted by equipoise at 4:01 PM on June 20, 2023
So many good answers here.
Don’t call it gut. Gut can be knee-jerk and baseless. It can be fickle and emotional. You can decide something and then as you take steps towards it, have your gut ratchet up the fear for historical reasons alone.
Call it Wisdom. Wait till the “gut” calms down and ask your deeper Wisdom to comment.
Sometimes Wisdom has no comment. “I don’t have enough information to make that decision” or “I am neutral on either option”. So gut will try to jump in to give you a signal because it is so scared of the unknown. It wants a definitive answer where there is one. Wisdom will allow space, to be open and “wait and see.”
Then like others said above, when it’s ready Wisdom can give a calm yes or no, without much justification or qualification.
posted by St. Peepsburg at 4:35 PM on June 20, 2023
Don’t call it gut. Gut can be knee-jerk and baseless. It can be fickle and emotional. You can decide something and then as you take steps towards it, have your gut ratchet up the fear for historical reasons alone.
Call it Wisdom. Wait till the “gut” calms down and ask your deeper Wisdom to comment.
Sometimes Wisdom has no comment. “I don’t have enough information to make that decision” or “I am neutral on either option”. So gut will try to jump in to give you a signal because it is so scared of the unknown. It wants a definitive answer where there is one. Wisdom will allow space, to be open and “wait and see.”
Then like others said above, when it’s ready Wisdom can give a calm yes or no, without much justification or qualification.
posted by St. Peepsburg at 4:35 PM on June 20, 2023
I do think the subconscious can notice things that our conscious minds are not capable of analyzing. If my gut screams at me not to get into a car, I'm not getting into it. Perhaps I am picking up on the fact that something is mechanically off about the vehicle. Or I've noticed that traffic patterns are weird and jumpy in general today. Or I'm actually sensing that the driver seems distracted or secretly impaired. Or any number of things. In that sense, my intuition is usually borne out, and others have described it as "frightening" or "psychic." Personally, I think my subconscious mind is just detail-oriented and highly attuned to danger.
And yet, I also have a severe anxiety disorder, and certainly understand what you're saying about not getting strong instincts. I guess I would say that the "gut" sense of danger that I attribute to my subconscious tends to emerge on an immediate basis, and it's just...not even a question. It's like, I meet someone, and I know that they are bad news, and from there it's only a matter of waiting for them to reveal their true colors. Whereas I do not have access to a "gut" sense about less immediate matters. Like, if I am considering whether to take a job or not, I almost inevitably will feel positive that I should (due to anxiety about money), and feel positive that I shouldn't (due to anxiety about working conditions or other unpleasant possibilities). It's very hard to tease out my honest feelings, since they all reside under a nebulous fog of doubt.
In short, my anxiety makes most situations basically look like this, so unless I'm receiving some clear message like Don't trust her! or That is going to break!, I just accept that I don't know what the hell is going on, ever. My gut is great when it truly shows up. But most of the time, it's screaming two diametrically opposed thoughts at once, which is useless.
posted by desert outpost at 8:02 PM on June 20, 2023
And yet, I also have a severe anxiety disorder, and certainly understand what you're saying about not getting strong instincts. I guess I would say that the "gut" sense of danger that I attribute to my subconscious tends to emerge on an immediate basis, and it's just...not even a question. It's like, I meet someone, and I know that they are bad news, and from there it's only a matter of waiting for them to reveal their true colors. Whereas I do not have access to a "gut" sense about less immediate matters. Like, if I am considering whether to take a job or not, I almost inevitably will feel positive that I should (due to anxiety about money), and feel positive that I shouldn't (due to anxiety about working conditions or other unpleasant possibilities). It's very hard to tease out my honest feelings, since they all reside under a nebulous fog of doubt.
In short, my anxiety makes most situations basically look like this, so unless I'm receiving some clear message like Don't trust her! or That is going to break!, I just accept that I don't know what the hell is going on, ever. My gut is great when it truly shows up. But most of the time, it's screaming two diametrically opposed thoughts at once, which is useless.
posted by desert outpost at 8:02 PM on June 20, 2023
I find it helpful to think of people's cliched advice as almost like the old "flip a coin" trick - the key isn't that the coin is right, the key is that now you have a concrete option to engage with and if your reaction is AHAHAHA LOL NO you can safely disregard their advice.
A lot of people like to say, "if it was really the right [relationship/job/life choice] you wouldn't be so unsure about it" and last time someone said that to me I did literally laugh out loud and say "I'm unsure about everything!" and they shrugged and said "ah", and we moved on. They're speculating as much as the next person.
posted by Lady Li at 12:23 AM on June 21, 2023 [2 favorites]
A lot of people like to say, "if it was really the right [relationship/job/life choice] you wouldn't be so unsure about it" and last time someone said that to me I did literally laugh out loud and say "I'm unsure about everything!" and they shrugged and said "ah", and we moved on. They're speculating as much as the next person.
posted by Lady Li at 12:23 AM on June 21, 2023 [2 favorites]
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A few years ago, I was about to make a life-changing decision - taking a new job and emigrating 8,000 miles back to a place I'd lived previously, which was a very long way from the place I was based at the time. It was a move I'd pined for, but when I went there for a visit prior to the permanent move, I had kind of butterflies in my stomach for a bit, but that was soon matched by a cold, calm, collected certainty that this was the wrong thing, and that I didn't want it. It was like a cold rock in my stomach and very different from the anxiety. That was what I listened to. YMMV.
That said, don't let faux-wise people on social media pressure you into feeling like you should have an all-wise gut feeling that will mystically guide you onto the correct path in life. People talk a lot of bullshit online, and I feel like, often, claiming to have an amazing gut-feeling that tells them the absolute truth about the world, falls into that category.
posted by penguin pie at 7:11 AM on June 20, 2023 [13 favorites]