[NF] Learning to trust gut feelings/intuition - even a little too much?

[SilkRoad]

This may sound strange, I'm not sure how much sense it makes. Please ask me to clarify if it doesn't.

Does anyone have experience with moving from a time in their life when they doubted their gut feelings, insight and intuition a great deal - and then started to trust their own thoughts and feelings more? What difference did it make in your life?

I'm wondering about this lately. INFJs often seem over confident to me (the whole "I am always right about other people" thing). Well, basically I'm starting to wonder if I should adopt more of that.

I am enneagram 6 so I find that I have insights and strong feelings about others but I second guess them a lot. Partly, I don't want to be unfair to others (even if I am angry at them or they've hurt me) and I don't want to make a fool of myself. I say things to myself like "well, you're angry at him so obviously you're going to judge him harshly." Or "you've built all these little factors into a grand picture about her, but you could just be putting your own spin on it."

Thing is...it's starting to seem like more often than not I am proved right about these people or situations. I tell myself for months or years that I'm judging them harshly, but eventually they make a mess of their lives in exactly the way that I deep down suspected they would. This has happened enough times that it's starting to feel slightly eerie. It also makes me very curious to see how things will play out with certain people I know. And it gives me a different perspective on some situations, friendships and relationships in the past.

But, I don't really want to become an overconfident INFJ either...

Any comments?

 

[Ponyboy]

I always trust my gut feelings. I have been told in the past that I can be judgmental when first meeting people so sometimes I try to give the benefit of doubt and put my thoughts on the back burner. Thats usually when I end up getting burned and then I say to myself "I should have known". When in fact, I DID know, I just tried to ignore it for whatever reason.

 

[Qlip]

Absolutely, I have done this within the last 5 years, it should have been sooner. There was a point where the second guessing took a greater toll than being occasionally wrong. Gut feelings and intuitions are a major part of how I operate, auditing them is occasionally important, but being suspicious and mistrusting them was stunting my growth and making me a less effective person.

I imagine this could play differently for INFJs, though.

 

[SilkRoad]

I always trust my gut feelings. I have been told in the past that I can be judgmental when first meeting people so sometimes I try to give the benefit of doubt and put my thoughts on the back burner. Thats usually when I end up getting burned and then I say to myself "I should have known". When in fact, I DID know, I just tried to ignore it for whatever reason.

I hear you on this... I have put the gut feelings on the back burner either when I feel I "should" make a big effort not to judge someone harshly, for whatever reason, or when it's someone I'm attracted to and the attraction has overriden gut feelings. You can get burned big time in either situation and ESPECIALLY the latter.

Qlip, how do you "audit" your gut feelings and intuitions, out of curiosity? I take it you mean trusting them, but not absolutely and blindly.

 

[Neutralpov]

I hear you on this... I have put the gut feelings on the back burner either when I feel I "should" make a big effort not to judge someone harshly, for whatever reason, or when it's someone I'm attracted to and the attraction has overriden gut feelings. You can get burned big time in either situation and ESPECIALLY the latter.

Qlip, how do you "audit" your gut feelings and intuitions, out of curiosity? I take it you mean trusting them, but not absolutely and blindly.

+10

I also have wondered this in my dating and romantic life. I am judgmental to a fault in that area and generally am a long term serious dater but I have been told I rule out men way to fast. I think this might be true as I went on 20+ first dates in the past year or so trying to be open, especially to introverts, but I seem to just click or know (mindmate connection!) with few men and those I get burned on because I let the mindmate attraction overplay the longer time it takes to feel out comparability and friendship.
I am hoping I am right and my gut will know when my hubby comes along and my friends are not all 100% correct in that I am too judgmental ; but seriously dates are the worst when you don't click intellectually no matter how fun the plans.

 

[Qlip]

I hear you on this... I have put the gut feelings on the back burner either when I feel I "should" make a big effort not to judge someone harshly, for whatever reason, or when it's someone I'm attracted to and the attraction has overriden gut feelings. You can get burned big time in either situation and ESPECIALLY the latter.

Qlip, how do you "audit" your gut feelings and intuitions, out of curiosity? I take it you mean trusting them, but not absolutely and blindly.

I guess I take into account what kind of mental state I'm in, if I'm in a turtle type of mode I may be paranoid. I think if a person or situation reminds me of something that may have happened in the past. Sometimes dejavu can lead you to believe a memory is an intuition. Sometimes that memory has bearing, sometimes it does not.

 

[Salomé]

Does anyone have experience with moving from a time in their life when they doubted their gut feelings, insight and intuition a great deal - and then started to trust their own thoughts and feelings more? What difference did it make in your life?

It feels amazing. Incredibly empowering. Really, few things can compare with the enormous confidence boost and glorious comfort one achieves from complete and utter Certainty.
Even when you're totally wrong.
I highly recommend it.

 

[Totenkindly]

Does anyone have experience with moving from a time in their life when they doubted their gut feelings, insight and intuition a great deal - and then started to trust their own thoughts and feelings more? What difference did it make in your life?

Yes. I trusted my intuition much more than my feelings (my feelings were automatically on my "black list" because of my natural T mistrust for their volatility and undependable nature, as well as the religious values I originally saw as true... that feelings were inconsistent and often selfish, and they would lead me astray if I did not set them aside to make good logical moral decisions).

However, I could only trust my intuition "intuitively" if that makes sense... It basically gave me a picture of the world, but I felt I could not actually act on my intuition unless I validated it through thinking ... some sort of explicable rational reason to take such action and confirm my intuitions were right. This was partly for me, and partly so I could justify my choices to others so they knew I wasn't being frivolous or crazy.

Eventually intuition became meshed with experience, so I could trust it more. Also I did reach a point where I was tired of needing to justify everything to myself and others (it's such a tedious way to live), and it was about the same time I started also trying to actively reintegrating my feelings as a valid component of my living experience and sense of self. The first decisions were the hardest, because those are ones I made where I ignored external criticism that didn't support what I could see, and I ended up suffering some of the loss of social support I had expected because of it.

But after people downgrade your reputation for always being "rational" about everything, you no longer have to live up to it and can just be yourself. It no longer really matters what others think. Also, you can make corrections in mid-course if you err, rather than having to think it all through ahead of time and get it right before you do it. So integrating intuition + emotions + thinking = a more in the moment experience, that you simply do course-correct during.

By handling it that way, instead of experiencing life as some sort of preprogrammed calculation, you can engage each moment and be part of the timestream.

I'm wondering about this lately. INFJs often seem over confident to me (the whole "I am always right about other people" thing). Well, basically I'm starting to wonder if I should adopt more of that.

Chances are, while you might not be 100% right all the time, you could probably trust yourself realistically more than you currently do.

Partly, I don't want to be unfair to others (even if I am angry at them or they've hurt me) and I don't want to make a fool of myself. I say things to myself like "well, you're angry at him so obviously you're going to judge him harshly." Or "you've built all these little factors into a grand picture about her, but you could just be putting your own spin on it."

There is that... so you just develop new strategies to accommodate things. For example, if you realize you were unfair, then you apologize and change what you're doing, and learn from it. As for making a fool of yourself, if you truly think you were foolish, then you just change your behavior and you will no longer be foolish; meanwhile, if you realize that other people think you're foolish but you know you weren't being that, then you learn to set aside those critical comments as incorrect.

So my thoughts are: Be brave; engage life rather than not living inside of it; and never be afraid to admit you made a mistake or to change course.

 

[Anew Leaf]

This may sound strange, I'm not sure how much sense it makes. Please ask me to clarify if it doesn't.

Does anyone have experience with moving from a time in their life when they doubted their gut feelings, insight and intuition a great deal - and then started to trust their own thoughts and feelings more? What difference did it make in your life?

I'm wondering about this lately. INFJs often seem over confident to me (the whole "I am always right about other people" thing). Well, basically I'm starting to wonder if I should adopt more of that.

I am enneagram 6 so I find that I have insights and strong feelings about others but I second guess them a lot. Partly, I don't want to be unfair to others (even if I am angry at them or they've hurt me) and I don't want to make a fool of myself. I say things to myself like "well, you're angry at him so obviously you're going to judge him harshly." Or "you've built all these little factors into a grand picture about her, but you could just be putting your own spin on it."

Thing is...it's starting to seem like more often than not I am proved right about these people or situations. I tell myself for months or years that I'm judging them harshly, but eventually they make a mess of their lives in exactly the way that I deep down suspected they would. This has happened enough times that it's starting to feel slightly eerie. It also makes me very curious to see how things will play out with certain people I know. And it gives me a different perspective on some situations, friendships and relationships in the past.

But, I don't really want to become an overconfident INFJ either...

Any comments?

I think every NF has to find a balance between their intuition and reality. It is good to listen to what our gut and heart are telling us, but we do need to check in at the Te/Ti help desk every now and again to make sure what we are thinking/feeling actually has truth to it.

NFJs can become extremely invasive at times when they decide they are "right" about something and push that agenda onto another person.
NFPs can become Olympic vaulters as they leap to conclusion after conclusion driving others insane.

I always trust my gut feelings. I have been told in the past that I can be judgmental when first meeting people so sometimes I try to give the benefit of doubt and put my thoughts on the back burner. Thats usually when I end up getting burned and then I say to myself "I should have known". When in fact, I DID know, I just tried to ignore it for whatever reason.

I have learned this as well. I meet someone and think "hmm, something is off about them." Then I think, "Oh, I am being judgemental, I really should be openminded about them!" Then a few weeks, months later I am smacked in the face with the reality of "this person is a jerk/liar/thief/jerky mcjerk face/etc."

 

[Crescent Fresh]

It's hard not to trust my gut feeling as I've been using this all the time. However, I noticed that my gut feeling is mostly associated with negative judgement, and that immediately puts me off from building a trusting bond with people who later turn out to be the exact opposite.

So now I've learned that as long as you keep your gut feeling in "private," that is, without voicing it to others (a common INFJ trait) as it might influence other people's mindsets, it's perfecting okay to apply intuition and judgement in private sphere. Though I also realized that it is very important to always keep an option open, as sometimes, people might surprise you once you discovered their good qualities throughout the pathway. Then you can weigh all the pros and cons in your head and then decide how close you want to bond with this person.

But I agree with silkroad that when it comes to romance, my gut feeling is usually right but I let my emotions to override it. And of course things didn't turn out to be good as I tend to idealize romance too far to overshadow the negative gut feeling I first initiated.

Interesting topic!

 

[CrystalViolet]

I have learnt, not only do I trust my intuition, I have to tell people.....even if it's just a passing comment.Yeah people think I'm suspicious and paranoid, and I am. LOL, but when the alarm bells are ringing in my head, I know now, not to ignore it ever.
Friends who know me well, pretty much trust my judgment....except, and I learnt this the hard way.....sexual attraction overrides every thing.....so you could be telling your friend her boyfriend's an axe murder (come on he leaves blood on the carpet, when he comes in) but if she's hot for him, no amount of reasoning is gonna penetrate that haze of hormones. In some ways, I'm very glad I'm demisexual.

 

[Neutralpov]

Interesting thing is that I find attraction to be blended intuition with feeling over time. Possibly intuition that causes feeling? Or attraction could be a separate a la carte item from both...pondering (disclaimer: enneagram ones are gut based so that may influence this).

 

[frenchie]

When I was a freshmen in college, I would hang out drinking with my friends in their dorm rooms drinking. Oddly enough, I would get this feeling that it was time to bounce and did.

Everytime I left, almost 20-30 minutes later an RA came and wrote them up. That happened 5 times in the course of two months.

I trust my gut.

 

[jimrckhnd]

I call this "listening to the voices". I used to dismiss my inution because it was illogical. Later I realized that there is alot of background processing going on in my mind that I'm not consciously aware of and intuition is the "voice" of that background processing . Now I feel free to cross index inution with logical analysis and find they often agree - or at least my inuition warns me that my analysis may be lacking in either method or data.

I'm very glad I finally got to the point I trusted my gut: I find that it gives me a another set of tools to work with.

 

[Glycerine]

I struggle with this a lot because people (esp. my mother) try to convince me that I am being judgmental and that I need to give people the benefit of the doubt. Most of the time when I try to give people the benefit of the doubt, that means that it is very bad sign because with the vast majority of people, I don't need to give them the benefit of the doubt. My gut alerts me of big consistency issues with someone and when someone is trying to control me against my will. I have learned that the more you try to convince yourself of something, the more you need to RUN THE FUCK AWAY FROM THE SITUATION or decide the opposite of what your brain is telling you.

 

[King sns]

I don't trust my intuition nearly as much as I should. It doesn't always matter- in most situations, logic and common sense are fine- but then there is the strange occasion when my intuition completely disagrees, and that takes longer to figure out. Like Jim said, I like to believe there is a lot going on in the background in my mind that doesn't surface right away except with intuition. The intuitive feeling has proved invaluable in my nursing career, catching very sick people and discomfort before the average person might. I have a few stories like that, situations where I may just know what someone needs before it's clear. A lot of times, I am still wrong though- I always tend to at least follow up on intuitive feelings now- even if it's not immediate trust and blind action.

 

[Saslou]

Does anyone have experience with moving from a time in their life when they doubted their gut feelings, insight and intuition a great deal - and then started to trust their own thoughts and feelings more? What difference did it make in your life?

Any comments?

Oh yeah, been there, done that. Not trusting what came to me naturally tore me in two because my instincts were essentially screaming at me but i took the word of someone else so doubted my own mind. Now i am free i feel enlightned and although it took a while, i am starting to trust myself and my intuition. I feel like i've been let out of a cage and free to roam.

Although .. like yourself i find it easy to pick up on others needs and emotions before they've even said something, i won't go bragging or be overly confident about it as these are my instincts thus require no recognition from anyone but myself (Unless i am offering support)

 

[SilkRoad]

+10

I also have wondered this in my dating and romantic life. I am judgmental to a fault in that area and generally am a long term serious dater but I have been told I rule out men way to fast. I think this might be true as I went on 20+ first dates in the past year or so trying to be open, especially to introverts, but I seem to just click or know (mindmate connection!) with few men and those I get burned on because I let the mindmate attraction overplay the longer time it takes to feel out comparability and friendship.
I am hoping I am right and my gut will know when my hubby comes along and my friends are not all 100% correct in that I am too judgmental ; but seriously dates are the worst when you don't click intellectually no matter how fun the plans.

I relate to a certain extent (except going on lots of dates, hahaha) because I think when you do feel that sort of rare connection it can easily be mistaken for compatibility. I've certainly made that mistake and sometimes there are little voices in the back of my head telling me to look at things a different way, which I need to listen to more. Mind you, it doesn't help that these turn out to be the kind of guys who like to keep thing ambiguous with me.

I guess I take into account what kind of mental state I'm in, if I'm in a turtle type of mode I may be paranoid. I think if a person or situation reminds me of something that may have happened in the past. Sometimes dejavu can lead you to believe a memory is an intuition. Sometimes that memory has bearing, sometimes it does not.

Ooohhhh, see this really rang a bell with me. Thank you for bringing that out. I think that's one of the things I'm worried about. Since I'm an Ni user, anything that happens influences not only the present, but the past and the future. I pattern everything. It was also recently after figuring out Ni (well, sort of...) that I realised why my university professors always said things like "you're able to pick out just the right passages in different works of literature and link them in ways that others wouldn't see." Yeah

So as far as patterning everything...Sometimes you fit things into a grand pattern too soon and the pattern may be more in your mind than reality. I have also realised that sometimes I become disproportionately upset over a situation or someone's behaviour toward me because it's not just about them, or about me and them, but it's about all the times other people behaved like that toward me so it's this sort of grand cumulative pattern. So yeah, I do worry about letting my past experiences make me think that I'm more "intuitive" about a situation or a person than I actually am. Then again, sometimes when you have observed certain kinds of situations play out in certain ways you do develop more of an instinct for how things are going to go. I guess it's all about finding a balance.

Eventually intuition became meshed with experience, so I could trust it more. Also I did reach a point where I was tired of needing to justify everything to myself and others (it's such a tedious way to live), and it was about the same time I started also trying to actively reintegrating my feelings as a valid component of my living experience and sense of self. The first decisions were the hardest, because those are ones I made where I ignored external criticism that didn't support what I could see, and I ended up suffering some of the loss of social support I had expected because of it.

But after people downgrade your reputation for always being "rational" about everything, you no longer have to live up to it and can just be yourself. It no longer really matters what others think. Also, you can make corrections in mid-course if you err, rather than having to think it all through ahead of time and get it right before you do it. So integrating intuition + emotions + thinking = a more in the moment experience, that you simply do course-correct during.

By handling it that way, instead of experiencing life as some sort of preprogrammed calculation, you can engage each moment and be part of the timestream.

Chances are, while you might not be 100% right all the time, you could probably trust yourself realistically more than you currently do.

I agree with you that you can allow yourself to trust instincts/intuition more when they are tempered by experience. And I can definitely stand to trust myself more than I currently do. I have to say, unlike what some in this thread have said about themselves, I seldom get called out for being judgmental. (Although it does happen from time to time, and it's one of the few negative things that others really call me out on, so it brings me up short...) What tends to happen is that I trust too much, and then I get burned, and then I become super-judgmental of the other person involved (if it's that type of situation). Like, allowing my intuitions about them full rein, but kind of to an extreme (going to the extreme of only trusting my bad instincts about them, and not being able to see anything good in them at all any more.) I have a sense that it might be better and more useful to be a bit more judgmental/listen to instincts earlier, and that might help me not to get into those situations where I then feel I have to judge them extremely harshly for my own protection (or whatever exactly that is.)

 

[SilkRoad]

Oh yeah, been there, done that. Not trusting what came to me naturally tore me in two because my instincts were essentially screaming at me but i took the word of someone else so doubted my own mind. Now i am free i feel enlightned and although it took a while, i am starting to trust myself and my intuition. I feel like i've been let out of a cage and free to roam.

Although .. like yourself i find it easy to pick up on others needs and emotions before they've even said something, i won't go bragging or be overly confident about it as these are my instincts thus require no recognition from anyone but myself (Unless i am offering support)

It is a weird feeling...and it can put you in very dangerous situations... As you say (I think) you can want so badly to trust someone, or they may actually have more experience than you or whatever the case may be, so you try to override your gut feelings and trust them instead. And then later you find out that the gut was right and that trusting the other person was wrong. It can be so difficult, depending on the situation.

Honestly, the thought that I could trust my gut feelings/intuition more than I've been doing gives me a sort of...stronger feeling. In some areas at least, it makes me think, maybe you can short-circuit some of that anxiety and constant second-guessing. I can also see though how it could give you a false sense of power. The temptation could be there to not check in with Ti/Te etc. Just to ride on that "I'm right, I'm right" feeling.

 

[Saslou]

It is a weird feeling...and it can put you in very dangerous situations... As you say (I think) you can want so badly to trust someone, or they may actually have more experience than you or whatever the case may be, so you try to override your gut feelings and trust them instead. And then later you find out that the gut was right and that trusting the other person was wrong. It can be so difficult, depending on the situation.

Honestly, the thought that I could trust my gut feelings/intuition more than I've been doing gives me a sort of...stronger feeling. In some areas at least, it makes me think, maybe you can short-circuit some of that anxiety and constant second-guessing. I can also see though how it could give you a false sense of power. The temptation could be there to not check in with Ti/Te etc. Just to ride on that "I'm right, I'm right" feeling.

Well i think in my case it was just nievity or maybe i want to believe people and their actions are genuinely good .. Life seems to show me otherwise which can become slightly disappointing to the ideals i hold about people in general.

Difficult, yes. A learning curve, moreso

I am not sure i could trust it 100% but when those moments arise when i 'know' something isn't quite adding up, i will trust my intuition .. I think a healthy balance of intuition and common sense/logic is what's needed thus needs to be applied.