1. Emotional Response:
– Intuition: Often feels calm and grounded. It may present as a subtle knowing or instinctive feeling, often without much emotional charge.
– Emotional Trigger: Typically accompanied by heightened emotions, such as anger, sadness, or anxiety. You might react defensively or feel overwhelmed.
2. Internal Dialogue:
– Intuition: Comes with clarity and confidence. The inner voice is usually quiet and measured, guiding you toward wisdom without urgency.
– Emotional Trigger: Often brings about a narrative filled with self-doubt or insecurity, leading to a frantic or reactive thought process.
3. Body Sensations:
– Intuition: May manifest as a sense of peace, alignment, or a light feeling in the body, like a gentle nudge.
– Emotional Trigger: Can create tension or discomfort, like a knot in the stomach or tightness in the chest, indicating underlying emotional distress.
4. Context and Consistency:
– Intuition: Is usually consistent and doesn’t change based on external circumstances. If you have a gut feeling, it remains even when faced with new information.
– Emotional Trigger: Often reactive to specific situations or interactions. It may fluctuate depending on who you’re with or what they say.
5. Time to Process:
– Intuition: You may find that your intuitive insights come quickly but are easier to process over time.
– Emotional Trigger: Reactions may happen instantaneously, leaving little room for reflection or rational thought.
So now that you can identify if it is intuition or a trigger, what next?
Ask and you shall receive:
Engaging in discussions with trusted friends or a therapist can provide perspective. They can help you identify if your response stems from past experiences or if it’s a genuine intuitive insight. You want to make sure you are speaking to someone that is unbiased and will give unconditional love and support – and 100% honesty with you – which may be challenging- so be open minded 🙂
Mindfulness and Grounding Techniques to help you navigate through this process
Practicing mindfulness can help you observe your thoughts and emotions without judgment, allowing you to create space between your reactions and the actual situation. Grounding exercises can also help you return to a state of calm before assessing the situation more clearly.
Ultimately, it requires self-awareness and practice to distinguish between these two responses. Reflecting on past experiences and how you’ve felt in similar situations can also provide insight into your patterns.
It can be challenging to separate intuition from emotional reactions, especially when someone’s behavior triggers past wounds.
When you are aware that it is solely a protection mechanism you can then move toward greater healing – move beyond what is behind the trigger (thank the trigger!) and see the trigger for what it really is.
To wrap it up in a neat bow: Our emotional experiences can create filters through which we interpret interactions, making it difficult to fully understand what is being communicated.
