This is only what works for me, but i find that trusting my gut feeling for 100% and replacing that doubt of “is it me or them” with certainty has worked amazingly well. There is some caveat to applying this properly, and I’ll come to that later.
Our gut feeling in regards to people works far better than we give it credit for. After all, it’s an evolutionary adaptation to keep us safe, to keep danger out. We wouldn’t survive long in the wild disconnected from our intuition.
Also, if we were abused we were made to disregard our accurate intuition and gut feelings all the time. A core part of abuse is making you believe that bad things are normal and ok and the fact they don’t feel that way to you it’s your problem, that your intuition is wrong. This is how you learn to mistrust it, and with mistrust you start to ignore it.
This happened to me and so i knew for a fact that i have the tendency to under trust my gut feeling. So I tried an exercise: I’m going to trust my gut feeling for 100% for a while and see how it feels. Not 99%. 100%.
- This comment this person made felt hurtful. [Unconscious self doubt + self blame begins] Maybe it was something I did, so I deserve it. Or maybe it’s just me being triggered, but they did nothing wrong…- Instead –> It felt hurtful? That means it was hurtful. Has this person done this before? Let’s see if I should keep them in or out of my life.
- This person seems to be making fun of me but I can’t pinpoint how. If I can’t pinpoint how better be safe and assume they weren’t and i just misread the situation –> I trust my intuition. If it seems like it to my intuition, then I’ll take it as that they are making fun of me. Let’s not reply to that or tell them it’s not ok.
- There’s something off with this person. I get some weird vibes. I don’t know what though. They also seem nice otherwise. –> My gut feeling is clearly picking up on something weird from them. Let’s limit contact.
- This new psychologist made me feel really unsafe there for some moments and I was feeling hurt like I haven’t in a while. Maybe hurting like this is just part of therapy? They are a therapist, they must know better… –> No. If I felt unsafe, they are unsafe. I do not care to “make sure”, let’s not see them again.
And you know what? It felt amazing. Even if I would get it wrong once in 100 times (which, by the way, when looking back I don’t think I did, not even once) the benefit is just overwhelmingly positive. I don’t regret any people-related decision that I did during that period. It was about 3 months.
The reason why I say this was an exercises I tried, and not something that I still do is because it needs conscious effort until it becomes automatic. So I still do try to trust my gut feeling, but during that period it was my sole focus and it showed me how well it works when I get to that point of going for it 100%.
Another example is that I also used to think I was bad at picking up social cues, a bit autistic-like. I thought this was because my family barely talked and socialized. Turns out I do pick them all up, my gut feeling does, I just learned to ignore them. And again it makes sense. When you’re picking up tons of social toxicity around you but your family completely gaslights you to doubt your assessment, you start distrusting everything your gut feeling tells you.
And the weird thing is, it’s actually so much more relaxing and less energy consuming to do it this way.
For me:
If someone feels unsafe, they are unsafe. That’s it. No second thoughts, no “let’s really make sure” or “maybe i’m misreading the situation here” or “maybe it’s me”. And I haven’t regretted it once.
Now for the caveat. While this does work extremely well, you do need to be able to distinguish the subtle difference in your body when 1) someone feels safe, and they do something that isn’t hurtful per se, but that activated your own triggers and when 2) someone feels unsafe, and they do something that is actually hurtful. This can be already quite the challenge because traumatized people are usually surrounded by other traumatized people, and for good and bad, often that means there’s a lack of safety. Also this needs practice. Being more in touch with your intuition/gut feeling is helped directly by being more in touch with your feelings in general.
Also an explanation why it needs to be 100% and not just 99%. If you were playing a game with someone where you’re standing, fall back and they have to catch you. If you say “I trust you, but only 9 out of 10 times” every time you start falling back, you’re anxious. Will this be one of those 1/10? This is not trust. There’s always this 1/10 chance you could fall back and get hurt. Trust needs to be at 100%. If we trust something for 90%, what that means is that actually we don’t trust it. There’s no such thing as “I trust you but only for 90%”. Or in this case “i trust my gut feeling, but only for 90%”. So for it to work, you really need to go into a “fuck it” mode and go 100% all in trusting your gut feeling – again, about people.