Intuition: to trust or not?

That morning, for some reason, Alexander bought a newspaper that he had never bought before. “I don’t know why I did it,” he says, “it was like something pushed me. And then the newspaper literally opened itself on the page with ads, and among them I immediately saw the address of the apartment for sale. The area I have always dreamed of living in and the price is right! I called the realtor, went to look – and now it’s almost ten years since we live in this apartment!

Moments when, against our will, we do unusual things happen to us often, and we usually tend to attribute them to the work of intuition. According to a brief psychological dictionary edited by Petrovsky and Yaroshevsky, intuition is “knowledge that arises without awareness of the ways and conditions for obtaining it.” By accepting this definition, we thereby recognize that not everything can be explained using the logic that is familiar to us.

Attempts to find a scientific explanation

So should you trust your sixth sense? “No,” scientists answered for many years. Arising from nowhere, not correlated with any of the five human senses (touch, smell, hearing, taste, sight), intuition did not interest the scientific world for a long time.

In 1958, American sociologist James Staunton set out to find out if people trust their intuition. He analyzed information on more than 200 train wrecks and more than 50 air crashes and found that on the safely completed flights, the cabins of trains or planes were filled by an average of 76%, and in emergency cases – only by 61%.

15% of passengers before the trip, trusting their intuition, refused to travel. Why didn’t it work for others? It is logical to assume that intuition gave signals to all passengers without exception, but most of them simply ignored them, obeying more powerful stimuli – determination, curiosity or call of duty.

Later, the leading American neuroscientist, professor at the University of Iowa (USA) Antonio Damasio and the French neuropathologist Antoine Becharat studied the reaction of the nervous system of a person who makes a decision “at random”. At the Iowa State University College of Medicine, they conducted an experiment in which 16 participants took turns drawing cards from a deck, with a hefty cash prize waiting for the winner.

And here’s the amazing thing: if a player drew a card that later turned out to be happy, his nervous system worked as usual. When the participant wanted to draw a losing card, he began to worry, the nervous system, as if anticipating failure, gave him an alarm signal. After processing the results, the scientists suggested that “there is an unconscious mechanism that controls behavior, which should be recognized as an integral part of thinking.”

Today, the ability for instant sensual awareness of the truth, bypassing logical thinking, is being studied in many scientific centers of the world. Dr. Dick Bierman, head of the Department of Psychology at the University of Amsterdam, says: “Many experiments confirm that sometimes the human mind is really able to get ahead of itself and, having made a small leap into the future, warn us of danger.”

Learn to pick up signals

One of the most successful businessmen, George Soros, has repeatedly admitted that he conducts financial affairs, relying not so much on reason as on physical sensations: any wrong decision causes him sharp back pain.

Each has its own “indicator”. Someone anticipates danger at the bodily level: for example, a stomach cramp or goosebumps that cover the skin can signal it. Someone is prompted by a sudden inexplicable desire or, on the contrary, an acute unwillingness to perform any action. Someone distinguishes a warning in accidentally heard words, someone is helped by visual images. In any case, intuition is always keenly felt.

One of its main properties is spontaneity. “If a solution to a problem that we have been tormenting for a month appears literally out of thin air, there is nothing surprising in this,” explains psychologist Sergey Stepanov. “It’s just that the brain analyzed the information and, without additional orders, answered the question posed earlier. Intuition is different. Sometimes we get an answer before we even have a chance to formulate a question!”

At the same time, thoughts and decisions arise as if by themselves, without any apparent tension of the mind. So, Natalia, a mathematician and head teacher of a prestigious physics and mathematics school, has been taking part in interviews with applicants for 15 years. “As soon as an applicant enters, I already see whether he will be able to study with us or not survive,” she says. “Of course, the decision is made by the commission, but in all the years of my work, my intuition has never let me down!”

Another manifestation of intuition is empathy, the ability to understand the world of experiences of another person, to join his emotional life. This phenomenon is actively used in psychotherapy. “How can one heal without intuition? asks psychotherapist Tatyana Bednik. “This is part of human nature, and its roots are in the ability to empathize and compassion. It is important for the psychotherapist to trust the sensations and not to immediately try to drive everything that happens into a rigid rational framework.

Can our intuition fail us?

One intuition helps, others can do a disservice. “Premonitions turn out to be false when people wishful thinking is true,” Sergey Stepanov explains. “In such cases, it is not intuition that is mistaken, but we ourselves, taking our own hypothesis for insight that came from above.” Unconscious desires often do not allow you to correctly interpret the signals of the inner voice.

“My mom has a very good intuition,” says 28-year-old photo editor Julia. “But with regard to my friends, she is always wrong: she wants too much that everything was fine with me.”

“I dreamed of getting this position so much that during the interview I took the elementary politeness of the people who spoke to me as a sign that I would certainly be hired,” says 34-year-old Anna. “God, how upset I was when I realized my mistake!”

Another hindrance is our fears. “Most of them are born from past experience,” explains Tatyana Bednik. “Experience becomes a part of us and prevents us from perceiving the new. Established in the flesh and blood of the installation like: “I never succeed”, “Love is not mine”, “At my age it is already unrealistic” – they make it difficult to understand what the inner voice is whispering.

In other words, when deciphering messages coming from the depths of consciousness, excessive emotionality – it doesn’t matter at all whether it is with a plus sign or a minus sign – can confuse all the cards and ultimately cause harm.

Intuition is the art of trusting yourself

Intuition is a unique mechanism that allows you to use deep sensations and thereby strengthen faith in your own strengths. “It is important for clients to find an explanation for the unusual things that happened to them: forebodings, unexpected insights, strange physical sensations,” says Tatyana Bednik. “They understand their importance and strive to learn how to interpret them correctly so that they can be used wisely in the future.”

Psychotherapy helps to get rid of the existing blockages, teaches you to understand yourself and not to remain captive to clichéd ideas about yourself and the world around you.

“Starting from this,” continues Tatyana Bednik, “a person gradually gains confidence in himself, in his abilities.” Listening to your intuition does not mean becoming a controlled machine. Capturing and understanding its signals without trying to minimize or exaggerate their significance is the best way to use this amazing feature of human thinking.