How do I know what to do? Listening to the voice within
It’s one thing to discern what’s coming up for us and another entirely to know what the message is. How often have we felt an instinct, gut response, or some sort of inner awareness coming from within but been utterly unsure as to what it’s trying to tell us?
I hear it so often – coachees telling me that they have the murmurings of some sort of gut instinct or insight, a voice in the back of their head, a nagging sensation in their stomach, a heaviness lurking in their chest, and they just don’t know what it is. We might be able to explain why it’s there (oh, it’s familiar) and if we’re able to discern where it’s coming from, we might be able to pinpoint its origins; it might be a childhood trauma, memory of a bad experience, a parental wound, or just plain fear. Perhaps it’s ‘just how we are’.
How useful is that? Not very.
Sure, being aware of where it’s coming from is helpful to an extent. We’re less likely to throw the baby out with the bathwater if we have discernment that the nagging feeling in the pit of our stomach isn’t in fact a sign we should quit our jobs or leave our spouse. It’s helpful to know where it’s coming from.
How much more useful would it be if we could translate the messages it’s trying to tell us? If we could develop the fine skill of inner enquiry? Going deep into ourselves and being able to take the tapping and extract its message into something tangible that we can understand? Armed with that, how might it inform our decision-making?
Take the example from my previous blog post about deciding whether to stay or go in my past relationship. I felt absolutely riddled with anxiety throughout most of it. Riddled.
Initially, I gaslit myself (like we so often do), telling myself that I was just being a commitment phobe. My parents are divorced, so obviously I'm a commitmentphobe, right? I tried to rationalise it as a result of my anxious attachment and just part of nature. Abandonment wounds abound in my family, and I am no exception. I told myself that I was afraid it was all ‘too good to be true’ and self sabotaging.
I had been working hard on my attachment stuff with my therapist though, and across all my previous relationships I had always been pro-commitment. It clicked that I wasn't afraid at all. I just sensed on a deep, nervous system level that I wasn't safe to do it here.
Ultimately, I spent almost a full year subtly gaslighting myself into denying my reality. It took learning the art of discernment with my women’s embodiment coach (I owe her so much) to really pick up on the reality that I was actually entirely right to feel anxious. There were things in the present-moment that I was picking up on that were red flags. Yes, there was absolutely anxiety from my past, and yes, some element of commitment phobia was present. That’s pretty natural. But if that was only 25% of the reason I was feeling so lousy, the other 75% was because things were actually quite wrong. I just couldn’t see it rationally.
Once I had discerned that the anxiety coming up was a present moment expression to something happening on a day to day basis, I was able to go to the next step – to translate what was coming up for me.
At this juncture, I went knee deep into my own mindful inner enquiry. I used various tools and techniques that I’d accumulated throughout the past 15 years of inner work I had done. I gave myself some time and space to systematically go through what was coming up for me, and begin to untangle the messages into a coherent, clear sense of direction. Slowly, slowly, it got clearer to me and I began to feel what I’d been seeking all along – clarity. All the tangled up, jumbled up sensations, intuitive pulls, feelings, muffled messages from inside, began to make sense. They reclaimed a sense of order and direction, and I finally felt myself getting calmer. Even as what I had translated was going to trigger a huge upheaval of my life. But I felt calm because I finally had clarity.
With this newfound clarity, I was able to take the time to look at what had come up for me and explore it from all angles. I got to know what was ‘true’ for me and make my peace with it. Before too long, I knew it was time for the next step - to take action.
Read more in my next blog post to learn what happened next.
