Trusting Your Gut

Is it anxiety or intuition?

There’s something powerful about learning to trust your gut. We are conditioned to avoid discomfort, seek advice, and to weigh every option.

This is something we’ll do throughout many areas of our lives from our careers and relationships to health and even where to live.

I spent my twenties dating a verbally abusive sociopath. I knew he was lying (specifically about his age and background, which was eventually confirmed) but I looked past it because I didn’t want to be alone.

For me, personally, I’ve found that my gut and intuition feel strongest when it comes to anything medical and anything pertaining to my kids.

For those of us who aren’t doctors but have had to advocate for better healthcare, you know how frustrating it can be. I’ve experienced this more than a handful of times as a parent, through my daughter’s cancer treatment, my son’s emergency, life-saving surgery at six months old, and most recently, some new medical issues we’re facing.

I want to share my experience with the hope that it might help some of you better advocate, or feel less alone in how much you’ve had to advocate for yourself and your families.

Your intuition knows. We’re not always going to be right, but I’ve found that most of the time, it’s pretty spot-on.

For the longest time, I mistook anxiety for intuition. Sometimes, I still do. I run anxious. I worry about my kids. But intuition isn’t rooted in fear. It can be a sense of peace you get when something is right—even if it’s hard. Sometimes, it’s a job you walk away from because, deep down, you know you were meant for something else. Other times, it’s seeing multiple doctors to get to the bottom of what’s really going on.

My good friend went through this recently. She pushed and pushed until the doctors finally found something and ended up needing surgery to remove it. She’s fine and healthy, but she knew.

Learning to trust your gut takes time and practice. But the thing is, you just have to be honest with yourself. There are times you’ll have to fight for answers, which might make you second-guess your intuition in the first place. I want to share the answers I got today, because I knew what we were going to find. This was it, even though I had multiple doctors tell me it didn’t need to be done. I’m going to share some information I wouldn’t normally share, but it feels important especially when it comes to trusting the “experts.”