When my gut is smarter than me

I was working with a client recently and he was having an emotional time describing a troubling event. As he was talking, a thought popped into my head to try something that might help him cope with the event better, but it was something that combined a couple of different types of techniques that I hadn't used together before. Having faith with my gut feeling this would work, we tried it, and it ended up going even better than I had hoped.

We all have gut feelings about what to do, but often over-analyze our initial thought and end up talking ourselves out of it. Or as I like to say, we "overthink the shit out of things". In his book "Blink: the Power of Thinking without Thinking", Malcolm Gladwell discusses in detail the concept of the Adaptive Unconscious, or those gut feelings, and how our ability to make spontaneous decisions is often as good or better than carefully thought out ones. It's worth a read.

I think it's important for all of us to have some faith in our gut feelings. How many times have you had your gut tell you to break up with a significant other, quit a bad job, or stay away from some activity, but you talked yourself out of it, only to later realize you were initially right and now have to do what you should have already done? The amazing ability we have to rationalize our unhealthy actions, usually after lots of thinking, causes us to defer changes in our lives that could make a big difference. Having faith in ourselves, via our gut, can help us to make positive changes in our lives.

As I've learned to listen to my gut, I've become willing to try unusual things in therapy that go outside the 'book', and have found that my gut is usually a lot smarter than me.