How to Differentiate Fear and Intuition for a Better Life EP 58 [REPLAY]

If you're listening to this in real time. Happy holidays. Here in the US we are getting ready to celebrate holiday season and I wanted to share a little gift to all of you. As of today, I am officially opening the doors for our next Tress Building Boot Camp. It will start January 30th. It is a six week program. We will meet every Tuesday at 7 pm Eastern time. However, I'm offering a holiday discount for those of you who have been wanting to join but haven't yet joined. This is your chance to get it at a 15% discount if you sign up before the end of the year. That offer will close on December 31st. You are not going to want to miss this Tress Building Boot Camp. You'll get so much transformation just in these six weeks and you're gonna get it at a discount, but that discount will end December 31st. If you're interested in signing up and getting that holiday discount, head over to wwwtopselfcom forward slash boot camp for the 15% discount, or you can just click the link to join in the show notes. And because it's the holidays and I'm taking a little time off to prepare and get everything wrapped up literally and figuratively for the holidays, I am gonna share with you an oldie but goodie from Dr Ashley Greer. Sometimes it's really hard for us to tell the difference between fear and intuition, and that can be because of how activated our nervous system is when we have these thoughts created in our mind. So intuition is real and it can be trusted. You just have to know how to differentiate between your intuition and your fear. Ashley Greer is here to help us do this today, so this is a replay from Back in the Vault. I hope you enjoy it. Happy holidays. Go register for the Tress Building Boot Camp. This is the only time you're going to get that discount, so go register today and I will see you in the boot camp. Welcome to Top Self, the podcast dedicated to relax your mind, achieve change and become a healthier, more present you. Are you ready to move past the daily anxiety, comparing and doubting yourself and feeling like you're not enough? I'm your host, shannon Bryant, and I've ruined many good relationships because of my jealousy and stayed way too long in some bad ones because of my insecurity. But I stopped letting fear drive my actions, and now I can't wait to share with you as I dive into these emotions, shed light on how they might be impacting your life and uncover strategies to break free from their grip. It's time to start living a life of confidence. So get ready to ignite yourself worth and transform your life because, my friend, you are worthy. Welcome to another episode of Top Self. I'm your host, shannon Bryant, and the question that we're answering today on this episode is is it fear or intuition? So I've brought in Ashley Greer. She has a PhD in psychology and is a mentor and mindset coach who focuses on helping us determine Is it my fear or is it intuition. Welcome, ashley. Thank you so much for having me on the show. Yeah, well, thank you. This question or topic came up from a conversation that I was having with a member of the Facebook group who said you know that that's what I always have to gauge on Is it my fear, is it my intuition? So I thought it would be a great topic for us to discuss. How do we know the difference? Because when we are jealous, we kind of live in fear, but we still have intuition from time to time. So let's dive in and talk about how we can tell the difference.

Sounds great. I mean, I think it's such a great topic because, whether it's about jealousy, whether it's about work, whether it's about going for a drive, a lot of times this differentiation between fear and intuition is something that so many people struggle with, so I love the topic that we're talking about today.

Yeah Well, I may have a situation where I'm like I've seen this happen before, this is the same thing that's happened in the past, or this looks really familiar, and then we base our actions off of those thoughts. So talk to me about the difference between fear and intuition.

So there's a couple of really important components here. The first is that fear and intuition are going to feel really different. The very basic, basic thing is that the feelings really matter and when we have a lot of anxiety you know, because jealousy a lot of times is driven by anxiety and worry right, when we have a lot of those feelings, we tend to want to avoid those feelings and not dive into them. We want to avoid feeling jealous, we want to push it off the table. Unfortunately, that's just not how intuition works. We actually have to sit with the feelings that are involved and understand what's going on. One of the primary things that's most important with this is you have to slow down. A lot of times in jealousy comes up, it comes up spur of the moment. It comes up hot in your face, gets hot, you want to react and you want to respond and you want to go off on all of those things. In those moments that's probably not intuition, that's probably emotion and it's probably related to stuff in the past and I'll talk about that a bit in a minute. But this emotion that's going on is really important to tune into and so when it comes to intuition, you really have to be able to sit with that emotion through time. It's not going to be in the moment. It's going to be sort of like smooth and calm, like a nice calm. If you walked up to a pond and you saw that it was nice and calm, you can actually see through to the bottom of the pond and you can actually see what's going on down there. If that pond has a disturbed surface, so to speak, you're not actually going to be able to see things very clearly. It's going to be really distorted and you're going to wonder what am I seeing? A fish? Am I seeing a rock? I don't know what I'm seeing down there. So that's the first point is we have to give ourselves time. A lot of times, fear versus intuition is something that I say take a day, take a few days, sleep on it, let it calm down, let your nervous system calm down and then return to the feelings and what's going on. That's the first part about feelings is give it some time. The second part about feelings is fear and intuition actually feel really really different. Fear is a thing that feels really frantic, it feels really wound up, it feels really tight, it feels really like worry, like anxiety, whenever a sense comes up that you wonder if it's intuition and it's actually worry and anxiety and it's in your head. It's probably fear when it comes up and it actually feels more like calm certainty again, that calm that's clear and that's smooth. It feels like calm certainty. It feels like that's a weird thought. I wondered why I would feel that way right now. Huh, that came out of nowhere, I wasn't even thinking, I wasn't even wondering what my partner was doing today. That's weird. I'm washing the dishes and he's sitting on the couch and he's not texting or any of this stuff that popped in my head. It's not disturbing me, it's just there. That's more when intuition is coming into play. When it comes to our emotions, do we feel calm, do we feel certain, do we feel sort of curious, or do we feel frantic and do we feel emotional and do we feel triggered and do we feel really reactive? That's fear. Does that make sense?

Yeah, 100%. Would you say that most of the time, if we're already in that mode and we're already thinking about where's he been today and who has he talked to and where did they eat for lunch, those types of things and then we have a thought of, oh, I maybe need to check his email, when we're already probably in that mode and, as you said, feeling sort of frantic and anxious, most likely that's the fear.

Correct Absolutely, because what happens is it sort of becomes like a cyclical feedback mechanism where we create anxiety and we have all this worry and we've built up this narrative in our head, this story about what's going on, and then that feeds into a fear that we're going. Maybe there is something to this which feeds into the anxiety and the worry and it sort of ramps up and up and up and up until we actually I talk about this with clients a lot until we sometimes feel as though we have to do something to calm the obsessional thoughts that we're having, which is usually a behavior such as checking the email, looking at the bank receipts, whatever it might be, whatever checking kind of things you do, it actually is a little bit of an obsession, compulsive response.

Yeah, yeah, we get into that obsessive mode and I love that you brought that up, because I always say, you know, questions breed questions and we get into that mode of well, now I need to check the email and, unfortunately, when we're in that sort of mindset and that cycle, as you said, and then we go check the email just because we don't find something that doesn't satisfy that, because then we go, oh, they're either really good at hiding it or it's somewhere else. Maybe it's in their text messages, maybe it's in, you know, social media.

Yeah, absolutely. And so then we wind ourselves up more and we go searching for more evidence and we're convincing ourselves well, there must be something out there, because why do I feel this so strongly? Instead of saying why do I feel it so strongly, it's really, why am I fearing this so strongly?

Oh, love that.

And that brings up a really this other point that I really wanted to make, because you said at the beginning you said you know this has happened to me in the past. I've seen these signs before, I know what this feels like, right, and so people tend to project that into their current circumstances. Unfortunately and this is another thing about intuition intuition is anchored in the present. It's not about the past. It's actually anchored in how do I feel right now If my mind is going to the past. What that is a lot of times is that's trauma, that's people reflecting on traumatic experiences that have happened to them, rejecting from those traumatic experiences and projecting that fear into the present moment instead of just feeling what's going on around them. Right, yeah. So like here's an example Like you go into a restaurant and you see somebody and for some reason, your spidey sense goes off and you're like that person doesn't feel right, that person doesn't feel safe, something about that person just gives me the willies and that's present moment. You don't know, jack, about that person, they don't remind you of anybody that has absolutely that intuition in that present moment. But you walk in and you see a guy who looks like your narcissistic ex-partner and you're like that guy gives me the willies. Oh, he looks just like Jack. Jack was an evil SOB.

Yeah, that's trauma, that's trauma and that's going into that fear place. Yeah, that's a really good, easy distinction, I think, for us to tell the difference. So then from that you're kind of saying intuition, you said it's about the present. Does it tend to happen then when we're kind of not doing anything or thinking about anything? In particular, is that usually when we get these intuitive thoughts?

I would say generally, if it's going to just come to us, that's when it comes from. It just kind of comes out of nowhere. It comes in the silence a lot of times. The silence meaning those times when you're not really in your head. So those moments when you're in the shower or you're driving or you're going for a walk, where your mind's just kind of drifting and you're not thinking about anything and you're not listening to a podcast. I mean, you should listen to this podcast but you're not listening to a podcast, or you're not like planning your day and you're just sort of or maybe right before you go to sleep or right when you wake up those kinds of times is a time that it comes. But there are ways to actually tune into your intuition and I'm happy to talk more about that if that would be helpful for your audience as well.

Yes, I love that because when, as you said, when we, maybe we are listening, this podcast can certainly be somewhat triggering, and I say that from time to time just because of the topics and the things that we're talking about. And so, you know, I fear that some people go, oh, I never even thought to look there or oh, I never even thought to do that, and so I think it's really helpful to say again, like that's coming from that fear place, and when we need to move away from that fear and into our intuition. I'd love to hear more about how we can do that.

Absolutely so. This is something I call intuition anchoring, and what it is is. It's basically attuning you and teaching you to really anchor into your intuition and be able to sense where you feel it. A lot of times, intuition, most of the time intuition, is felt in your body. It's not actually something you think you might get a flash, you might get a thought, et cetera, but you're going to feel it. You know, you've heard it, I feel it in my gut. Yeah, that's something that happens for everybody. Yeah, and so what I usually do is I walk my clients through an exercise where they answer yes or no questions that are totally obvious. What the answer yes or no is right. So the yes questions might be things like my name is Ashley, I am a coach, I live in Australia. You know what I mean. I love my partner, I love my work. Maybe the no questions are I have 15 children.

I have no, I don't have 15 children.

I love the snow. I'm trying to think of total no questions. I love to eat lobster. I'm allergic, so I don't. You know things like that, but are obvious no's and what you do is you actually sit there and you know, you have this list in front of you which are obvious yes and no's for you personally. They have to be personal to you and they have to be relevant, because sometimes when you ask silly questions like I'm an octopus, people just laugh at me. I can't connect with it. No, I'm not, but that doesn't trigger this for me. So then you close your eyes and you ask yourself these questions and you ask yourself my name is Ashley. I mean, tune into your body. It's good to do a bit of a relaxation. You know a couple of breaths and take some time to get into relaxation. Before you do this, my name is Ashley, and where in your body do you actually feel that? What are you actually feeling? And really tune into what's going on inside of your body? When you ask this yes or no question, my name is Ashley. You know like I am a coach, I love my work, et cetera. I personally get yeses. It feels like an elevator going off on the inside of my body and it burst through my face or burst through my chest. That's a yes for me.

And then I go to the no's.

I love snow. You know I have 15 kids. For me personally, this is an elevator going down the middle of my body and explodes out the bottom and explodes out my gut, like it's a very strong feeling and I can feel this quite attuned. But I've been working with this stuff for a long time. For you and for your listeners, it might be subtle, it might be. I feel it in, I feel a no in my toes. I've had clients say that and I'm like that's perfectly okay, it's different for everyone. I feel a no, a yes, because my face is getting hot, or I feel it in my forehead, or it's totally unique to every single person. But the more and more you practice these yes or no's, the more you're going to be attuned to what your intuition is telling you. And then what you have the opportunity to do is when you feel in that calm place. You know where the pond is calm and you can see through to the bottom. You can actually ask yourself important questions that matter to you. Is there anything to worry about in my relationship? Okay, maybe I'm getting a yes right now. Is there anything that I need to know about my partner that he's not telling me? Okay, maybe I'm getting another yes. Is he lying to me? Oh, I'm getting a no. Is he feeling depressed? Oh, I'm getting a yes. Is my jealousy actually his depression? Oh, wow, I just got a really strong yes.

Wow, that is an amazing exercise. That's incredible. So if we do this, I assume we can make our own yes or no questions. This is something that we could just come up with. These are definite yeses for me. These are definite noes. Is there? Should we switch those questions up from time to time? How often should we do that and maybe stick with the same questions, or should we switch them up?

As you're training your intuition, I would say to continue asking different questions, because what you're going to be doing is you're basically it's like lifting weights in the gym You're training yourself and you're training yourself to recognize what's going on inside of you. And as you do that, all of these questions, you're going to feel stronger or weaker, because you know, something like my name is Ashley might not be as strong as maybe something like I love to travel. That's something I'm really passionate about, so that I feel really strong about and you'll feel even the strength of the yes and the no based on how you feel about the yes and the no, so based on the actual actuality of the yes and the no, and so you'll be able to and the more you do it, the more you'll anchor into where that feeling is and be able to find it again. So I definitely recommend to continue doing it until it's really strong and until you can actually ask yourself high stakes questions and still feel it and not get triggered. And I would suggest for your audience also start with high stakes questions that don't have anything to do with your partner. Start with high stakes questions that are not about your jealousy. Start with high stakes, questions that maybe are like am I in the right job or you know, are my kids happy or whatever it might be that you know, you care about deeply, but aren't as triggering because that's going to then train you to understand your intuition in terms of these important questions in your life without feeling some of that triggering you know, emotional jealousy, that goes on.

Right because we're going to want to jump right to like okay, I've trained my body for a minute, let me jump to these. These really you know questions that I feel like I want answers to when it comes to my partner, I love that exercise. How long do you think that we should do it if we're practicing it, how long do you think before we kind of move to those higher stake questions?

Yeah, I don't think there's a real, you know, obvious answer to that. I think it's really going to depend on the person. I think for some people, they're going to have a lot of natural ability to tune into their intuition and they're going to feel that really strong feeling immediately. For other people, it's going to be something that they have to really work at, to turn up the volume on so that they can hear it and so they can sense it and so they can feel it and so they can know what it is that they're actually experiencing. And for those people, I'd say take a bit more time and take a bit more practice. Another thing I wanted to mention, though, that I was just thinking about is when you ask these high stake questions, particularly when it comes to things that are highly emotional, ask yourself that a couple of times through time. So don't just ask it today and then go confront your partner. You know, ask yourself it today, ask yourself again tomorrow. Maybe you didn't sleep well, maybe you slept better than maybe there's less stress going on. You know, like I'm sure you've all heard of halt, hungry, angry, lonely, tired. Whenever you feel those things, you're emotionally vulnerable and you're probably not going to be very clear Ask yourself again when everything's going right. Ask yourself again when you're feeling happy and connected. Ask yourself in different circumstances so that you have confirmation that that intuition is actually reading things correctly.

Yeah, yeah, that's a good thought and I assume then we want to try to practice this outside of our you know, we're in that mode and we're in that fearful mode is probably not the best time to practice the intuition 100%.

Yeah, you don't want to practice it in that situation, because then what you're practicing is you're practicing reading your anxiety and your fear.

Is there? I assume that maybe and I haven't done the I'm 100% doing this exercise, but since I haven't done it yet, is there like, if we feel one you know, we ask ourselves some of those higher state questions it's not related to our partner yet, but and I just kind of sort of feel it, it's not just it's not a real strong emotion. Does that mean then, that maybe that less the emotion that it's not as strong is maybe not correct, or it just means maybe I'm not as tied to it?

It could mean a variety of things. It could mean either it's not as important to you. It could mean the intuition isn't certain, you know, like are my kids happy? Maybe they're neither super happy nor sad, so it could be. There's not a clear answer to that. A lot of times, the best thing to do with that is rephrase the question, Find a different way to ask the question that's clearer. So, instead of are my kids happy? Saying are my kids struggling in school? Are my kids satisfied with their friendships? Do my children feel connected to me and my husband? Things like that, so that you can actually be clear about what you're asking. Because another thing that sometimes happens as well is we put too many things in one bucket and so if we say something like am I satisfied with my life, and you're like I didn't get any sign, I'm sort of neutral there Well, maybe you hate your job, but you love your family and you hate the town you live in but you love your friends. So I don't know, are you satisfied in life?

Right, so you're being really specific and clear on the questions that we're asking.

Yeah, yeah, absolutely, and making sure that there's one thing it's about and not multiple things.

That is amazing. What a wonderful exercise. You find that normally, if we are feeling a pretty strong sense of you know, intuition, we're feeling it pretty strong. Are we usually right, or can that still kind of be up in there?

I always want to hedge on the side of. It could always be up in the air. Things could always be off off target. We might not be asking the best questions. You know, like something like I mean, even just think of it. Like, when it comes to questions, even think of some things such as has my husband had an affair? That could be a yes if he had an affair in his last relationship. So again, being really specific, it's the quality of your questions. Yes, yes, a lot of. We need to make sure that we're being very clear about what's going on and that it's not something that is triggered from those past experiences we've had or an expectation that we have. That's. Another thing that's probably worth talking about is when we have expectations. I expect my husband's going to cheat, or I expect my partner's going to go out and do these things to me. What happens is we end up creating a filter over our eyes. It's like putting on orange sunglasses, and we're going to find evidence of that wherever we go, including in our intuition, and so when we have expectations that that's the truth, it's going to generally be very difficult to find evidence of the contrary, because our orange glasses are rose-colored at that point, but they're going to give us feedback and data that reinforces our expectation Because, essentially, when we go on to the world, our world meets our expectation. When you go out into the world and you expect everybody at a party is going to be rude and cold, everybody at that party is going to be rude and cold Because you're going to have the energy that's going to be putting out sort of guarded and sort of anxious and sort of awkward. If you go to a party and you think everybody's going to be amazing and friendly and awesome to talk to, you're going to find that experience as well, and so I want people to be really careful about expectations, that if they have strong expectations that my jealousy is accurate, then you're going to probably find evidence of that, and so you need to kind of check those expectations at the door and go into it with curiosity. I wonder what's going on here. I'm open to allowing whatever truth comes through for me. I really want to connect with the heart and soul of my partner and understand our dynamics and understand my own fears, and I want to leave any expectations that my partner is cheating or isn't cheating or any of that at the door so that I can see things clearly and truthfully.

Yeah, yeah, and I know we get into those situations, especially in those jealous situations and I've done it a million times where I know this is going to happen, I know this is going to happen and, like you said, we bring it to us. And so I like the curiosity piece because it's also sort of trying to take that anxiety and think about it as excitement, because it's really hard when we're going to an event or we're going to be around other people or we're going to dinner, we get into that mindset of, like you said, the expectations. I expect that this is not going to go well, I expect that there's going to be somebody that I'm going to worry about, and so it's more of I'm excited to see how this is going to turn out and I'm curious to see.

Yeah, yeah, I love that. That's a great way to put it. I would really encourage people to in terms of fear I mean, we can talk about fear for a minute Really encourage people to get to know their fears. You know like people don't like to hear this, but when you put your fears out of your mind, when you push your fears off the table, when you try to deal with your fears by denying they exist, what happens is they get bigger. They end up basically getting shoved back into the subconscious mind and they influence your behavior, they influence your choices, they influence your expectations, they influence those filters, without you even realizing what's going on. And so if you take those fears out of the shadow, out of the dark, and you sit them down and you say, okay, let's watch out what's going on here, what are you really afraid of and why are you really afraid of it? Let's actually get to know you. A lot of times, what happens is the fears begin to diminish. They no longer impact the you know, the behaviors and the choices and all of this stuff without our knowing it. So we don't feel as out of control, because a lot of times we feel out of control when our fears are driving the bus right Restriction. But what's more is that we finally feel empowered to sit down and understand what's going on for us in terms of those fears, because we tend to want to project fear onto our environment. I'm afraid of things out there, I'm afraid of what that person's doing, I'm afraid of what's going to happen in that circumstance. I'm afraid of you know, that kind of stuff. But the true root of our fears is inside of us, and so if we can actually get to know what is it that I'm actually really afraid of and where is that coming from, that's when the real, you know gifts occur. That's when the real gifts happen and that's when you're going to be even clearer with your intuition. So an example might be, you know, like, if I get to sit down and get to know my fear and I'm saying what is it that I'm really afraid of when I say I'm afraid that my partner is going to cheat on me, well, gosh, if I just leave my partner out of it, what I'm actually really afraid of is to I'm afraid of being abandoned. I'm afraid that the person who loves me is going to, is going to leave me, and that I'm going to be all alone. Oh, wow, that feels really heavy. Well, if I think about that fear, when else have I felt that in my life? Oh, wow, I felt that when my parents got divorced and my dad left, wow. So my fear about my partner is actually real about, really about my dad. And when I can address that internally, then suddenly things start to feel a little bit, a little bit less frightening with my partner because I know that there's seeds from the past and then I feel more calm and able to anchor into that intuition about what's going on in the here and now easier.

Yeah, we know that jealousy and when we become that extreme jealous person, it's you know, the work is on us and it lies within us most of the time, unless we have, you know, evidence otherwise. But most of the time we don't have that evidence. There's nothing going on, it's it's all.

It's all inside us and all work that needs to be done inside yeah yeah, and I think I also want to give your audience the nudge that your feelings are important and your feelings are data and so what you're feeling, tuning into that is important, including fear, including jealousy, I'm sure, all of it, I'm sure you teach them that that. Is there relevance to this, or is it? Is there facts to this, like you said, or not? And you know, because sometimes there are unfortunately.

Yeah, and I think that, you know, practicing that intuition and learning what it feels like is so super key because we second guess ourselves so much, because we don't know, like, am I thinking this because I'm just that way and I'm always, you know, hyper focused, or I'm always sensitive about it, or is it something that we do really need to look at? And you know, we have most likely in the past ignored some of those signs because we didn't know that it was intuition versus our fear.

Right and you actually bring up a really another, really good point when it has to do with intuition is the importance of self trust. You have to be able to trust yourself in order to be able to tune into and listen to your intuition and, unfortunately, a lot of people have experienced situations in their life where they've had their emotions invalidated, whether that's by their parents being told you know like oh, you're not hungry you just ate or, you know, stop crying. Or if it's by a partner you know, an ex partner or there's a narcissist in your life who gaslit you and told you you're crazy for feeling the way you did, what can happen is you lose trust in yourself and so then you second guess your intuition. So I also want to acknowledge that that can happen as well, and so developing that self trust muscle and understanding that the things going on inside me have wisdom, as long as I can be calm and I can return to this and I can, you know, practice like we've talked about I can actually tune into things, into my own wisdom, and that that holds its own special genius.

Yeah, a hundred percent that self trust. Oh, it's so difficult sometimes, but I think your exercise will really help people to figure that out and go. You know what? I a hundred percent know the difference. This is my fear, so I know it's at least not that, and even if my intuition is wrong, it still wasn't based on fear and I trust that I know the difference. So thank you so much for sharing that exercise.

Absolutely my pleasure. I've still enjoyed chatting with you today about intuition and fear, and I look forward to hearing how your listeners have benefited from it.

Yeah, and Ashley, if someone wants to reach you, how would they connect with you?

They can pop over to my website ashilverecom, and connect with me there.

Well, thank you so much, Ashley.