Is Fear Blocking Your Intuition?

October 16, 2018


My clients often express their frustration over situations where they didn’t listen to their instincts. They knew that the delivery wasn’t going to turn up on time or they knew that their boss was going to change their mind. Our intuition helps us with everything in life from the trivial, like a friend cancelling last minute or knowing that a client is not going to pay, to very serious things like that gut feeling that somebody close to you is seriously unwell.


Over the years, I’ve witnessed the same transformation in my clients’ intuition. The therapeutic process increases their ability to listen to that inner knowing. The resolution of inner conflicts, fears and trauma results in  an increase in instinctive perception and intuition. And there is a significant improvement in their ability to listen to and respond to those feelings.


Doing therapy makes you more intuitive.


Unresolved stressful experiences and  trauma inhibit your intuition.


Fear takes away your ability to trust, listen and act upon your instincts. To understand this better, let's take a look at the different types of fear, how it blocks your intuition and what you can do about it.


I am not saying that all fear is bad because, actually, as I was talking about last week, fear can be really useful. It is the mechanism that our mind uses to contain and manage unpleasant emotional material. Our mind sticks the unpleasant stuff in a metaphorical container and stops us from going near it by wrapping it in fear. If you want to learn more about that, you can read last week’s blog here.


Fear can be useful because it protects us. We can see the protective role of fear at work in the familiar phenomenon of fear spreading amongst a group of people. Our limbic system, our biological system, is designed and programmed to be tuned in to other people’s reactions and feelings. If the people near us are feeling fearful, if they are emitting chemical and other signals because they feel threatened; we pick up on that. It makes sense that if somebody near us is feeling threatened, then that threat must be relevant to us too.


In this situation if the threat is real, feeling fearful is an excellent survival response. If the threat is not real or not relevant to you then feeling scared is not so helpful. You can easily discern which it is by removing yourself from the situation Then you will quickly be able to ascertain whether that fear is arising from within you, in response to the situation or from the person or people near you.


Fear is contagious.


Similar to this is the type of fear that is stimulated by our primitive instincts. It is the thing that stops us walking across the road in front of that articulated lorry. It’s the thing that tells us to run away from a dangerous fire. That is a really useful type of fear.


Finally, there are the type of fears that muddy the waters and confuse us. These are fears that have nothing to do with the present. It is not your instincts. It is not the person standing next to you. It is actually a memory of a past experience. That sort of fear and worry, the sort that manifests as negative thought patterns and anxiety - THAT is the type of fear that stops you listening to your intuition.


This is the fear that stops you being discerning. It makes you paranoid. It’s the sort of fear that has to hook onto something, anything, because we can’t just feel past fearful feelings in an abstract, disconnected way. Our mind has to find a reason for this feeling and the easiest answer is to connect it to something happening now. It’s much harder for your mind to delve into the back catalogue of memories and find the original source. That takes work; otherwise known as therapy. So, your mind hooks the fear onto whatever it has got in the present - worry about the kids, your business, money, there are plenty of options available to the mind.


Most people are scared to look at this type of fear. The irony is that not resolving it leaves you more vulnerable to negative things happening because you are not able to hear your intuition and  that inner knowing that is designed to keep you safe.


The fear of listening to your intuition can also come from a place of not wanting to get things wrong. You may fear that you might make a mistake, so you just ignore your inner knowing. You may worry that if you delve into the intuitive side of yourself, and open up to that, you will somehow leave yourself vulnerable to hurting yourself or other people.


In my experience, it’s not possible to develop your intuition unless you  address your deeper fears. If you are on a more spiritual path, you will not be able to advance further along that path without some in-depth analysis and emotional processing.


So, what do you do if you want to develop your intuition?


The process is simple but very challenging. When you experience this type of fear you have to learn how to allow yourself to simply feel those feelings. To drop into them. Don’t try to navigate your way around them. Don’t try and push them away. Surrender and go all the way into them.


A client was speaking to me recently about this very thing. This is someone who is very experienced with this type of emotional processing, having had Analytical Hypnotherapy. She explained how she had woken up in the night with a horrendous feeling of anxiety. Like she had been hit with a huge wave of fear. Due to all of the work she had previously done, she very quickly recognised that this feeling had nothing to do with the present. She knew it was something from the past that needed to be released. She allowed herself to stay with it. She didn’t fight it or run away from it. Her body and mind then had permission to let that wave of anxiety reach a peak and process it through until it reached a natural resolution. An hour later she went back to sleep and woke in the morning feeling fantastic!


So, the next time YOU have that feeling - anxious, fearful - don’t try and push it away. Dive into it. Explore it. Instead of getting sucked into it, be an objective witness to it. If you want help with that you can get in touch with me. I will explain to you how Analytical Hypnotherapy can help you develop this emotional processing skill, how to go through your fears and hone your intuition.






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