Intuition vs Instinct

Instinct vs Intuition

Instincts are innate

Intuition is learned

We have heard both words, but do you know the difference and how they each serve you?

We often speak to our intuition as mothers, but I actually believe instincts serve a higher purpose as mothers than intuition.

Intuition is often that "gut feeling" we speak about when sometimes we feel something but don't have a good reasoning as to why we feel it.

This can serve us well, or cause more issues in our life.

Why?

Because sometimes our intuitive pulls aren't based on reality and wisdom, but our past experiences, which has created adaptive mechanisms where our ego is solely protecting us.

It's difficult to discern what's real and what's not sometimes, because our intuition will give you a nudge based on what it knows, which can be true, but also may be a trauma response.

So yes, intuition can be valuable, but if you have experienced a great deal of harm and mistreatment and abandonment in your life, then your intuition will often lead you to stay in self protection and not open up to others, even when it ultimately hurts you more in the end.

It's a double edged sword.

Instincts, on the other hand, are innate and don't involve conscious thought or knowledge seeking.

Instincts are primal, in your bones, and much of Western culture has lost their instincts in many ways.

Birth, for example, is highly instinctual, yet we see it being taken over by a system that uses "science" and "experts" as a manipulation tactic to coerce you to follow their rules.

This is where true instincts come in as women.

When women get pregnant, they are no longer just choosing for themselves, they are making decisions for their own birth experience, as well as their babies. So primal instincts tend to rise up for women in pregnancy, and this becomes the first whisper of her primal nature peeking through.

And this is the moment when a woman will decide whether to trust her instincts and inner wisdom, or the learned experience of medical providers around her(often THEIR intuition).

It is a crossroad.

And how you choose will define much of how you walk into motherhood from this point.

No shame

No guilt

No criticism

It simply just IS.

It's the way of the world.

Some people will learn through their own mistakes of following the lead of others, which then brings them back to their own instincts.

And some will have been raised in a way that allowed them to trust their instincts more keenly than others, and you will see that wild nature rise in them early on.

Birth is instinctual, not intuitive.

It's a process of the body, and baby, letting the natural biology of their bodies do the work, not the learned behaviors and conscious rationale of the human mind.

And yes, there IS a time to bring in the external knowledge of others, but that is still a decision that should always belong in the arms of the mother.

#intuition #instinct #primalroots #wildlyawakenedmotherhood