How to Get Your Intuition Back (When It’s Hijacked by Life)

Suddenly at midlife, the gut instinct I had long relied on to make important life decisions left me. Here’s how I learned to get it back.

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CreditJasu Hu

By Judi Ketteler

• July 17, 2018
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Earlier this year, I wondered if my husband and I were going to separate. We’d been having ups and downs for a few years, but in the weeks right before our 10th anniversary, I found myself trapped in a cycle of personal conflict around splitting up, a kind of “will they or won’t they?” — like some romantic comedy, but in reverse.

One minute, my gut instinct was telling me that we needed to separate, and that being on my own was what I truly wanted. Twenty minutes later, it shouted at me that separating was a terrible idea and not what I wanted at all.

For weeks, this went on — my intuition canceling itself out over and over again. It reached a pitch one afternoon, when I told my husband I wanted to separate and then immediately regretted it. Before dinner, I found myself completely undone, sobbing on the bathroom floor as he browned taco meat in the kitchen.

In short, I felt like I couldn’t trust myself. It was as if something had hijacked my gut instinct, or intuition — the feeling of Yes, this is right! that bubbles up, seemingly from nowhere, and that I had long relied on to make important life decisions.