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 Post subject: Intuition Vs Mind-Reading
PostPosted: Mon Jan 28, 2008 2:13 pm 
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How can you tell the difference between correct intuition and false "mindreading?" Occasionally, I can pick up on others' hidden thoughts or feelings, even when I am not trying to do it and they haven't given any indication. It feels like an inner knowing, not an attempt to try to figure it out. People have been amazed at times that I can do this.

However, I am also guilty of "mind-reading," meaning that I can be really wrong in my assumptions at times.

As far as the internal feeling is concerned, how can you tell the difference between an incorrect assumption and correctly picking up on another's feelings? Is asking the person what they think/feel the only way to be certain?


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PostPosted: Mon Jan 28, 2008 2:14 pm 
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PS - I'm not talking about having special powers or ESP. Just a situation where a sensitive person is more attuned to someone and is able to pick up on subtleties.


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PostPosted: Mon Jan 28, 2008 5:01 pm 
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I can pick on on things a lot too. I think I learned that at home from being hypervigalent with my alcoholic father and voliatile family life. I was trained. So now, I can usually pick up on people's mood. People don't seem to like it if I say, "You seem to be unhappy." I try to just wait it out or I might as if everything is okay. I just pick up on it and I'm usually right.

As far as mindreading though, I find it best to try to fight that. Even if I could be right, I am learning to simply take people at their word and that's it, let it go because otherwise I'm not being fair to myself (or them). I hate to feel annoyed or irritated thinking I "know" something and they wont admit it, or I have no chance to check it out, or whatever. If someone gives me information, I just take it at that and go with it. I can be freer that way and not tortured. And they can then take responsibility because that is what they said, afterall.


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PostPosted: Mon Jan 28, 2008 5:31 pm 
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I recently read an interesting book that relates. Gut Feelings: The Intelligence of the Unconscious by Gerd Gigerenzer. (I'll post separately about it).

Unfortunately, while it goes into the kind of subconsious thinking we use to make decisions, it's not a self-help book (it's an information book) so it doesn't give any guide for knowing when to listen to one's "gut instinct" and when not too.

But it does indicate (with examples) that sometimes intuition is better than reasoning everything out for decision making.

Still, it can be hard to know if there's twisted thinking when it's subconscious.

I think one way is to look at how good your intuition / gut feeling (or whatever one calls it) has been in the past in similar situations in the past.


Perhaps sometimes we pick up on non-verbal clues that we may not even be consciously aware of.

But also, sometimes, we understand how someone thinks, and can correctly make suppositions about what they are thinking. I forget the term, but it's having an idea of someone else's mind, how they think, what they know, their perspective. Other times we project. So, I think it often comes down to figuring out when it's a good solid sense of who the other person is that contributes to what we think/feel/believe is true, and when it's projecting.

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PostPosted: Tue Jan 29, 2008 2:50 am 
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I need to learn to trust my intuitions better in situations where I get clear "vibes" that something about someone is not right. Too often I shove aside those warning signals and end up in a bad situation. For example, years ago when my oldest daughter was only 4 months old, I was molested by a real estate agent in his office while he held a knife to my baby. I recall thinking that the guy was "creepy" but I allowed myself to end up cornered in his office and the pocket knife appeared so quickly out of nowhere that I don't think I could have possibly suspected what was coming. He seemed oddly interested in the fact that I was breast-feeding my daughter but I had no inkling that he would be that interested in lactating breasts that he would be getting under my shirt that way. Even while I was sitting there with my breasts exposed to his fondling, with my daughter sitting on my lap, I was telling myself "this is not happening" because it seemed so unreal that I could not even accept reality for what it was enough to do something to protect myself (other than let him have his way with me until he let us leave). My foster mother insisted that I tell the police what happened and it turned out he already had several other complaints against him. I will never know why I did not walk out the door when he offered to be my "sugar daddy" and instead thought I could sit in his office and discuss real estate. My husband accuses me of being "paranoid" now but sometimes people really are out to get you! No wonder it has taken me so long to buy a house. LOL

I believe that we all have the ability to perceive things beyond our awareness but that we don't always acknowledge that in reality. The quote from the movie "The Sixth Sense" - "they don't know they're dead" - could describe us all. We don't accept reality in the moment and then life takes on an unreal quality to it in order to hide those things we don't want to know. Because we so often dull our senses to reality, it comes as a surprise to us when we are aware of our surroundings to such a level of intuitive understanding. Animals use this ability all the time without any need to second guess themselves.

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PostPosted: Tue Jan 29, 2008 5:20 am 
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I wonder if there's a difference between correct intuition and false mind reading? I think of intuition as sort of knowing instinctively what a situation is about and also how to read another person. Not reading their minds, but getting a take on what they're about. False mind reading would be thinking you know what another person is thinking.

I often get vibes or intuition on what people are like. It's usually about their character and what they are really like. To my amazement I have often been correct in the past. I don't get this "feeling" very often, but when I do it's overpowering. I don't know how "true" these feelings are. It could also be like people with psychic powers. I don't believe in psychic powers though. But I think intuition can be a very strong feeling.

I usually go with my gut instinct on the intuition stuff. But as I said, I have to be careful because I could be wrong. Maybe I think I know what this person is about, but I really don't.

I read that people with BPD can be hyper-vigilant about picking up the essence of situations and people. So maybe we're just more aware than other people of what's going on around us. I do know that if a situation seems dangerous to me, I will be out the door. And if I sense a person can feel dangerous to me, I won't have anything to do with them. I think after living many years you get a feeling of what is comfortable to you and what isn't. So I guess a lot of this also comes down to common sense. And trust also plays into this. How much we're willing to trust people. So it's a complicated issue and we also need to react in these situations with Wise Mind. I know Emotion Mind can take over, especially when we listen to our gut instincts. So thinking things through carefully also plays into it. I know I use Emotion Mind a lot so I have to make sure I have some information to back up my gut feelings.

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PostPosted: Tue Jan 29, 2008 8:09 am 
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There's genuine intuition and then there's borderline "knowing," and I think it's important in recovery to learn to listen to the first and ignore the second.

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PostPosted: Tue Jan 29, 2008 8:30 am 
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Mobilene -

Can you explain more about that ? Seems to me this is what E2 is trying to get a grip on... whats the difference and where does one start paying attention to it?

Myself I think the knowing, which has been quite right on, is about paying closer attention to others than myself. I didn't / don't know my own emotions at times, but when I listen carefully to others, I can determine what deeper emotions they are dealing with. (And have been told on many occassions I am right.)

Perhaps the difference between this and instinct is simply that what I should be doing for myself (listening closely) I refuse to do/ been trained not to do and instead do with others.

I'm guessing but don't know that what I am describing is different than what Mobilene is describing. I wonder if he is referring to 'knowing what is best' in the sense of losing boundaries (which what I describe is in a sense) and therefore 'knowing what is best for them / the two of you'


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 Post subject:
PostPosted: Tue Jan 29, 2008 9:11 am 
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Is it possible that true intuition is usually self-based, with the focus being on self-preservation? Such as having a strong feeling about a certain area of a parking garage, or a feeling about a person at a bus stop. This is described in the book The Gift of Fear.

When it comes to being hyperaware of what other people are thinking or feeling, perhaps that's based in the "training" we received as children to be hypervigilant, and since we are so sensitive to certain body language cues, it's not that hard to be right about what feeling someone else is projecting.

Maybe the problem comes in regarding the mind reading when we see certain body language cues and take our assessment past just the initial feeling being projected to the story behind the feeling, such as, "He's mad at me."

I do the same thing, btw, and it's very reinforcing when I happen to be right about what someone's thinking.


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PostPosted: Tue Jan 29, 2008 9:54 am 
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Let me elaborate just a bit on what the book I mentioned talked about. It talked about how we may often have very simple rules, usually subconscious, for decision making, and that these can often be more accurate (giving examples where, with using multiple people and statistics, accuracy can be comparatively measured). And accuracy is a matter of, are we looking at the right things, are we using the right rules.

It gave an interesting example where doctors accuracy of assigning patients to one section of the hospital or another was improved after instituting rather elaborate hard to understand calcuations to work it out. But it was shown that it wasn't that doctors were following this, it was that it taught them what to pay attention to... it improved their intuitive decision making.

I can't help thinking perhaps the tools here can work the same way, long term, such that eventually, even when we don't consciously use them, they have improved our intuitive decision making.

As I'm not even sure if that last paragraph is an off topic aside or an on topic point. Can the tools help us in learning to tell "correct intuition" from "false mindreading"?

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