I've always felt a powerful connection with that arational part of the mind, the intuition. I've often had hunches about things that proved true, or blurted out something, only to find I'd hit the nail on the head without trying. That's key: without trying.
You see, if you start trying to have an inkling, intuition eludes you. It slips away, retreating further and further into doubt. It starts telling you what the rest of your mind wants to hear, stuff that's flat out wrong.
Throughout these years of infertility, I've found myself grabbing poor intuition, so long my helpmate and friend, by the neck and throttling it for information. This waterboarding of my subconscious hasn't yielded anything but a loss of confidence in what used to be one of my main ways of knowing.
Thus, I'm very confused about something I've felt, in that intuitive way, lately. I feel fertile. I know, denial, right? But I'm the first person to tell you I'm infertile if you ask me. I happily participate in the infertility community and identify as infertile. I know I have reliably gotten my period every month, and what that means. Yet, when I dare to listen, some tiny voice deep inside says, "Calm down. You're fertile and you will get pregnant. Something's just a little off..."
Insane, isn't it? How the mind works?
I'm writing about this because I feel there are plenty of guides out there to the gross contours of the IF psyche. But I'm curious if there are even more insidious, subtle seeds of madness that drive us up the wall, things that we think are specific to our own minds, but actually happen to all of us. So, in short, is it just me?
7 comments:
Thanks for your lovely comments - I feel like such a spaz sometimes and you always make me feel better.
I don't think that your intuition is necessarily off. I think there's a lot to be said for feelings. (Of course, this is coming from a woman who used to be convinced that she'd see two lines each month before she knew it was impossible.)
Maybe this surgery will be the thing to take care of the little bit that just needs to be tweaked.
Have you ever read Women Who Run With the Wolves? It has a lot of insight into that "little voice" and it's nature... how we've learned through society and the other influences in our lives to ignore the little voice, which is infact a throw-back sense from long, long ago which serves us well if we can remember how to plug back into it. It also talks about how we always get in trouble when we ignore it. I think your little voice is right, very right. I hope you can take comfort in it, and believe it for what it is. I have had that little voice telling me things about myself too. I don't think it's wrong-- maybe we are impatient and used to instant gratification, which is why it seems wrong sometimes.
You're not alone. I feel fertile all the time. I know I'm not. I know I need help. But every month when we've had sex (and yes, there are months when we haven't) sometime in the middle, I spend a lot of time wondering or worrying that I might be pregnant. (Worrying because our ability to create a lasting embryo on our own is limited...)
I keep peeling away layers, questioning my voice. Is this denial? Is it displacement? Is this some other psychological phenomenon?
For me I don't have a voice so much as a feeling when I make the right decision. I just don't always change direction when I have the you're making a wrong decision feeling.
It's not just you. I have also relied on my intuition to guide me in decisions both big and small, and I, too, have engaged in some serious "waterboarding of my subconscious" which has my vote for phrase of the week, by the way). And now I'm so very confused about which voice is my intuition and which voice is hope. So I spend quite a bit of time not trusting either one.
The key for me is to create space for me to really *listen*. I guess I believe that when I do spiritual practice, when I take the time to let things get quiet enough in me, when I do the things that make it safe for my intuition to speak, the little voice tells me the truth. Hearing the little voice is a different experience than hearing the voice of hope, who seems to be overly tight with anxiety and worry, all of them clanging around in my head.
I think you are totally right about intuition being about not trying. It's something we wait for, something we receive. And hoping is something we *do*. At least that's been my experience.
you've inspired me (yet again!) to trust what my intuition is trying to tell me. no more waterboarding. i promise.
i keep on going back to what my acupuncturist keeps on telling me: meditate about your baby, stop worrying, slow down. very sage advice, i've just been too stubborn to listen to it.
I have felt this way a lot going through IF, but I often can't tell the difference between intuition and hope in this case. Especially having been diagnosed "unexplained." There's nothing like a lack of something obviously wrong to make you think something is just a teensy bit out of whack and it is just going to take a little longer than normal. I struggled with that for awhile before we decided to start treatment. So no, it isn't just you.
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