January 17, 2000
Gut Feeling
age: 19
gender: female
ok this is crazy but here goes......i may be completely out of my
mind and please feel free to tell me so......but sometimes when i
am talking to friends about problems it is like i just know what
to say.....and the scary thing is is i don't know where it came
from i just knew it ..... and when i have to make a decision i just
know what to choose sometimes...sort of a weird gut feeling...so
am i just imagining things or what .....
thank u for your time
Well, imagination is involved in what you're describing, but the truth of the matter is that you're experiencing a very powerful manifestation of your Intuition, or what Jung called the Intuitive Function. We all have it...but we're all hard wired in different ways...which is the basis of Typology and the focus of the work that was done by the women who pioneered the field to produce the Meyers-Briggs Type Indicator / Instrument. Some of us have Intuition as our dominant function, others have Thinking, Feeling or Sensation as the dominant. One particular fact about teens (and the teenage years) is that they are almost always more intuitive than many other people, but when those years with all of their psychic ordeals have passed, their connection to Intuition often becomes less acute. You are, as a teen, very close to what's going on in the collective unconscious...which is the basis of most intuitive information...and at times, this can be frightening and even dangerous. Inundation by such collective information cannot be easily controlled, and can cause one to feel as if they are going crazy because that is the mechanism of psychosis. Fortunately it is not always the outcome...as long as one has genuine support and a relatively strong and healthy sense of self. Having a mentor during this time of life can often prove to be the factor that prevents such psychic information from becoming overwhelming. Unfortunately, not everyone values or understands the nature of the four functions...and of intuition in particular. Such people, who generously serve as mentors offer sincere and important help to teens...but from a Jungian perspective...their assistance is somewhat incomplete and leads to a genuine loss in terms of the potential for wholeness (which requires a healthy integration and respect for all 4 functions) that must ultimately be pursued by many people. I'd say that to seek out advice on this issue for yourself might be very useful...but unfortunately there are no absolutely reliable resources that come readily to mind. You're kind of left to your own devices on this...but with your strong intuitive capabilities, that means you're likely to find the right person if you'll just trust your gut feelings.
kristo