Trust Your Gut

Ciara Ward

Aug 14

6 min read

You’re going to feel if it’s the right fit.

That's what I tell people when they ask how they'll know if therapy, or a therapist, is right for them.

Yes, there are qualifications to look for and questions to ask, but when you sit down with someone, you are going to feel whether it's the right fit or not.

Clients say, “I don’t know,” in sessions all the time.

I say, “Yes, you do.”

Not because I think they know every step.

Not because I think the answer is always easy.

But because most people know what they want in this life.

Society, family, friends, fear, and years of being geared another way have just taught them not to trust it.

Not trusting your gut is the leading cause of having an unregulated nervous system.

Doing Everything Right

Earlier this year, I decided I was going to do what society told me was right for my body.

I started taking supplement gummies to get my nutrients. I drank half my body weight in water. I was doing all the things I had been told a healthy person was supposed to do.

And what happened?

I had never had a worse blood panel in my life.

So I stopped forcing my body to follow somebody else’s formula and went back to what I knew had always worked for me. I honestly drank less water and went back to drinking my herbs for nutrients.

Within a week, I noticed a difference.

I started losing weight.

I started sleeping better.

I started waking up smiling because I had slept so good.

My body temperature started regulating again. I felt better. And the entire time, I kept thinking about how I had ignored what I already knew because somebody else told me what I was supposed to be doing.

Now, please do not leave this blog saying Ciara told you to stop drinking water. That would completely miss the point.

What works for me may not work for you.

That is the point.

I sometimes get distracted from trusting myself, but when I look back over my life, trusting my gut has been one of the best things I have ever done. It is usually when I start second guessing myself that things do not work out.

I know what works for me.

The problem is that sometimes I forget that I know.

Discombobulated

I honestly believe one of the biggest reasons so many of us feel dysregulated is because we keep living against what we know. We want our nervous system to settle while we are constantly asking our bodies to accept something that does not feel right.

Your mouth says yes.

Your gut says no.

You keep showing up.

You keep explaining it away.

You keep telling yourself that you are overthinking, being difficult, doing too much, or not giving something enough time. Meanwhile, something inside of you has been saying the same thing since the beginning.

We hear all the time that God does not bring confusion. Yet we will stay in confusing situations because a person looks good, because they are family, or because they have been in our lives for so many years.

But that’s my father.

But that’s my friend.

But that’s my husband.

We trust titles and roles over our gut, then wonder why we feel discombobulated.

A title does not make something healthy.

Time does not make something right.

And history does not mean something still belongs in your future.

Sometimes confusion is not a sign that you do not know. Sometimes it is what happens when what you know does not match what you want to believe.

The Part We Skip

I’m not religious.

But what really started my healing journey was a gut feeling that something was missing in my life. I did not know exactly what it was, but I knew it had something to do with God.

At that point, I had grown up in church, but I had never really read the Bible for myself. I knew what I had heard. I knew the scriptures people repeated. I knew the parts we could somehow spend an entire hour discussing.

“Honor your father and mother.”

We all know that one.

But when I started reading for myself, I kept going. The instruction did not end with the child. Fathers were also told not to provoke their children.

Wait.

Why didn’t we talk about that part?

I thought about how many children carry trauma from the very people they were taught to honor. How many children were expected to respect adults who did not respect them. How many adults are still trying to make sense of what happened when they were children.

I could keep going.

"Spare the rod spoil the child."

All the things people have used to justify what they were already doing.

But this is not a Bible study, and I do not want it to become one.

Reading the Bible for myself left me more knowledgeable, but I still felt like something was missing. So I trusted my gut and kept looking.

I read the Bible.

I read books about God.

I kept searching.

Then I read a book that changed everything for me.

The simplest way I can explain what I received from it is that God is within.

I had spent all this time searching for something outside of myself when the answer had been within me the entire time. The gut feeling that led me to search for God may have been God guiding me back to myself.

That changed the way I understood everything.

Written on the Heart

Later, Hebrews 10:16 (referencing Ezekiel 36:26), started to make more sense to me.

In it God declares that He is moving away from external physical signs and rules. Instead, He promises, "I will put my laws in their hearts, and I will write them on their minds," giving believers an internal compass.

Some people call it conscience.

Some call it intuition.

Some call it a gut feeling.

I believe it's the part of us that recognizes when something is right for us and when it is not.

That does not mean every feeling is a fact.

It does not mean every fear is a warning.

And it does not mean trusting your gut will always lead to the easiest decision.

But when the same knowing keeps returning, we owe ourselves the honesty of listening to it.

We all have a moral compass.

We just spend a lot of time negotiating with it.

We know when we need a boundary.

We know when our habits are not helping us.

We know when our bodies need movement, rest, or something different. We know when we are staying in a situation because leaving would require us to disappoint somebody.

Most of the time, we know.

We just do not always do what we know is right for us.

Microwave Results

Even when we finally decide to trust ourselves, we want everything to change immediately.

We live in a microwave era.

We want instant results with everything. We set one boundary and expect the entire relationship to change. We eat differently for a week and expect our body to transform. We go to one therapy session and wonder why the feelings are still there.

That is not how life works.

Start where you can.

Start with the boundary you keep avoiding.

Start with the eating habit you know is not working.

Start with moving your body in a way you can actually maintain.

Start with whatever you are struggling with and do what you know is right for you today.

One day at a time.

One step at a time.

We hear those sayings so much that we stop listening to them. But nothing worth having happens overnight.

Feelings will not disappear overnight.

Healing will not happen overnight.

Trusting yourself will not happen overnight either.

Every time you listen to yourself, your voice becomes easier to recognize. Every time you follow through on what you know, you build a little more trust.

And every time you stop abandoning yourself to make somebody else comfortable, you move a little closer to yourself.

The next time you hear yourself say, “I don’t know,” pause.

Maybe you truly do not know. But maybe you know and the answer requires a boundary, a change, an uncomfortable conversation, or a decision that somebody else may not understand.

I will just say what I have always said to my clients.

Yes, you do.

Trust your gut.

You have it for a reason.

Ci Notes

Trusting your gut does not mean every decision will be perfect. It means your voice deserves to be heard before every title, rule, expectation, and outside opinion makes the decision for you.

Sometimes what we call confusion is really the discomfort of accepting what we already know.