Why Does Our Intuition Sometimes Suddenly “Stop Working?”

A student of mine emailed me a while ago asking about intuition.

She said that in the past few years she had gained a much greater awareness of how to work with her intuition, and a much deeper connection with her intuition, overall. Yet she was still bumping up against a block and she wasn’t sure why.

This “block” that she described seemed to come up the most frequently when she was worrying about something. There would be some issue or problem in her life that she just couldn’t get off her mind, and she would be fixated on it. In these instances, she would try to call on her intuition in order to anticipate things attached to the situation. She would try to use her intuition to “predict” what she should do.

And that’s when her intuition seemed to completely shut off.

It was at times like these, she said, that she felt almost as if she didn’t have any intuition at all, or that she only had a very, very weak connection to it. She had emailed me to ask me my thoughts on this. Why was this happening to her? What was going on? Why did it seem like her intuition was failing her, just when she needed it the most?

I wasn’t surprised by these questions, because this is a stumbling block with intuition that comes up all the time for INFJs and INFPs. I’ve run into it myself more than once.

What’s happening in this kind of situation is that we are trying to use our intuitive ability — a right-brain energy — in service of domination and control — a left brain energy.

The two energies — right brain and left brain — are not working together to form a greater harmony, a beautifully ordered whole, but instead one (left) is trying to exploit the other (right) to gain the upper hand and, ultimately, power over circumstances and the environment.

We could also frame this as the ego trying to use intuition to gain control, or the critical parent part of the psyche trying to exploit the wisdom of the inner child. The framing really doesn’t matter. What does matter is that we see that we are trying to take the magic of one ability that should be used in service of expansion, and use that ability instead in the service of contraction.

Intuition is a tool meant to be used to open up possibilities; to give individuals a greater sense of choice and freedom. It is a gift that can bring about a deeper realization of our own personal power. It gives us a greater awareness of our own unique place in the vast interconnected network of the Universe. It is an energy that connects things.

When we attempt to use our intuition to anticipate, manage, and control outcomes, we are turning away from trusting the interconnectedness of all things. Instead of opening ourselves to unknown possibilities, we constrict and guard ourselves against possible harm. We approach the future with fear, instead of hope and joy.

This is why intuition “doesn’t work” when we try to use it when we are trapped in anxiety and trying to control everything to relieve that anxiety. When we are in fear, we shut down. When we try to control, we are trying to divide and conquer. When we are trying to conquer, we are trying to dominate.

Intuition doesn’t work in the service of domination.

There are certain energies in life that pull this trick of suddenly “not working” when we need them, when we ourselves are in a state of energy that won’t work with them.

Critical judgment doesn’t work with playfulness.

Stubbornness doesn’t work with spontaneity.

Anxiety doesn’t work with receptivity.

Control doesn’t work with intuition.

When we try to activate a new energy in service to an old energy that doesn’t work with it, nothing will happen. We won’t get any new result. We just stay stuck in the old energy.

This is why intuition isn’t working for people who are trying to use intuition to manage their anxiety by helping them to control outcomes.

The only real way to work with intuition is to let go. Ask the question and then let go of what you think the answer should be. Or feel into the hunch you’re getting about the future, and then let go of your emotional reaction to what could happen.

Understandably, this is sometimes very hard to do. This is why it’s also important to be honest with ourselves about how impartial we can be about our attachment to any given future outcome.

I, personally, have gotten intuitions about people, relationships, and circumstances that I didn’t want to be true. I was so attached to certain things being a certain way, that I wasn’t open to considering the possibility of them being different. In some situations, it just hurt too much for me to acknowledge the truth.

When I was younger, it was extremely challenging for me to see this clearly at the time that I was in any particular situation. I so badly didn’t want to see what my intuition was telling me that I just ignored it. Nowadays, I still have emotional attachment to certain outcomes, but I can also see that I have that attachment, and so I remind myself that my intuition might be a little off in these situations due to my heavy emotional investment in the outcome.

Intuition is not an exact science. The best way we can work with it is to try to stay open, let go of control, be conscious of our attachment to outcome, and try to flow with it as best we can.

I talk about these kinds of topics for INFJs and INFPs every week in my email newsletter, and if you have a question about personality type, personal growth, or any other kind of wondering about life in general, you can send it my way and I’ll add it to my list of questions to be answered. You can sign up for my email newsletter here, and you can send your questions to lauren@laurensapala.com.