Episode 338: Intuition vs. Intrusive Thoughts: How to Tell the Difference
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[00:00:00] You are listening to episode 338 of the Peaceful Mind Podcast. Welcome to the Peaceful Mind Podcast, a place where you can move out of overwhelm and into a calm, confident motherhood with God at the center. I'm Danielle Thienel, certified life coach, Catholic mom, and creator of the Cyclone Mom Method. I help you create emotional steadiness and peace of mind from the inside out so you can experience more balance and more joy in your busy mom life.
In the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Spirit, let's get started.
Hello, beautiful mamas. Welcome back to the podcast. I'm so glad you're here. I hope you're having a beautiful day, and thanks so much for spending your precious time with me. Today, we are gonna talk about your intuition versus intrusive thoughts. I want you to know how to tell the difference, [00:01:00] because I think if you do and you can recognize it, and it will help you have more peace in your motherhood.
So here's where I wanna start. I want you to visualize you're standing at the kitchen sink. Your hands are in the water, and a thought drops into your mind. Maybe it's one about your kids. Maybe it's about your job. Maybe it's about a decision that you're making right now, or something that you've been feeling really pulled towards for months and haven't acted on.
And before you can even finish really recognizing that's what you're thinking, another one shows up right behind it, but it tells you the exact opposite of what you were thinking now. In other words, it shows you why you shouldn't do the thing that you wanna do. So now you're stuck, right?
Because one of those thoughts might actually be [00:02:00] like a nudge from above, and the other one just is most likely fear, right? Wearing a very convincing costume as being realistic, right? And you honestly can't tell which is which. And if you've ever laid in bed at night asking yourself, "Is this the Holy Spirit or is this just worry talking?"
Then this episode is for you. So welcome again. I'm Danielle Thienel, certified life coach and Catholic mom, and today I'm gonna give you something that I don't know if I've ever laid out on this podcast before. It's the exact test that I use with my private clients when they're wrestling with a decision.
I call it the peace or pressure test, and it's three simple questions. And by the end of this episode, I hope that you'll be able to run any kind of thought that you're having through this test [00:03:00] and use it in the middle of your regular busy life. I'm gonna be really honest with you along the way.
You're gonna hear three kind of true stories from my own life. Two, it's where I followed my intuition, and one where I heard it loud and clear, but ignored my intuition anyway, and I kinda paid for that choice for a year and a half. But before we dive in, I wanna say one more important thing. is that I'm a certified life coach.
I am not a doctor or a therapist, and if you're listening to this and you really believe that you have intrusive thoughts that feel constant or frightening, or you suspect suspect something like OCD or another condition that perhaps is at the point where it needs a physician's care, please reach out to a medical professional.
This is not a weakness. This is you being wise and loving steward of your own mind. [00:04:00] Because what I'm talking about here and on the pod- podcast on a regular basis are just like everyday intrusive thoughts, the ones where every single one of us gets, the ones where our brain offers up all day long really because it's just trying to keep us comfortable and safe.
So let's get started with what's actually happening in your head, okay? So there's two voices 'cause we have this one busy mind, and here's something that early on I teach those that I work with personally, and that is that not every single thought in your mind deserves the same weight.
Your brain produces thousands of thoughts a day, a whole lot of them, and they were-- some of them were never meant to be our instructions or to be honed in on or to be used. They're just like noise from part of our brain that [00:05:00] has one job, and that job is to protect you. If you've been listening here long enough, I know you know I've talked about the higher brain and lower brain, the higher brain being your prefrontal cortex, where this is the one where we take control of our life.
But there's this other part of our brain that is kinda like software in a computer, like it's put there to help protect us, and this is the... Which we wanna be protected in many cases, but in our life, a lot of time that's not helpful for us in the long run. So that protective part of your brain, your lower brain as I call it, it's running what we coaches call the motivational triad, right?
It wants three things for you at all times. It wants you to avoid pain, it wants you to conserve energy, and it wants you to seek pleasure. That's it. That's the whole program. Now, I totally love to avoid pain and to [00:06:00] conserve my energy and to seek pleasure. There's nothing wrong with that. However It's all the time in everything we do, and a lot of great, wonderful things in our life and the things we wanna experience and explore, guess what they require?
It requires us being uncomfortable and going through some hard pain sometimes. And it's, takes a lot of energy sometimes to, lot of times, to reach really big goals. And sometimes we have to delay pleasure and do the hard, difficult thing that isn't a lot of fun or something to be able to have the ultimate wonderful result that we want.
So whenever you really do listen to that part of your brain that just wants you to not change anything, to not do anything that pushes you or makes you grow, right? Your brain is not broken. It's doing exactly what it was designed to do, which is to keep you alive and comfortable [00:07:00] But comfortable and being called to do something are not the same thing, and that's where intrusive thoughts come from.
They are your lower brain's like alarm system. They will show up uninvited. They're usually have a flavor of fear or urgency. That's a big one for me when all of a sudden I feel like, "Oh my gosh, I have to take care of this and do this right now." And they tend to repeat on us, right? How can we afford this?
What if I fail? How do you think... Who do you think you're are, you are to do this, right? Something bad is gonna happen. You should be doing more. Those are examples of your your lower brain's kind of alarm system and what are intrusive thoughts. But your tuition, it's different, right? I believe your intuition is part of how God made you and what He wants you to operate more often from.[00:08:00]
It's that quiet inner knowing that's connected to your gifts, to your values, to what He's asking of you in this season of life. And what I know about our intuition is it doesn't shout. It doesn't spin. It just has this knowing. So here's the question you're probably asking. "So if I have both of these voices in my head, how do I tell them apart?"
And here's the answer that most people get wrong, so I want you to really hear this, okay? You cannot tell them apart by what they say. You can only tell them apart by how they feel to you and kinda discerning where they come from. And here's the tricky part, mama. Intrusive thoughts don't always sound scary.
Sometimes they actually sound responsible. [00:09:00] Sometimes they even sound flattering, and your intuition doesn't always sound safe. Sometimes it asks you to do the hard thing, the expensive thing, the thing nobody around you understands. If you... And if you sort your thoughts by like their actual like content, you could get fooled.
And I know this because I've been fooled and I'll tell you that story in just a few minutes. But so instead what I want you to do is to not sort by the actual thought you're having, but by what the source of it. And that's what the peace or pressure test that I mentioned at the beginning does.
So there's three questions, and let's just walk through them right now. Question number one you can ask, does this thought come from peace or from pressure? Because peace is gonna be the intuition. The source i- [00:10:00] can be our God. And pressure is when I talked about it was gonna be that, that like urgency, right?
So when a client asks me in a session, "Danielle, how do I know if this is God guiding me or just like my anxiety?" The very first thing I say is this like check how does it feel to you?" Because if it comes from peace, it come, it's from God, right? But the anxiety, yeah, that's how you know. That's how you know that it is an intrusive thought.
So a real decision from my own life. Years ago, my husband and I were deciding on making a decision about schooling education for my twin daughters. And it happened to be where we live in the city and the, they were going to a public school and then the next options for us weren't something that we felt was in line with us.
So [00:11:00] we You know, if if you have twins or you know it's already, if we were going to go to a Catholic school, that meant double the tuition. And this was right around the time when my husband left what everyone would call like a steady sor- secure kind of career to go into the startup world of, in business and entrepreneurship.
So you can imagine all the thoughts that showed up for me, like, how can we possibly afford this? 'Cause we still had another child whose, education would be upcoming too. And I was like: What are you thinking taking this on right now at this juncture in, my husband's career?
And I want you to notice that those, what those thoughts did to me. They really did put me in a panic. Like I, I could tell my chest was tight, had like kinda like this sinking feeling in my stomach. My m- my mind started trying to gather all the [00:12:00] information spinning out, like I was going years into the future, and I was adding up all the tuition bills for a decade.
I was putting a lot of pressure on on myself and like the family's finances. And it felt it just kinda grabs you, kinda squeezes you. And it kinda de- demands that I was, like, solving our next 10 years of our children's education. But then there were some other thoughts, and one of them was the Lord has always provided for our family.
And I really was like, He's kinda never not once provided for us. And I didn't have to decide the next 10 to 12 years of tuition. That started to creep in. I was like, I only really have to decide where they're going or if we're gonna commit to this [00:13:00] for this one year. And then I thought, and next year I could see how it works out, what-- if we figured it out, if God provided, if there was another way, if there was a, a different path at that time.
I was like, I can look again and make a new decision if I need to. So even as I'm laying out these thoughts, do you feel the difference even just hearing it from me? Those, that second half of thoughts, they were pretty grounded, and they also chose to bring my faith into it. And they felt like they gave me some room to breathe.
And here's what I really want you to catch about all that. The peaceful thought was not the easy one. The peaceful thought still asked us to write the bigger check, right? So peace does not mean that I'm going to be comfortable. Peace didn't mean either be cheap or convenient. It didn't mean that I was gonna feel [00:14:00] settled totally right away It, 'cause God's guidance and it being from your own tuition can still stretch you, right?
But it also has this kind of peace and this y- you c- you're, you settle a little bit at the same time. But the fear part, I promise you, that can only just really squeeze you, pressure you. So that's question number one. When this thought is in the driver's seat, do I feel settled or do I feel squeezed, right?
Do I feel peace or do I feel pressured? That's how to run it through the peace or pressure test to find out if it's your intuition or an intrusive thought. Now question two is this my calling, my heart's desire talking or my lower brain? And the second question goes back to that motivational triad, right?
When a thought [00:15:00] shows up, I want you to ask, "What is this thought actually trying to get from me? Is it trying to keep me comfortable and avoid pain at all costs, and not to change and not to grow, or is it connected to what I think are, like, the desires that God has put into my heart," right? Of what maybe He's asking me to do, or is it connected to using my gifts?
And here's where this got really real for me. So when I was deciding whether to even get certified as a life coach or not, it was a significant investment. Real money, it would take real time, and I was a mom of three young kids. And oh, like all the thoughts showed up. Who am I to do this? I shouldn't be spending that kind of money on myself right now.
We have family goals that would have to go on pause. Shouldn't I [00:16:00] be putting the kids first? What if I can't show up as the mom I wanna be while I'm getting certified in this year program? So now listen to those thoughts again, because that's important. They don't sound scary, do they? They sound humble and realistic and very responsible.
They sound like I'm being a good Christian mom, like being selfless. That's the costume, though. That is your lower brain dressed up in a sweater set. Underneath it, it's all that, it's all that responsible-sounding language, right? Every one of those thoughts was doing the same three things. It was having me avoid pain of risk, conserve the money and the energy, stay where it's comfortable.
But there was this other voice. It was quieter, and it said things like, "I really want to do this. I [00:17:00] think I'd not only be really good at it, but I think it would help a lot of people. I think that I have already, from my life experience and naturally what God gave me, the gifts to be able to be a really good coach."
And I was like, coaching helped me so much, and I believe he didn't want me to keep all that I had learned and used and transformed my life for the better as a secret. I think he led me to see that even the moms around me in my circle were struggling as I had, but I had what I felt like an answer and a secret sauce, and I felt called to this.
But I wanted to know, I wanted to, learn the skills that it really takes to be a good coach, and that's where this certification, and it had a certain investment price. So notice [00:18:00] where all of those thoughts pointed me. They also didn't point me towards total comfort, right? But it did put me towards service and using my gifts, and that felt amazing.
And I think that your intuition almost always points toward what God made you to be and who you're meant to serve. And your lower brain almost always points you back to the couch. Don't do anything. Don't bother. It'll be too much. It'll be hard. So question number two will help you there.
Is this thought protecting my comfort, or is it connected to my calling and my heart's desire? And then question three is what I'll just call here is the go within question, right? And it's like the tiebreaker. It's the one that I want you to memorize. When you've [00:19:00] asked the first two questions, and maybe your brain is still offering, you're still not sure, is this something I should act on?
Is this my intuition, or is this just like an intrusive fear-based thought? I want you to close your eyes. I want you to go within and ask yourself one thing, and that is, what do I want the answer to be? Not what's impressive, not what looks good, not what everyone else thinks. What do I, deep down, already want the answer to be?
In fact, if you're in the middle of making a decision and you have all these thoughts that con- kinda contradict or line up your pros and cons list, this is what you wanna do. You wanna just ask this question. If you had a crystal ball and you already knew that whichever one you pick would work out, [00:20:00] which one do you want the answer to be?
That's how you get to your intuition. Now, before you tell me that sounds too simple, I'm gonna tell you about a time that I had the answer, but I walked past it. So before I was a coach, and before I was even my very first career I've mentioned this before on the podcast, I spent years as a professional ballet dancer, and that is what landed me here in my hometown of Nashville, because I was a professional dancer with the Nashville Ballet.
And then I retired and stepped away and and then I was in my stay-at-home mom years and had my children. But I was asked within that, when I had all my children was stay-at-home mom, I was asked to come back to serve as the director of the school, [00:21:00] right? It was a big role, prestigious title, like the kind of opportunity people would say not to pass up.
And I really did have such a heart for the ballet and the world the world of dance and and and of course, a heart for service and always wanna help. And I was being told like you'd be perfect for this job." But at the time, my son was three. He was... Had started preschool, and when I sat with the decision, I cried, and I cried because I wanted to be the one picking him up And with the current job hours, I didn't know if I would be able to.
I'd have to rearrange. But I'm just totally summing up when I'm just thinking back to what I went through just to get to the end result, which is what I want you to see, is that I can see in retrospect that my intuition was so clear. It was now [00:22:00] is not the time. It wasn't the right timing for my family.
That, and the tears and the pressure, and there wasn't really peace there. The intrusive thoughts of was, which now I'm thinking was more ego-driven, right? Really took over. They were loud, and they were flattering, right? "You should do this. This is a big deal. Think of the title, the position, and adding, the income to your family."
And I really let those thoughts and other people's opinions really point me to say yes. And so I did take the job, and I did end up working there for a year and a half. And I do believe God will ma- help us make the best out of our decisions, but I don't think I listened to Him. And yeah, for the next year and a half, there was a lot of stress and overwhelm brought into our home.
And I see now that, again, I can [00:23:00] always look and see where there was great things that came about it. But I go back to the decision-making, and I see where I, in this case, followed the intrusive thoughts instead of the intuition I and here's what I know, like when I look back. I cried because I already knew.
The tears were my answer. Like when I closed my eyes and went within, the answer was already sitting there. I just didn't wanna trust it because the world's voice was louder. And this is also why I wanna warn you about something that we moms love to do when we can't decide. We love to research, we love to poll everyone.
We'll ask our husband and our sister and our mom friends and ladies in the Facebook group, and can I lovingly tell you what that actually does? It totally gives your power away. Everybody has a different opinion, so the more people you [00:24:00] ask, the more confused you get. And some of us hide behind the waiting too, telling ourselves we'll just wait to hear the answer from God," or when we're-- 'cause we're really just avoiding the answer that we already have within us, right?
God gave us that inner knowing for a reason. But you don't want 10 opinions, mama. You need one honest answer from within, and that's the go within question. Okay, so those are the three questions that make up the peace versus pressure test that you use when you wanna find out if it's you're going with your in- intuition or intrusive thoughts, right?
So let's just see what that might look like, right? So for yourself, pick the decision or the recurring thought that's been circling in your mind, and before you Google anything, before you text anyone, or sit down for a few quiet minutes [00:25:00] and run those three questions. Does this thought come from peace or pressure?
Is it my calling talking, my heart's desire, or my lower brain? And what do I want the answer to be? And then second, if your mind is really spinning, put it on paper. Draw the two columns, right? Write out the thoughts that feel settled and grounded, and on the other side, write the thoughts that feel urgent, panicky, or squeezing.
Just seeing them sorted on paper takes away so much of their power. And notice how it's not like a pros and cons list of what the decision will give you or get you. It's literally writing out whether it's the intuition or intrusive thoughts for you to then be able to see. And then watch for those two kind of disguises, right?
Where if pressure gets dressed up as responsibility, like all those humble [00:26:00] sounding reasons, like the ones I gave you that where I almost didn't become a coach. And then sometimes pressure is dressed up as opportunity, like when I was given or offered that kind of flattering, prestigious yes that I gave to the ballet.
So if a thought is just pressuring you, it doesn't matter how responsible or impressive it sounds, it's still pressure, okay? And then once you have found that peaceful thought, your intuition, just take one small step from it, right? Again, like me with the school decision, you don't have to map out 10 years in, in advance, but just ask, "What's the next step I can act on this intuition today?"
And then let me just say the heart of this one one more time in a slightly different way, because repetition is how this sinks in. I know [00:27:00] sometimes I repeat myself here, but that's the reason, to get those neural pathways in your brain kinda connecting. Okay? And that is that God's guidance can ask really hard things of you But it will settle you while it stretches you.
That's what becoming a coach and taking that leap did for me. It was hard, and it stretched me, but it also felt so right. And then fear, fear will-- it can, it wants you to stay comfortable, and sometimes it disguises itself as sounding responsible, but it will feel, it won't feel good, and the whole time it will kind of pressure you, right?
So stop sorting your thoughts by what they say and start sorting them by how they feel in your body and asking where they come from, and if it comes from peace, it's coming [00:28:00] from God. Okay. If you listened to this episode and thought, "All right. This sounds wonderful, but there's so much noise in my head right now that I can't even hear my intuition anymore," then I want you to know that learning to hear yourself again is exactly the kind of think I, things I help moms do inside my coaching.
So if you've been wondering whether coaching with me might be right for you, I'd love to invite you to a free coaching consultation call. I have this short questionnaire you can fill out, and so I can learn about you before we meet, and then on the call, we'll talk about what's going on in your life and what you want to change or what you want to be different and we'll figure out whether working together is the right fit, right?
And here's the beautiful part. You can run the very decision through the peace or pressure test. This... close your eyes, go within, and ask yourself what you want the answer to [00:29:00] be, and if it's a settled yes, you can follow and schedule the coaching consultation with me. You can either go to my website at daniellethienel.com and look there, or you can book it in the link that is directly in the show notes here of the podcast.
All right, everyone. Thank you so much for being here, and that's what I have for you this week. So my beautiful mamas, until next time, may peace be with you always. Thank you for listening to the Peaceful Mind podcast. If you've been feeling a quiet desire for more peace and steadiness in your motherhood, I invite you to take the next step of scheduling a free coaching consultation with me.
We'll meet over Zoom to explore options and possibilities of how having a personal life coach and mentor could help you experience the exact motherhood and life your heart desires. To talk through current options, schedule a free coaching consultation today. You'll find the [00:30:00] link to schedule in the show notes.
It would be an honor to support you at any stage of your motherhood journey.
