You Can't Trust Your Gut

Feb 24, 2020

35:58

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Curt and Katie talk about the ins and outs of intuition. We look at when you can trust your gut feelings and when you cannot. We sort through how to actually develop and use clinical intuition as well as the problems that can come into play when you do not follow the appropriate steps.

It’s time to reimagine therapy and what it means to be a therapist. To support you as a whole person and a therapist, your hosts, Curt Widhalm and Katie Vernoy talk about how to approach the role of therapist in the modern age.

In this episode we talk about:

Definitions of the 4 types of intuition: mystical, spurious, inferential, wholistic
Confirmatory bias – how it can be known, but go unrecognized
How operant conditioning might be supporting your feeling of being able to trust your gut
Discounting affect (ignoring when your assumptions were wrong)
Whether or not we should pay attention to Mercury in Retrograde
The challenge of looking for evidence that both supports and challenges your assumptions
The different individual characteristics that get in the way of evaluating things appropriately
The importance of deliberate practice
The two different thinking processes described by Daniel Kahneman in Thinking Fast and Slow
The need to test our assumptions, even though it is potentially laborious or threatening
Using the scientific method
The problem with “mindbugs” like the availability heuristic and the misinformation effect in trying to actively improve our ability to assess data
Deductive intuition versus inductive intuition
Conditions required to use clinical intuition: regularity, practice, immediate feedback
Looking for things that prove you wrong, hearing and sorting through both positive and negative feedback
A danger of specialization where you fit every client into your area of focus
The left brain/right brain fallacy
When case examples or individual stories don’t honor all of the times that clinicians are wrong
Unexamined bias is a constant challenge in trying to make sure you are evaluating the actual data and not what you are expecting to see

Resources mentioned:

We’ve pulled together resources mentioned in this episode and put together some handy-dandy links. Please note that some of the links below are affiliate links, so if you purchase after clicking below, we may get a little bit of cash in our pockets. We thank you in advance!

Glyn Brokensha – Clinical Intuition: more than rational?

Blindspot: Hidden Biases of Good People by Mahzarin R. Banaji and Anthony G. Greenwald

Thinking Fast and Slow by Daniel Kahneman

Awakening Intuition by Terry Marks-Tarlow

Therapy Reimagined 2020 Call for Speakers

Therapy Reimagined 2020 Call for Sponsors

Relevant Episodes and Blog Posts:

Saying “Trust Your Gut” Is Bad Advice

Deliberate Practice episodes:

Be a Better Therapist

Finding Your Blindspots

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