What If You’re Not Crazy? Learning to Trust Your Intuition and Spiritual Guidance
There are some things that, not even that even a few years ago, might have been called a little too woo-woo, maybe even crazy.
Talking about intuition. Feeling a presence. Receiving a message that seems to come from somewhere beyond your rational mind. Talking about spirit guides, angels, or other spiritual beings. Having a knowing that you can't quite explain.
And yet, when you look at the history of spirituality and religion, these ideas aren't actually new. We see angels and spiritual beings represented in religious art and sacred texts. We hear stories of people receiving guidance, having visions, hearing a call, or feeling that something greater was speaking to them. What feels different now, I think, is our willingness to talk about these experiences.
Spirituality is becoming more accessible, and we're having new conversations about consciousness, energy, intuition, and the soul. I think there are many of us who have been having these experiences for a very long time but simply didn't have the language for them.
Maybe you've always been deeply empathetic. Maybe you've walked into a room and immediately known that something was happening before anyone said a word. Maybe you've had a feeling about something that you couldn't explain, or received what felt like a clairvoyant message or a deep knowing that came through so clearly that you didn't know what to do with it. Or maybe you did have the experience, but immediately dismissed it because you thought, That's crazy. I can't possibly trust that.
I know because that has been part of my journey too.
When Being Empathetic Becomes Part of the Story
As I look back at my own life, I can see how being deeply sensitive to other people became intertwined with codependency and people pleasing. I wanted to help. I wanted people to be okay. I wanted to be liked and accepted. I became very aware of what other people were feeling and what they might need from me.
There is a beautiful side to being empathetic, but when we haven't yet learned how to stay connected to ourselves, that sensitivity can become part of the pattern of looking outside ourselves.
This is some of the work we do in Recover Your Soul. We begin to turn the attention back to ourselves and become curious about the beliefs, patterns, and stories that have been operating underneath our lives.
For me, one of those core beliefs has been a fear of judgment. I have spent a lot of my life wanting to be liked and accepted, and the idea of being seen as strange, different, or even “crazy” could feel threatening. As I began opening more deeply into my own spirituality, I noticed that fear showing up again.
There was a part of me that wondered, What are people going to think? And that is where this work gets really interesting.
Moving From Collecting Spiritual Tools to Integrating Them
Before I got sober in 2018 and began my spiritual journey in earnest, I was gathering tools. I was reading books, listening to podcasts, learning and collecting information. I think many of us do this. We gather the things that resonate with us and slowly begin to build a spiritual language.
But there comes a point when something shifts. The information becomes experience. The practices become part of how you live. You begin to assimilate and integrate what you've been learning, and you may find yourself becoming more willing to trust experiences that you once questioned.
For me, that has included learning to listen to my Higher Self, or Soul Self, and becoming more open to what I experience as spiritual guidance, spirit guides, and angels.
I don't say that as someone who has it all figured out. I'm not an expert telling you what is true. I'm sharing what I've experienced through my own studies, spiritual practice, recovery, and healing.
How Do You Know If It's Intuition or Fear?
One of the things I've become fascinated by is the subtle difference between the constant conversation happening in my mind and what feels like a deeper knowing.
We have so many thoughts. Some are connected to our old beliefs and stories. Some come from fear. Some are that critical voice telling us we're not enough, that we're going to be rejected, that we need to be careful, or that we need to stay small and compliant.
But then there are other thoughts that seem to arrive fully formed. They have a different energy to them. There can be a knowing that doesn't have the same feeling as the mind trying to figure everything out.
I've learned to become curious about that difference.
When something is critical, mean, or unkind, I don't experience that as the voice of my Higher Self. That feels much more connected to fear and the parts of us that are trying to protect us.
The guidance I've come to trust feels different. It can be quiet. It can be loving. It can simply be a knowing. And learning to recognize that difference has become part of my spiritual practice.
Learning to Listen to Your Inner Knowing
I've also explored what are sometimes called the “clairs”—different ways that intuitive information can come through. For me, my clairvoyance is more of a knowing. I also receive words, completed sentences, images, pictures, smells, and other forms of information.
Eventually, I began using automatic writing. I would write a question and then allow an answer to come through without trying to figure it out with my mind. Some of those conversations became deeper and deeper, and I received information that I couldn't have imagined on my own. That experience brought a great deal of healing for me, and it is actually where the Recover Your Soul nine steps came from.
This doesn't mean that everyone needs to experience guidance in the same way. Spiritual connection isn't one-size-fits-all. Our experiences are unique, intimate, and personal.
What matters is that we become willing to listen.
We can ask for guidance. We can ask our Higher Self what is in alignment for us. We can ask what will bring us greater joy. We can become quiet enough to notice what we are feeling and what we are knowing.
And then we still get to choose.
I believe we live in a free-will environment. Even when I ask for guidance, I am still in charge of my choices. The guidance isn't taking over my life. It is something I am learning to listen to.
From Codependency and People Pleasing to Empowered Spiritual Connection
This is one of the places where my spiritual awakening has connected so deeply with my recovery and soul journey.
For much of my life, my desire to help people became mixed up with codependency and people pleasing. I wanted to save and fix. I wanted everyone to be okay. I thought my sensitivity meant that I needed to respond to what everyone else was experiencing.
Now I see something different.
I can feel deeply without taking responsibility for everyone else.
I can be empathetic without abandoning myself.
I can listen to another person's experience without making it my job to fix it.
And I can use that sensitivity in a more empowered way, while continuing to turn my attention back toward my own healing.
That is such a big part of Recover Your Soul for me. It isn't about fixing ourselves because there is something wrong with us (there is nothing wrong with us). It is about becoming aware. It is about noticing the old patterns and beliefs that have shaped how we see ourselves and the world, and beginning to choose something different.
Sometimes that different choice is simply listening.
Maybe You Don't Have to Decide If You're Crazy
I think we're entering a time when more people are becoming willing to talk about intuition, spiritual guidance, consciousness, energy, the soul, and experiences that don't fit neatly into what we can see or explain.
And maybe we don't need to decide exactly what every experience means.
Maybe we can become curious. If you're deeply empathetic, what have you been sensing that you haven't known how to name? If you've spent years people pleasing, what might happen if you began listening to your own inner knowing instead of immediately looking outside yourself for approval? If you've experienced codependency, what would it feel like to trust yourself without needing everyone around you to agree with you? And if you've had a thought, feeling, image, or knowing that you've dismissed because it seemed too far out, maybe you could simply pause before dismissing it.
You don't have to believe everything you experience.
You don't have to accept someone else's spiritual explanation.
You don't have to call yourself intuitive, psychic, spiritual, or anything else.
You can simply listen.
For me, that willingness to listen has become another part of recovering my soul. I'm still learning. I'm still discovering. I'm still opening. But I know that my life feels very different on this side of recovery than it did when I was living from addiction, codependency, people pleasing, control, and fear.
So maybe we're all a little crazy.
But I have to tell you, it feels pretty good over here.
And I'm going to keep listening.
Take what resonates and leave the rest. 🧡
With love,
Rev Rachel
Want to learn more?
Listen to the full episode on all streaming platforms, or watch the video on the Recover Your Soul YouTube Channel.
Join the Self Study Collective to work the Recover Your Soul Steps at your own pace, with live teachings each month with Rev Rachel and connect with others on the path.
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