Trauma, Sensitivity, and the Power of Intuition
Long before your mind explains, your body knows. Trauma made sure of that.
For many survivors, the body becomes finely tuned to subtle signals in the environment. A flicker in someone’s face, the shift of energy in a room, the almost imperceptible change in tone...your nervous system registers these cues before you can name them. This isn’t overreaction. It’s survival. Research shows that traumatic experiences can heighten sensory awareness and increase vigilance as adaptive responses to threat (van der Kolk, 2014; Teicher & Samson, 2016).
The difficulty, of course, is that this heightened sensitivity doesn’t always turn off. What once protected you can also leave you flooded, anxious, or mistrusting of your own perceptions. That’s why many survivors live caught between extremes: hyper-alert to danger and uncertain whether they can trust what they sense.
But there’s another way to see this. Sensitivity can be reclaimed... not as pathology, but as intuition.
The Body’s Knowing
Intuition is the body’s early warning and guiding system. Neuroscientific studies show that the body often reacts milliseconds before conscious awareness. Antonio Damasio’s somatic marker hypothesis (1994) describes how bodily sensations guide decision-making, often more reliably than pure rational analysis. Survivors, in particular, may feel this bodily knowing more vividly because of how trauma reshapes neural pathways for threat detection (Shin & Liberzon, 2010).
The challenge is teasing apart intuition from trauma-driven reactivity. Trauma reactions feel urgent, heavy, insistent, often repeating old patterns. Intuition, though just as quick, carries a quieter steadiness. It nudges rather than shouts.
Subscriber Content
The Double-Edge of Sensitivity
Heightened sensitivity is both burden and gift.
It can leave you overwhelmed by sensory input... sounds too loud, lights too bright, emotions too intense. At the same time, it can help you perceive nuances that others overlook. Studies on post-traumatic growth suggest that some survivors develop heightened empathy, insight, and relational attunement (Tedeschi & Calhoun, 2004).
Yet cultural messages often dismiss sensitivity as weakness. Survivors are told they’re “too much” or “too emotional.” Over time, this erodes self-trust. The work of integration is not to blunt sensitivity, but to honor it and to learn when it signals wisdom, and when it echoes the past.
Reclaiming Intuition
The first step in reclaiming intuition is simple: notice.
Notice when your body speaks... tightening, softening, drawing you forward, pulling you back. Don’t label these signals right away. Just observe.
Patterns emerge over time. Maybe you find that your chest relaxes around certain people who later prove trustworthy. Maybe your stomach knots when a choice doesn’t align with your deeper needs. Journaling or tracking these patterns helps you distinguish intuition from anxiety.
Neuroscience supports this process: awareness practices strengthen the prefrontal cortex, which helps regulate amygdala-driven fear responses (Siegel, 2012). In other words, by noticing without judgment, you slowly teach your brain to tell the difference between past alarm and present guidance.
Practices for Integration
- Ground first. When you sense something strongly, pause. Touch the ground, breathe, orient yourself to the present. This helps separate past echoes from current signals.
- Start small. Experiment with low-stakes choices What path to walk, which book to open. Each time your intuition proves reliable, trust grows.
- Balance with reflection. Intuition and reason are partners, not rivals. Let your body’s signals and your mind’s analysis inform each other.
- Embodied connection. Gentle movement, meditation, time in nature. All of these activities support the dialogue between sensing and thinking.
Intuition as a Companion in Seeking
Here is what I want you to remember: intuition is already yours. Trauma sharpened it in ways you didn’t choose, but you are free to shape how you carry it now.
When integrated, intuition becomes more than a survival tool. It becomes a compass, pointing you toward what feels aligned, safe, and meaningful. It doesn’t make you certain of everything, but it gives you a guide you can trust, rooted in your body’s wisdom.
In your seeking, let intuition walk beside you. Not as the loudest voice, but as a steady one. Because even through everything you’ve endured, your body has always been speaking. And its language, once reclaimed, can lead you home.
References
van der Kolk, B. A. (2014). The Body Keeps the Score: Brain, Mind, and Body in the Healing of Trauma. Viking..
Damasio, A. (1994). Descartes’ Error: Emotion, Reason, and the Human Brain. Putnam.
Shin, L. M., & Liberzon, I. (2010). The neurocircuitry of fear, stress, and anxiety disorders. Neuropsychopharmacology, 35(1), 169–191.
Siegel, D. J. (2012). The Developing Mind: How Relationships and the Brain Interact to Shape Who We Are. Guilford Press.
Tedeschi, R. G., & Calhoun, L. G. (2004). Posttraumatic growth: Conceptual foundations and empirical evidence. Psychological Inquiry, 15(1), 1–18.
Teicher, M. H., & Samson, J. A. (2016). Annual Research Review: Enduring neurobiological effects of childhood abuse and neglect. Journal of Child Psychology and Psychiatry, 57(3), 241–266..
Subscribe to get access
Read more of this content when you subscribe today.
I would really love to talk with other survivors and seekers about their experiences with intuition.