This YouTube interview (Josh Trent with Bizzie Gold) examines the difference between instinct and intuition and how to avoid conflating them. Bizzie frames instinct as survival-driven, patterned, sometimes epigenetically inherited, and often reactive; intuition is described as non-structured, freer, and accessible only after diffusing emotional/instinctive reactions. She recommends a stepwise practice: notice stimulus, label instinctive emotional reactions, use logic and "Eli questions" to down-regulate the amygdala/neurotransmitter flood, then access intuition to make boundary- and future-oriented choices. A concrete tickling example (home vs. bar) illustrates how the process shifts responses from embarrassment-driven reflexes to protective boundary action when appropriate. The conversation also touches on masculine/feminine framing and generational trauma (Mark Wolin referenced).
Chapters
Can you contrast masculine and feminine with. With instinct and intuition? Because sometimes instinct can be, like, to protect us from dying, and intuition could be, like, commingled with that. Like, there's a lot of gray area between the two. And in masculine and feminine, that's when.
You know it's real. So when your intuition actually is at odds with or goes against your current belief system, that's a really great checkpoint. Okay? And this happens very rarely for psychics, because their own woundedness is like seeing the intuitive hit and then speaking to you even through that lens. So I really encourage healers to dig in here. There's more work to be done collectively, because intuition shouldn't be like that. Intuition should be completely free and removed from any of your beliefs and your patterns and your perception of what you're even seeing to then share with somebody. So instinct really is, I would say, more aligned with that emotional response, the survival. Right, Survival instinct. Even when people say, like, go with your gut, your gut is that survival instinct. In many cases, Your gut is Mr. Crude, which is why having this balance point, which I'll kind of take this one step further. So it's not like we just use this triangle as it is. There's actually an action to it. So when we look at stimuli coming from the external environment, smell, touch, sound, taste, even hear, this could be an intuitive hit, right? Coming in as a stimulus. What our bodies and brains are programmed to do is immediately react out of emotion, right? We react out of instinct or pattern. Where we are best served is to actually be highly aware of what those reflexes are, how they feel in our body, what sorts of triggers set them off, and what sort of assumptions we usually make out of that triggering. So that we go up to logic, and we're equipped with what we refer to and break as Eli questions, so we can very quickly shift our bodies out of that amygdala response and into more logical processing to actually stop the flood of neurotransmitter. So instead of actually allowing ourselves to become the Hulk, now we're like, okay, am I trying to react to this out of my childhood wound? Am I treating this person like they're my dad? Am I. Am I jumping to a conclusion here? And I don't actually have enough information to choose this emotion right now. Right? So now you've diffused your emotional response, and then we train you to then go to intuition. And now that you've removed any of those tricks that your brain would have you fall into, now you actually can sit there and say, like, what am I actually processing about this exact moment? So that your final balance point is that babbling brook? Like, what do I want in the future? Is this in my best interest for what I want for my future? What for what I want for my kids, what I want for my health? So that you finally make that last decision point out of intuition, but that you've removed any chance of contamination up to that point by going through it in that pattern.
And the instinct, I don't want to demonize instinct. I don't want to demonize ego. These are things that get to be embodied. Right. So I don't feel that from you at all. But, but I do want to just reiterate, like, instinct is something we learn super young and, and it's epigenetically passed on to us as well. And even if you look at Mark Wolin's work, which we've had on the podcast, you know, healing Generational Trauma, there's that aspect as well. At times, not for everyone, but at times. So if we look at this as like, really a masculine response, which is super cool, I'm glad you challenged my belief on that, because I'm always open to my beliefs being challenged, even if it's uncomfortable sometimes. How could you explain the language of what is felt or what is heard when we look at instinct versus intuition? If intuition is a bit softer, maybe if instinct is more like a lightning bolt, like, how does that work as far as hearing words or hearing guidance or feeling it?
So I actually think that the word instinct is often misused and again, kind of commingled with intuition. Instinct to me has a much more specific architecture, right. And it really is often more of an if x than y sort of pattern where intuition doesn't actually follow any sort of set structure, right? You could, you could be doing something and all of a sudden your brain showing you some stream of images that make no sense whatsoever, and that could be an intuitive hit. Whereas instinct usually gives you some sort of. Of input and response that your brain is trying to push you into for some sort of reason, which is why, you know, instinct could be to hide. Instinct could be. Let's use my example, right? If I'm. If I really kind of lean heavily into self reliance, my instinct could be to put everyone's work on my plate without using my voice, like, oh, if. If things look uncomfortable here, I'll just do more. Right? Instinct, it can have. Which is why, again, you're saying, like, you don't want to demonize it. Of course it can have a Positive ripple effect out in the world. Right. When I show up more and I take on more work that can make other people's lives better, but also if I keep acting out of that instinct rather than treating the situation as if it's brand new and making sure I'm reacting to what's presently happening rather than seeing it through the lens of everything I've done in the past so that I just reflexively always take on more work, I'm potentially robbing other people of opportunities to take on responsibility. I'm robbing people of chances to show up for me and show me that they are trustworthy. And I'm robbing people of chances to grow and change their environment. If I keep responding to my environment as if it's the past, I'm then going to trigger them to do the very same thing. So by allowing ourselves to look at this instinct, which is usually our brain trying to keep us safe, whether that is showing up a certain way in a relationship or performing a certain way at work, we're often better served to go through at least the list of things that can get us out of this past perspective and back rooted into the present and balance it with this kind of big picture, multidimensional way of thinking with intuition, which, by the way, I give this example in my work because it's important to remember that sometimes instinct is what needs to happen because it keeps actually physically keeps you safe. So when I first teach this example of how Eli works, I try to use a really tangible example of being tickled. When I was a little kid, I had an uncle that used to tickle me all the time, and I hated it. And he would do it in front of all of his friends. It was really embarrassing. So if I look at it from an adult perspective, naturally the emotional response that I have to being tickled, if I don't work at it, is the second I start to get tickled, I quite literally want to scream at the person, throw them off of me, and like, swear and just go completely buck wild. So I give one example where let's say we know that this is my instinctive pattern to tickling. I'm at home on my bed, on my computer, and I feel like a little tickle on the back of my rib cage. Right. But I also am aware of this pattern. I can go up to logic and say, is this my uncle? No, I haven't seen my uncle in 10 years. Is this about the time that my fiance comes home? Yep. And does he know not to tickle me? He does, but this was kind of like a little tickle. Like maybe he just forgot for a second. He's just trying to be kind, right? So I've talked myself off the ledge. I haven't just abruptly turned around and been like, get the F off of me. So then I go down to intuition. I'm actually looking at him and I assess, does he look like he's trying to provoke me? Because, hey, like, maybe sometimes they're doing it actually. Or try to provoke you, right? But like his soul, his shoulders are soft. He's like, hey, honey, how was your day? Right? And then I actually have the ability to intuitively look at him and look at his body language and feel his energy. And I'm like, hey, honey, my day was great, right? And I didn't actually try to attack him. But now let's shift the same person, same pattern into a bar, right? I'm out with my girlfriends at the bar. Everyone's drinking, which I don't do anymore, but everyone's drinking. I'm, you know, my fiance is not with me. All of a sudden, I feel a tickle again on my ribcage from behind. Is this my uncle? No. Am I in a safe place? Not really. Like, would you expect anyone to be behind you tickling? No. I can see all my girlfriends in front of me. So I go to intuition. I turn around, I look at this person, and it is somebody that is invading my personal space and my boundaries. And this person actually does deserve an F off. Please, please leave me alone.
This is the time for your response.
This is the time for the response. But what's interesting is that the instinctive pattern, if I had allowed this to happen without working my way through it, I would have been treating the person behind me like it was my uncle out of the childhood pattern, which wasn't out of protection for my well being, that was out of embarrassment versus this now that I've actually run myself all the way through and I've actually landed back at this kind of angry, protective response. I'm reacting to protection, solely protection and boundaries, which is not something I'm addicted to.
Yeah.
So I've actually not fed the loop of my neurotransmitters because I'm not addicted to protection. I'm addicted to having to like free myself from some sort of embarrassing, oppressive.
