Intellectual vs. Gut Understanding
One of the most important things I’ve learned about myself over the last few years of therapy and internal work is that there are two different types of understanding for me (and, I suspect, most people):
- Intellectual understanding is when my brain is presented with information and forms mental models about that information.
- Gut understanding is when that information is processed and internalized at an instinctive and emotional level.
It’s the difference between my brain processing something and then my body feeling it to be true. I’m sure there’s some academic definition of both types of understanding and plenty of theories around how and why things work that way. But I’m not an academic, so I’m just going to document how it works personally.
For me, intellectual understanding almost always comes first. It’s my default mode. I’m a problem solver, and look at things through a very pragmatic lens. Need to fix something around the house I haven’t had to before? Analyze the problem, research solutions, weigh the options, pick one, and execute. It’s all factual, figureoutable.
Gut understanding takes longer for me. Sometimes a lot longer. Not sure why that’s the case (again, sure there are plenty of theories that could explain it), but it’s shown itself to be true for me. I can understand a concept intellectually but still have an opposite gut reaction to that concept until I’ve had enough time to mull things over and internalize a lesson.
The lag between intellectual and gut understanding has been the source of plenty of problems in the past. It will, no doubt, cause just as many problems in the future.
What I’ve learned is that—even though it takes longer to understand something—my gut is the first to react. An example:
Someone behaves in a way that I don’t agree with, but they have a reason as to why they did what they did. Instead of taking time to understand the reason, I react poorly and start or escalate an argument. My brain could (and very likely) understands the reasoning behind an action, but my gut hasn’t had time to fully process it. But that fucker jumps the gun and creates problems. Given some time (usually anywhere from an hour to a few days), my gut catches up and I emotionally process and internalize what’s going on. In turn, I can often revisit the topic with that person, better explain my initial reaction and discuss things, and turn an argument into an agreement. It just takes time.
There’s no switch I can flip to increase the throughput of either type of understanding, but just learning this about myself has been very helpful. It’s gotten me to the point where I can pause in the moment and either process or recognize I need time to process before letting a situation get out of hand. It’s not all the time—and I expect it’ll never get to be—but it happens a lot more frequently than, say, 5 years ago.
I’ll count that as a win.