Help, I’ve lost my gut instinct.

When something goes wrong in my life, I rush to the group chat for advice.

I send the same voice note to several friends to get their opinion on how a date went.

I turn to strangers online to see if how I'm feeling is normal.

I scroll and scroll until the external chatter and my internal anxieties become so loud it leaves me wondering what my gut feeling even was in the first place.

Sound familiar?

We're in an advice era. Any question we have, any tiny anxiety we feel, we can simply turn to TikTok, Reddit, Instagram or good old Google and find someone who's experienced it before us.

Let's be real, self-proclaimed experts are everywhere, teaching us how to ask for a pay rise, what attachment style we have, and why we should watch our cortisol levels.

More than one in three Mamamia women say they rely on the voices that help them make sense of the world. And a whopping 83 per cent of you agree that you look for short-cuts or hacks to make life easier and less stressful.

It's the age of being influenced. But struggling to sit with "not knowing" has a dark side: we're losing our intuition. And tbh, that's a bigger deal than we think.

Hear me out. Intuition isn't as woo-woo as you might first think. No crystals required, I promise.

"It's essentially our brain processing things kind of really quickly almost before our kind of conscious catches up or our rational mind catches up," clinical psychologist Rachel Harker told Mamamia.

"It's formed from our past — lived experience, memories, learned behaviour."

It's an interesting and broad concept that kicks in more often than we realise. You might've felt it in relationships because something just doesn't feel right. Or at work, when you don't second-guess a decision because you just know.

But crowdsourcing advice from our friends and (and yes, even those random Reddit strangers with questionable usernames), may be hindering us from knowing our own minds better.

"It essentially weakens our intuition and it causes us to second guess ourselves," Rachel explained.

Can't make a decision without asking the group chat? Same. Image: Mamamia.

It comes down to two things: information overload and a fear of making the wrong decision. Oh hi, anxiety, my old friend.

"The power of words and the online narrative can totally sway people's opinions," Rachel said.

"There are such conflicting opinions and often people online speak with such conviction and might have what you perceive as evidence to back up their claims, but that evidence might not actually be accurate. So, you really start to second guess yourself like, 'Oh, maybe I should be doing it this way instead or make this decision'.

"And I think over time if we keep doing that, we're not giving our intuition, our gut feeling, a chance to practice that and learn from our internal decisions."

Listen to Mamamia Out Loud discuss intuition. Post continues below.

So, how do you know if it's intuition or just nerves?

Get out the trusty pen (or Notes app) and brain dump.

Rachel suggests trying these prompts: "Is anything in my past contributing to how I'm feeling right now? What am I hoping to have happen? And what am I worried about?"

"I think once we put it down on paper and we visually see it rather than the noise in our head just going around, it can clear things up and give you some clarity about what is a valid concern versus what could be kind of noise going on," she explained.

Watch: 60 Second breathing exercise for anxiety. Post continues below.

Basically, we have to learn to back ourselves. Yeah I know, easier said than done, right? Rachel had advice for that, too. Thank goodness.

Firstly, we need to try to limit all of that external noise. Turns out, taking to Dr Google or TikTok with a question and being bombarded with responses maybe isn't the best idea. (Shocking, I know.)

That means physically stopping ourselves from looking for extra opinions and validation, and instead listening to our gut instinct and rational thinking. Easier said than done when the "search" button is right there, but we've got this.

"If that's hard to do initially, maybe start with smaller, not as emotionally high decisions and just practice doing it yourself and spend time reflecting on what's happened in the past," Rachel said.

"Use past experiences to make that current decision rather than relying on online kind of validation."

Mindfulness is also a super important skill to practice. And no, you don't need to sit cross-legged chanting "om" for an hour (unless that's your thing).

"It's about paying attention to our body and those subtle cues we might get — that gut feeling or the tension or those kind of red flags — that if we're in tune with our body, we're much more likely to recognise when that goes off," Rachel explained.

So, here's to backing ourselves in 2025. Who's with me?

Feature image: The CW.