It may seem simply incongruous that doubt and intuition can be the best of buddies. Yes, I mean besties. BFFL. Allies. Your inner Magic 8 Ball.

It may even surprise you that they can dance together beautifully, with delicate interweaving synchronicity, and through their union create accuracy of meaningful perception.

Together, intuition and doubt can bring forth joy by supporting the positive unfolding of events in your life.

If allowed, these two processes can happily hang out together. By doing so, they help you choose your favourite flavour of ice cream, inform you that the potential suitor is worth having dinner with, and offer insight into which particular new role is the juiciest path in life for you to take.

Yet, the experience of self-doubt is the main reason why many people claim they’re not intuitive at all.

Or they mistakenly believe they’re not very adept at correctly or effectively using their intuition in their lives.

Being intuitive is a healthy and normal level of subtle awareness which we all use in our daily lives, whether or not we are consciously aware of it.

And the appearance of doubt is not an indicator that you are unintuitive or inaccurate with your intuition.

Usually, unless you have a free, natural or well-experienced relationship with your intuition, the first thing that arises when you have an intuitive awareness is doubt.

Even if you do have a great relationship with your intuitive awareness, doubt still arises.

Why?

Because doubt itself can and is a healthy function of intuition.

In fact, it can be the best friend of intuition. Healthy doubt is a function of your spirit and soul, your awareness, your higher self (or however you name and relate to guiding consciousness) guiding you further and deeper.

But herein lies the challenge: The doubt that fills the gap after intuition. Is this doubt your best friend? Or is it best-friend doubt’s unfortunate nasty cousin: undermining, paralysing, derisive doubt?

Here’s how to discern which doubt you’re dealing with: derisive doubt or friendly doubt.

Derisive doubt is usually a function of either your inner critic or absorbed, internalised voices from those around you, your culture, your family or friends — voices that function as a way of keeping you fearfully or obediently in line.

This hindering, nasty, turn-us-to-jelly-inside version is the form we can all recognise with ease. It’s usually a potent weapon of your inner critic or inner repressive voices.

It’s easy to recognise this bad cousin: It’s snitchy, nasty, happy to tell you blatantly that you’re wrong and undermine any further exploration and inquiry into your intuitive awareness. It wants to halt your exploration right then and there.

Your intuitive guidance is often opposed to such socially constructed limitation, seeking to liberate, inspire and free you to be healthier, more authentically yourself and following your unique life path. As a result, you feel friction.

In contrast to derisive doubt, the best-friend doubt has a central role as a refiner of your intuitive awareness.

Best friend doubt acts more like a steadying influence, allowing you to check your awareness, facts and deeper inner knowing.

It isn’t there to put you down or shame you for your intuitive insight or guidance, but to help you gain more clarity about the intuition itself and how to utilise it. This form of doubt comes from the same deep, quiet core of yourself and your essence that intuition itself both springs from and is serving.

When friendly doubt arises, it calls you to inquire deeper into intuition. It coaxes you closer to its message and guides you more accurately on your interpretation and actioning of intuitive messages — in your life and in service to others.

Friendly doubt can also show up as felt-sense awareness. Body sensations and feelings may feel like “Yes, but this is not quite right. You are close, but home in more.”

Or it can be directly heard as a knowing, niggling or voice in your mind which says, “Mmm, I’m not sure this is accurate, but you are close. Go back and check.” It coaches you onward.

Without this refining, guiding doubt, it’s much harder to action your intuitive guidance into life and follow the guidance it seeks for you to follow.

This best friend doubt has a message worth hearing. Take some time to listen to it and probe deeper. Show it in the door of your awareness and cultivate a relationship with. It’s essentially supportive and will help your life to flourish.

In essence, your best friend doubt is refining, encouraging, deepening and positive about exploring intuition. Derisive doubt hopes it can fatally wound it, kill off your awareness of intuition itself and keep you under its sharp, bony, critical thumb.

Of course, not all intuitive messages are followed by doubt.

Most intuitive knowing is clear, straightforward and easily received by your awareness. It is doubt-free!

Your heart and your body, speaking through your felt sense (the inner awareness of your bodies of feelings and sensations), can respond to such accurate intuitions by giving a clear signal that “Ahh, yes. That intuition is right.”

I love my friendly doubt and am grateful for it.

When I’m exploring my own inner process, questioning an action to take or working collaboratively with a client, I rely on my friendly doubt to help me refine my accuracy and clarity around the issue, options or random intuitive insights I receive.

If there is no doubt following intuition, and my body awareness says “Yes” when I check it for feedback and deeper awareness, then I know I’m on target.

If doubt arises, my body will confirm the doubt and I’m encouraged to explore deeper. I let the first level of intuition open to the next one, and so on, peeling back deeper layers of information and insight until doubt no longer arises. By that point, the accurate feedback loop which my body provides then gives me a consistent, peaceful and healthy “Yes” to my intuition.

So, the next time you have intuitive insight, no matter how subtle or strong, and doubt follows, don’t automatically assume your intuitive message is wrong because doubt has shown up directly after.

v. Is it the best friend doubt or the nasty, jealous cousin fearing it will be out of a job if you don’t listen?

Gradually learning to discern the difference between supportive and undermining doubt will cultivate an empowering new level of self-awareness which will bring you results, self-confidence and a deeper ability to trust yourself and your inner sources of guidance. You will be equipped with an internal support system that will guide you to live more peacefully, and more on your path, every day.

With passion for your inner compass,