When NOT to trust "your guts"
We deal with shitty stuff in our life, and we always try to improve ourself, we outgrow our past-self version and we try to build new ones to better face situations. Sometimes we succeed, sometimes we feel like we're walking backwards because we are not satisfied with our reaction. Well let's dive a little bit deeper in this feeling. If you're responding to a difficult situation that makes you feel:
Is crossing a boundary you have
The situations that makes us feel like this, often give out a sense of urgency, because we feel like we have to respond immediatly. When we're stressed or confused we tend to lean towards "what we know better" , because is faster and it doesn't require too much thinking (ofc cause we already did it multiple times!) and that often is our instinctive response. Which, most of the time, is one of the response that our old-self would give.
HERE. Don't trust your guts (not immediatly at least). Pause, and try this instead.
Notice how you would have responded in the past
Take a lil bit of extra time to come up with a different solution that is aligned with your present-self and not with your past-self
THEN, decide what to do...
Important
Do not think that all of your past way to react/coping mechanism are somehow wrong and you don't have to use them anymore. Some might result in being extermely valid again, even after a long time.
What I'm saying here is take your time to consciously decide if the reaction you're about to have is aligned with who you are /you want to be NOW.