Learning to trust your intuition can play an important role for you when you’re navigating a variety of health interventions for your child. If you’re feeling overwhelmed and are receiving conflicting information from practitioners about which direction to take in helping your child, it might be time to learn how to calm yourself so that you can tap into your intuition. Being in a state of stress or fight-or-flight usually means that you cannot access your intuition. Instead, you are more likely to make a kneejerk reaction based on fear.
Using intuition begins with looking inward and deeply listening to your inner voice—a skill that requires being in a calm, unfearful state. When faced with a health issue, parental intuition can aid in peeling back the layers to identify root causes.
The Role of Parental Intuition
Parental intuition is the quiet, inner voice nudging you toward decisions that may ultimately prove beneficial for your child. Trusting your intuition becomes even more important in the realm of healthcare, which is often laden with conflicting advice, varying expert opinions, and a continually evolving body of scientific research. Parental intuition acts as a compass, helping to sift through this clutter and zero in on what is most beneficial for their child.
The Brain Map: A Tool for Intuitive Exploration
A brain map serves as a method to understand how intuition might guide us. This structured approach involves mapping out potential root causes and possible therapies in a visual and organized manner. By doing so, you can clearly visualize the interconnectedness of various treatments and identify areas that may need further exploration.
The brain map can include columns or sections for symptoms, potential root causes, traditional medical treatments, alternative therapies, and follow-up actions. This structured visualization can aid in tapping into intuitive insights. For example, as you fill out a brain map,you might inexplicably feel drawn to a specific section. This intuitive nudge could be important in uncovering effective interventions that might otherwise be overlooked.
Practical Steps for Tapping into Intuition
Being calm and not in a state of fear or fight-or-flight is key to tapping into your intuition. Indeed, it’s very difficult to access your inner knowing if you’re stressed, worried or overwhelmed. Learning how to stay calm and centered as much as you can could help you and your child in the long term, not only for reasons of coregulation and calming your child, but also by allowing you to understand your gut feelings. Learn to pay attention to what makes your gut feel good and/or excited in a good way (which would indicate something your intuition says is a good idea) as well as what gives you a heavy, muddled or negative feeling (which would indicate something your intuition says is not a good idea). To manifest this approach in decisions for your child, consider the following steps:
Remove Sources of Fear-Based Information
Television news programs, certain kinds of movies and shows, and even many types of social media are designed to get a negative reaction from you. Many of these operate on using fear and negativity because “if it bleeds, it leads”. Challenge yourself to read about the news rather than watch or listen to it. You’ll not only get a greater understanding of a certain situation, but you’ll also be less susceptible to the feelings of fear, dread and uncertainty. Remember that when you’re in a state of fear, you can’t access your inner knowing.
Try Meditation, Prayer and Breathwork
Techniques such as meditation, prayer and breathwork can calm the mind and make it more receptive to intuitive guidance. When you are in a relaxed state, you are better able to distinguish between rational thought and intuitive insight. The nice thing about these approaches is that they are free and accessible to you anytime and anywhere!
Get Outside
There’s something about being outside in nature that helps you to be grounded and to be less stressed. Take advantage of this fact by intentionally getting into nature to reconnect with your inner knowing. Being in quiet, uncrowded places especially helps. Seek out nature trails, quiet beaches or other natural settings to help you tap into your intuition.
Use Calming Therapies
There are a mutlitude of therapies that can help you (and your child) achieve a state of calmness. Look into:
Journal and Reflect
Keeping a journal in which you track your child’s symptoms, treatments tried, and the gut feelings you had during decision-making can be extraordinarily revealing over time. Patterns may emerge, further reinforcing trust in your intuitive insights.
Use Subconscious Mind Strategies
Setting intentions before sleep to find solutions can harness the power of the subconscious mind. Parents can pose questions related to their child’s health before bed, allowing their subconscious to work on these problems during sleep.
The Power of Intuitive Guidance
The practice of trusting your intuition—that inner knowing or gut feeling—is a powerful tool in navigating the complex landscape of your child’s health. Parental intuition serves as an irreplaceable guide. Whether through mindfulness practices, mind-body therapies, or continuous self-education, you can learn to continually improve and trust your intuitive abilities.
About Maria Rickert Hong CHHC
Maria Rickert Hong is a Co-Founder of, and the Education and Media Director for, Documenting Hope.
She is a former sell-side Wall Street equity research analyst who covered the oil services sector at Salomon Smith Barney and Lehman Brothers under Institutional Investor #1 ranked analysts.
Later, she covered the gaming, lodging & leisure sector at Jefferies & Co. and Calyon Securities. She quit working on Wall Street when her first son was born.
Prior to working on Wall Street, she was a marketing specialist for Halliburton in New Orleans, where she also received her MBA in Finance & Strategy from Tulane University.
She is the author of the bestselling book Almost Autism: Recovering Children from Sensory Processing Disorder and the co-author of Brain Under Attack: A Resource for Parents and Caregivers of Children with PANS, PANDAS, and Autoimmune Encephalitis. She is a co-author of Reversal of Autism Symptoms among Dizygotic Twins through a Personalized Lifestyle and Environmental Modification Approach: A Case Report and Review of the Literature, J. Pers. Med. 2024, 14(6), 641.
Maria is also a Certified Holistic Health Counselor. Her work can be found on DocumentingHope.com, Healing.DocumentingHope.com, Conference.DocumentingHope.com and MariaRickertHong.com
Still Looking for Answers?
Visit the Documenting Hope Practitioner Directory to find a practitioner near you.
Join us inside our online membership community for parents, Healing Together, where you’ll find even more healing resources, expert guidance, and a community to support you every step of your child’s healing journey.
