Is It Intuition or Is It a Trauma Response? Here Is How to Know

The Lie I Tell At Dinner Parties

For years I’ve said the same line at dinner parties, on first dates*, and in the smug little voice I use when I’m trying to sound deeply self actualised. I don’t really have regrets. I’d say it with the confidence of a woman who has clearly never moved interstate on a hunch. Everything happens for a reason. Every choice taught me something. Every detour was a lesson. The full motivational fridge magnet starter pack.

It sounded mature. It sounded grounded. It sounded like the kind of thing a woman in linen says before she tells you about her sound bath. The problem is, it wasn’t actually true. It was a beautifully packaged piece of self gaslighting I’d been selling myself so I didn’t have to sit with the discomfort of admitting that some of my big, bold, dramatic life choices were, in fact, not it.

Because here’s the cold hard truth, babe. I moved to Brisbane and I regret it. Not in a tragic way. Not in a my life is ruined way. Just in a quiet, six months later, nervous system finally regulated, oh no, I have made a tactical error kind of way. And pretending otherwise isn’t intuition. It’s denial in a really cute outfit.

*Because at this point we know there’s rarely, if ever, a second date.

Intuition Versus Dysregulation, A Cautionary Tale

Nobody really tells you this about intuition, so I will. Real intuition is calm. It’s quiet. It feels like a gentle knowing, the way you know what you want for dinner before you’ve consciously thought about it. It doesn’t grip you by the shoulders and scream PACK THE CAR, WE’RE LEAVING. That isn’t your inner wisdom. That’s your nervous system having a public meltdown and disguising it as guidance.

When I made the call to move back to Brisbane, I told myself it was The Fates. The universe. A cosmic alignment. My dad had passed away, I wanted to be closer to family, and Brisbane felt like it was pulling me back like a tide. It all sounded so intentional. So spiritual. So Eat Pray Love coded. What it actually was, in hindsight, was a woman in the deepest grief of her life trying to outrun her own dysregulation by changing postcodes. Geography, as it turns out, is not therapy.

So before you make a massive life decision in the middle of a personal earthquake, do this for me. Wait. Not forever. Just longer than you think you need to. A regulated nervous system will tell you the truth. A dysregulated one will tell you whatever gets you moving, because movement feels like relief when stillness feels like drowning. Ask yourself if the urge feels like a calm yes, or like a frantic anywhere but here. The other tell is justification. If you’re building a PowerPoint presentation in your head about why this is the right move, complete with bullet points, contingency plans, and a closing slide titled Signs From The Universe, that’s not intuition. Intuition doesn’t need a pitch deck. It doesn’t need to convince anyone, least of all you. The decisions that have actually been right for me, the calm, grounded, surprisingly boring ones, never needed defending. They just felt obvious. Brisbane needed a campaign. That should’ve been my first clue.

Stop Outsourcing Your Reality Check (But Also, Maybe Build a Better Inner Circle)

Now, the deeply uncomfortable part. I cannot, in good conscience, blame the people around me for not stopping me. I’m a grown woman with autonomy and a passport. Nobody held a gun to my removalist quote. But I will say this, and I will say it with love. If you have someone in your life making a life altering decision in the middle of grief, divorce, burnout, or any other form of full body crisis, you are allowed to ask them, gently, if they’re sure. You’re allowed to be the friend who says, hey, are we making this choice from a grounded place, or are we making it from a place of needing the floor to stop tilting? That isn’t overstepping. That’s love wearing its work boots.

That said, the bigger lesson is on me. I’d surrounded myself with cheerleaders. Lovely, supportive, encouraging cheerleaders who clapped at every announcement and never once asked the harder question. And look, that’s partly because I’d trained them. I’m a woman who moves with conviction. I don’t typically invite a committee meeting on my own life. So when I came in hot with the Brisbane plan, of course they cheered. They were following my lead.

The real work is building an inner circle that loves you enough to slow you down. Not stop you. Not control you. Just slow you down long enough to ask the questions you’re not asking yourself. And if you don’t have those people yet, you have to be that person for yourself. Write the decision down. Sit with it for a week. Read it back when you’ve slept and eaten and cried and moved through whatever wave you were riding. If it still feels true, go. If it feels feral, wait.

Regret Isn’t a Character Flaw, It’s Information

Somewhere along the line we decided regret was a personal failing. Like if you admit you got something wrong, you’ve revealed yourself to be unevolved. So we rebrand. We call it a lesson. We call it a chapter. We call it a season. We do absolutely anything except call it what it is, which is, I made a choice and it wasn’t the right one for me. Saying that out loud doesn’t make you a failure. It makes you honest.

Regret, when you actually let yourself feel it, is genuinely useful data. It tells you what you value. It tells you what you missed. It tells you what conditions you thrive in and which ones quietly grind you down. My regret about Brisbane isn’t really about Brisbane. It’s about Adelaide. It’s about realising I was calm there. I was at peace there. I had a life that fit me, and I left it because grief convinced me that staying still was the same as standing still. It wasn’t. They are wildly different things, and grief is a notoriously unreliable narrator.

So let yourself look at your regrets honestly, without the protective gloss. Not to spiral. Not to self flagellate. Not to make a TikTok about your healing journey. Just to listen. What is the regret actually telling you? What would you do differently? And what can you do now, with that information, instead of pretending the lesson is enough on its own? Lessons are nice. Course corrections are better.

The Plot Twist Is, I’m Allowed To Change My Mind

Here’s the part I want you to take with you, even if you forget everything else. You are allowed to change your mind. You are allowed to make a big, dramatic, suitcase laden choice, live with it for a while, decide it doesn’t suit you, and choose differently. That isn’t failure. That’s discernment. That’s a woman with enough self respect to stop doubling down on a decision just because she announced it loudly.

I don’t fit in Brisbane. I never have. And given I don’t drive, the lifestyle is, charitably, a logistical performance art piece. So next year I’m going home to Sydney. Not Adelaide, because as much as I loved her, my whole family is on the east coast and I want to be near them in a city that actually suits the way I move through the world. Sydney has the transport, the pace, the noise, the chaos, and the proximity. It has everything Brisbane doesn’t, for me, specifically. That’s the choice my regulated, grieving but no longer drowning nervous system is making. And this time, I’m letting it be quiet. I’m letting it be calm. I’m letting it be the thing I sit with for a while before I act on it.

If you’re sitting in your own version of this, somewhere you moved to, a job you took, a relationship you committed to, a haircut that has betrayed you, you don’t have to stay just to prove a point. You’re allowed to say, oops, I regret a life choice, and then quietly, deliberately, lovingly do something about it. Regret isn’t the end of the story. Sometimes it’s the bit right before the best chapter. Lulu and I will see you in Sydney.

You Are Not Entitled to an Answer – Chaos, Crumbs and Clarity

In this episode of Chaos, Crumbs and Clarity, we're unpacking why you are not entitled to an answer. Specifically, we're talking about the strange little corner of modern dating where a few days of app chat somehow becomes an emotional contract, and suddenly a man you've never met believes your silence requires a formal explanation, a debrief, and possibly a follow-up meeting with management.I have two stories for you. One man who talked almost exclusively about himself, ignored the fact that I was sick, and then followed up a week later asking whether I'd reconsidered his "request for clarification". And another who became offended because I didn't respond to his selfie within two hours while I was lying in a dark room with a migraine. Sir. Please be serious.Because here's the thing. Before you've met someone, you do not owe them unlimited access to your time, attention, reassurance, or emotional labour. You don't have to justify why the vibes changed. You don't need a reason they'll consider reasonable. You are allowed to disengage because something felt off, because you changed your mind, because you met someone else, or because you're in your luteal phase and frankly the entire world can wait.Today we're talking about the difference between ghosting and simply disengaging, why demanding closure can become a boundary violation, the exhausting expectation that women should manage men's feelings for them, and why you do not need to JADE, justify, argue, defend, or explain, when you've already decided you're done. Let's get into it.Key Takeaways:A few days of chatting does not create a debt. Matching on an app, exchanging messages, or talking on the phone does not give someone a claim on your attention. Until you've actually built a connection, you are allowed to walk away without submitting supporting documentation.Closure is not something another person can demand from you. Asking once is one thing. Continuing to push after someone has clearly disengaged is not persistence or emotional maturity. It's refusing to accept the answer you've already been given.You do not need to JADE. You don't have to justify, argue, defend, or explain why you're no longer interested. The reason doesn't have to be good enough for him. It just has to be yours.Pre-date silence and post-date silence are not the same thing. If you've never met, disengaging is part of app dating. Once you've shared an actual date or developed a genuine connection, a simple goodbye becomes basic courtesy. Nobody needs a dissertation, but acknowledging another human being matters.Sometimes they don't miss you. They miss the audience. Someone can seem interested while actually being interested in having your attention. Real connection requires curiosity about you. If the only time they become deeply engaged is when you're leaving, pay attention to that.For more visit ⁠BryJaimea.com⁠ or follow over on IG ⁠@BryJaimea

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