A feeling can be real without our interpretation of it being right.

Discernment is perceptual literacy: learning not just to see, but to read what we see.

We can agree on facts and disagree on what the facts are facts about.

Judgment requires knowing the limits of the evidence.

In 1978, psychologists Pauline Clance and Suzanne Imes described what they called the “impostor phenomenon.” They found high-achieving women sometimes feel they have somehow fooled everyone regarding their professional competence.

But imagine feeling this way before there was a name for it. You earned the degree, landed the job, and won the respect of colleagues. But you’re convinced that everyone will soon find out they misjudged you terribly. You’re really a fraud. Without another way to understand the experience, you are isolated. The feeling is yours alone. If you feel like a pretender so strongly, it must be true. Once the pattern is named and widely understood, however, there’s a chance this is just a distortion. Other people you admire feel this, too? Hmmmm, perhaps feeling fraudulent is not evidence of being fraudulent.

What Does a Feeling Prove?

A strain of popular psychological advice privileges trusting our intuition, listening to our bodies, and getting out of our heads. But the familiar false binary of head and heart can obscure something vital. Our lives are a dynamic improvisation of feeling and thinking. It’s always a yes-and. A thought can make your heart race. A racing heart can then seem to confirm the thought that produced it. Fear is real. Feeling fear does not necessarily mean you are in danger.

Discomfort is real. Feeling uncomfortable only establishes that you are uncomfortable. It does not yet establish what the discomfort means. I tell........

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