Anxiety vs Intuition: Learning How to Tell the Difference

How can you tell when your gut is trying to tell you something if you’re anxiety is constantly tricking your gut?

Telling the difference between anxiety and intuition is tricky, and it takes a lot of practice and even more patience with yourself. You might not get it right every time, but that’s okay. Keep in mind some tools that can help you cope with anxiety in high stress moments, and remember that every “mistake” is just an experience offering you more information to make a better decision next time. 

So first: what’s intuition?

Intuition, or your “gut feeling” is that sense of knowing you get in your body or mind without having any physical evidence for your reasoning in front of you. This isn’t as magical or rare as it sounds–our brains have way more information stored than we access on a daily basis, and they process information much faster than we realize. Sometimes, our brains are picking up on things without us really noticing what’s happening, and based on the information we get from those things our brain notices, we can get signals telling us if something is safe or not. 

Now, this isn’t always right and there can be many social influences that tell us what is safe and what is not, even if that’s not true. (That’s the internal bias that lends itself to racism, homophobia, transphobia, sexism, etc.) But when you learn to decipher your own intuition from those learned biases, you can tap into that wisdom and begin to trust your gut. 

How does anxiety get in the way?

Anxiety is often confused for that gut feeling, simply because anxiety often manifests in ways related to our actual gut! The mind-body connection is powerful, and by design it’s hard to ignore. Physical symptoms are an extreme effort by your body and mind to get you to notice and take action when something isn’t right. 

So when you’re experiencing extreme anxiety symptoms and you begin to feel nauseated, that’s your body trying to get you to find a way to treat and manage the anxiety. However, because it often comes up in response to specific situations, it can seem like a gut feeling telling you you’re better off skipping whatever it is. 

So how can you distinguish between your intuition trying to tell you something and your anxiety getting in the way?

Ask yourself: 

When I listen to what the feeling is telling me do I feel more or less at ease? 

Your intuition is tries to guide you toward safety, while your anxiety misinterprets where danger actually is and encourages you to lean into precaution, even when it could hold you back or hinder your growth and healing. When you listen to your anxiety, that sense of ease doesn’t come the way it does when you listen to your intuition. 

Is this situation similar to one I’ve experienced before?

When you’ve already gone through a similar situation, you can use that past experience to help figure out if your anxiety and precaution is warranted. Is this something that you’ve gone through and been able to tolerate a bit of discomfort and wound up actually enjoying in the past? Or was it an experience that was genuinely distressing and would cause you greater harm to sit through? 

Learning to identify and cope with anxiety can be a huge help when learning to differentiate between anxiety and intuition. If you’re looking to learn new ways to cope with anxiety, working with a therapist can help. Our therapists at Anchor Counseling New York can help you explore coping skills that work for your situation. Our therapists are accepting new clients -schedule an appointment today to get started.