I’ve often made the mistake of mistaking my gut feelings for anxiety and vice versa, ending up in situations that could’ve been avoided if I’d done the opposite 🤦🏾‍♀️

25 comments

  1. Often you can’t. Gut feelings and intuition are just guesses with a fancy name. Guesses come from the available evidence your brain has and that evidence is filtered through the lens of whatever emotion you’re feeling, which can be anxiety.

    The thing about guesses, whatever you call them, is that they can be right and they can be wrong. So whether or not you go with them, it always ends up being basically just a coin flip. Don’t beat yourself up about choosing the wrong option, because that’s just the risk that comes with being human

  3. Honestly, this plagued me for so long so I 100% get where you are coming from. My tips are:

    * Keep a journal and write down the feeling/intution, this is helpful to see how situations play out over time
    * Have more just ‘you’ time away from the internet and information and other people, spend time with yourself and get to know yourself basically
    * {ractice neutrality, try to deattach yourself from an outcome of a situation. Whether you like it or not, something will occur and whatever thats going to happen regardless of whether you worry about it or not. – Buddha says the root of all suffering is attachment, and expectation is an attachment to an outcome, so deattach yourself from the outcome ( easier said than done I know, but practice makes perfect)

  4. There’s no easy answer, and it’s something that I’m still trying to figure out myself. However, I think it’s important to listen to your intuition and follow your gut instinct, even if it goes against what your head is telling you.

    A relevant poem:

    “Trust your heart if the seas catch fire,

    live by love though the stars walk backward.”

    -e.e. cummings

  6. Anxiety often triggers the fight or flight response. Distance yourself and think it through. ask yourself how bad can it get if you got it wrong? Then act on that.

    Eg
    Situation- a guy walking behind you after dark. Is it anxiety saying oh he’s dangerous and following you or is it your gut instinct that he’s dangerous/following you?
    In this situation, you can’t afford to get it wrong, walk faster and avoid even if you’re wrong (ie flight).

    Situation 2 – your teacher/boss is calling you for a talk. Is it anxiety that you’re in trouble or gut instinct that you’re in trouble? You’re better off finding out what is it that they really want to talk about, it could be trouble or good news, so go head and talk to them (fight).

  7. Intuition is something that’s more linked to our unconscious. Your unconscious registered something that you can’t quite put a finger on. Since this is usually based on past experiences, it’s helpful to find out what memories the situation your in might compare to.
    Maybe a person close to you has a similar behavior pattern and they are unpleasant to be around. Maybe it reminds you of a bad experience that you had before. If you can find out what exactly is causing that gut feeling, you will be sure it’s not just anxiety.

  8. psychology (as a student and not a professional) stress is the reaction of your system/body towards a danger and anxiety is worrying about things that could happen. I think that gut is less stronger than anxiety. It’s the thoughts that come and go. While anxiety is thinking and fearing a lot about something.

  9. Anxiety and intuition are two different sides of the same coin, but sometimes it can be hard to tell what’s what.

    I’ve found that there’s a simple exercise you can do to help distinguish between the two: If your gut feeling is telling you something is wrong, try rewording the situation in a positive way. For example, if you’re worried your boss doesn’t like you because she’s been giving you the silent treatment lately at work, ask yourself how you would feel if she did like you. Would she treat you differently? Would she smile at you when she passed by your desk? How would things change?

    Now that you’ve thought about the situation in a more positive light, take a look at your emotions. Does imagining things going better with your boss make you feel anxious or excited? Either answer is fine—it’s just important to understand where the feeling is coming from.

    If your thoughts about the situation made you feel anxious, scared, or nervous, then it’s probably just anxiety talking. But if they made you feel excited and hopeful, then maybe it’s intuition telling you to take action!

  10. My recommendation: By practicing the ABC Framework, which is a cognitive behavioral therapy technique that my therapist taught me and has really helped with my anxiety. (Also, I’m not a doctor of any kind, so do some research of Cognitive Behavioral Therapy and the ABC Framework for yourself. The following are just what has personally worked for me.)

    When I was just starting out, I had to pay attention to events that triggered my anxiety, then I grabbed a notebook and filled in the ABC Framework, which took some time, like 30min – 1h if I needed to really reflect on the event that happened. Now, I can do most of it in my head pretty quickly, so I am starting to apply it in real-time while I’m out in the world.

    ABC Framework:

    **A — Activating Event:** Write only the facts of the event that triggered your anxiety and keep it simple and direct. Leave out emotions or opinions.

    *Example:*
    My coworker said he calls me out in front of other coworkers in order to help me grow in my career.

    —

    **B — Beliefs, anxiety-induced:** Write your beliefs about the Activating Event. This is where you can add in how you felt about the situation, which are what I call my “anxiety-brain thoughts.” I like to do these in bullets so I can address them individually in the next step.

    *Example:*
    – I felt embarrassed and shamed when Jim, the office douchbag, made me look stupid in front of our other coworkers
    – He says he does that because he’s “helping me grow” in my career, but it was just belittling and insulting to me as a professional
    – It makes me angry that he thinks everyone needs to be an extrovert to succeed in the corporate world

    —

    **C — Consequences of your Beliefs:** Write out the potential impact of believing your Beliefs from the last section.

    *Example:*
    – I feel embarrassment and shame when someone calls me out in front of a room full of people
    – I feel belittled and insulted when someone tries to make career decisions for me without talking to me about a career plan
    – I am becoming insecure in who I am as a person when people tell me I need to be different than I am

    —

    **D — Debate your Beliefs:** Write out debate points that counter your Beliefs from section B.

    *Example:*
    – Maybe Jim has a higher tolerance for being shamed in front of other people and didn’t realize how impactful his actions were against me.
    – He is a manager, so he might have been asked to “guide” his subordinates, but just doesn’t know how to do that well.
    – Maybe being an extrovert is the only way Jim has succeeded in life, so he thinks everyone has to be like him to achieve the things he has achieved.

    —

    **E — Effective, new Beliefs:** Write out new, healthy beliefs after having Debated your old Beliefs. You’re basically reframing the “anxiety-brain thoughts” into more calm and rational ways of thinking.

    *Example:*
    – When Jim inevitably calls me out in a meeting again, I am going to set a boundary with him to let him know I am not comfortable with that because I am a smart person who does well in their job.
    – Since Jim is my manager and I have to work with him each day, I am going to sit down with him and come up with a career plan so he understands what **I want** out of my career and doesn’t give me advice that only works for him.
    – I can do a better job of communicating to Jim that I am an introvert, so the same techniques that worked for him will not work for me.

    —

    The framework isn’t perfect and neither is the way I fill it out, but taking the time to **vent**, **reflect**, and **reframe** really helps settle my anxiety and teaches my brain that it doesn’t need to automatically go into “flight-mode” when my triggers happen.

    Also, I highly recommend seeing a therapist and asking about Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, if you’re able to.

  11. For me, anxiety is led by fear. It’s something you can sort of work out through CBT techniques – you can logically work it out and “calm” the feeling. Anxiety is also really overwhelming and it tends to be consistent – you don’t get “anxiety” over one specific person or event, it tends to be a thing that you deal with generally-speaking. IMO when it does show up for only one person or situation, that could just be your intuition screaming at you.

    Intuition is more like something that comes to you, often more quietly, or feels like a message that you didn’t ask for. For me, it’s come in the form of excitement (getting excited about an idea, getting energy from talking about the idea to the point that others notice it), a calm message (like right before a dangerous incident, something told me “get out of here” and I did, and I was right because something bad happened there right after), or in some form that you can’t work out logically. You can’t really logically explain to yourself why you decided to go into your career (that has worked out really well for you) that seemed to come out of nowhere… something about it just felt right to you, and things worked out very easily/well. That’s kind of what happened with me and my career – I was in a slightly different position, aiming for that, it wasn’t really working. Then suddenly I started slowly looking into what I do now, remembering that others had mentioned it seemed like a good fit for me (years before this) and slowly learned more, and somehow it worked out really seamlessly, and has just always “worked” and felt right. To me, that was intuitive – to go for that and to stop chasing the other thing that wasn’t working.

    Another good example is when it comes to people, I have really good intuition but I’ve made the mistake of often ignoring it. The “anxiety” has usually been projections of past trauma or assumptions, but intuition is just a knowing about someone’s true intentions or how they are as a person. I can almost immediately pick up on if someone has “bad vibes” (I hate the term, but you know what I mean). It might not happen in a split second, but sometimes it takes literally 2-5 seconds, and I tend to be very right. Allowing yourself to listen to the inner voice is intuitive and thus that is your intuition.

  12. Take time!

    Not to rationalize away good intuition, but to move slow in your decisions.

    A sense of “rush” is what clouds intuition and promotes anxiety.

    If you’re dating someone who rings some alarms, move slow in the relationship and take like 3-5 months to make and sound judgements on them. Incidentally, a person with bad intentions will usually get annoyed by your need for time, so they will

    This applies to most other things as well. Like a lot of scams rely on convincing people to rush into making a decision. A bad potentintial boss might really rush you into taking a job. When someone is rushing you, stop for a second and ask if the time crunch is really necessary. Slow things down and then open your senses back up to whatever is going on. This keep panic away and strengthens intuition.

    If you work in an ER or something though, you just gotta practice a lot and trust your intuition anyway lol.

  14. The best advice I’ve heard to distinguish between the two is this: anxiety is frantic, while intuition is calm. I have found that simple metric to be helpful. Another way to tell the difference, for me, is that anxious thoughts often manifest in the form of questions, like “What if my s.o. is cheating on me?”, whereas intuitive thoughts present themselves as statements, like “My s.o. is cheating on me.” I hope that’s helpful!

  15. The book The Gift Of Fear by Gavin De Becker is a wonderful book about learning about your gut instincts, and learning to protect yourself and keep yourself safe. He has a lot factual evidence and experience in trauma and violence, so he breaks it down in very helpful pieces.

  16. This is a great question. I believe some women and men and children are psychic. There are different kinds of psychic abilities and most people with ability can’t control it. Ie. Let’s go win the lotto! 😝but when it comes to danger one needs to listen. There’s a book called “The gift of fear” I found it fascinating.

    Let me give you a for instance…you get on the elevator and just before the door closes a man gets in suddenly in less than a second your hair on the back of your neck stands up you get off that f ing elevator no matter what before the door closes say “shit my keys” as an excuse and hop off if you’re afraid of insulting him make any excuse as you exit. Sometimes women are too damn nice so listen to your body before anything else it’s a gift don’t throw it away…

  17. Learn your triggers for anxiety. Your anxiety could be coming up for a legitimate reason, or for a trigger that you’ve become sensitive to. So when you have that feeling, if you see a trigger, you may be reacting due to that trigger. If you don’t see any triggers, be cautious because sonething may be very wrong with the situation.

  18. People say to always trust your gut….but when it comes to anxiety that is just self sabotage a lot of the time. I’m not sure how to tell the difference, it takes a lot of self soothing to release an anxious thought and analyze the facts.

  19. Kind of hard to explain.

    For me personally, intuition is more of a specific thought in my mind that isn’t directed towards myself (self doubt, etc) and that can sometimes be accompanied by certain feelings, like discomfort or smt – but not anxiety. Different emotions arise to process the situation or what the person is doing, and trying to understand why I feel a certain way around them. Like I’ll be more attentive, but still calm towards the person or situation to see what puts me off.

    As for an anxious thought is something that persists and well, I feel anxious in my stomach. And usually the anxious thoughts are directed towards myself, like “oh I hope I didn’t say anything dumb” “oh I hope I did well” etc.

    I hope that kind of clarifies things a tad bit? Sorry if it doesn’t make much sense. Kind of difficult to put into words.

  20. I can’t but I also accept that living a low-risk life has a lot of benefits, so I’m happy erring on the side of caution most times.

  21. Honestly, come to think of it, in the last situation, they just weren’t necessarily mutually exclusive. I’d say anxiety is based off of a gut feeling of something not being right, but anxiety also makes it more negative than it actually is (when life isn’t so black and white). Sometimes, you got to view anxiety as leading you to your core wound of certain needs not being met, and then once you’re able to identify, you can see what your gut feeling is specifically about and ask for it before deciding to proceed or remove yourself from a situation.

  22. My dreams will verify that I’m not crazy when I have that gut feeling. It’s happened so many times.

  23. Both make me feel nauseous, but anxiety can usually be related to past triggers or patterns, wheras intuition usually doesn’t have any reason to be there other than a warning from your little old soul. Also, after i’ve listened to a gut feeling, the nausea immediately goes away, whereas anxiety… doesn’t go away lol

  25. for starters intuition is a deeper or unshakable knowing whilst anxiety is almost purely fear or rooted from self hate so relax and then be honest with yourself

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