Four ways to tell the difference.
It’s one of the most confusing feelings — not knowing whether to trust yourself or question everything.
Is it your intuition guiding you, or anxiety pulling you into overthinking?
Our minds chatter. All day long. They’re inundated with countless thoughts and decisions to make.
But all that noise makes it extremely difficult to decide, or to be more precise, to be certain that we are making the correct decisions.
You know those moments. You are sure of it. It’s driving you insane. You are convinced it’s going to happen and you have to find proof to back up your theory.
You think this is your intuition and that you should listen to your hunch.
But are you sure this isn’t just your anxiety?
Anxiety can be a barrier to intuition. Most anxious people have trouble making decisions and trusting and recognizing their instincts. They act on impulse and generally, out of fear — and you can’t listen to your intuition if you are fueled by fear.
According to the Oxford Dictionary, these are the definitions of both intuition and anxiety.
Intuition — “the ability to understand something instinctively, without the need for conscious reasoning.”
Anxiety — “a feeling of worry, nervousness, or unease about something with an uncertain outcome.”
Still confused?
If you find yourself struggling to tell the difference between intuition and anxiety, I’ve created a structured workbook to help you identify triggers, regulate emotional responses, and build clarity step by step.
Here are five differences to help you learn to trust yourself and situations better and never be uncertain again.
1. Do you feel any emotion?
Intuition is free from emotion. It is accompanied by a feeling of calmness and you will feel detached from the problem or the person. It is often described as “a knowing” and will feel reassuring, interesting even, and the correct thing to do. Intuition is often easy to explain to others, although many times you won’t feel the necessity to do so.
Anxiety, on the other hand, is driven by fear. Maybe you are worried about something that will happen in the future and you become obsessed and start overanalyzing everything. Nothing is calming or reassuring about anxiety, there’s just an overwhelming swirl of thoughts and emotions.
2. Is this feeling about the past, present or future?
Intuition is always experienced in the present moment. Intuitive thoughts focus on the here and now, and they tend to feel neutral and calm. It is very mindful.
Anxious thoughts relate to the past and future and carry a sense of dread and nervousness. Anxiety often operates through past emotions and experiences and is very demanding of your attention. Usually, your thoughts become so focused on how to protect yourself from a FUTURE threat (whether perceived or real) that you go running ahead of yourself imagining various nightmarish scenarios.
To stay connected to your intuition practice mindfulness and meditation, and learn how to stay connected to the present moment.
3. Where is this feeling coming from?
Some believe that intuition comes from something greater, from God or The Universe. It’s a higher level of consciousness, and ability to sense energies. It’s our ability to know something without needing reasoning. Our souls “just know”.
But when the feeling comes from fear and worry, and is full of uncertainty, doubt, and questions, this is anxiety. Anxiety is a learned response based on fearful experiences. These anxious thoughts come from you, not some higher energy. When you find these feelings are coming from anxiety, sit with them, calm your mind, then see how you feel.
4. What are your physical symptoms?
Anxiety is chaotic and unpleasant. It also comes with a variety of physical symptoms that are different for everyone. The most common ones are, a tight chest, restlessness, rapid heartbeat, and the sensation of something being stuck in your throat. The sensations tend to be felt in the upper body.
Intuition on the other hand is very subtle. The sensation is often felt in the gut or lower in the body and it’s a calming sensation. It doesn’t provoke the craziness of anxiety. It’s almost liberating.
Learning to tell the difference between anxiety and intuition is a challenge. With practice, it becomes easier and you can start having faith in your decisions and trust your gut.
There is a powerful statement that may help you remember how to differentiate between the two:
Anxiety screams, intuition whispers.
Allow uncomfortable thoughts and reactions to calm down, and permit yourself stillness, only then you can start the process of untangling your anxiety from your thoughts versus your intuition.
Trust yourself — and your gut.
Thanks for reading! I hope this article helped empower you. Learning to tell the difference between intuition and anxiety takes practice.
If this article resonated with you and you want a more structured way to understand and manage your anxiety, you can explore my Calm Anxiety Workbook here.
I send occasional emails with simple, real-life tools to help you trust yourself more and overthink less.
You can join here if you want in — Louise 🙂
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