#174: Anxiety vs. Intuition: How to Tell the Difference
Have you ever wondered how to tell the difference between intuition and anxiety? If so, this episode is for you. We're talking all about the difference between intuition and anxiety, and sharing some simple tools to know how best to relate to these states and when to listen to the information our body is giving us.
We'll cover:
anxious attachment and hyperawareness of shifts in people's emotional states
trusting our perception but questioning the meaning-making
recognising urgency as a key imprint of anxiety
treating our anxiety with care and kindness without letting it run the show
Understanding Anxiety and Intuition: Navigating the Line Between Fear and Insight
In the intricate dance of human emotions and relationships, anxiety and intuition often occupy centre stage. They emerge as whispers from within, compelling us to pay attention to the signals our bodies send. But when they intertwine, it can be challenging to discern which voice is steering the ship. Anxiety might shout in urgent tones, warning us of impending danger, while intuition, more subtle, guides us gently with a feeling or a gut instinct. Recognising the difference between these experiences is a crucial skill, particularly for those with insecure attachment patterns, as it can profoundly affect how we interpret and respond to the world around us.
Anxiety vs. Intuition: The Challenge of Discernment
For many, the sensations of anxiety and intuition can feel strikingly similar. Our bodies communicate through a complex web of feelings, often without the clarity we crave. For those with anxious or disorganised attachment styles, this becomes even more complicated. There's a heightened sensitivity to shifts in the environment, such as changes in tone or mood, which can trigger anxiety spirals and conflict cycles. The challenge is in interpreting whether these sensations signal a legitimate concern or are merely reflections of internal anxieties. Knowing when to act on this information is essential for maintaining harmonious relationships and self-peace.
Trusting Feelings, Questioning Stories
When faced with a wave of intense emotion, it's important to trust the physical sensations you experience but be cautious about the narrative your mind creates. People with anxious attachments may have an acute ability to pick up on changes in their surroundings. However, while they might accurately sense a shift, the interpretation often leans towards catastrophic conclusions. This inclination to assume the worst, such as fearing a partner’s sudden distance means they are no longer loved, needs careful re-evaluation. It's about separating perception from interpretation, a process that involves pausing, regulating emotions, and embracing more balanced perspectives.
The Urgency Factor: A Hallmark of Anxiety
A sense of urgency is a telling sign that anxiety may be at play. When you feel an intense pressure to react immediately to a situation, it’s likely that your body is in a heightened state of arousal, driven by stress hormones like adrenaline and cortisol. This urgent need to act often signals anxiety’s grip on your nervous system. Instead of succumbing to this impulse, focus on grounding techniques to calm your body. Practising deep breathing, walking, or any calming activity can help temper the anxiety, allowing for a clearer, more rational assessment of the situation at hand.
Nurturing Your Anxiety Rather Than Ignoring It
Ignoring or dismissing anxiety is neither productive nor realistic. On the contrary, acknowledging and tending to it can transform how you relate to this part of yourself. Instead of trying to silence the anxiety, which only intensifies the struggle, listen to what it is trying to communicate, albeit without accepting its narrative as absolute truth. Much like comforting a child who fears monsters under the bed, offer comfort and understanding to your anxious self. This act of self-validation doesn't mean acting on the fears but rather soothing them and understanding their protective intent.
By adopting a compassionate approach towards anxiety, you differentiate between the anxious noise and genuine intuitive insights. The key is not to let anxiety dictate your actions or cloud your reality with imagined fears, but rather to hold space for it, recognise its presence, and decide your steps from a place of calm and reason.
Building Self-Trust Through Clarity and Compassion
Ultimately, discerning between anxiety and intuition involves building self-trust. By refining your understanding of these experiences, you cultivate the ability to respond rather than react—to situations and internal states alike. This newfound clarity empowers you to approach relationships and life with a balanced perspective, grounded in trust both in yourself and in the signals from within. Developing tools and strategies to manage anxiety effectively not only enhances your emotional intelligence but also strengthens your interpersonal relationships. With practice, the distinction between anxiety and intuition becomes clearer, paving the way for deeper self-awareness and healthier connections.
Questions for Discussion & Reflection
Reflect on a recent situation where you felt anxious or had a gut feeling. How did you discern whether it was anxiety or intuition guiding you? What process did you engage in to interpret those feelings?
Do you find yourself often assigning catastrophic meanings to subtle changes in your partner’s behaviour? How can you work towards exploring other possible interpretations that are less threatening?
Consider a time when urgency in decision-making was predominant in your experience. How did you respond to that sensation of urgency, and can you identify whether it was driven by anxiety?
How do you currently respond to your anxious feelings or thoughts? What strategies have you found effective in soothing these parts of yourself without dismissing them entirely?
In what ways can you cultivate a relationship of curiosity and compassion towards your anxious parts, instead of perceiving them as a hindrance?
Share an instance where you successfully separated the experience of anxiety from the content of anxious thoughts. How did this separation impact the outcome of that situation?
How often do you rely on external validation to confirm your own experiences or feelings? What steps can you take to build self-validation and trust in your inner experiences?
Reflect on your self-regulation toolkit. What activities or practices help you to bring more safety back into your system when experiencing anxiety?
When your anxiety presents a plethora of worst-case scenarios, how do you ground yourself and explore alternate, less catastrophic explanations?
Consider the role of self-worth in your experiences of anxiety and relationships. How might focusing on building self-worth alter the ways you engage with anxiety and intuition?
UPCOMING EVENTS:
Byron Bay Retreat - Apply now! 🏝️
FURTHER LINKS & RESOURCES:
Join my new membership community, On Attachment Insiders 🌎
Check out my couples course, Secure Together (& save $200 with the code SECURE)
Save 50% on my Higher Love break-up course with the code PHOENIX
You might also like…
Episode Transcript
[00:00:04]:
In today's episode, we are talking all about anxiety and intuition and how to tell the difference between these two experiences, which for a lot of people, a lot of the time can feel very similar or at least when we don't have clarity around what the different feeling tone is associated with intuition on the one hand and anxiety on the other. It's really easy for the lines to feel really blurred and for you to not really have clarity around if you're getting all this information from your body that feels alarming and that is telling you to do something, that's maybe warning you about something bad that might happen or giving you, you know, a hunch or a gut feel about a situation. Wading through all of that information that your body's feeding up to you and figuring out how much of this is quote unquote just my anxiety and how much of this is actual information that I need to to act on. And if you are someone with insecure attachment patterns, particularly anxious attachment and disorganized attachment, you probably experience a lot of hypervigilance, a lot of really pronounced acute sensitivity to environments, to other people's feeling states, any sort of subtle shift in the energy, the mood, the temperature, all of that is likely to have your ears pricking up and it's something that you really are very tapped into, and that you notice, and that can often be the trigger for an anxiety spiral.
[00:02:01]:
That can be what kicks off one of your cycles, and particularly in a relationship, it can be the starting point of one of those negative conflict cycles. If you perceive that something's wrong and then you start questioning your partner saying, What's wrong? I can tell something's wrong. Why won't you talk to me? All of that sort of thing, it can really snowball from there. And so it really does beg this question of, like, when do we need to act on the information that we're getting? How can we sharpen our discernment around knowing what needs our attention? How can we best use that sensitivity that so many of us with anxious attachment patterns and disorganized attachment patterns have? How can we use that, you know, to our advantage rather than letting it be a source of stress and anxiety and something that causes maybe unnecessary rupture in our relationship. So we're gonna be talking about all of that today, how you can best relate to these parts of you, and how you can best respond within yourself and then relationally when you notice these things come up. I actually sent out an email newsletter last week on this topic, and I have a little over 30,000 people who received my weekly newsletter. And I received so many replies from people saying that they found this really, really helpful, and it was something that they related to a lot. Something that they had wondered about, how to tell the difference between these things.
[00:03:24]:
And so I thought I'd best turn it into a podcast episode, so that everyone can get the benefit of it because I suspect that, many people listening will also relate to this quandary. Okay. Before we dive into that, a quick reminder that my twenty eight day secure self challenge is kicking off on Monday next week. So if you are someone who struggles with insecure attachment, with anxiety in your relationships, with self worth, the Secure Self Challenge is a really effective way to kick start things in the right direction. So we spend four weeks together. Each week has a different theme, and it's all around the pillars of self worth, which is something that I teach self compassion, self care or self regulation, self respect, and self trust. And so we spend a week on each of those themes, really laying the foundations of self worth, which to me is absolutely essential and frankly a prerequisite to having healthy relationships. Because as much as I'm not someone who thinks that you need to love yourself before you can be in a healthy relationship, I think it's really hard to build a healthy relationship when you lack self worth because it is a breeding ground for all of those other patterns that I've talked about so many times.
[00:04:38]:
The people pleasing and the approval seeking and the lack of boundaries and holding on to people from a place of fear and control, all of that stems from a lack of self worth and not really trusting in our own value and being able to stand firm in that. So if any of that sounds like you and you'd like to spend twenty eight days with me and a community of others, really focusing on building those pillars of self worth, I'd love for you to join the Secure Self Challenge, which kicks off next week. The link is in the show notes to sign up, or you can head straight to my website, stephanierigg.com. Second quick announcement is just a reminder about my upcoming retreat in Byron Bay. If anyone is interested in joining me and a small group of others in an absolutely idyllic location for a few days of really focused, deep, powerful work and lots of lovely relaxation in between. I would love to see you in Byron Bay. It's not just for people in Australia. We've got about half and half so far people who are joining from Australia and joining from overseas, so definitely check it out if that sounds appealing to you.
[00:05:40]:
It is in mid May. We still have some spots available. And if you have any questions around the retreat, feel free to reach out to me whether via email or on Instagram. I'm happy to chat through it with you. Okay. So let's dive into this conversation around anxiety and intuition. So I think a really important starting point, and I've said this many times before in many different contexts, is that we want to whenever we experience something like this, like anxiety bubbling up, the default mode for most people is to treat that as a problem to be solved. It's like a fire that we need to extinguish because we relate to, most of us, our anxiety as a nuisance, as something that ruins everything, it gets in the way.
[00:06:20]:
It's a part of us that we wish wasn't there and we want to get rid of. And as much as that is understandable and maybe a natural response to something that we perceive as being in the way of us having healthy relationships or having self worth or whatever. It's actually a really counterproductive way to relate to our anxiety because the more we try and silence it or make ourselves wrong for it, the more we add stress, we add shame, we add this sense of brokenness to a part of us that's already carrying a lot of fear and stress. So it's sort of the equivalent of if there was a child that was really really distressed and worried and scared, and you were just telling them to shut up and be quiet, that wouldn't do anything to alleviate their fear and their stress. If anything that would make it worse, and most of us, I would hope, wouldn't think to do that, right? The way that we would relate to a child who is afraid would be to comfort them and reassure them and say I'm here to protect you, rather than just telling them to shut up because they're annoying. So that's really the kind of inner relationship we always want to be cultivating with not only our anxious parts, but any part of us that we perceive as being inconvenient or getting in the way. Rather than making ourselves wrong for it, we really want to turn towards it with curiosity and go, Okay, what are you trying to do for me? I trust that you have good intentions, and, you know, all of our patterns are an attempt at self protection in one way or another, so how are you trying to protect me or keep me safe? That's a really good guiding question to ask to any of our parts. Okay, so I'm going to offer three guiding principles for this question around anxiety versus intuition.
[00:07:54]:
And this is far from exhaustive. This is not gospel. This is how I relate to these concepts and what I think is useful in wading through, sifting through, distinguishing between, you know, how to relate to these things. And I do want to acknowledge that there's no, you know, really clear black and white lines here. It's not like if you told me what you're experiencing that I could say, Oh, that's intuition and that's anxiety, and here's what you should do. Right? I think these concepts are inherently a bit murky, and to suggest that something's gonna be wholly one way or the other is probably not accurate. You might have some intuitive gut feel about a situation with a lot of anxiety layered over the top. So to suggest that it's always going to be one or the other is probably inaccurate anyway.
[00:08:39]:
In addition to that, I think we've got to acknowledge that concepts like intuition and gut instinct and all of that, that there's probably a bit of fluidity there around the definition and what it means to different people. So what I identify and know to be an intuitive feel about something in my body, you might have a really different experience of what that feels like in your body. So obviously, there is a level of subjectivity baked into these concepts, and I just wanted to acknowledge that at the outset. This isn't like precise science, what we're talking about here. Nevertheless, I wanna offer these three guiding principles. And the first one is, when you notice this stuff coming up, trust the feeling that you're having, but question the story that you're telling. So for anxiously attached people, for fearful avoidant folks, as I said in the introduction, you've probably got a pretty sharpened ability to perceive shifts in the mood, in the temperature, in other people's emotional states. Like, you've got a pretty good read of the environment around you.
[00:09:39]:
Right? That's a skill that you have. It's not all in your head. And so what I'll often find is that anxiously attached people will correctly read that something is off. Right? So you will perceive, okay, my partner's tone just shifted. An hour ago they were being warm, and now suddenly there's a slightly different tone and they're being a bit more standoffish. So you're probably correctly tapped into the temperature shift that has happened there. So you can trust what you're perceiving, but where we can really come unstuck is the interpretation. And I think that's where anxiously attached people in particular, their interpretation is almost always going to be really unfavorable, catastrophic even.
[00:10:24]:
So you might sense that your partner is suddenly a bit, you know, standoffish or short towards you, and you make that mean they don't love you anymore, or they're really angry at you, or you've done something wrong, or they're having an affair, or they're hiding something. You know, it gets really sinister really quickly. And naturally, if your anxious brain is sort of tossing those pebbles into the pond, like, that's going to create some serious ripples in your system. That's going to really ramp up the threat response, and that's going to then drive what you do next. So recognizing that, like, yes, you're probably not imagining it, whatever you are perceiving, that is maybe the the first domino, but you've got to really watch the subsequent dominoes because that's where your anxiety is going to come in and sort of tell you stories, interpretations that are likely to be catastrophic. So part of your growth is really noticing that first piece, and rather than just following those doom and gloom stories, actually pausing and regulating and consciously reorienting to less catastrophic stories, and just noticing because your anxiety will keep doing that. You can just notice the stories. Like, still now for me, if my partner has gone to the shops to pick something up, and I ring him and I can't get onto him, my brain will immediately go like, Oh, he's been in a car accident.
[00:11:46]:
Right? But I notice that, and I can almost I can laugh it off. It's not something that then sends me spiraling into panic because I'm convinced that he's been in a car accident. I can just recognize, Oh, yeah. That's my anxious part doing its thing and and telling me, like, all of the bad things that might have happened that are the reason for me not being able to get through to him. Right? So you can just watch that, like clouds floating by and go, Yes. Okay. Thank you. That is one possibility.
[00:12:11]:
What are the 500 other possibilities that aren't the absolute worst thing? And the more that we can do that, the more that we can stay somewhat grounded and regulated rather than just quickly going up into a full blown anxious fight or flight kind of response that then the more we follow our body into that, the more the stories become catastrophic, and that really just continues to to be a vicious cycle. They reinforce each other. What's happening in our body reinforces the stories and vice versa. So really consciously separating out the thing that I'm observing and the meaning that I'm attributing to it and trying to to stay somewhat grounded and recognize that there are explanations that are not the worst possible thing, and maybe I could give, you know, the benefit of the doubt to this situation rather than assuming the very worst. Okay. So the next guiding principle that I wanna give you is if it feels really urgent, there's a good chance that it's anxiety. So urgency, this sense of I have to do something right now because otherwise something really bad is gonna happen. You can even hear in that.
[00:13:12]:
Like, that's anxiety one zero one. Right? That is a function of our sympathetic nervous system. That is a function of that mobilized adrenaline cortisol state that we get launched into when our nervous system, our brain has perceived a threat. And it just tells us, like, something bad's gonna happen. You need to do something now. So if you're noticing that kind of feeling tone to whatever it is that's going through your body, going through your head, there's a good chance that anxiety is driving the bus. Now that doesn't mean that again, like, it doesn't mean you just have to completely ignore that thing, but recognizing what is going on in your body and going, okay, this looks and sounds like anxiety. I'm gonna treat it as anxiety, which means that I need to focus on regulating my nervous system first.
[00:13:59]:
Right? It doesn't mean ignoring it. As I said, if you just try and ignore it, like pressing the mute button on your anxiety, it's gonna get a lot louder. It's going to protest against that because it feels ignored and it is still convinced that something bad's gonna happen, so it's gonna jump up and down really, really loudly to try and get your attention. So instead of doing that, try and regulate your nervous system. Do whatever you need to do to bring some more safety back into the system. So that might be going for a walk, doing some exercise, doing some deep breathing, any number of things, and, you know, building out your toolkit for how to deal with anxiety and how to move that anxiety through your system so that you can come back into some more regulation. That's a really big part of your work as well. It's a lot of what I teach in Healing Anxious Attachment.
[00:14:43]:
But just really recognising, oh, okay, this looks and feels like anxiety, so I'm going to deal with that anxiety first, and then I will revisit whatever the thing is that my anxiety was trying to get my attention around. So it's not just dismissing ourselves, it's not invalidating ourselves. It's just recognising, okay, this is infused with anxiety so I'm going to try and soften whatever stress is in my system. Gonna try and process that and then see what's left over. And if there's still something that needs my attention, great. I'll deal with it then. But first and foremost, I need to address, like, the pressing issue which is I'm feeling really anxious and my nervous system is dysregulated. Okay.
[00:15:26]:
The third guiding principle that I wanna give you, and I've sort of touched on it already, is don't just ignore your anxiety. Right? It's not about trying to make our anxiety go away. I think implicit in the question, is it intuition or is it anxiety, there's an assumption that, like, intuition is to be listened to and anxiety is to be ignored or dismissed. Right? I actually did an episode a couple of months ago on the importance of self validation for anxiously attached people. And I realize that's not a particularly enticing title, but it's actually a very, very important conversation because anxiously attached people in particular are really, really bad at validating themselves. It's so evident in the questions I receive. Things like, how do I know if it's just my anxiety or my partner's actually doing x y z thing? Basically, like, am I just too sensitive? Am I just too anxious? Am I just too needy? All of those questions are really invalidating. It's basically saying, my experience that I'm having, I don't trust that I'm allowed to be having it.
[00:16:27]:
And so I'm trying to sense check that against other people to get them to tell me whether what I'm experiencing is real and true, and I'm allowed to be experiencing it. Right? And that same sentiment is present in the question of is it intuition or is it anxiety? It's a sense of, oh, do I need to listen to this thing or do I need to ignore this thing? Is this thing leading me astray or is it leading me to something that is actually important and needs my attention? The truth is your anxiety needs your attention too. It needs your care. It needs your reassurance. But what we really wanna do is be able to separate out the experience of anxiety from the content of anxiety. So we want to listen to our anxious parts, but not take what they're telling us as fact and as something that we absolutely need to act on in terms of whatever the the catastrophic story might be, whatever the fear messaging is, again, we sort of want to park that to one side and turn towards the anxiety. Again, it's almost like a little kid. If they were saying, like, I'm convinced there's monsters in my closet.
[00:17:30]:
You're not gonna take that and go, Oh my god. There's monsters in the closet, and join them in the chaos. You'd comfort them and you'd say, Oh, that must be so scary. Tell me more about it. And you'd really be a calm soothing presence so that a child could co regulate with you and come back to some safety and not be so frightened anymore. That's exactly how we want to be relating to our anxious parts rather than, you know, either joining them in the chaos and just letting them drive the bus or completely dismissing them and telling them to shut up. Right? So don't ignore your anxiety. Actually turn towards your anxiety.
[00:18:06]:
Offer it comfort and reassurance, but don't take the content of your anxious thoughts, fears, stories as fact that you then need to act on right away because there's a good chance that there's some creativity in there. And our anxious brain, in its fierce efforts to keep us safe, will always offer up a platter of everything that could possibly go wrong and try and warn us about that. And while that's, you know, really protective in some ways, it also can lead us to be in a heightened stress state all the time. And so it's almost like we've got these goggles on, and we're perceiving everything and everyone and every interaction from this state of something really bad's gonna happen. And that's a really challenging way to be in relationships because it leads us to be on high alert all the time, and it actually robs us of the joy of presence and connection because there's no presence in anxiety. Anxiety is all about, you know, replaying scary things from the past and preempting scary things that could happen in the future. Okay. So I hope that that's been helpful in teasing out some of these concepts around anxiety and intuition and reframing those questions so that you have a little more clarity and guidance on what to do when you notice these things coming up.
[00:19:21]:
How do I relate to the stories that I'm telling myself? How do I relate to what I'm perceiving? You know, what needs my attention? Where do I focus? What do I need to act on and what do I need to maybe not act on? Hopefully you've got a little bit more clarity around all of that so that you can feel more grounded and ultimately more self trusting in your ability to handle these situations if and when they arise. I think that's such a big piece for for people with anxious attachment in particular is actually building that self trust and going, like, it's okay. I don't need to live in fear of my own anxiety or my own thoughts because I have the tools and the capacity to deal with them. Right? To know what to do, to actually hold myself in a centered, grounded place rather than feeling like I'm at the mercy of my fear that's going to grab the wheel and drive me off a cliff all the time. Okay? So really hope that that was helpful. If you enjoyed this episode, always so grateful for those who leave a rating or a review if you're listening. If you're watching on YouTube, please like and subscribe. That is a huge help for me.Otherwise, I look forward to seeing you again next time. Thanks, guys.
[00:20:35]:
Thanks for joining me for this episode of On Attachment. If you wanna go deeper on all things attachment, love, and relationships, you can find me on Instagram @stephanie__rigg or at stephanierigg.com. And if you enjoyed this episode, I'd be so grateful if you could leave a review and a 5 star rating. It really does help so much. Thanks again for being here, and I hope to see you again soon.
Keywords from Podcast Episode
attachment, relationships, anxiety, intuition, insecurity, healthy relationships, insecure attachment, anxious attachment, disorganized attachment, hypervigilance, sensitivity, anxiety spiral, conflict cycles, self worth, Secure Self Challenge, nervous system, self compassion, self care, self regulation, self respect, self trust, self validation, anxiety vs intuition, nervous system regulation, intuition vs anxiety, self reassurance, anxiety in relationships, relationship coach, anxiety response, self protection, stressful environments