280. Is it anxiety or intuition?

Intuition is this deep sense of knowing that guides and expands our lives. Anxiety on the other hand restricts us by keeping us beholden to fear. Despite their differences, they can feel remarkably the same, especially if you are someone who has an anxious, overthinking disposition. In today’s episode, we break down how to tell them apart, including:

• Where anxiety sits in the body
• How to spot an anxious thought
• The origin and science of intuition
• How intuition should feel
• Why they feel similar
• My 6 question checklist for telling them apart
• How to strengthen your connection with your intuition

Plus personal stories of being saved by a gut instinct and our listener questions! Listen now!

 

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Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
Hello everybody, Welcome back to the show. Welcome back to
the podcast, new listeners, old listeners. Wherever you are in
the world, it is so great to have you here.
Back for another episode as we, of course break down
the psychology of our twenties. How many times have you
heard the phrase just trust your gut, go with your instinct,

(00:21):
or when you know you just know. When we hear
those phrases in response to a situation where we really
just need advice, we're feeling uncertain, it can make the
situation feel even more confusing, especially if you are someone
who's naturally anxious, because feelings of anxiety and a gut

(00:42):
instinct often feel completely similar and are incredibly hard to differentiate.
Self doubt, intuition, generalized anxiety, even excitement. They all feel
the same, They all operate on the same axis. So
how can we sure that we are making the right choices,

(01:02):
that we are choosing the right path, questioning the right
things when we can't always tell what to focus on
and what to ignore. Well, today that is exactly what
we are talking about. We are going to talk about
how to distinguish between intuition and anxiety. And let me
tell you, I think it is so important to have

(01:23):
this conversation in our twenties because there are so many
big life decisions to be made during this decade, and
so much insecurity and doubt in general. And if we
let ourselves be led by fear, thinking that an emotion
that powerful must be a sign, fear must be a sign,

(01:43):
I don't think that we give ourselves the lives that
we want, and fear in these situations or anxiety cannot
be the master of our fate or the master of
our destiny, or whatever you want to call it. Knowing
the difference between my gut instinct and my fear, it
has been a process of trial and error for me.
I used to be such a back and forth kind

(02:07):
of person. I would constantly need other people's input. I
would take a leap of faith, and then I would
back down because I began to doubt my own instincts.
But around three years ago, I think I experienced just
this huge mental shift in general across all areas of
my life. And around that time I basically decided that

(02:29):
for three months I was just going to go with
whatever thing I had decided to do first, so whether
it was what restaurant to pick, what movie to watch,
what person to date. I had to be decisive, and
I had to base it on my first thought and
my first decision, and I definitely got things wrong during
that period, but I think I came out of it

(02:52):
with such a strong inner voice. And there have been
so many times where I have really not trusted my
inner voice and been disappointed, And every single time I
have been, it's almost been reaffirming to me when like
what that sounds like when it's an instinct, When it's
my intuition and it's so loudly calling me and I

(03:15):
ignore it, it feels terrible, but it also just helps me
again reinforce what that voice means to me and when
to listen to it. Now. Don't get me wrong, I
still experience anxiety when it comes to my decisions, but
I think I can now really sit back and appreciate
it and have a conversation with my anxiety almost rather

(03:35):
than allowing it to dictate what I do in life.
When we confuse intuition and anxiety, I think a lot
of things can happen. We can become very obsessive over
particular thoughts that are unhelpful because we think they mean
more than they do, when really they are just thoughts.
We can make decisions because we're panicked that actually end

(03:59):
up being one that we regret. We leave someone we shouldn't,
we turn away from an opportunity we shouldn't, we quit
when we shouldn't, or we don't make decisions that we
need to make because we think how anxiety is trying
to tell us something, when really, if you think about it,
it's just trying to keep us small, and it's also

(04:20):
trying to keep us safe in a way. These are
the mistakes that I want us to make less of.
And the thing I'm most excited for in this episode
is this questionnaire slash checklist that I have that I
use for myself for judging whether a thought I'm having
is an anxious thought or an intuitive guide or an
intuitive signal. And it's literally one that you could take.

(04:45):
You can bring any question, any thought you're having, and
you could apply it and put it through this framework
and you would have your answer. Is this a thought
I should listen to? Is it coming from an anxious
place or an intuitive place? I also want to talk
about how intuition and anxiety feel in our bodies and
in our minds, why they're similar, how they're different, when

(05:06):
to know the difference, and more most importantly, I think,
how to truly strengthen our intuition, how to make sure
that it is a voice that we hear over the
voices of our fear, but also over the voices of
a lot of other people who have opinions about our lives,
as they always will. So there was definitely a time
that I needed this episode myself. Maybe I still need it,

(05:28):
but now I get the chance to make it for
you all. So I hope you learn something. I hope
it makes you recognize something about yourself. I hope it
quells some of your anxiety. So, without further ado, let's
talk about the distinction between intuition and anxiety and how
to tell the difference. So let's begin by breaking down

(05:52):
how each of these feelings sensations, how they each work.
What is anxiety based in and what is into wi
based in. We're going to start with the louder and
more persistent or arrogant of the two. We're gonna start
with anxiety. Anxiety put simply, is our means to survive.
It is the alarm system that is meant to protect

(06:14):
us against danger by triggering our fight or flight system. Nowadays,
this has also been adapted to include fawn and freeze. Basically,
anxiety is the first responder, and they see the incoming
danger and they call back to the rest of the
body and say, are we going to run? Are we
going to fight? Are we gonna stay still? Are we

(06:35):
going to make friends? Sometimes I think we often villainize
anxiety because you know, it is pretty terrible for it
to be this constant voice in our head, But it
actually is really essential and it does allow us to
see our surroundings properly. It does allow us to be safe.

(06:56):
It is an essential part of who we are. When
it becomes a proper though, is when it starts getting
fanatical and making up stranger and stranger scenarios that aren't
actually happening, but convincing us that either they will happen
or they are happening. So this is known as a

(07:17):
disordered anxiety response. Now, there is a way we should
experience anxiety. Anxiety can be situation or event based. It
can be limited both in terms of intensity and frequency.
It is important for our protection. And then there is
a way that becomes unsustainable and mentally harmful, and that

(07:38):
is when anxiety becomes constant. We are unable to switch off,
and it emerges even when nothing is wrong. So if
you've ever been sitting on the couch and you're sitting
there and your whole life genuinely feels perfect in that moment,
there is nothing scary happening around you, and yet you're
sitting there almost being like something's wrong. Something's wrong. I

(08:02):
can feel it, I know it. You feel uncertain, you
feel scared, and you cannot release that feeling. That is
disordered anxiety, and it basically turns us into a bunch
of conspiracy theorists. We may, you know, look at a
relationship that seems perfectly normal and think, oh my god,
they're gonna break up with me, even though there are

(08:24):
no signs of that. Or we think that person is
so mad at me, or I'm going to lose my job,
some big disaster is about to happen, the worst case
scenario is about to happen. Even when we have no
single piece of evidence for those thoughts or scenarios, we
end up spiraling, We end up feeling very panicked. There

(08:46):
is this desire to do something, this desire to act
the sense of uneasiness. We also start to think that
this feeling, because it is so significant, it must mean something.
Because it is so so loud, it is so hard
to dismiss. And the thing is is that your anxiety
is meant to be loud. Anxiety is not meant to

(09:07):
be quiet. Our it was basically made. It was evolved
so that it was hard to ignore because we needed
to listen to it for it to be useful, because
it was meant to tell us something important. But because
it is so intense, it feels like everything that it
is telling us must be coming true, and it will

(09:31):
come true, and we need to be prepared, and we
better be listening to every single tiny piece of thing
it tells us, even when it's a lie. Now here's
the thing about anxiety that I was talking to a
friend about this the other day, which is that even
the saying goes that even a wrong clock is right
twice a day. So your anxiety is ninety nine percent

(09:53):
of the time going to be wrong about a situation
or a scenario you're in, and then almost by accident,
sometimes it will be right. And those are the moments
we need to watch out for, because we begin to
take it as evidence, even though they are so so rare.
We take it as evidence that these feelings we have,
which is just simply an overreactive olympic system and our

(10:15):
brain trying to interpret the environment, we take it as
a sign. And then other times our anxiety actually creates
a self fulfilling prophecy, which is one of the reasons
we confuse it with intuition. So I'm going to use
the example again of you think that a friend is
mad at you. You think that's your intuition. It's actually

(10:36):
just your anxiety. But because you believe that they are
mad at you, it begins to inform your behavior. So
you become distant, you become cold, you begin to ignore
them as a protective mechanism, and suddenly there is a
problem and you're sitting there going I told you so, Look,
my anxiety was right, It was actually intuition, when really
what was happening was this irrational feeling has created this

(10:59):
behave you subconsciously. So about thirty percent of us are
going to experience an anxiety disorder in our lives. And
like the example I just gave, it does shape our behaviors,
our actions, and our thoughts. It is such a good liar.
Our anxiety is such a good liar. But it's also

(11:21):
the part of us that is so vulnerable and genuinely afraid.
I always think about anxiety as like a parent who
tries to shelter their child from the world and tells
their child lies, like you know, the sun is poisonous,
or other people are evil, or these people are the
embodiment of satan, like you know when you watch those
weird cult documentaries and the parent carry for example, like

(11:45):
the parent has told them something about themselves, not because
they hate them, but to protect them because of their
own trauma. That's literally how I think about anxiety. This
actually brings up an important point, which is the relationship
between anxiety and trauma, because we cannot talk about anxiety
and the confusion between anxiety and intuition without talking about trauma.

(12:10):
So in meta analysis from twenty twenty four, it looked
at over a thousand studies and papers written on this topic.
Within these papers, there were almost twenty five thousand combined participants,
and it found that PTSD makes us more anxiety sensitive.
Our anxiety response is deeply informed by our past and

(12:32):
the things that have caused us extreme pain and hurt
and trauma is just going to scramble the parts of
our brain that can think rationally about something. Because if
you've been through something really terrible, give be it relationship trauma,
family trauma, childhood trauma, even like a natural disaster, anything
like that, Basically that has almost rewired how your brain

(12:58):
sees threats and how it sees information. Because you survived that,
your brain is now almost locked in on those memories
and believes that those memories are useful. So the things
that you saw right before I don't know, the boat
sunk or right before the relationship exploded, your brain has

(13:18):
still got those in storage and is going to bring
them out and use them as almost like a tester
for what you know that experience would look like in
the future, how do we avoid it? Essentially, I feel
like that just I just rambled there and that maybe
didn't make any sense. I just like to give the
example of being afraid of flying right and having experienced

(13:40):
or traumatic flying a bit that has happened to me.
I had a really traumatic flight once. It was just
I'm not even going to go into details, but it
was just so awful. It was so awful. People were crying,
people were screaming. It was genuinely traumatic. It may have
not led to PTSD, but what it did lead to
was a heightened anxiety response in relation to flying. And

(14:01):
because I went through that, my brain is now so
hyper aware of how scary that felt that anytime I
get on a plane, I'm thinking, oh my god, this
twinge in my stomach, that's a sign, because I felt
anxious when I thought the plane was crashing, And so
this new feeling must be This same feeling that is
actually just a natural response to an unknown must be

(14:22):
telling me something. This is all to say, Obviously, anxiety
is going to feel a lot like a sign sometimes
because it is loud, because it is sometimes linked to
very emotional, heightened situations, and because it's fear based and
we are naturally prone to listen to fear. Okay, now
we really need to discuss intuition. If you want to

(14:45):
hear like a full debrief on anxiety, you can listen
to I think it's episode thirty one on the Anxious Mind.
But now it's important to distinguish between anxiety and intuition. Here.
Intuition is something that is is sometimes lumped in with
a bunch of other concepts, our paranoia, cognitive biases, emotional thinking, anxiety,

(15:06):
of course, a got instinct out in a voice, whatever
you want to call it, whatever people confuse it as. Basically,
intuition describes the way that we can just sense that
something is not quite right without needing rational proof in
that moment. It is this strange ability to pick up
on cues from another person or our environment, or from

(15:29):
our senses that is telling us something that might not
be something we can admit to ourselves or we can
say out loud, but we can feel it. So I
found this really amazing article that kind of brought broke
down the four types of intuition. So there's clairvoyance, which
is kind of almost having visions or seeing images of

(15:51):
something that's about to happen, honestly, quite spiritual, very rare.
There's clear sentience, which is like a gut reaction that
could include feeling really intense bodily sensations or feelings. There's
clear cognisance, which is when you're kind of sitting there
and you just feel this piece of knowledge drop into
your head. One example I give is people who say

(16:13):
they knew the queen was gonna die the day before
she did, and it felt like this weird intuitive, oh
my god, like mystical thing. And then there is clear audience,
which is hearing short phrases, voices, sounds that feel like
some kind of direct message. Obviously, there's a lot of
overlap with that last one with schizophrenia or schizoaffective disorder. Essentially,

(16:37):
it's just how you hear your intuition when your intuition
is at a normal, balanced level. Now some people are
going to define intuition as a very spiritual or magical phenomenon.
And until about twenty years ago, the scientific community would
have probably agreed, and it would have told you that
it was garbage and it was just mystical thinking. But

(16:58):
more and more evidence is coming out the points to
the fact that our gut instinct and our intuition has
a very strong scientific basis, and it does occur on
almost a cellular level, on a social level, a physical level,
and a collective level as well. I personally have a
deep belief in intuition. If that is not obvious, I'm

(17:20):
going to tell you about this crazy story that actually
happened to me that felt like intuition at work, and
probably even saved my life. So around five years ago,
I was living in Canberra and it was around eleven
pm at night, almost twelve, and me and my boyfriend
at the time decided to go and get McDonald's, like

(17:42):
a drive through McDonald's. I don't know why. I think
we just were like we'd watched a movie. We were
still awake. We really felt like, I'm honestly, that's just
a silly detail. You don't need to know that. We
go through this drive through, we pull out, and we
pull into this like four way intersection with two going
either way. We pull up to the light, there are

(18:03):
no other cars around. We're listening to music, and the
light for me to turn right at this intersection goes green,
and I'm sitting there and I just don't go forward,
and my boyfriend at the time looks at me and goes,
what are you doing, Like why aren't you moving? And
I kind of just looked at him and was like, oh,

(18:25):
I don't know. Right at that point, I turned back
to the road and I went to go forward, and
at that very moment, this car, going probably around one
hundred kilometers an hour, ran the red light and would
have completely hit us. It would have hit us and
it probably would have killed us. And right behind it

(18:46):
these three to four cop cars pull onto the road
and chasing it, and we are just sitting in the
car and I'm just like, holy crap. If I had
pulled out onto that road, we would have died. We
would have died. This car would have hit us directly
where him and I were sitting, and it would have

(19:10):
just been the end. And that's like we literally pulled
over and were just like in shock, Like I cannot
even explain that feeling of just being like wow. And
later that then we called our friend. I don't even
know what happened. I think we like texted our friends
and we're like, you're not gonna believe what just happened.
And they go on the news and they go into

(19:31):
like our local news page and Canberra and there's a
car that has been like in pursuit by the police,
and an hour later like it's been basically it's a
high speed chase. And I don't know what it was
in that moment when you know, I'm in the car
listening to music and the light turns green and I
see it turn green and I did not go and

(19:54):
some part of me says that was just intuition. The
thing is, I'm quite a scientific person. I love the science,
I love the evidence, and for a while I was
really trying to find an answer, because how do we
explain moments like that. We've all had a moment like that.
There are a few theories as to what causes this

(20:15):
intuition that stops us or tells us to go over
as like a calling. The first explanation is obviously one
of fate and destiny and mysticism and higher power controlling everything.
Call it God, the universe hollah, some power is moving
all these parts. Now, this one's hard to prove, obviously,
because it's hard to prove the existence of something you

(20:39):
can't see and that doesn't have a scientific measure to it.
But that's one take on it. The psychology, though, says
two things. Intuition is this emotionally charged, rapid unconscious process
whereby our brain is basically using information that we've never
acknowledged or seen before to influence our actions. So basically,

(21:03):
when we look at the world, our brain is really
good at just selecting what is important to us. Because
we do have finite cognitive resources, it cannot process every
single little thing in our environment at once and give
all that information to us to consciously process all that
information though it still exists and it's still being processed.

(21:25):
You may not consciously have noticed the car speeding down
towards you, but part of your brain did and told
you to stop. You may not have consciously seen the
suspicious shadow in the alleyway, some part of your brain
did and it kind of cut over all the noise
and said, don't go down there, don't go forward, don't

(21:45):
do that thing. That's the first explanation. Basically, your unconscious
mind noticing things quicker than you, faster than you, silently.
The second explanation is based on learning and how our
brain really predicts things based on experience and yeah, basically
it learns from what we've been through before. So this

(22:06):
is the theory that was put forward by the neuroscientist
Joel Pearson. He runs a lab on neuroscience and intuition
called Future Mind Labs at UNSW here in Sydney. And
I'm going to explain this explanation the way he does,
which is using your coffee shop. So you run a
new coffee shop. You're let's say you're walking around London,

(22:27):
you're walking around Brazil, you're walking around Tokyo, some city
you've never been before, and you want to get a coffee,
you want to get some lunch. Now, you've been to
heaps of cafes before, and when you were in those environments,
your brain processed all of these pieces of information, the temperature,
the music, the coffee machine, how clean the floor was,
the decor, how warm it was, And you've just basically

(22:50):
learned what parts of an atmosphere or an environment are
going to predict the kind of food and experience and
coffee that you want based on all these learnings. So
as you're looking for a cafe you're standing in the entrance,
your intuition is applying those learnings to all this conscious
information that's happening right now to help you make a

(23:11):
decision based on a gut feeling. This is why you
might have a gut instinct about a bad friend or
that someone is lying to you. It's because you've probably
encountered a situation before, and although you may not have
picked up on some of the information that came with
this situation, part of your brain did, and now it's

(23:32):
pulling that information out of storage to help you make
the best decision in this moment. Now, there is another
component of intuition, and it's talked about a lot less,
and it's this kind of ancient kind of knowledge, knowledge
passed down through generations that feels like it's in our DNA,
even in ourselves, Like you may not have encountered a

(23:55):
situation before, but there is some human part of you
that feels very familiar with it and knows how to
act and some kind of deja vous. I honestly think
it's because there's some ancestor some experience from your past
that it's in your blood, it's in your bones, it's
been passed down through you. You can call it spirit, you

(24:15):
can call it whatever. I know this sounds very woo woo.
It's an ancient human knowledge that informs how you see
the world and informs your intuition and you're gut instinct.
I want to tell another story, this time about my mum.
When she was my age, she was traveling around the
world doing fun, fabulous things, and she was in Indonesia.

(24:37):
She was on a mountain that she knew was an
active volcano and it hadn't exploded for a while. I
think it was semi dormant. She's walking up this volcano,
doing this hike, and she just gets this sense that
this is going to erupt. Something's not right, and she
runs down the mountain. She sprints down the mountain and

(25:01):
it erupts like I don't know if it was the
day later, it was after she got down the mountain,
but within a very short period of time, the volcano
had erupted. And from what I can remember of this story,
no one was there with her, no one had told her.
She just had this very human sense, and it was

(25:23):
almost like some ancest to, some human person in her
past had encountered this, and there was a knowledge there
that was passed on. And I remember her telling me
she felt like she needed to move and she needed
to hustle, but she didn't feel anxious about the thought.

(25:44):
She didn't feel like there was anything to do other
than to act. She was very certain, And I think
this is what intuition feels like. It feels very calm
and self assured. There is no doubt, there is not
a thousand possible outcomes or explanations running through your head
the way that that you know. That's sometimes what happens

(26:05):
with anxiety. You're sitting there, Oh, like this could happen,
or this could happen, or this could happen. It's serving
you up a thousand different possibilities with intuition. That's that's
not the case. There's one explanation, one prediction. You feel
it in your body. It is stable, it is certain,
it is confident. Most people will also obviously say you

(26:27):
can feel it in your stomach. That's the term gut instinct.
That's where it comes from. Now, the science behind this
sensation is very, very cool. Scientists don't call the stomach
the second brain for no reason. There's very good reason,
because there is a vast neural network of over one
hundred million neurons lining your entire digestive system. And every

(26:50):
single year, more and more evidence emerges that there is
this bi directional communication pathway between the brain and the gut.
In other words, you might feel your emotions or certain
sensations in your stomach before you consciously process them. They're
known by another name. They're called gut signals, and a

(27:11):
twenty twenty paper looked at whether they could be trusted,
and it did find that emotional stress and cues have
an immediate impact on the gut in a way that
we may be quicker to recognize than a passing thought
or than any other kind of sensory information. That's what
the gut instinct is. As to whether we can trust

(27:33):
our intuition, I can't go into all the studies because
there are so so many, and the answer is it
really depends. It really depends. But by and large we
do need this part of ourselves, this unconscious intelligence. A
two thousand and six study that I read that looked
at this found that people were better able to make

(27:57):
a decision under like chaotis circumstances when they went with
what they initially thought rather than those situations where they
had time to really think about it, especially when we
have more options. So, if we're thinking about intuition and
a big life choice, especially one in our twenties, if
you just applied reason and rationality to however many choices

(28:20):
you have, you would not make a good decision because
you would get too caught up in the data. There
are certain moments like that one where you have to
just trust what is being fed to you, what information
that you may not be able to label is being
told to you. That is helping you make a choice.
I also think you know human emotion, and to some extent,

(28:41):
human relationships aren't always properly represented in rational thought. There
are things about human relationships that cannot be presented in
facts or figures or pro cons lists. And so listening
out for that emotional directive that you are being given
and whatever direction you're being called to is really really important.

(29:03):
Otherwise you end up confused, robotic, almost mathematical at times.
The question now is how do we tap into that
inner voice when sometimes it does just feel like anxiety.
We spend a lot of time talking about both of
those things. Let's put it together after this very short break. So,

(29:26):
knowing what we know, now, why do we confuse intuition
and anxiety. Well, we often confuse them because they feel
the same and they elicit very similar thoughts and sensations.
In particular, if you are someone who was already anxious,
you are going to be hypervigilant to even the smallest
cues or signs of danger or signs that you should

(29:46):
or shouldn't be doing something, And so your brain is
going to naturally apply a deeper meaning to things that
sometimes is just fear. Sometimes it's just catastrophic thinking. Sometimes
it's just worry and we confuse those sensations for an
intuitive thought. Here are some of the other reasons that
we tend to get them confused. I think to start

(30:08):
off with, they both often occur in response to uncertain situations,
and so with both intuition and anxiety, they often are
going to come up when there is some kind of
unknown and that's something we never enjoy as humans, And
because in that situation we're already stressed, it can be

(30:29):
hard to tell the difference. They can both often feel
a little bit irrational, like I don't know why I
feel this way, I just do. In terms of anxiety,
the reason you just feel this way is because your
mind is, I don't know, just on high alert and
dysregulated in terms of how you're processing fear. In terms
of intuition, sometimes it's because you're just seeing something that

(30:51):
your brain isn't consciously knowing is there. They also both
originate from within us, even if it's different corners of
the mind. If anxiety was all situation based or was
just what someone else had to say, it would be
very easy to discredit it. But because both of them
intuition and anxiety are coming through some of the same channels,

(31:14):
they can get kind of confused. They also, like I said,
a listit some of the same physical sensations, specifically that
gut signal or sensation for anxiety that can feel like nausea.
Sometimes that feels the same as a gut instinct, so
it's easily confused. They both also feel important to listen to.

(31:34):
So as much as we kind of hate an anxious feeling,
it is an important feeling and it's very hard for
our brain to ignore it. The same with intuition. It's there,
they're loud, and often they are directed towards something that
feels emotionally salient to us. We're not going to feel
intuitive or anxious about what bag to take to the

(31:55):
gym or what pen to use. We're gonna feel anxious
and intuitive about very profound big things like finances, relationships,
life choices. So they sit in the same ecosystem, and finally,
they're both trying to guide us to make a certain decision.
Intuition wants us to make a good decision. Anxiety wants

(32:16):
us to make the decision that keeps us safe. Either way,
they're both working on our brain to kind of give
it the best argument as to what path to take.
We've talked about how they're similar, how do they differ.
This is the real thing we want to know well.
Where anxiety is urgent and rushed, and it will always

(32:36):
make you feel like you need to do something immediately,
like a bad boss with a bad way of time management.
Intuition is going to let you take your time. Intuition
will not push you. It will not rush you towards
a decision, even if it's an important choice. Intuition I've
found also feels remarkably calm. It's like this steady feeling

(32:59):
in your whole body, this like real sense of like, yeah,
this is what I need to do. And sometimes you're
gonn just like I can't explain it. I just know
and it's not scary, it's just knowledge. On the other hand,
anxiety tends to be very uncomfortable. There's a lot of restlessness,

(33:21):
there's a lot of jitteriness, its movement, it's chaos, its energy.
Like we said before, this is also no important and
important distinction. Intuition is singular, anxiety is plural. Intuition will
often give you one answer, one scenario, one hypothetical, whereas
anxiety will give you several Intuition is also present focused,

(33:42):
it's based on what is happening now, whilst anxiety is
focused on the future, and it's very obsessive and it's
based in fear, whereas intuition is based in freedom. I
think the best way I can describe the difference is
that we often confuse use anxiety as intuition all the time,

(34:03):
but very rarely the other way around. We never think
that intuition is just anxiety because intuition is so absolutely
sure of itself and there's often no fear. I know
this feels rather abstract, so I thought i'd give you
a bit of a checklist. Say you are listening to
this episode for a specific situation to you, one I

(34:26):
probably don't know there's something coming up, though, some part
of you is scared, some part of you wants the
right answer. Some part of you doesn't know which feeling
you're having right now to trust and which one to ignore.
So I want to give you a checklist for whether
the thought you're having is an intuitive thought or an

(34:46):
anxious thought. To begin with, does the thought you're having
start with? What if? If it does, it's an anxious thought,
what if this happens? There's no what IF's with intuition. Secondly,
how long have you been thinking about this hypothetical? If
it's persistent and subtle, that's intuition. If it's just showed

(35:07):
up today and it's coming in waves of fear and overthinking,
that's anxiety. Does this thought limit or expand you? If
it traps you, it's anxiety because anxiety really likes to
keep things safe by keeping them the same. If it's intuition,
it's going to expand you and guide you, even if

(35:29):
it feels uncomfortable. And that's why we cannot rely on
discomfort alone to tell whether a thought is intuitive or anxious. Now,
does this thought push you more towards self trust or
does it make you doubt yourself? More? Self trust? Intuition,
self doubt, anxiety. Do you feel confident in this decision

(35:53):
deep down? Or are you seeking constant reassurance? So? Are
you going to friends, family, Reddit pages trying to tell
is this the right decision? If is it not the
right decision? If you feel confident deep down, its intuition.
If you're needing reassurance, it's anxiety. If you sit quietly

(36:13):
and you breathe, and you're all alone and you feel
like you're trying to bring yourself peace. Does the thought
go away? Does it fade when you relax. If that's
the case, it's anxiety. If it's still there and it's steady,
it's not causing you any harm. It's intuition. This is

(36:34):
my checklist, and I want you to write these down.
Remember that this episode is here for the next time
you have a thought that you think is anxious, that
you think is misleading, test it against this framework. I
think if you're still struggling to delineate between these two emotions,
the final way to really tell is that intuition is

(36:57):
going to respond positively to action. An anxious thought will
respond positively to slowing down. So if the thought gets
louder the less you do, you have confused intuition with anxiety.
If the thought gets louder, the more you try and
change and escape, you've confused anxiety with intuition. That's really

(37:21):
I know I've given you a lot of ways of
telling this, but this is really the one. With all
that in mind, how do we improve our ability to
hear our inner voice and our inner diirective and what
it wants from us. Matter of fact, how do we
also improve our ability to tune out our anxiety and
to stop it cutting over the intuitive frequency. The first

(37:44):
thing I do when I really want to tap into
what I truly want and I am thinking, is that
I spend time in solitude. I take a step back
from everything. I spend time by myself, particularly in nature.
I find that firstly that my anxiety. I always say this,
the best way to regulate your nervous system is to

(38:05):
put it back into the environment. It was made to
work in your nervous system, your stress response. It was
made for the wild, it was made for this so
called natural habitat. That's where it's going to be regulated best.
So being outdoors helps with that. It also makes me
more focused on what I truly want, so that solitude

(38:25):
part is really really essential. I also think if you're
trying to tap into your intuition spending more time alone,
it's not just that it's a cure for anxiety in
some way. It's also that it stops you from approval
and opinion seeking. So that is often a symptom of
someone who is quite anxious and quite obsessive in their thoughts.

(38:47):
You're often asking people for their opinion constantly because you
can't trust yourself. Being away from that temptation is really helpful.
And I think when we are constantly looking for other
people's validation of our decisions and what they think, we
do cut ourself off from our self knowledge because our
own thoughts, we start to question them in favor of

(39:09):
what someone else thinks. And really, what do they know, Like,
what do they know about what you feel? Probably not much.
They're applying their own intuition about their life to your
circumstances when your circumstances are probably entirely different. And there's
this incredible study from twenty twenty three actually conducted in
Australia that found those of us who spend more time alone,

(39:32):
we are more self aware and we are more satisfied
in terms of autonomy. Autonomy being our ability to make
decisions for ourself and believe they are good decisions. Now,
I will say small caveat here, you can't spend more
than seventy five percent of your time alone. Another study
kind of gave us that figure. Also another study from

(39:53):
twenty twenty three, So finding that balance between being able
to appreciate solitude and I in a sense, but also
not tip too far over the edge really important. The
other way to strengthen your intuition is to be patient,
don't always look for a sign, don't rush it. Rushing

(40:14):
is an anxious game. That is anxiety's favorite game to play,
and it will have you looking for signs where there
aren't any, leading you to read too much into small things,
leading you to make the wrong decisions. Basically, what I'm
trying to say is don't feel like you need to
change everything at once, and that every discomfort is a problem.

(40:40):
Sometimes discomfort it is growth. It is okay to sit
in a period that feels strange and odd for a
little while without feeling like it's indicating a problem. Let
me give some examples of this. When you are in
a new relationship, especially if you're in a new relationship
where you've previous in an unhealthy one. Sometimes that's going

(41:03):
to feel a little bit painful. There are these growing
pains in a relationship. It doesn't mean that you should
trust that discomfort solely. Another example is in a new job.
You know I always say the first three months of
a new job are really really hard. Doesn't mean it's
the wrong decision. What about like moving to a new city.

(41:23):
That's another one. You're going to feel uncomfortable when you
move to a new city. That discomfort does not mean
that you necessarily have made the wrong decision. My rule
is always the six month rule. If it's three months
for a job, it's six months for a new city.
If you still hate it, it's six months. Then you

(41:44):
can say, oh, maybe I didn't trust my gut instinct.
But yeah, I just think that be patient with choices
that you make just because they aren't working out right
now doesn't mean that you were wrong. I would also say,
in the opposite direction, notice patterns in past decisions, and
so reflect on times when you made the wrong decision.

(42:04):
You can arguably say, tang, I really made a wrong decision.
Right before you made that decision, in the weeks, days,
minutes before you made that decision, was there another decision
calling you that you ignored. That was probably your gut instinct,
That was probably your intuition. Remember that feeling, Remember it

(42:25):
and apply it to the situations you're in now. Do
you feel something similar at the moment, and try some
trial and error. You know, sometimes the best way to
get more in touch with your intuition is to make
mistakes that prove to you what your intuition is not.

(42:46):
Trial and error sucks, but sometimes if you feel strongly
about something, you have to follow through with it, see
what happens. And that's going to be the easiest way
for you to tell what anxiety feels like for you
versus what intuition and feels like for you. And if
that feels very big and scary, you can start with
very small, low stakes risks just to build confidence in

(43:09):
your intuition by making minor intuitive decisions. So trying a
new activity, if you feel called to talk to someone
on the street, if you feel called to I don't know,
have a connection with someone, do it. It's so low stakes,
I feel like it's gonna be fine. Those kinds of
things are a really great practice routine. They're really good

(43:30):
training wheels. Now for managing your anxiety. This's a whole
another ballgame, a whole nother pit of snakes. Like I said,
we have an episode on this, I'm gonna leave it
in the description. It's actually probably a really good episode
to listen to right after this one. But rapid fire,
how I address my anxiety when I feel like it's

(43:51):
taking over. I create a fear versus reality list. What
is a fear thought? What is a reality thought? I
put them on separate sides. I repeat them to myself
so that I can just reaffirm what I do know
to be true. Challenge the what if thinking. Ask yourself,
what if the best case scenario happened? What's the chances

(44:11):
of that happening? No more, no less than the worst case.
Talk to other people about the feelings that you're having.
I would also say stop drinking. If you're going through
a real anxious period and it's interrupting your ability to
hear from your intuition, please stop drinking. We know that
alcohol spikes anxiety by initially causing a very calming effect

(44:36):
through gabber activity in the brain, but then as it
wears off, the brain tries to rebalance those neurotransmitters with glutamate,
which is a very anxious neurotransmitter slash hormone, causing us
to feel my anxious Please stop drinking. Engage in some
kind of movement. If I'm anxious and I'm like, okay,
why does my intuition slash anxiety tell me this friend

(44:58):
hates me. Why why do I suddenly believe I'm going
to get evicted? Why do I believe this that I
immediately dance, I shake, I sing, I do some kind
of movement to dispel what is a physical reaction for me.
And also get therapy. Get therapy. People talk about it
a lot because it actually works, surprise, surprise. It's amazing.

(45:22):
And so if you really want to tap into your intuition,
sometimes you do have to clean out some of the garbage.
Sometimes you do have to clean out some of the
thought patterns that you have developed over time to protect
yourself that actually are hurting you. All right, we're going
to take a short break, but when we return, we've
got some listener dilemmas to do with anxiety and intuition.

(45:46):
Stay with us. So, my lovely listeners, if you are
a loyal listener of the show, you have been here
for a while, you will know that this is a
relative new segment of the podcast. I'm just trialing it
out for the next couple of episodes. I'm always down
for your feedback. But so many of you would have

(46:09):
questions after the episode had gone up, and I wish
that I could have answered those questions in the actual episodes.
So now I am giving you all the opportunity to
ask me those specific questions dilemmas that you are having
before the episode is so I can answer them for you.
If you want to submit a question for an upcoming topic,

(46:29):
just make sure you're following me at that Psychology podcast.
We've got some really cool episodes coming up around confidence,
around being a late bloomer, around parasocial relationships. I will
be asking for your questions and your dilemmas. If you
hate this segment, please actually let me know. I really
want to hear it, because if you guys don't like it,
it's going, it's going. It's going. It's gone. But I

(46:52):
want to answer some of the questions that a lot
of you kindly submit it today. Let's talk about this
first question. Is there any such thing or any time
when being led by anxiety is a good thing? The
answer is yes. So anxiety causes distress and use stress

(47:12):
U stress. It's spelled eu stres. It's also known as
good stress, and it helps boost a lot of really
great things, specifically our motivation and our focus. So there's
this law called the yerx Dodson law and Basically, it
says that anxiety up to a point actually helps improve

(47:34):
our performance. Moderate levels of anxiety, of course, will help
you better with studying, they help people with deadlines, but
it's when we get to an excessive point that it
really starts to kind of hurt us. So essentially, it's
an important balance to have. Anxiety also helps indicate when

(47:58):
something requires attention. I know there are a lot of
like posts on TikTok and Instagram being like how I
got rid of my anxiety. I cured my anxiety with exercise.
I no longer feel anxious. That's probably not a good thing.
You do need anxiety sometimes. Otherwise you would be just
in a constant state of complete calm and normalcy, and

(48:21):
even when stressful things happened, you wouldn't respond to them.
It's important to feel that way, Like think about your
wedding day, or like some really important event where you
feel a deep emotional sensation in response to it. You
feel nervous, you feel scared, you feel excited. All of
that is possible because of anxiety. So yes, there is

(48:41):
some level that is important. Question number two. My gut
says to leave my boyfriend, but my anxious self wonders
if it's just self sabotage. This is just one person's question,
but the amount of times I got something very similar
in my DMS was incredible. It's something that a lot

(49:05):
of you are obviously quite worried about, and I get it.
I really get it, because you might be dating someone really,
really nice and wonderful, but you're still so young, and
you worry is this really what's right for me? You
can't tell whether you're going to regret it, or whether
this is really a sign that you need to move

(49:25):
on you don't want to waste their time. What I'm
basically describing right here is relationship anxiety or relationship OCD.
Don't let the term fool you. It has nothing to
do with how we typically see OCD. Essentially, it's this
real sense of hypervigilance towards your relationship, whereby you're constantly

(49:47):
looking for things that could go wrong, not because they're
a bad person, but because you're worried about making the
wrong choice. It sounds like that's something that you may
be battling with. On the other hand, it may be
a deeper sign you've noticed something about who you two
are as a couple. Maybe not consciously yet, but you're

(50:07):
feeling it first in your gut. Here's what I would
say to you. If you're thinking about what it would
look like to leave him more than you are thinking
about your future with him, it's probably not the right relationship.
The other question I would ask you is if you
knew you would find love again soon, if you knew
that there was someone else out there who would love

(50:29):
you as much as this person loves you, now, would
you leave? Is this just a safe place to land?
Is this just an in the meantime relationship? I think
be really, really honest with yourself. Also acknowledge, and some
people might not be happy with me for saying this,
but you don't need to make a decision right now.

(50:52):
Like I said, intuition gives you time. Anxiety wants you
to make a decision right now. Relationships naturally go through
ebbs and flows and hard points and great points. It
might just be that you're in a bit of a
rat right now. I wouldn't want you to give up
a really amazing relationship because you've been sold this idea
that couples can never have low points. So that's my

(51:14):
advice on that one question. Number three asked over on Instagram.
When do you know if you should push through a
comfort zone or if it's actually just unsafe? Good question.
It's hard to tell. My natural desire is to always
push through. I think that discomfort is something that we

(51:36):
as humans are not good at managing, especially in a
world where we don't have to be that uncomfortable if
we don't want to be, you know, we truly don't.
We can be warm at all times, most of us,
thank gosh, can have food in our belly at all times.
We don't experience extreme discomfort anymore. Sometimes a little bit
of discomfort is a good thing in this situation, unless

(52:01):
you can point to evidence that this is actually going
to be an unsafe thing. So can you see examples
of it? I think about this with traveling. Are there
stories of people being kidnapped in the country you're going to?
Are there stories of or I don't know, Google reviews
that the zipline you're gonna do is a little bit dangerous.

(52:21):
It's important not to be arrogant. Just because we are
trusting our intuition doesn't mean that we ignore anxiety at
all points. It is still an important resource. So when
you're feeling like, there is something that's holding you back,
and you think that it's because it's unsafe. Investigate the
evidence for that thing. Take a couple of minutes to

(52:45):
walk yourself back from the situation and see it more clearly.
I also would say, do things to make whatever you're
going through feel more safe, but still keep going. So
I'm trying to think of like what you might be
talking about. Say it's your career, it feels uncomfortable, you
think that that's a sign that you're doing the wrong thing.

(53:07):
Try and make ways to make your career the way
that you're pushing it more comfortable. So try and find
different income streams to keep yourself financially stable. Maybe that's
the source of the discomfort whilst still pushing forward. I
think that's like a really great way to say it. Like,
you know, people didn't stop building skyscrapers because it was

(53:30):
unsafe or uncomfortable. They kept building them, and they built
them with safety measures. I think you can do the
same in your life. I don't know why I just
suddenly used a construction metaphor. I think that's the first
time that's ever happened during this podcast. So whoever's question
that is you should feel very privileged. All right. Final question,
I get visceral morning scaries when I wake up. Is

(53:50):
it my body trying to tell me something? This is
a great question. It's a great question because I get
this a lot. I guess morning scaries probably like five
days a week. In terms of whether it's trying to
tell you something like about your future or about your
life in a mystical way, I don't think so. I

(54:12):
think what you're probably experiencing is an elevated cordisol awakening response.
So that's morning anxiety. Basically, when you wake up. Sometimes
we can have this huge surge in our stress hormone cortisol.
It's meant to help us just be alive and awake
to the world. When that's just regulated, it can actually

(54:32):
go too far the other way and make us quite anxious.
It's important not to read too much into it. Sometimes
I think we can have those, again, very visceral emotional
responses and say that's a sign something's wrong. I have cancer,
someone's gonna die. No. I think that there's often the
simplest response is the best one. Focus on your sleep hygiene,

(54:56):
focus on trying to bring down your cortisol levels. And
your stress response before before going to bed and after
waking up. So no phone in your bedroom. You have
no idea what a bright blue light in your face
before you go to bed and right after you wake
up does to your stress response and your circadian rhythm,

(55:17):
So try and control that. Try not to have any
bright lights in the bedroom, and also review your alarm schedule,
so it's actually best to wake up naturally at the
end of a full sleep cycle. If your alarm is
like waking you up at like six hours and fifty
five minutes, maybe do it for like seven and a
half hours and try and go to bed earlier or

(55:39):
get that sleep in. Because if you're waking up in
the middle of a sleep schedule, you're waking up in
the middle of a dream, you're waking up in the
middle of rem sleep, you are going to be more anxious.
So again, simplest solution is probably the best one. I
don't think that this is a sign of anything. You're
trying to tell you something other than that your sleep

(55:59):
patterns maybe just a little bit off. And if it
keeps happening, go and see a doctor. They have these
really cool sleep studies right now and see feeling it
in other areas of your life. If you're not feeling
it in other areas of your life, I do think
it's just linked back to what this is. I think
that is all the questions that I have for today.

(56:21):
I'm just reviewing my notes and it looks like that
is the case. A long episode. If you have made
it this far, you know the deal. A special emoji
coming your way. I want you to leave an emoji
that best represents to you what intuition feels like. What
does it feel like in your body? What does it
feel like in your soul, in your limbs, in your brain.

(56:42):
If you've made it that far, this far, I mean,
let me know in the comments, using that little sneaky sign.
As always, I want to thank you for listening. I
really loved this episode. Sometimes you just make an episode
and you think fuck. Sorry to swear, but like fuck,
I really like this episode. I really like this episode,

(57:02):
So appreciate you listening this far. Make sure that you
are following me on Instagram. At that Psychology podcast, we
are doing more like listener questions, So if you want
to get involved in some upcoming episodes, that's a great
way to do it. Also, If you feel like there
is a friend of yours who could really benefit from
this episode, make sure to share it with them. I

(57:23):
would love to hear from you. I would love to
see more people listening, more people following, more people giving
us a five star review if you feel cold to
do so, but thanks again, thanks for coming along with
me on this really fun episode ride. Until next time,
stay safe, be kind, be gentle with yourself, and we
will talk very very soon.