How to tell the difference between anxiety and intuition

Ever get a feeling that something isn’t right? An internal voice that is trying to tell you something? It could be your intuition bubbling up. Or maybe it’s anxiety. Or both. Learning to tell the difference between anxiety and intuition can help you determine if that feeling is something you should listen to or address in another way, but it’s easy to confuse the two.

“People have become disconnected from their emotions, beliefs, and self-confidence,” says intuitive life coach Tammy Adams. “They have so much doubt within themselves that they don’t listen to their own intuition. People veer off with fear and live more in anxiety than they do in confidence.”

Your gut feeling is your intuition, says Adams. “It has many different names,” she says. “I call it our sixth sense. The more you connect to your senses, the more information you get.”

Anxiety is an alert system, a feeling of apprehension, says Laura Day, a practicing intuitive and author of Practical Intuition: How to Harness the Power of Your Instinct and Make It Work for You. “It can be useful momentarily because it makes you pay attention to the data that intuition is providing,” she says. “That data gives you a blueprint that leads you immediately to the right action or perception. Anxiety has put the spotlight on your intuition, but it is the intuition that is useful, not the anxiety. When anxiety persists after that, it is no longer useful.”

A test for anxiety

Telling the difference between intuition and anxiety is simple, says Adams. If acting on the information makes you feel free, it’s intuition. If that feeling doesn’t go away, it’s anxiety. “We often create our own anxiety by putting ourselves in negative situations because we’re creatures of habit,” she says. “True anxiety is not something someone just catches or has. It’s been built up.”

The only time that anxiety would persist in an intuitive paradigm is if a boundary has been crossed, says Day. For example, you see a good friend do something unethical and dangerous, such as stealing or lying. Your intuition tells you that the person needs to be stopped, but you will often be anxious because someone close to you has broken rules you hold dear. 

How to Get Better at Listening to Your Intuition

Your intuition is something that needs to be trained, and it’s different from belief, says Day.

“Trust is belief without proof,” she says. “Intuition provides proof; it does not require belief to be present and useful. I am wary when I hear people say, ‘I believe in intuition.’ That is like saying, ‘I believe in gravity.’ Intuition simply is. If you refine and document its action, you quickly discover that you can rely on it. But when you ‘magicalize’ it with belief, you remove its burden of proof, thus rendering it less useful.”  

Day recommends recording your feelings of intuition. You can use a journal, for example, but she recommends removing any attached emotional content. Also, don’t try to make sense of what you feel. 

“We get lots of information all the time, but we don’t have a very good filing system, especially for our intuitive information,” says Day. “Intuition functions best on automatic pilot. When you document it, you begin to see that it’s accurate, it’s precognitive. Your subconscious will make it more available. It’s noticing what you notice, not looking for anything.” 

The importance of goal-setting

To use intuition, it’s important to know what you’re working on and know what your goals are. “You don’t see what you’re not looking for,” says Day. “You will know how to address your intuition when you know what your goals are.”

Adams also recommends practicing meditation for at least 20 minutes a day as a way to make room for intuition. “Allow yourself to step away from situations that could become negative habits, such as wasting your night on things that are not important,” she says. “Reclaim quality time by doing meditation, being silent, or walking in nature. . . . Pay attention to your breath. When you’re quiet, your soul, spirit, and body—the true trinity that’s inside of us—will have an epiphany and the knowledge and knowing inside you starts kicking in.”

Every human being has intuition, says Adams. “We can all feel energy, because we are all energy,” she says. “Feel the energy coming off other people. The energy may tell you that person’s not so happy, or that person is really happy. You can’t lose your intuition. You can disconnect from it, you can ignore it, but you can’t lose it.”