intuition vs anxiety and how to stop mistaking panic for wisdom

there’s a specific kind of inner chaos that comes from being someone who “feels deeply” in a world that constantly demands certainty. it’s the chaos of waking up with a heaviness in your chest, convincing yourself it’s a sign, and spending the rest of the day decoding what the universe might be trying to say. is it a gut feeling? is it your higher self trying to warn you? or is it, as your therapist gently suggested last year, simply the residue of your nervous system reacting to an overstimulated mind and three iced coffees? sometimes it’s hard to tell the difference. especially when your anxiety is eloquent and your intuition is introverted.

i used to think they were the same thing — intuition and anxiety. they both lived in my body. they both showed up as restlessness, chest tightness, that sinking-pit-of-stomach thing that feels like a premonition but is often just undigested emotion. and because i romanticized the idea of “gut instinct,” i assumed every uncomfortable feeling was wisdom disguised as fear. i assumed that every no i felt was sacred, every withdrawal was protective, and every mental spiral was my intuition trying to save me from a mistake. spoiler: it wasn’t. sometimes it was just a caffeine crash, or an insecurity in heels.

we’ve been conditioned to think of intuition as something mysterious but trustworthy — a kind of spiritual gps that never lies. and to be fair, sometimes it really is. sometimes, the body knows what the brain hasn’t figured out yet. you walk into a room and feel something’s off. you meet someone and instantly sense a red flag your friends take months to see. you just “know” when a job is wrong or a city isn’t home. and that knowing feels calm. clean. centered. not dramatic — just quietly sure. that’s intuition. it doesn’t yell. it doesn’t spiral. it doesn’t rehearse arguments or catastrophize outcomes. it just gently tugs at your sleeve and says, “maybe not this.”