Is It Your Anxiety or Intuition?

You're about to board a flight to go on a vacation you've been dreaming of for months! But as you sit there a dark feeling comes upon you. Your heart starts racking in your chest, and you imagine the plane is about to crash. You freeze. Should you get on this flight? Is that your anxiety talking, or your intuition? So many people can't tell the difference between the two and that can be extremely frustrating! Here's how to start to tell the difference, and how to build your intuition into your best friend.

Fear of flying is ever growing these days, and I tend to think it has more to do with anxiety in general than actual risk of death or injury. In fact, when you look at safety statistics for travel, planes actually rank the safest in terms of per mile traveled. Driving in a car statistically is way more dangerous than your odds of danger in a plane. And yet, people increasingly have flight fear and drive their car daily.

Anxiety, I believe, is often an issue with getting stuck in your head, which then reinforces the tension in the body and negative cognitive looping instead of genuine awareness of body signals. Let me explain it a different way. Sally has a boyfriend who makes her feel small and unimportant. He tells her how her friends talk behind her back, and that they don't really like her. Sally never had an issue with anxiety before, but now she can't stop wondering what they're saying about her, and she starts questioning all her choices around them.

Her body knows something is wrong though. They never talk bad about their other friends, and they often tell her how much they enjoy being around her. But Sally is now stuck in this mental loop and disconnected from the feelings and sensations in her body that are trying to remind her that her friends do care. Now, the anxiety is bringing up tension in her body. This is uncomfortable for Sally to feel, so she retreats even further into her mind. Disconnected from her body and caught in the negative cognitive loop of her mind, she has a panic attack for the first time on a plane during turbulence, and now she believes that she's afraid of flying. This small uptick in stress from turbulence put her over the edge.

In client sessions, I often hear this complaint: how do I know if this is my intuition screaming or my anxiety? When you're disconnected from your intuition you're losing an important alert system in your body. And when you think anxiety is your intuition you may run from what's truly meant for you. So, here's my best guide at figuring out both, and I want to credit Michaela Boehm for some of this. She's been a pioneer at this kind of work, and her book the Wild Woman's Way is incredible!

The body is the key here. Anxiety will often show up in the body as tension, tightness, or stuck energy. Don't trust the mind, it can and will lie. The body can't lie. Anxiety can show up anywhere in the body, and it often gets described in the neck, jaw, shoulders, and lower body. One of the best ways to deal with anxiety is to allow yourself to feel the sensations. This can absolutely be scary and uncomfortable. But it's definitely worth it.

One of the best practices for anxiety is embodiment. You know, that thing all the influencers have been trying to teach you for ages! It's also a core principle of Tantra. They knew thousands of years ago the power of the body. Before anxiety strikes, you've got to learn how to feel and freely move the body. It speaks to you all the time. Notice right now, what sensations is your body feeling? Heat, cool, pressure, expansion, contraction, tingles, numbness, fullness, etc. These are all messages from the body, and the better you get at listening to and understanding these messages the better you'll get at catching your anxiety.

So, when you're in the midst of anxiety, or you're trying to choose if it's anxiety or intuition, move freely. Get weird with it and just move your body. Don't follow a rhythm or try to dance but be free. Flop this way and that and do what feels good. Listen to the sensations then figure out how they want to move through your body. Don't hold your breath, breathe big deep breaths. Touch your toes, shake your hips, flail like a car lot inflatable. Don't stop until you feel complete, like you've actually moved what was stuck or tight. And when the looping thoughts come up keep returning to the body and moving it.

Anxiety is a nervous system pattern that disconnects you from the embodied cues of your body. This means that it can be changed by embodiment practices or somatic practices that reconnect you to the body. It might not be an overnight fix, but with practice and learning to feel the body, interpret the sensations, and freely move them you can start to learn what is anxiety and what is intuition.

The anxiety and looping thoughts will often subside after an embodiment practice. Intuition will stick around, and it will likely not show up as tightness, stuck energy, or looping thoughts. Intuition is often straightforward and brief, and will usually be accompanied by sensations in the body. Learning the different sensations is the practice.

You can learn how to tell if it's anxiety or intuition. Give yourself time and space to learn this skill, and you'll be an intuitive genius sooner than you think! And remember, it's most difficult to do in the throes of anxiety, so practice outside of anxiety to get better at it. Several times a day just notice the sensations in your body. And start to move! You've got this!

INSPIRED ACTION: Try the free movement exercise! Stand up, and move without an agenda. Move without rhythm. Move without thought. Just feel what's alive and move it. Then stand still after and notice what's happening in your body.