You read and reread the email. Your cursor blinks, almost taunting you. Just hit send already. But something feels off. You call a co-worker and read the email out loud. They reassure you, and you finally feel like you can send it, even though there’s a pit in your stomach.
You’re anticipating the consequences.
We’ve all been there. It seems like a minor event, but the mental gymnastics are exhausting. Is this anxiety? Or intuition?
If we looked under the hood, we'd see that anxiety and intuition function similarly.
Sudden gut reaction? Check.
Physical sensations? (Stomach drop, tight chest, heart racing, etc.) Check.
Recognition of patterns where we are anticipating future events based on past experience? Check.
Both create fast, internal signals and trigger physical responses, but only one is reliable.
The key difference? Anxiety is a false alarm. It’s not helpful. Intuition is real information and actionable.
Anxiety is paralyzing.
Intuition is movement.
Because anxiety and intuition feel similar in the body, it can be hard to tell the difference in the moment. They are both alarm bells going off, but Anxiety can be frantic, with racing thoughts and worst-case scenarios. You have to ask for external validation.
Intuition is internal. You have a calm, steady knowing- there’s no panic. You don’t need external validation. It’s confidence.
Both can be related to fear, and that’s the tricky part. Remember that fear is what is happening now.
Example: A bus is racing toward you, so you jump out of the way.
Fear was necessary- it protected you and helped you survive.
Let's look at how anxiety and intuition compare
You have a bad feeling before a date. The anxiety is telling you that you have a past trauma from a bad relationship, which makes you uneasy even if the person is okay. Intuition says something about their behavior signals danger, even if you can’t explain it yet. Fear says they physically threaten you, triggering an immediate fear response.
You hesitate before sending an email. Anxiety says you’re afraid of negative feedback, but there’s no actual risk. Intuition says something in your gut tells you this will backfire, even if no one else sees it. Fear says your boss yells at you immediately, creating a real fear response.
The guiding principle is that if it’s intuition, it will not feel panicked. If it’s anxiety, you will seek external reassurance. If it’s fear, there will be a reaction to something immediate.
When we are misguided, our intuition can marry fear, and this can distort our decision-making.
I have lived with anxiety for most of my life. I grew up being told I was overreacting, that I was wrong, that I was too much. Over time, I learned how to make myself small. Anxiety has ruled my decision-making, my thought processes, and my outward behavior.
It’s only in my late 30s that I’ve realized I’ve had enough.
Recently, I was writing a summary about a student whose behavior plan wasn’t working. I asked for a team meeting to discuss the next steps. I included all stakeholders, including the teacher, the principal, and the case manager. But instead of agreeing, the director tried to pull me into a one-on-one meeting.
I declined. I reiterated that the decision should involve the whole team.
Then came the pressure—the emails, the phone calls after hours, the attempts to isolate me in a closed-door conversation.
My old pattern would have been to cave in order to avoid conflict and to submit because that’s what I was conditioned to do.
But I didn’t. I held my boundary. Because this time, I recognized the difference between fear and intuition. My gut wasn’t warning me- it was standing firm.
For years, I mistook fear-based intuition for the truth. But fear-based intuition doesn’t protect us- it keeps us small. It keeps us quiet. It keeps us compliant.
So, how do we rebuild self-trust after years of second-guessing? How do we rewire our intuition to actually work for us?
Some self-monitoring strategies may work in conjunction with grounding and meditation. Tuning out the noise.
Pause before reacting. Try to put space between the event causing the stress and your feelings + immediate reaction. Ask yourself, is this coming from fear? Is this coming from past experience? Or is this my gut telling me the answer?
Look for patterns. If you always get a “bad feeling” in certain situations but then nothing bad actually happens, you may be in an anxiety trap, and your brain is tricking you. For example, if every time you get a new opportunity but you think “no” immediately- ask if this is fear of real failure or a real red flag.
Practice Boundaries: Being uncomfortable because you put in a boundary is a good thing. It means we are disrupting old patterns. Discomfort does NOT equal danger. Example: Saying no to a meeting when it doesn’t feel right, even if saying no makes others uncomfortable.
If self-doubt is learned, it can be unlearned. Next, we will discuss how to build intuition after years of self-doubt.