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Have you ever thought you were making an authentic decision, but later realized you were actually listening to anxiety? This is one of the most common questions I hear from people who want to trust themselves more. How do I know if this is intuition or fear dressed up as wisdom? Today, we're going to discuss the difference with a simple embodied way to sense what's true. You're listening to Relish, the podcast for people ready to stop chasing self-improvement and start savoring their lives. If you're tired of the hamster wheel of healing and hungry for more joy, presence, and meaning, you're in the right place. Hey friends, welcome back to Relish. I am Elysia and this podcast is about stepping off the hamster wheel of fixing and striving and second-guessing
yourself and coming back into trust with yourself and to presence and embodied truth. Before we dive in, if Relish has been supporting you, please take a moment to follow and download the show. Leave a fivestar rating or review. It helps us get the work out to more people. So, let's talk in this quick bite about intuition versus anxiety. Let's start with language because clarity matters here. Anxiety, psychologically speaking, is a fear-based response driven by the brain's threat system, primarily the amygdala. Its job is protection. It scans for danger. It's predicting worst
case scenarios. It's trying to keep you safe by controlling outcomes, by anticipating them. Intuition, on the other hand, is not fear-based. It is really an integrative signal. It's pulling from your lived experience, your values, your nervous system, and your deeper sense of truth. In my practice, I think about it this way. Intuition is the voice of what I call your light. You know, some call it your truest self, your higher self, your authentic self. It's that one that's not run by the conditioning. Anxiety is the voice of your protector. Anxiety is a pattern and your protector's job is not to tell you what's true. It's to try to keep you safe. That distinction alone can be helpful because it helps to see
anxiety is not bad. It's protective. We talked about this a little bit in part two of the shame series where I introduced that embodied spirituality paradigm. Uh you can listen to that if you want to hear more. So anxiety is really trying to protect you. But protection and truth are not the same thing. So a key distinction, the first key distinction I want to make at a high level, the core difference is anxiety comes from fear. Intuition comes from trust. Anxiety is basically allergic to the unknown. Okay? It wants certainty and control and closure and it wants it. Now intuition, however, can often move us towards the unknown. So your authentic path will take you towards the unknown at times not away because that's
really where possibility is. And while it can be liberating and feel creative and alive in some ways it's also very unfamiliar to the brain and what's unfamiliar is not comfortable. I mean think about it. You want to change something. You want to go towards something that's different from what you have now that's unfamiliar. Your brain's going to resist that. The difference though is when your intuition leads you into something unfamiliar and uncomfortable, it's not trying to eliminate the uncertainty. It's actually willing to be with the unknown. So anxiety is from fear and it hates the unknown. Intuition comes from trust and the unknown still might be uncomfortable, but there's a willingness to be with it. Okay, so that's the
distinction number one. Distinction number two, this is one of the clearer tells. Anxiety is very rigid and binary. So it can sound like this is dangerous. There's only one answer. If I don't do this right now, something bad's going to happen. It might sound like I know exactly how this is going to end. So in all of those examples, there's no curiosity, there's no spaciousness, there's no possibility, there's no alternative stories or options. With anxiety, fear prevents curiosity. So there's a sense, I know what's going to happen and there's no possibility for it to be any other way. With intuition, however, it's more open and spacious and
and it has more of a felt sense knowing than a loud argument. So, it might sound like, hey, something here matters. This doesn't feel quite right. This doesn't feel aligned. Hm. I don't know [clears throat] all the answers, but I'm trusting this direction. Intuition leaves room for possibility. Anxiety is going to shut it down. Key distinction number three, this is sematic signals. This is where the embodiment piece becomes essential. Now, everyone's experience of feelings and emotions are different. But for most people, anxiety tends to feel like a type of contraction in the body. It could be in different places. For some people, it might be a tight chest. It
could be a shallow breath. It could be like a jittery or buzzing energy. There could be some sense of urgency or pressure. And the many different manifestations make sense neurologically. When the threat system is active, the body is mobilizing. It's mobilizing to run. Intuition, on the other hand, often feels more expansive or even settled and relaxed. You know, I am typically more calm, more open when I connect to my intuition. Now, sometimes I still might get a specific answer. So like there can be a firmer sense of yes or no, but it's grounded, it's lighter, there's much less activated energy, there's less heaviness, there's more stillness, less noise, and there's not that sense of contraction that comes with anxiety.
So it feels like a whole body kind of knowing where there's less urgency even if a decision is big. Sometimes I have a sense of being at peace with a decision I've made, even if it's not what I thought. Although I do want to note intuition, just like it comes with the unknown, it's not always comfortable, but it can feel clear without being frantic. So if it feels rushed or panicked or desperate for me, that's a sign it's probably my protector. An important nuance, fear can be informative, like authentically helpfully informative, but it does not need to be in charge. Sometimes intuition can include fear. So for example, my intuition might tell me, hm, something isn't safe here. I need to leave. This boundary matters. The difference is intuition
acknowledges the fear without being run by it. So there's still curiosity. There's still space to explore and openness. But anxiety is driven by the fear and uh collapses around it. It's tight and it's rigid. So, a question I like to ask myself sometimes when I'm not sure is, is this signal asking me to listen or is it forcing me to act? Intuition invites. Anxiety demands. It can be tricky to tell the difference. Sometimes people use this phrase, I'm listening to my gut or trusting my gut. And I have a complicated relationship with this phrase. It might be helpful for some. And if you know for you that
your gut feeling is your intuition, then great. You have probably learned sematically how that feels. But I think my experience is some people using that phrase, you know, I'm listening to my gut, they are actually referring to anxiety or fear more than intuition. Sometimes my gut, my gut response might be fear driven. It might be informed by past trauma or past negative experiences. And that impacts the brain's predictions which is going to be a part of your intuition. Your intuition is that holistic um integrated experience. So for example, if someone had a traumatic experience of being let's say followed and attacked by someone walking down the street, okay, their brain might be more
on alert scanning for the sensation of what it feels like when someone's following them. and their brain might be giving them those predictions more often than someone who has not had that experience. That doesn't necessarily make it a healthy piece of what I would call intuition to trust every single time, especially if it's rooted in unhealed pain and fear. So, I bring that up to say I don't think it's wise to blindly trust a gut feeling unless you are clear about what that gut feeling is and you have a full body knowing that it's intuition. So, here's some practical ways to work with this. When you're unsure, pause and ask, whose voice is this? Is it my light, my authenticity,
or is it my protector? And check in with your body, the sensations, not your thoughts. Okay? Okay, I mean your thoughts can inform, but notice the sensations. Is there contraction or is there expansion? Is there urgency or is there steadiness? Is there certainty that's coming from fear or is there trust even if there's still unknown and not guarantees? And also you can come back to that question I mentioned earlier. Is this signal asking me to listen or forcing me to act? clarifying this distinction for yourself between fear and truth. And I mean in your own body, that's how you're going to build selfrust. And it's not by getting it right every time. Some of how you're going to learn
is by getting it not right sometimes. But the more you do that, the more you learn to listen more accurately. If you want a deeper dive into selfrust, I do have a short course on it called Unshakable that I will link below if you want to check it out. I've also included a free download below in the show notes and it has a kind of quick reference guide for cues for self-doubt or fear as opposed to selfrust or intuition. And it breaks down how those cues can show up in the body and emotionally and mentally. And that's taken directly from my course. So, I'm offering that to you for free as a tool. I hope that you find it supportive. At the end of the day, you don't need to get rid of anxiety to
hear intuition. We just need to stop confusing that tendency to protect with truth. The intuition is not necessarily louder. It's not necessarily more dramatic. For me, it's often quieter and steadier and very deeply embodied. The more you come back into your body, the easier I find it is to tell the difference. Okay. If this episode resonated, please share it with someone who's learning to trust themselves. Don't forget to follow the show. Leave a review. It really helps relish grow. And I'll see you next time.
