Is it Intuition or Anxiety? Here’s How to Tell with Laura Berman

You know that feeling when something inside you says, Don’t do this. Get out. Something’s wrong. Sometimes that feeling is your intuition picking up on something before your conscious mind has caught up. But sometimes it’s anxiety. An old wound gets activated, your nervous system goes on high alert, and suddenly everything in you is saying danger even when you’re not actually in danger. So how do you tell the difference? A listener named Angel wrote in with this question, and it’s such an important one because once you’ve been hurt, especially in relationships, trusting your gut can get complicated. Maybe there have been times when your instincts were absolutely right. And there may have been other times when fear convinced you something terrible was happening when it wasn’t. In this Language of Love Session, I talk about how I distinguish intuition from anxiety and, more importantly, what to do when you genuinely can’t tell which one you’re feeling. One of the biggest clues is how the message arrives. Anxiety tends to be loud, repetitive and urgent. It wants an answer right now. Intuition is usually quieter and clearer. But when your nervous system is activated, even intuition can get tangled up with fear, which is why I don’t recommend making an important decision from that state. I walk you through a few simple somatic practices to settle the fear enough that you can listen to what’s underneath it. I also show you how to begin learning your body’s own language of expansion and contraction, including a surprisingly easy exercise you can practice with something as simple as foods you love and foods you hate. In this episode, I talk about: How intuition tends to feel different in the body than anxiety Why urgency is often a clue that fear has entered the picture What to do when a gut feeling comes with a lot of anxiety Three ways to regulate your nervous system before making a decision How to “try on” a choice and notice your body’s response What expansion and contraction can tell you A simple exercise for learning what a yes and a no feel like in your own body Why learning to trust yourself is a practice, especially if fear has been running the show for a long time If you’ve ever thought, I know something feels wrong, but I don’t know if I should trust that feeling, this episode will give you a way to slow things down and get clearer about what your body is actually telling you. If you'd like to ask a question or get some advice, email me at [email protected] or leave a voicemail at drlauraberman.com to have your own question answered in a future session. And if you want to go even deeper into somatic work and regulating your nervous system, check out my book, Crying Out Loud, where I dive into even more techniques to help you come back to your body and trust yourself again. Because you deserve to trust the voice inside you, but first, you have to learn which one is actually yours. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices