Is It My Intuition or My Anxiety? How I Learned to Tell the Difference
One of the most frustrating pieces of advice you can give someone who doesn't completely trust themselves is:
“Just trust your gut.”
Okay.
Which one?
Because sometimes my “gut” has approximately 14 opinions.
There's the part of me that feels excited.
There's the part imagining every possible way something could go wrong.
There's the part that wants to do it.
There's the part that would prefer to cancel everything and stay home.
And then somewhere underneath all of that is supposedly my intuition calmly waiting for me to figure out which voice belongs to her.
For years, I thought intuitive people must receive some kind of unmistakable internal notification.
THIS IS YOUR INTUITION. PLEASE PROCEED ACCORDINGLY.
Mine did not come with that feature.
What I've learned instead is that intuition becomes easier to recognize when you stop treating it like a magical answer-generating machine and start understanding your own patterns.
I've always been someone who notices things
I've always been sensitive to people, environments and shifts in energy.
I notice tone.
I notice when someone's behavior doesn't quite match their words.
I notice when the feeling in a room changes.
I notice when something feels different before I necessarily understand why.
But being perceptive doesn't automatically mean you trust your perception.
Those are two very different things.
You can notice something immediately and then spend three days talking yourself out of what you noticed.
I've done that plenty.
Maybe I'm reading too much into it.
Maybe I'm being dramatic.
Maybe that's not what they meant.
Maybe I'm projecting.
Maybe I should give it more time.
Sometimes questioning your first reaction is healthy. Our perceptions aren't infallible.
But there's also a point where reflection becomes self-abandonment disguised as being reasonable.
And learning where that line is has been a huge part of my own work.
Anxiety and intuition can feel annoyingly similar
Both can show up physically.
A feeling in your stomach.
Tightness in your chest.
Restlessness.
A sudden urge to move toward—or away from—something.
And sometimes even excitement can feel similar.
That's something I've personally struggled with: distinguishing excitement from anxiety because both can create that activated, almost buzzy feeling in my body.
So the advice to “listen to your body” isn't always enough.
Your body is communicating.
But you still have to learn its language.
If your nervous system has learned to associate uncertainty with danger, something new and exciting can trigger a stress response even when the opportunity itself isn't wrong for you.
Likewise, something familiar can feel comfortable even when it isn't particularly good for you.
Which means:
Comfort isn't always alignment, and discomfort isn't always a warning.
That's why discernment matters.
My intuition rarely gives me a PowerPoint presentation
I've noticed something about the moments in my life that, looking backward, felt the most intuitive.
The knowing itself was usually relatively simple.
The chaos came afterward.
The intuitive part might say:
I'm done.
Then my mind says:
Okay, but what are we going to do instead? How will this work financially? What are people going to think? What if we regret it? What if this is stupid? What if we're throwing away years of work?
And suddenly one quiet piece of information has turned into a congressional hearing.
This happened during my transition away from spa ownership.
There wasn't one morning where I woke up and received a perfectly formed message saying:
Ronni, your esthetics chapter is complete. Please transition into personal development, education, consulting and The True Indigo Method.
It unfolded over time.
I became less interested in parts of the work that had previously defined me.
Other parts became increasingly exciting.
I kept feeling pulled toward teaching, mentoring, writing, creating, facilitating conversations and helping people understand themselves.
I tried restructuring things.
I tried making the existing version fit better.
And eventually there was a very simple truth underneath all of my analysis:
I didn't want to keep doing this the same way anymore.
Then came all the noise.
The intuition wasn't necessarily loud.
The fear was.
The India dream didn't make my decision for me
One experience from that transition stands out because it helped me understand the difference between intuition and confirmation.
I had a dream that seemed to take place somewhere in India.
In the dream, I was leaving quickly because something was chasing us. I realized I'd left my belongings behind, but the car had already gone too far.
I couldn't go back.
I remember feeling sad about leaving everything.
But I also remember this strange acceptance:
I can buy new things.
When I woke up, the dream hit me hard.
At the time, I was wrestling with leaving behind a physical business I'd spent years building—equipment, products, furniture and all the tangible evidence of that chapter.
I don't believe the dream magically made the decision for me.
I think it reflected something my deeper awareness had already been processing.
That's an important distinction.
Intuition doesn't always arrive as a supernatural instruction.
Sometimes you've been collecting information below the level of conscious thought for months.
Then something—a conversation, a dream, a quiet morning, a random sentence—brings it into focus.
So how can you tell intuition from anxiety?
There isn't one universal rule.
I don't want to pretend there is, because people experience intuition differently and anxiety can manifest differently too.
But there are patterns worth observing.
Anxiety often wants certainty
Anxiety asks:
But how do we KNOW?
Then it searches for more information.
And more.
And more.
You ask your friend.
Then another friend.
Then your mom.
Then TikTok.
Then Google.
Then maybe your birth chart.
Then you circle back to the first friend because perhaps she has developed additional insight since Tuesday.
The goal isn't always understanding.
Sometimes the goal is eliminating uncertainty.
And unfortunately, life rarely gives us that.
Intuition can exist without an explanation
Sometimes intuition sounds like:
No.
Or:
This person isn't for me.
Or:
I need to call her.
Or:
I want to do this.
Or:
Something isn't right here.
You may not immediately have evidence.
That doesn't mean your interpretation is automatically correct, but the original signal can still be worth noticing.
Anxiety tends to build a story
A sensation becomes a prediction.
Something feels weird.
becomes:
They secretly hate me, I'm going to lose this opportunity, everyone will find out I'm a fraud and I'll probably end up living under a bridge.
That escalation matters.
The initial sensation may have contained useful information.
The entire story built around it may not.
Intuition often returns
This has been one of the biggest indicators for me.
An anxious thought can change dramatically depending on my mood.
But certain deeper knowings keep returning.
I can distract myself.
Rationalize them.
Temporarily convince myself otherwise.
And eventually:
Hi. It's me again.
The same thing resurfaces.
That's when I pay closer attention.
Your first feeling and your interpretation aren't always the same thing
This distinction changed a lot for me.
Let's say you meet someone and immediately feel uncomfortable.
The signal is:
I feel uncomfortable around this person.
Your interpretation might be:
This person is untrustworthy.
Those aren't the same statement.
The first is something you're experiencing.
The second is a conclusion about someone else.
Maybe your conclusion is eventually supported.
Maybe it isn't.
But you don't have to invalidate the signal simply because you can't prove the interpretation yet.
You can say:
I notice that I don't feel comfortable here. I'm going to stay aware and gather more information.
That is very different from either extreme:
My intuition says this person is evil, therefore it is objectively true.
or
I don't have evidence, therefore my discomfort means nothing.
Self-trust doesn't require abandoning critical thinking.
The two can work together.
This is why Awareness comes before Inner Authority
People often want to jump directly to trusting themselves.
But in The True Indigo Method, Inner Authority isn't the first stage.
Awareness is.
Before you can confidently trust your internal signals, you need to become familiar with them.
Then comes Reflection.
What was happening when I felt this?
Have I experienced this before?
What happened afterward?
Was I responding to something actually occurring—or to something the situation reminded me of?
What does anxiety typically feel like in my body?
What does excitement feel like?
What happens when I know something but don't want it to be true?
What happens when I desperately want something to be true?
This is how you build your own internal reference library.
Then comes Resonance—learning what genuinely feels congruent with you.
Only after that do we arrive at Inner Authority.
Because self-trust isn't blind faith in every thought you have.
It's developing a relationship with yourself strong enough that you can listen, question, discern and still make your own decision.
A simple practice for intuition vs. anxiety
The next time you feel torn about something, don't immediately ask:
What should I do?
Write down four things instead.
What do I know?
Only facts.
No predictions.
No interpretations.
What has actually happened?
What do I feel?
Name the emotion or physical sensation without explaining it.
I'm nervous.
I'm excited.
My stomach tightens when I think about saying yes.
I feel relieved when I imagine saying no.
What story am I telling myself?
This is where you put all the mental narration.
If I say no, they'll never ask me again.
If I leave this job, I'll never find another one.
If I try this and fail, everyone will think I'm ridiculous.
Put the story somewhere visible.
What remains when I remove the story?
This is the interesting part.
If you temporarily remove the consequences, expectations and need to explain yourself…
What do you actually want?
You don't necessarily have to act on that answer.
Just notice it.
That's awareness.
Self-trust isn't always doing what your intuition says immediately
Sometimes you receive a signal and wait.
Sometimes you gather more information.
Sometimes you talk to someone.
Sometimes you realize your first interpretation was wrong.
Sometimes you change your mind.
None of that means you failed at intuition.
I think we create unnecessary pressure when we believe becoming intuitive means becoming certain.
I'm actually more comfortable with uncertainty now than I used to be.
Because I don't need myself to know everything.
I need to trust myself enough to respond to what I learn.
That's different.
If I make a decision and later discover new information, I can adjust.
If I choose something and realize it isn't right, I can leave.
If I misunderstand a situation, I can correct myself.
If something stops fitting, I can change.
That is inner authority too.
Maybe trusting your intuition starts with listening before believing
You don't have to blindly obey every feeling.
And you don't have to dismiss every feeling you can't explain.
There is a middle ground.
Notice.
Get curious.
Separate the sensation from the story.
Look for patterns.
Gather information.
Then make the decision that feels most honest with what you know right now.
The more you practice that, the easier your own internal language becomes to recognize.
Eventually, “trust your gut” stops feeling like useless advice.
Because you're no longer trying to hear some mysterious voice outside yourself.
You're learning how to recognize your own.
Want to understand your own internal signals more clearly?
If you find yourself constantly second-guessing your decisions, asking everyone else what they think, or struggling to tell the difference between fear and what you actually know, this is part of the work I explore through The True Indigo Method.
My one-on-one sessions aren't about me telling you what to do. They're a space to slow down the noise, identify the patterns underneath it and strengthen your ability to hear and trust yourself.
