That Gut Feeling Might Be Lying to You: Here's How to Know

You're about to send an important text. Your stomach tightens. Your heart races. A voice in your head screams, "Don't do it!" But is that your intuition protecting you, or just anxiety playing tricks? If you've ever second-guessed yourself into paralysis, you're not alone. In a world that constantly tells us to "trust your gut" and "follow your instincts," what happens when your gut feels like it's always on high alert? How do you separate genuine inner wisdom from the noise of worry? The answer matters more than you think. Getting it wrong can mean ignoring real warning signs or letting fear run your life. Understanding the difference could change how you make every decision, from the career move you're hesitating on to the relationship that doesn't quite feel right.


Here's something fascinating: your gut actually has a brain. Scientists call it the enteric nervous system, a complex network of over 100 million nerve cells lining your digestive tract. That's more neurons than in your spinal cord. When people talk about "gut feelings," they're not just being poetic. The vagus nerve connects your brain to various organs, including the gut, controlling functions from digestion to heart rate. This nerve is like a two-way highway, with information constantly flowing between your belly and your brain. About 80% of the signals travel from gut to brain, not the other way around. Antonio Damasio, a neuroscientist who revolutionized our understanding of emotion and decision-making, developed what he called the somatic marker hypothesis. The theory proposes that emotional processes guide behavior and decision-making through "somatic markers," which are feelings in the body associated with emotions, such as rapid heartbeat with anxiety or nausea with disgust.
Think of it this way: every time you have an experience, your brain tags it with a physical sensation. Touch a hot stove? Your brain creates a marker linking pain with that action. Go on a terrible first date at a specific restaurant? Your body might tense up the next time someone suggests eating there, even if you can't consciously remember why. This is intuition at work. It's your brain's shortcut system, drawing on years of stored experiences to give you rapid-fire guidance without needing to consciously think through every detail.

But here's where it gets tricky. Anxiety uses the exact same physical pathways. Racing heart? Check. Tight stomach? Check. Urgent sense that something's wrong? Double check. Anxiety comes from a place of fear and is often frantic and urgent in nature, whereas intuition is usually described as a deep knowing accompanied by a sense of peace or confidence. The key difference lies in the quality of the feeling. Clinical therapist April Kilduff explains that anxiety wants answers right now. It demands immediate action to make the uncomfortable feeling go away. It's the mental equivalent of a fire alarm going off, except there's often no fire. Intuition, on the other hand, doesn't panic. It doesn't need you to do something this second to prove it right. It simply knows, calmly and steadily, even when delivering uncomfortable news.



1. The Urgency Check
Anxiety often feels urgent and overwhelming, while intuition arises from a deeper, inner knowing that's often unexplainable but clear. If the feeling is screaming at you to act immediately or something terrible will happen, that's anxiety. Intuition might suggest action, but it doesn't threaten catastrophe if you pause to think. Real-life example: You're about to leave for the airport and suddenly think, "I should check my passport." That calm nudge to verify? Intuition. Spending 45 minutes convinced you've lost it despite having just seen it, checking the same drawer 12 times? Anxiety.

2. The Body Scan
Intuition often feels like a calm, steady feeling in your whole body, while anxiety tends to manifest as physical discomfort, such as tightness in your chest, a racing heart, or a feeling of restlessness. Close your eyes and tune into your physical sensations. Anxiety typically comes with tension, fidgeting, shallow breathing, and a sense of being wound up. You might pace, bite your nails, or feel jittery energy that needs an outlet. Intuition feels different. People often describe it as a settling sensation, a quiet certainty that sits in your body without causing distress. You might feel serious or contemplative, but not panicked.

3. The Thought Pattern Test
Anxiety involves anxious thoughts which are fear-driven and focus on potential negative outcomes, while intuition is a subconscious process that doesn't require conscious reasoning. Anxiety lives in "what if" territory. What if this goes wrong? What if they think I'm stupid? What if I made the wrong choice and my entire life falls apart? It spirals, creates elaborate disaster scenarios, and obsesses over details. Intuition doesn't argue with itself. It doesn't present a 47-point case for why something is or isn't right. It just is. You might not even be able to articulate why you know something, you just do.

4. The Time Test
This one is remarkably effective: wait. Not making a decision is also a decision, and sometimes the right one. The calm that comes with intuition remains steady, whereas anxiety changes or fades over time. Give yourself 24 to 48 hours if possible. Anxiety tends to fluctuate based on your mood, stress levels, how much sleep you got, or whether you've eaten. It might be screaming at you one moment and barely a whisper the next. Intuition stays consistent. That quiet knowing doesn't change just because you had a good lunch.

5. The Values Check
Intuition aligns with your values and sense of self, while anxiety tends to disregard your values in favor of fear. Ask yourself: is this feeling pushing me toward or away from the person I want to be? Intuition guides you toward your authentic self and core values. Anxiety just wants the uncomfortable feeling to stop, regardless of whether the action aligns with who you are. If you value honesty but anxiety is telling you to lie to avoid conflict, that's a red flag. If you value adventure but fear is disguising itself as "being practical" to keep you from taking a calculated risk, anxiety might be running the show.


Anxiety can deceptively resemble intuition because both originate in deep, fast-acting parts of the brain and both are shaped by experience. This is why the confusion is so common. Both systems are trying to protect you. Both draw on past experiences. Both create physical sensations meant to guide action. The difference is that anxiety's threat detection system is overly sensitive, like a smoke detector that goes off every time you make toast. For people with anxiety disorders, this oversensitivity isn't a choice or a character flaw. It's a genuine difference in how the brain processes information. The amygdala, your brain's alarm system, becomes hyperactive, flagging everyday situations as potential threats.


The good news? You can learn to hear your intuition more clearly, even if anxiety has been drowning it out for years.

Create quiet space. Intuition is strongest in the quietest of moments and emerges when your mind is calm and clear. This doesn't mean you need to meditate for hours. Even five minutes of sitting quietly, without your phone or any input, can help you tune into subtler signals.

Journal it out. Intuition often becomes clearer when you write it down, helping you articulate that gut feeling you couldn't put into words. The act of writing engages a different part of your brain and can help separate signal from noise. Write without editing or judging. Let whatever comes out land on the page.

Notice the morning clarity. Psychic medium Angela Lovell notes that the moment you wake up, before your thinking brain fully engages, is when intuition speaks most clearly. If you're struggling with a decision, pay attention to your very first thought upon waking. Don't analyze it yet, just notice it.

Build a track record. Start with low-stakes decisions. When you have a gut feeling about which route to take home or which checkout line will move faster, note it. Then see what happens. Over time, you'll start recognizing the signature of your true intuition versus anxiety's false alarms.

Practice detachment. The more emotionally attached you are to an outcome, the harder it is to hear intuition. Flooding your system with emotions over the desired or feared outcome will cloud your intuition. This doesn't mean not caring, it means holding your preferences lightly enough that you can still perceive clearly.


For individuals with anxiety disorders, "go with your gut" is not always great advice, because your gut is always telling you to escape or distract, and you actually need to do the opposite. If anxiety is significantly interfering with your daily life, relationships, or ability to make decisions, therapy can help. Exposure and Response Prevention (ERP) is particularly effective for anxiety disorders. It teaches you to tolerate uncertainty and resist the compulsive behaviors anxiety demands, helping you regain control over your choices. The goal isn't to never feel anxious. Anxiety is a normal human emotion that serves a protective function. The goal is to stop letting it make all your decisions while drowning out the quieter, wiser voice of intuition.


Your gut instinct is real, backed by millions of years of evolution and personal experience. But so is anxiety, and it's exceptionally good at impersonating intuition. The next time you feel that familiar tightening in your stomach, that voice telling you something's wrong or right, pause. Ask yourself: is this calm or chaotic? Consistent or changing? Fear-based or value-aligned? Urgent or patient? Your body is always trying to communicate with you. The trick is learning its language well enough to know which messages to heed and which to gently set aside. Because sometimes that gut feeling is saving you from disaster. And sometimes it's just anxiety, trying to protect you from a threat that isn't there. Knowing the difference isn't just useful. In a life full of complex decisions, it might be one of the most valuable skills you can develop.

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