What Am I Basing My Decisions On? Is It Intuition or Anxiety?

How do you trust yourself, when everything inside you is noisy?

Have you ever questioned your gut feeling, because you couldn’t tell if you were following the right path?

I’m going to start at the end, in case anyone is looking for the quick answer, because the simplest version is just this…

If it’s rushing you, it’s probably not intuition

But you probably already knew that – or at least, your intuitive mind did.

Some decisions come from somewhere inside us without any data at all. Sometimes those decisions don’t seem to have an underpinning logic. I work in a very corporate, data driven environment and that means that I’m surrounded by people who have to base their decisions on data and logical reasoning. But I recently realised that I often make up my mind based on feelings first, and then sneakily find the data to back up my argument.

I've always been a bit of an overthinker too. Psychologists describe overthinking as a form of threat monitoring. Overthinking is the brain’s attempt to solve uncertainty by running through every possible outcome, trying to make sure nothing goes wrong.
It thinks it’s being helpful but most of the time, it just creates more noise than clarity.

I’ve always been intrigued by the human mind, and one of the thoughts I found myself dwelling on earlier this year is “Why don’t we just do whatever we want all the time? Because I’m pretty sure, some people do, right?”.

The answer is surprisingly complex. Alfred Adler might say that human nature tells us we have to be part of something. Not to segregate ourselves by being too different. So, we seek community in those who are similar to us and that means we have to find commonalities and ways to make sure we fit in.

Freud, on the other hand, would say that the three driving forces within us, the Id (our innate self), Ego (the narrative in our mind that says what we want or truly think) and Superego (the filter that curates the ego's narrative to fit our surroundings before it leaves our mouths), are working both together and separately to make sure we keep our true innate selves just hidden enough from others to remain on the Christmas card list.

So, is fear of other people’s rejection the only reason we don’t just go around telling people what we really think of them, or quitting our jobs on a whim? Not exactly. Because a rejection we fear more but are often far more familiar with, is our own. We can be truly unkind to ourselves. Far more unkind than we ever would be to others.

Inside our own brains, the superego isn’t stopping that monologue. The ego tells us exactly what it thinks of us, all the time. So the thought of following our own judgement and then later finding out that our judgement was wrong – well that would just be diabolical! We might never forgive ourselves!

So this brings me to one of my two key subjects for comparison…

Anxiety

I want to start by saying… Anxiety is not a flaw. It’s not a weakness. It’s not a mistake. Anxiety is a very intelligent system trying to protect you. At its core, anxiety is your body asking one question, over and over again:

“Am I safe?”

And if the answer isn’t a very clear yes, it fills in the gaps.

There is a lot of research on this bodily function and notably in one of my favourite psychology books, ‘The Body Keeps the Score’, written by Dr Bessel Van Der Kolk, that shows the body reacts to situations before the thinking brain has caught up.

So sometimes what you experience as a “gut feeling” is your body recognising something from the past and saying: “We’ve been here before… and we didn’t like it.” Anxiety exists because, at some point, being cautious, alert, or even fearful kept us safe.

The problem is this bodily system, the sympathetic nervous system that controls our fight or flight responses hasn’t really updated itself for modern life.

So now instead of:
“shut down rest and digest so we can run from that bear”

Our body remains in fight or flight mode for lots of everyday things, like:
“Don’t send that email”
“Don’t say that thing”
“Don’t make that decision in case it goes wrong”

Eckhart Tolle talks about how fear lives in the future. And anxiety is almost always a future that hasn’t happened yet, being experienced as if it already has.

Which might sound like “What if this goes wrong?”, “What if I regret this?”, “What if they think…?”. And your body responds as if that imagined future is real.

Anxiety doesn’t show up the same for everyone. For some people, anxiety looks like overthinking or analysing every possible outcome. For others, it’s avoidance, procrastination, suddenly feeling very tired when something matters. Sometimes it’s physical, so for some it might be a tight chest, a racing heart or that slight nausea in the pit of your stomach.

And for some of us, anxiety is a feeling, a sensation that’s so familiar… that it just feels like you.

But in most cases it has broadly the same characteristics: that the thoughts it brings to your mind are fast, urgent, noisy. It tends to come with a running commentary and not much space to breathe.

Joshua Fletcher (Author of ‘Untangle Your Anxiety’) describes anxiety as a system that creates very convincing stories. And the more attention we give those stories the more real they can feel.

So, when we talk about trusting ourselves this is where it gets complicated. Because the voice of anxiety can sound very similar to the voice of intuition. They can both feel like “I just know.” But one is trying to protect you from a future that might go wrong, while the other is trying to guide you in the present moment.

What tends to be a common theme with a lot of the choices we make though, is that we are rarely unsure of the best decision… but unsure if we can trust which part of our mind or body is making it.

So, if anxiety is one voice we carry, what about the other one? The one people often call intuition, instinct or a gut feeling.

Intuition

It’s usually a subtle sense that something is right, or not quite right.

Sometimes it’s not even subtle – if you find something comes out of nowhere, a decision, solution, a guide from within and there isn’t any logic or fear you might hang it on, I would say that you’re in close proximity to a little taste of your intuition right there.

Intuition is often described as something mysterious or even magical, but if you believe the science, it’s actually very simple.

It’s your mind and body drawing on everything you’ve ever experienced and offering you a signal without needing to explain it step by step. There’s a lot of work, including ideas popularised by people like Malcolm Gladwell, that suggests we’re constantly recognising patterns without consciously realising it.

So intuition isn’t random. According to this definition it's just recognition without narration.

But there have been plenty of studies over the years, albeit widely debated that recognise that there are many things our human mind experiences that science can't yet explain, and for those who feel their intuition comes from something else, something more connected, to others, to something deeper or to something greater, their experience is still very real, even if science can't yet understand it.

So, if anxiety lives in the future, Eckhart Tolle would say intuition tends to come from presence. It just… is.

And this is where the difference starts to become noticeable.

Intuition is usually slower, quieter, simpler. It doesn’t rush you and it doesn’t spiral. It just let's you know that something feels right, or doesn't, and then goes quiet again.

Intuition isn’t always comfortable and it doesn’t always lead you towards the easy option. Sometimes it asks you to have a difficult conversation, walk away from something familiar, or choose something that doesn’t make sense to anyone else. But even then it doesn’t feel chaotic. It feels… clear.

The difficulty is that most of us don’t ignore intuition because we don’t have it. We ignore it because it’s quieter than anxiety, it doesn’t argue its case and it doesn’t always come with proof. So, it’s very easy to talk ourselves out of it. And if you’ve spent a lot of time in anxiety the quiet voice of intuition can feel unfamiliar - and anything unfamiliar… can feel unsafe.

So we default to the louder voice.

But the more you learn to notice the difference the less you need to force decisions and the more they start to feel like something you’re recognising rather than something you’re trying to figure out.

Sometimes there are other factors to consider, like neurodivergence or hormones, which may make us cycle through phases of high confidence and then mistrust, or have fast and urgent ideas that may sound like that earlier description of anxiety but actually turn into something that feels like a calling in life. Sometimes there may be spontaneous and ambiguous ideas, seemingly sent from some greater power, but we lose interest in that project after a week of intense focus.

All of these factors taken into account – it’s a wonder anyone is finding their way to that intuitive truth at all!

How to Figure It Out

So what is the big secret? How do we cut through anxiety, overthinking, neurodivergent traits AND hormones to give ourselves a clear shot at the big psychic abilities goal?

Well, annoyingly, I can't give you a map to your own internal processes, but I can tell you that there are ways to recognise the difference between the origins of your thoughts and ideas, using a combination of those descriptions already listed – fast thought vs slow thought, urgent and desperate vs spontaneous but calm – It’s about knowing all of those things and how they look and feel in your body and pinpointing them from the lessons we’ve learned in a long life of listening to them.

As I mentioned earlier, anxiety isn't your enemy, it's there for a reason, a really good reason. But it helps to understand it well enough to recognise where it comes from and what it might be attached to. If you can clear a path through those anxious, hormonal or ADHD ideas then you may be able to quiet the mind just enough to see, hear or receive the unexpected messages that your more spiritual self could be connecting to.

One tool you can use to do this might be Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), which is great for helping you to remain calm and comfortable in the process of decision making, because big decisions sometimes take time, and we can’t just live in perpetual anxiety until we’ve decided something. ACT helps to gain comfort in the waiting period before a decision can be made, and helps in aligning the intended course of action with your inner values, so that you can be proud of how you’ve handled it.

Another, more holistic technique might be NLP, Neuro-Linguistic Programming, because it gets to the deepest layer of the inner monologue so that you can hear the subconscious thoughts that are hiding right at the deepest layer, driving the ones you hear more consciously, and that’s a bit like a key to the self, helping you to understand and possibly even adjust your unconscious reactions.

But I’ve got another little thought on this that I’d like to share too…

If you are looking to use your intuition to make decisions about your own life, I would like to offer a thought and maybe an unpopular opinion, that it doesn’t actually matter which of those inner states drives the idea, what matters is that your personal life values are what drive any action you might choose to take on it.

Values Clarification is a tool from Alfred Adler, the Psychotherapist, which can help you really understand what matters to you in the way you think and behave. It can help you stay steady and true to your decisions based on what truly matters to you on the deepest level. Not what mattered to your parents or the society that shaped you, what matters to YOU. As long as you’re acting in line with your values you can be absolutely sure you’re on the right path.

Many people who don't have the patience for therapy may be looking for a quicker route to telling the difference, and for those who feel that way, I would have to ask, what makes you so anxious to get to that internal intuition so quickly? 

Regardless... Here are some suggestions!

Finding peace

One approach for you could be meditation. Which many people struggle with. Some people say that they can’t silence their mind to meditate, but there’s no need to fully rinse out every thought to sit peacefully. You just need to allow growing spaces between thoughts and anything that tries to fill it, you can ask it to come back later, when it might be more useful to you.

The Wait Test

If anxiety pushes for urgency but Intuition doesn’t then could you give the decision a little space? A few hours, maybe even a day.

If it feels unbearable to wait that’s often anxiety. If the answer is still there when you come back to it — that’s more likely intuition.

The Body Signal Check

When you think about the idea or decision, just notice your body. Does it feel tight, restless, slightly panicked? Or does it feel steady and grounded, even if it’s an uncomfortable thought or idea?

The "Strip the Story Away" Test

So, as I mentioned earlier. Anxiety needs a story Intuition doesn’t. So, if you can, take the situation… and remove the ‘what ifs’.

Take away the outcomes, the possible future and see if that vision, sound or thought still exists. Does it still feel important?

The "Name It" Technique

Sometimes just naming it helps… So using some of the earlier points about how anxiety and intuition feel for some people, plus your own understanding of your body and possibly time of the month, try to distance yourself from a thought or action by recognising what logic you might be applying.

The "Values Override"

Even if you can’t tell the difference — act in alignment anyway.

Instead of asking: ‘Is this anxiety or intuition?’ ask yourself:

‘What kind of person do I want to be in this moment?’

A Final Thought

For some of you it may still feel like a very alien concept. Maybe you’ll try a few of the techniques I’ve suggested here and become frustrated if you still can’t tell which of these thoughts is coming from your third eye and which are driven by a subconscious trauma response, and to those who feel that way I’d like to remind you…

As long as you find a guiding voice that you trust and feel safe with, once you align your decisions to your values and commit to them fully, the origin of the idea itself matters a lot less.

So, if you leave here still unsure whether it’s intuition or anxiety that’s okay.

Because the decision doesn’t have to come from a perfect place… It just has to move you in a direction that feels true to who you are.