Is It My Intuition or Fear?

We all know that having a connection to our intuition is a good thing. It can help us differentiate a good friend from someone who is trying to take advantage of us. It can help us move toward what we want even when other people might disagree with our choices. It can help us know whether we should go up or down, right or left. Or can it?

Intuition is, essentially, our sixth sense. It’s a feeling of knowing beneath our cognitive understanding. It’s knowing without being able to explain how we know. But what if our intuition is broken? What if what we’ve been feeling all along is actually something else, like fear?

Where Does Intuition Come From?

Intuition is important, but it’s complex. On a literal level, intuition is a sense, judgment, feeling, or emotion that arises before we have time to cognitively decide how we feel. It doesn’t come from our prefrontal cortex, the rational, thinking aspect of our brains—it comes from more primitive places: older parts of the brain, like the amygdala, and our nervous system, which is more sensitive in our gut than in our mind. Intuitive information tends to come through the body, not the thinking mind.

What we must keep in mind is that most of this information is learned. Our intuition is essentially a collection of information that we’ve gathered throughout our lives that our bodies have stored in places that don’t need thinking to activate. If we’ve been traumatized by men, for example, our “intuitive” reaction to a new man might be to push him away—even if he’s a lovely person.

There may be something more to intuition, however. Many people believe we can access something bigger than ourselves when we pay attention. We could call this Spirit, the collective unconscious, guidance from angels or spirit guides, or advice from a higher self. This type of intuition is a little different, and it works differently from the aforementioned quick reactions based on past experiences.

A Gut Feeling Versus Spiritual Intuition

In my experience, this spiritual intuition is slower and more long acting. It shows up when we are paying attention without fear or judgment; when we are “tuned in” to ourselves or another person. One way to know if this type of intuition is true spiritual guidance or just fear is if it sticks around no matter your mood, over days, weeks, or even months. This type of guidance helps you grow and learn and not just keep you safe.

Another way of defining intuition is through understanding our inner emotional compass. We were born with the capacity to feel a number of core emotions that are intended to guide us specifically in our relationships. Fear is a core emotion that tells us something is unsafe. This emotion gets a pretty bad rap, and yes, it can hold us back when we’re confusing unsafe with uncomfortable. But when things are genuinely unsafe, we should listen to our fear and get away.

Similarly, anger is a much-maligned emotion that’s supposed to help us understand our needs and boundaries and ensure we are protected. When we constantly suppress our anger, we can’t discern what our needs and boundaries even are, let alone stand up for them.

With both fear and anger (and most of the other core emotions), it’s a good idea to measure these emotions against our intelligence and the general context of what we’re experiencing. Ideally, we don’t need to react the moment we feel these emotions, but rather slow down and feel into them so we can understand the message they are trying to give us, cleared of any emotional or contextual debris (like, for example, we are tired, hungry, or dysregulated).

Intuition and the Attachment Styles

Intuition may be most challenging when it comes to love. That’s because our love relationships tend to trigger our oldest relational wounds, and it’s very easy for fear to arise and tell us we’d better not take the risk (whether that’s to stay, leave, approach someone, etc.). We learn love through the dynamics we grew up with, so if love was associated with anxiety and abandonment, for example, our “intuition” may look for those feelings in love relationships and avoid someone who invokes feelings of safety and stability.

Most of us form an attachment style in childhood that can show up in our romantic relationships looking like intuition. If we grew up with secure, consistent love, we will tend to assume love is available and possible. We’ll be less likely to become dysregulated with our partners, and it might be easier to move into a safe, connected state when we can attend to our intuition.

If we grew up with inconsistency around love in some way (including the loss of a parent or experiences of trauma), we will tend to experience anxious attachment, which means we’re much less likely to trust in our lovers. Our intuition can be overridden by a need for reassurance and closeness—even when we don’t particularly like the person we’re with.

If our needs were consistently unmet in childhood, we tend to experience avoidant attachment, which means we feel safer alone, used to meeting our own needs without the complication of another. Our intuitive responses to love will tend to lean towards breakups, distance, and separateness because those experiences feel safer. We don’t decide these reactions cognitively; they are wired in as strategies to deal with stressful childhood experiences that influence us well into adulthood.

How to Discern Between Intuition and Fear

So how do we know if it’s intuition or fear? Well, there’s truly no simple answer to this question, as intuition and fear both come with so many layers based on what we’ve been through and how tapped in we are to Spirit and ourselves. As many of us have learned, even when we’re feeling tapped in and are listening to ourselves closely, our intuition can still turn out to be wrong.

It’s important we don’t think of this “sixth sense” as infallible, like being able to look into a crystal ball and tell the future. Especially when it comes to love, it takes time to get to know people and figure out if someone is a good choice for us in the long term. Some of the work around intuition might be about trusting ourselves to take risks and make mistakes and know we’ll be okay if things don’t go the way we hoped.

That being said, here are a few hints to be able to tell the difference between unreasonable fear and healthy intuition:

• Intuition comes through when you feel calm and safe, not when you are already dysregulated.

• If you’re afraid, ask yourself if you are actually in danger or if something simply feels uncomfortable, challenging, or unfamiliar.

• Pay attention to the intuitive feeling when it arises—does it pass when you eat well or get enough sleep or when an argument is resolved? Or does it stick around through various moods and cycles?

• Try to set aside overthinking and rationalization and notice what is happening in your body.
  Allow yourself to settle into one side of a decision. What do you feel in your body? If there is tension, nausea, and a sense of being “not right,” that is likely an intuitive “no.” Do the opposite, and look for a sense of settling, exhaling, calmness, and “rightness,” even if there might also be emotions like sadness and fear. That is closer to an intuitive “yes” from your body.

• Compare your intuitive feeling against your past experiences and the opinions of trusted friends and loved ones. Maybe even ask the opinion of various “parts” of yourself.

• Keep in mind that intuition is just one aspect of decision making, and it’s a good idea to use all your parts, your bodily reactions, your emotions, and your mind when deciding what to do.