Anxiety, CPTSD, PTSD and Fear: Learning to Separate Anxiety from Intuition (Plus 4 Tricks for Distinguishing Between the Two)

I’m in my second trimester of pregnancy, and I’m not feeling the baby yet.* A very fear-inducing feeling. An all-consuming feeling. And while I can sometimes quiet my fears, it’s easy to let them rule me. To let them lead to anxiety about future events. And if I’m not careful, to let them run my life. But I know it’s just fear. I can tell. Because of where I feel it in my body. Because I’m learning to separate my anxiety from my intuition. 

Learning to separate my anxiety from my intuition has been a decades-long process. One I’m not sure if I’ll ever perfect, and one I have to work at every day. And when my fear and anxiety are bad, I have to work at it every minute of every day. 

I can tell it’s fear by where I feel it in my body. My fear resides in my head and in my chest. It’s that nagging, uncomfortable feeling. Kind of like when you’ve left for a trip and you fear you’ve left the stove on. You drive back home to check, and when you see that the stove is off, you realize it was just your fear. 

My intuition feels different. My intuition resides somewhere in my abdomen. It’s that all-knowing gut feeling. That part of yourself that knows and accepts whatever fate allows. For your intuition may not always tell you what you want to hear, but you will know it as truth regardless. Accepting what the Universe has in store. No matter how painful or joyful it may be. 

So if you ever feel you have difficulty distinguishing your anxiety from your intuition, here are some tricks to help:

1. Journal every day. Journaling will help you hear yourself. Your true self. And will allow your intuition to naturally come through. Which will also make it clearer when your fear is coming through. It will no longer sound like you. It will be a heightened, anxious version of you that you can soothe by continuing to write about your fears.
2. Acknowledge your fears. Whether it’s through writing about them or talking about them. You can talk to yourself and even record them on your phone if you wish, or you can talk to someone else. Friends and family are good to talk to for small, infrequent fears, but when they get to be too much to handle, it’s time to see a professional who is trained to help you deal with your fears properly. And remember, fears have to be acknowledged. If not, they will fester. And grow.
3. Meditate and/or do body scans. Meditation helps us connect to our inner selves on the deepest level. It helps us hear ourselves. Body scans allow us to check-in with each part of our bodies. Helping us know information that is hiding in our crevices and showing us what we need to see. 
4. Make sure you exercise every day or at least move. Movement will help you get into your body and stay in your body, helping you to feel where your thoughts are coming from. Remember, anxiety is usually a feeling in our chest and head and intuition is closer to our gut. Being in your body and learning how to distinguish between these two feelings can save you a lot of time fretting over unnecessary fears.

However you learn to distinguish your anxiety from your I intuition, make sure you practice it daily. So that you can kick your fears to the curb. And live your best life. 

*Shortly after I finished writing this, I started to feel the baby move 🙂 

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Photo by Darya Sannikova