Is It Anxiety, Or Is It Actually Intuition?

I used to think I was losing my mind.

Almost every day for more than a year, I asked myself—and anyone who would listen—Am I crazy? Am I imagining this? Is this normal? What is wrong with me?

If you’ve read my earlier posts, you know that in 2019 my ex-husband had his first affair. That discovery shattered me in ways I couldn’t yet name. It broke who I thought my partner was. It broke what I believed trust meant. It broke the future I thought we were building. And physically, it broke my body.

That same year introduced me to the lived experience of what I now understand to be gaslighting—a form of abuse more potent and destabilizing than any substance or disease I’ve ever encountered. It’s abuse written in invisible ink. You catch a glimpse of the truth for a split second, and before you can seek validation—before you can even ask yourself if what you’re seeing is real—it disappears.

I started therapy—individual therapy and couples therapy. We went to session after session. My ex-husband sat across from me and reassured me that I had nothing to worry about.

But my body told a different story.

It felt as though there was an elephant sitting on my chest. I lived every moment of every day with that familiar, sinking feeling—the one you get right before you’re about to get in trouble. Like something bad was about to happen. It was always there.

Eventually, my healing journey led me away from traditional talk therapy and toward something different—a more somatic approach. I began learning about my body and my nervous system. I started practicing breathwork and EMDR.

And that’s when everything began to shift.

Once I understood the connection between the brain and the body, I started to question whether what I had labeled as anxiety was actually my intuition trying to speak to me.

One of the most powerful things I learned is this: the nervous system sends far more information from the body to the brain than the other way around.

Read that again.

No matter how much you try to think your way into feeling safe—or talk your way into believing you are—your body will override those words unless it actually feels safe. The signals traveling from the body to the brain are stronger.

Your brain can’t bullshit your body.

That’s the difference between anxiety and intuition.

Anxiety tries to shave the square peg to fit into the round hole.

Intuition sits quietly in the dark and doesn’t need to see the hole to know the peg doesn’t fit.

Anxiety is noise that talks in circles. It loops.

Intuition is curiosity that seeks understanding. It listens.

Anxiety is impulsive.

Intuition is intentional.

It’s the deep internal sense that the words you’re hearing aren’t landing in a way that feels safe. It’s your body telling you something isn’t right, even when you can’t yet explain why.

It took me a long time to pull back the curtain on what that knowing was telling me: that as much as my partner said he was trustworthy, he wasn’t. My intuition spoke first. The evidence to validate it came later.

After his first affair, I was never able to fully let my guard down around him again—no matter how hard I tried.

I noticed things that didn’t feel right. And no matter how much my ex-husband tried to explain them away, deny them, or reframe them as my imagination, that knowing inside me persisted.

This is how gaslighting works.

With all the lights on, you’re being asked to believe the square peg is a perfect fit for the round hole—and you dared not to disagree.

And inside, it feels like: What in the actual fuck is happening? Is anyone else seeing this? Am I crazy?

It doesn’t just ask you to doubt what you see—it asks you to distrust yourself. It slowly teaches you to override your own instincts in favor of someone else’s version of reality.

Whether you call it intuition, instinct, or something deeper, it was real.

For a long time, I tried to shut it down. I tried to squash it. Numb it. Do anything I could to make it go away—because believing him felt safer than believing myself.

It wasn’t until I stopped fighting it—and instead gave it a seat at the table and listened to what it had to say—that everything began to change.

My body never felt safe again in that relationship.

But once I gave my intuition a seat at the table, I learned how to find safety within myself. I learned how to listen to myself. How to trust myself.

I began to see things more clearly.

I stopped needing someone else to confirm what I was seeing.

I started to believe myself.

You don’t need someone else to validate your reality.

If your body is telling you something doesn’t feel right, listen to it.

If you’re constantly asking yourself, Am I crazy? or Am I seeing things that aren’t there?—you’re probably not crazy.

That’s your intuition finding its voice.

Over the last several years, my intuition has become my greatest ally. She comes everywhere with me now, and I always make sure she has a seat at the table.

Give your intuition a seat at the table. Hear what it has to say.

Your own validation is all you need.