Anxiety & Intuition: Should I Trust My Gut?
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If you are reading this, there is a good chance you’ve been influenced by your gut feelings in the past, or you might have been told to trust your intuition.
We’ve been socialized and even encouraged to follow our ‘inner voice’, our ‘instincts’, or ‘gut feelings’. It can be valuable to trust your intuition in many cases. For instance, it can alert signs or cues of an actual threat.
However, gut feelings are not facts. And trusting your gut could be damaging if you have anxiety.
Anxiety & The Gut
Your gut can guide your behaviour - like opening this blog post for instance! Or waking up to your alarm clock in the morning. However, if you struggle with anxiety, there is a good chance your gut feelings could be faulty. Now, you might be asking, how is that possible?
Anxiety triggers unpleasant gastro-intestinal symptoms in our bodies, which send messages to our brain to abort mission! For instance, you might experience nausea, diarrhea, or appetite changes. These unpleasant sensations can influence your interpretation of a situation, causing fear and confusing something ambiguous as a threat.
Avoidance of people, places and things is a common response to fear. But avoidance is counter-intuitive and can be detrimental to anxiety recovery.
Riley is a college student who struggles with social anxiety.
Consider Riley. She feels anticipatory anxiety the night before class, and worries about how she will be viewed by her peers. The anxiety is so intense, she gets butterflies and her stomach and sometimes vomits at the thought of a crowd looking at her. She thinks that everyone will laugh at her and anticipates the worst.
The gut feelings tell her to stay home and avoid going to class. If Riley complies with her gut, she will continue to avoid socializing with others which would interfere with her goal of graduating college.
If you relate to Riley, you’re not alone. And the good news is, you can learn to discern these feelings to make decisions that align with your anxiety recovery.
Here are some strategies:
1. Fact Check
List the evidence that support your beliefs - only cold, hard facts. Then list the evidence that does not support your beliefs - again, only facts, not feelings. Notice if you’re making assumptions or predicting the worst outcome. Put your detective hat on, and determine if this is just fear.
2. Observe Your Physical Sensations
This is challenging at first, but it could help you make decisions that align with your goals! Pay attention to what happens in your body and name the sensations. Anxiety is very strongly connected with our bodies, and ironically drawing attention to your internal state could take away its power. When we try to resist or push these feelings away, they just get worse and intensify.
3. Consider the Context
Explore if the intensity of your emotions actually fit with the situation. How does your reaction compare to others in the same situation? For example, someone with flight anxiety would pay attention to how others behave on the plane. Is everyone on the plane panicking? What are people focused on? Look around you and observe if the gut reaction fits the context.
References
Arnold, C. (2013). Gut feelings: the future of psychiatry may be inside your stomach. The Verge, 21.
Freeman, D., Evans, N., & Lister, R. (2012). Gut feelings, deliberative thought, and paranoid ideation: A study of experiential and rational reasoning. Psychiatry research, 197(1-2), 119-122.
MacDonald, K. (2007). Interoceptive cues: when ‘gut feelings’ point to anxiety. Curr. Psychiatry, 6, 49.
Stolper, E., van Bokhoven, M., Houben, P. et al. The diagnostic role of gut feelings in general practice A focus group study of the concept and its determinants . BMC Fam Pract. 10, 17 (2009). https://doi.org/10.1186/1471-2296-10-17
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Disclaimer:
Please note the following information is not intended to replace therapy and this resource is distributed free online solely for the purpose of psycho-education.
Take what relates to you and leave the rest, there could be information posted here that does not apply to your unique concerns and circumstances.
If you are experiencing significant mental health concerns, particularly where your functioning has been impaired, it is strongly recommended you seek support in the form of appropriate psychotherapeutic treatment in your local area.