One of the questions I hear frequently in my work is some version of this: “How do I know if this is my intuition—or if I’m just afraid?”
It’s a good question because intuition and fear can sometimes deliver exactly the same message. Don’t do this. Something is wrong. Leave. Pay attention.
The mistake is assuming that intuition always feels good and fear always feels bad. An intuition can scare the hell out of you. It can tell you something you don’t want to know. It can challenge a relationship, a job, a plan, or an assumption you’ve built part of your life around. The difference, in my experience, is less about what the message says and more about what the message does to you.
Fear constricts. Intuition informs.
Fear makes the world smaller
Fear tends to narrow the picture. It makes you feel small, tight, limited. Suddenly there is only one possible outcome, one escape route, one thing you absolutely must—or absolutely cannot—do. I sometimes think of fear as being trapped in a dark room with one tiny pinprick of light. You become convinced that little point is your only way out.
Intuition tends to do something different. It gives you additional information. Even when that information is uncomfortable, it makes the picture larger.
Years ago, a client came to me frightened by a vision she’d had involving her husband driving their minivan on the freeway. In the vision, a tire came off and he crashed. Because of her religious background, experiences like these were complicated for her. She wondered whether she should trust them at all. Was this intuition? A message from God? Or was she simply imagining something terrible happening to someone she loved?
One thing stood out to me: she didn’t habitually obsess about automobile accidents or tires. This impression seemed to arrive out of nowhere. More importantly, it suggested a very reasonable response. I didn’t tell her that her vision proved her husband was going to crash. I told her to have the tires checked.
She did. They were badly worn and needed replacing. The person inspecting them told her husband that continuing to drive on them could have resulted in a blown tire.
Does that prove where her vision came from? No. But the information was useful, the action was reasonable, and following it potentially prevented a serious problem.
That is very different from fear saying, Sell the minivan immediately. Never drive on the freeway. Something terrible is going to happen. Intuition gave her more information. Fear would have made her world smaller.
Intuition isn’t necessarily supernatural
I’m a professional psychic medium. I believe that intuition can sometimes be the faculty through which we receive information or guidance from spiritual, supernatural, or what I might call non-ordinary sources. But I don’t think that’s where most intuition necessarily comes from. My simplest definition of intuition is the mind’s ability to make connections or recognize patterns faster than conscious thought allows.
Your conscious mind may not know why something feels wrong yet. Meanwhile, some deeper part of you may already be processing facial expressions, previous experiences, inconsistencies, patterns, environmental information, emotional cues and a hundred other little pieces of data you haven’t consciously assembled. And then an answer appears.
We sometimes attribute that answer to God, the universe, a spirit guide or some other external source because we don’t understand how we knew it. That doesn’t mean information can never come through those sources. I believe it can. But sometimes the mysterious voice that knows something before “you” do is still you.
Sometimes we externalize our own knowing
I had an imaginary friend named Luisa when I was a child. Luisa knew everything. I could ask her what somebody was about to do, why someone was behaving a certain way, even the answer to a math problem, and somehow she would know.
When I was around thirteen, Luisa told me she was leaving and that I would be fine without her. After she was gone, something interesting happened. The answers I had previously experienced as coming from Luisa began appearing directly in my own awareness.
That experience has stayed with me because it made me wonder whether we sometimes externalize extraordinary knowing until we become comfortable recognizing that capacity within ourselves. I don’t pretend to have a definitive explanation for what Luisa was or wasn’t. What matters to me is what the experience taught me: Learning intuition is ultimately learning yourself.
Your intuition speaks your language
There is no universal dictionary for intuition. I don’t believe that every time somebody sees blue in a vision it means the same thing, or that a tree, an animal, water or a particular sensation has one fixed psychic definition. There may be symbols human beings commonly associate with certain experiences. But your intuition is personal because you are personal.
Your history matters. Your fears matter. Your desires matter. Your patterns matter. Your tendency to idealize certain people matters. Your tendency to expect betrayal matters. The situations where you routinely doubt yourself matter.
The more fully you know yourself, the better equipped you become to recognize when something is coming through you and when something is coming from you. And even that discernment is never finished. You’re still human.
Intuition can frighten you
This is one of the biggest misunderstandings I encounter. People sometimes assume that if something produces fear, it cannot be intuition. I disagree. Intuition can cause fear. It can also cause sadness, excitement, joy, anger, relief or peace. Fear mostly creates more fear. That difference matters.
Many years ago, when I worked for an investment firm in Beverly Hills, I kept getting a simple internal message: Start looking for another job.
There was no obvious reason to leave. I liked the people. They liked me. I was comfortable. I was paid well. So I essentially told my intuition to shut up.
Four months later, the company was laying people off, and I was included in the second round. Had I listened, I might already have been interviewing and preparing myself for another opportunity.
Notice something important here: fear wasn’t telling me to leave. Fear was helping me stay comfortable. Sometimes the intuitive choice is the scarier choice.
Ask which choice brings you peace
When I’m genuinely torn between two choices, I use a question I remember learning through the work of one of my mentors, Debbie Ford: Which choice brings me the most peace if I choose it now?
I’ve found that one choice usually produces a noticeable sense of peace. But peace and relief are not the same thing. Relief removes an uncomfortable sensation. It’s like removing a rock from your shoe or a splinter from your finger. Peace feels more complete. More integrated.
You can choose something terrifying and simultaneously experience enormous peace about having made the decision. You may still be scared about what happens next. The difference is that somewhere underneath that fear is a comfortable certainty: This is what I need to do.
Trust your intuition—but verify it
I don’t believe intuition should replace critical thinking. In my Psychic Gym classes, I sometimes describe us as having a “psychic mind” and a “muggle mind.”
Your psychic mind is intuitive, emotional and receptive. It can provide information you haven’t arrived at through ordinary conscious reasoning. Your muggle mind is analytical. It asks questions. It looks at evidence. It reasons. You need both.
If you have a powerful intuition that your partner is cheating on you, for example, I would not advise you to storm into the room and announce that your psychic abilities have convicted them. Trust what you’re feeling enough to investigate it. Have the difficult conversation. Look at the circumstances. Examine the evidence. Ask yourself whether betrayal is already a fear you carry into relationships.
Trust it, but verify it. Intuition should give you additional information with which to make a decision. It shouldn’t relieve you of the responsibility of making one.
So how do you get better at intuition?
Start by listening. Most people have had the experience of looking backward and saying: I knew I should have done that. I knew something was off. Something told me to call. I had a feeling I should start looking for another job. Then we ignored it.
If you want to become better at recognizing intuition, begin noticing that quiet voice concerned with the good of your life. Don’t automatically obey it. Notice it. Ask questions of it. Check it against reality. Pay attention to what happens when you follow it and what happens when you don’t. Over time, you begin learning your own language.
Because if there is one thing I wish people understood about intuition, it is this: Most of the time, intuition probably isn’t the voice of God, a ghost, the universe or some strange anomalous entity. It is the clearest voice of your own self in that given moment, attracting your attention toward fuller information—coloring the picture more completely and inviting you to consider possibilities you hadn’t considered before.
And occasionally, I believe intuition may also be the faculty through which information from beyond ourselves reaches us. Learning the difference is part of learning yourself.
So the next time you’re trying to decide whether something is intuition or fear, don’t only ask: “Am I scared?”
Ask something better: Does this information make my world larger or smaller?
And then let both your psychic mind and your muggle mind have a say.