📚Author Q+A: Intuition vs Anxiety
Elizabeth Greenwood on how to tap into your intuition
Intuition is such a personal sixth sense. Some people feel it in their gut. Others have a deep knowing in their mind that just tells them to turn left when they expect to turn right. As I’ve gotten older, I have to work harder to distinguish between what my intuition is and what my anxiety is. So it should come as no surprise that when a friend (
) introduced me to , I was obsessed.Her new book, EVERDAY INTUITION, is a deep dive into how to hone your sensitivity to your intuition so that you don’t miss it. Or, maybe more importantly, so that you don’t confuse your anxiety for intuitive guidance.
Below is my Q+A with Elizabeth Greenwood.
☕️The Q+A
VN: Hi Elizabeth, I’m so excited to introduce everyone to your book! There’s something so magical about trusting intuition. How do you define intuition now, and how does it differ from anxiety?
EG: My definition of intuition is layered and always paring down to something more and more essential. Simply put, intuition is knowing without knowing why. All of a sudden, BAM! you know something, and you can’t always trace from whence or why it came, and that can make you doubt yourself and override intuition with cognition or rationality. The knowing is the important part, knowing why…not so much. To me, intuition feels like guidance and direction—do this, not that, go here, not there, etc. That’s where it gets really tricky and can masquerade as anxiety—is that premonition about going to the party and things turning out horribly intuition or anxiety?
Intuition, in my experience, is almost always kinder and softer than anxiety. Anxiety wants answers nownownow, while intuition is willing to hang out in uncertainty. One of the most interesting insights from my research was the connection between anxiety and uncertainty. As humans, our brains love patterns and predictability, and yet we live in randomass environments, the ground always shifting beneath us, and this is our central existential tension: our desire for predictability and its impossibility. Over hundreds of millions of years, the amygdala has evolved to do more than just fight/flight/freeze, it also functions as our “certainty checker.” So when we can’t find certainty about something, this makes us super anxious. So asking “Am I just uncomfortable with uncertainty/not knowing?” and the answer is yes…that’s often squarely anxiety. Anxiety is recursive thought spirals, whereas an intuition about something might reveal itself to you more than once, but it’ll be more of a gentle tap on the back than a violent nudge. Intuition is just a lot gentler than anxiety.
VN: What inspired you to explore the distinction between anxiety and intuition?
EG: Oh man, it was definitely a personal quest. I come from a family of textbook catastrophizers. As a result of precarity, they always felt like the sky was falling. But they are also quite intuitive, so…. Which one wins? This came to a head when I had my first kid and felt compelled to check his breathing in the night, um, constantly. Intuition or anxiety? I know now that was anxiety, but I think this mix-up is one a lot of women and marginalized groups struggle with because since birth we have been told we are wrong and gaslit about our own experiences. So reclaiming trust in ourselves is revolutionary.
VN: While researching your book, did you discover anything new about your own intuition?
EG: I learned what a layered human experience intuition is. According to evolutionary psychologists, it is an incredibly adaptive trait, a more advanced version of instinct. To neuroscientists, it is rapid pattern recognition based on domain expertise that shows up in biofeedback. Basically, your body will know what’s going on before your brain will catch up. To me, it’s knowing without knowing why. On the more spiritual side of things, it can be experienced as inner wisdom or signs and synchronicities from beyond. To me, it is all of these, and one doesn’t contradict the other. For something so vast, that touches every facet of human experience, I think we need it all, hence the subtitle of my book- What Psychology, Science, and Psychics Can Teach Us About Finding and Trusting Our Inner Voice.
VN: What do you hope readers will learn about themselves through your book?
EG: I advocate for readers to utilize the neuroscientific definition of pattern recognition based on expertise to become the utmost experts in themselves to be able to determine what is authentic personal intuition and what is something else: societal garbage, anxiety, trauma responses. I urge readers to ask themselves: When are you an unreliable narrator vs. when is your thinking at its clearest? What buckets of life do you know will make you anxious (example: travel, certain family or social constellations, etc etc)? How does intuition show up for you? How does anxiety? In this way, intuition can be a lens for greater self-knowledge, and more of a process than a destination.
VN: Your book features insights from a wide range of voices — from psychologists to psychics. Why was it important to include such diverse perspectives on intuition?
EG: I think we need it all. It’s funny, when I tell people about my work a common response I get is, “Well, I’m a skeptic, I’m rational, I don’t believe in psychics.” First of all, congratulations, here’s your Nobel Prize. Second of all, bro, do you think I’m not skeptical? I’m a journalist! I’m nosy as hell and my kneejerk reaction to ANYTHING is “yeah, but”!!! The skeptical thing drives me nuts because it implies that people who have had experiences with the psychic, the spiritual, the nonmaterial are just dumdums who will accept anything. ANYWAY intuition is complex, vast, and underappreciated, so I wanted to hear from experts and practitioners from across the spectrum who harness, practice, and study intuition. Their knowledge is vital and, in my opinion, does not contradict science, but adds to our understanding. And as I say in the book, your mileage may vary, so take what works, leave what doesn’t, but I urge you to give yourself permission to be curious.
VN: I call this section — Book Pairings (like wine and cheese, but all about books). What other books does your workbook pair well with?
EG: I love this question.
My literal answer:
Voices in the River podcast
Jack Kornfield meditations, any/all
Women Who Run With the Wolves by Clarissa Pinkola Estés
And here’s my annoying answer: Putting your phone on airplane mode, going for a walk in the sun, shutting up and shutting out the noise, and giving yourself a little minute to listen.
📚 Follow Elizabeth on Instagram. Pick up Elizabeth’s new book, Everyday Intuition on Amazon, Bookshop, or wherever books are sold.
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