When Following Your Intuition is Bad Advice

When Following Your Intuition is Bad Advice: I recently saw a post on Instagram that said something like this: “Follow your gut. Trust your intuition. If something feels wrong, it is wrong.” Well-intended advice, I’m sure. I suppose there’s something to it—and there are definitely times when we might indeed “go with our gut.” More than a handful of times since starting a business, I’ve begun some sort of professional business relationship with someone where there were perhaps red flags—but I ignored them. My need to move forward with something—my impatience, my willingness to give the benefit of the doubt—only led to later regretting that impulsivity and wishing I had listened to my “gut.”

I’ve also certainly been in situations that felt unsafe, so I left—perhaps a social situation that I felt might lead to trouble or a sketchy environment where instincts led me to feel something was off.

So yeah, I can see where listening to that “off” feeling can be important at times. The key here (and perhaps the tricky part) is figuring out when to listen to it and when not to.

As a general rule: If you really struggle with anxiety or related disorders (be it OCD, health anxiety, anxiety about relationships, Generalized Anxiety Disorder, or Panic Disorder), trusting the feeling that something is wrong might do more harm than good.

Why? People who deal with some form of disordered anxiety are often hyper-aware as it is. They see threats within themselves and in their environment where no true threat is actually present. The brain’s alarm system (the amygdala) can become hypersensitive in people with heightened anxiety, making them misinterpret benign signals as signs of danger. To compound that, it sometimes likes to scan for things that are wrong (or that could go wrong) when there’s nothing more pressing to focus on. If we’re constantly believing the feeling, we might only reinforce the anxiety through forms of avoidance, reassurance seeking, or other behaviors that make it all worse. 

Here are a couple of examples:

Example 1 - Health Anxiety: A common experience for people who have health anxiety is a constant nagging feeling that something in their body is off. They’re sensitive to foreign sensations in the body, increased heart rate, aches/pains, or anything else that might point to something being seriously wrong. Oftentimes, even full medical work-ups and clean bills of health aren’t enough to convince them that something hasn’t been missed. They run with the “feeling”—the gut instinct that something is wrong. The feeling is hard to dismiss and, therefore, often believed and deeply internalized.

Example 2 - Relationship Anxiety: People who often find themselves anxious and insecure in romantic attachments similarly struggle with feelings that something is wrong—but in this case, the preoccupation is with the relationship. They might be super cued into things such as response times to texts, facial expressions, tone of voice, and subtle shifts in behavior. Analyzing these cues can lead to strong insecurities and instincts that something is wrong with the relationship, even when no real issue exists.

Example 3 - Social Anxiety and Perceived Judgment: Someone with social anxiety might strongly sense that others are judging them or thinking negatively about them, even when no evidence supports it. The intuition that they are disliked or that they have done something embarrassing might only be a distortion of reality.

The bottom line: The feeling that something is wrong is more often than not—well, wrong! Anxiety latches on to things we value—things like our health, relationships, and social standing. We, as humans, are good storytellers, and we often make up the best stories for ourselves—narratives that help us fill in gaps where information might be incomplete or absent.

So what do I do?

It’s confusing, right? I’m telling you that there are times when we should follow our intuition and other times when we should take it with a grain of salt—or disregard it altogether. The answer to how we know what to do with our feelings (and when) might lie in mindful curiosity. It’s okay to doubt “intuition,” to challenge it, or to learn to sit with uncertainty and unsure feelings. We might label these feelings, explore where they are coming from, and be with them without assigning judgment to them. Thoughts and feelings, after all, are sometimes just thoughts and feelings.

Okay, so how do we detect true danger if we can’t always trust that our instincts are correct? I often tell my clients that if something is REALLY wrong, there likely won’t be much doubt. True danger tends to be clear and undeniable. If you find that you’re often internally debating whether or not something is real, that itself is a sign that anxiety (vs. intuition) might be at play. Excessive rumination or an obsession with a specific focus over a long period of time—where we’ve found ourselves to be wrong time and time again—is a good indicator that our feelings are being driven more by anxiety than by reality.

When to Take the Feeling Seriously

Although anxiety can sneakily trick us into seeing danger, there are situations where it’s better to trust your gut—especially when it comes to immediate physical safety. If you get a strong sense of unease in a new situation or with a new person, it is probably smarter to err on the side of caution rather than dismissing the feeling. Survival instincts exist for a reason, and in certain situations, we are best off removing ourselves first and analyzing later. Think about walking alone at night, noticing odd or aggressive behaviors in someone, or feeling like you are being followed. The main difference is that anxiety is more likely to bring up repetitive or abstract worries, whereas true instinctual fear tends to arise in immediate and real-world situations.