Decoding Your Inner Voice: Is It Intuition, Fear, or Overthinking?

Dear Sookie, How Do I Know If It's Intuition, Fear, or Overthinking?

Signed, Confused & Unsure

Dear Confused and Unsure,

The fact that you’re asking this question means you’re already listening. You haven’t gone numb and you’re not tuning it all out.

You’re in there, paying attention, trying to sort through the noise and this matters more than you know.

But I get it.

It sucks when you’re feeling like you’re standing at the crossroads of your own inner world, hearing three different voices, and not knowing which one to trust.

Here’s what I’ve come to understand.

Intuition, fear, and overthinking don’t just feel different, They arrive differently.

Intuition tends to be quiet. Annoyingly quiet. It doesn’t repeat itself the way anxiety does. It says something once, then it waits. It doesn’t need to convince you. It’s the knowing that was already there before you started asking questions. You feel it low in your body, not in your chest - sometimes even in the pit of your stomach. It’s still, but certain without being loud.

Fear, on the other hand, is urgent. I feel like it arrives with a racing pulse and a story - usually one set somewhere in your past. It borrows the language of protection, but its real job is to keep you small, safe, and still.  Fear repeats itself and escalates. It wants an answer right now because sitting in the unknown feels unbearable to it.  Fear tries to protect a younger version of you who once needed that protection. But it doesn’t always know the difference between then and now.

And overthinking? Thats the mind doing what it was trained to do in a world that rewarded logic and punished vulnerability.  It loops. It builds cases for both sides. It researched and lists “what-ifs” until you are so far from your original feeling that you can barely remember what you were even trying to decide. Overthinking is anxiety wearing a very convincing costume.

When I’m trying to find my way back to what’s real, I ask myself one thing: Is this thought pulling me forward, or is it pulling me back?

Intuition almost always points toward something like a next step, a truth, a direction that feels quietly right even when it’s uncomfortable. Dear and overthinking pull you back to old stories, old wounds, and old versions of yourself that haven’t caught up to who you are becoming.

I want to go back to what you said - I second-guess everything.  This isn’t a flaw. I think it’s what happens when you’ve been in environments where your instincts were questions, dismissed, or overridden enough times that you started doing it to yourself before anyone else could.

In my opinion, second guessing is a learned habit, and you don’t have to live by it.

The way back to trusting yourself is about practicing: small decisions, small acts of trusting the quiet voice, small moments of choosing yourself before you’ve talked yourself out of it.  Trust is built in the same way that anything worth having is built - slowly, with repetition, with gentleness toward yourself when you get it wrong.

The next time you’re caught in the loop, try this:

Take 5 minutes and bring the decision or feeling to your mind. Then journal it and ask yourself these three questions slowly and in order:

What is the first thing I knew before I started thinking about it?

Sit with this. Don’t analyze it yet. Just notice what was there before the noise started. That first, unguarded response is often your intuition speaking before fear had a chance to interrupt.

Next question.

What am I afraid will happen?

Let fear have its say without judgement. Write it out if you can. Name the worst case scenario or scenarios it keeps circling back to.  Usually, when fear is allowed to speak fully instead of being pushed down, it loses some of it’s power, and you can start seeing whether it’s responding to right now, or to something that’s happened a long time ago.

Last question.

How long have I been thinking about this?

If you’ve been circling the same thought for hours, days, or weeks without getting anywhere new; thats overthinking, not wisdom. Wisdom tends to arrive and settle. Overthinking never quite lands.

You don’t have to have perfect answers to these questions. Practicing is about learning to recognize each voice by how It feels in your body, how it speaks, and what it’s asking of you. The more you do this, the more familiar each one becomes.

Just remember, You’re human learning the language of your own inner knowing.  Give yourself a little more time at the table. The voice you’re looking for isn’t going anywhere.

With Love,

Sookie xx