Anxiety vs Intuition: The moment that changed my life
I knew it was the end of the line for me when in August of 2020 I ended up in a month-long mental health leave from my job.
I was taking leave from a new position I’d stepped into in late January of 2020. This was just 6 short weeks before New York City would issue (what we thought at the time was a temporary) work-from-home-order in response to the burgeoning concern about COVID-19.
On the surface, this new position seemed fantastic. It included a title bump, a significant pay raise, and a hefty increase in responsibility that included leading and managing a team of 10 people. After saying yes to this new position, I remember feeling ecstatic as I strolled home from the subway station with a noticeable spring in my step, daydreaming away about the kind of life I imagined this new position would afford me.
But once I started in my new role, internal alarm bells started going off almost immediately.
The first day I arrived on site, no one was expecting me. I hadn’t been informed of a point of contact or who to touch base with once I arrived. No one was prepared to show me around or get me settled. So I walked in without knowing who anyone was, where my office was located, or what I was expected to be doing. The team I was meant to supervise hadn’t even been expecting me - talk about awkward when I was the one who had to introduce myself as their new supervisor, a total stranger to them, with them staring back at me blankly!
This is just one example in a much longer list, but I think it sets the scene nicely for what would occur from there. Suffice to say, it didn’t take long for me to realize there was something off about my new workplace culture…
As someone who is highly attuned to energetic and emotional states, it was impossible for me not to notice the multiple areas of very obvious dysfunction that kept cropping up but were never proactively addressed. Instead, the strategy was to sweep an issue under the rug until it became an emergency that required immediate attention.
The departmental culture of reactivity, disorganization, lack of transparency, and seemingly arbitrary standards of accountability resulted in employees who were overwhelmingly confused, stressed, frustrated, and scared. They didn’t feel seen, heard, or supported during a time when they most desperately needed it. And rather than addressing employee concerns with transparency and fairness, employees instead received the message (sometimes implied, sometimes explicitly spoken): be grateful you have a job; so many people don’t during this time.
Employee well-being reached rock bottom just a few months into quarantine. My team was barely holding it together, and I was no better off. I was exhausted and burnt out from the toxic work culture and the emotional labor of supporting my employees during an unprecedented global pandemic, all without receiving any support myself and instead expected to produce the same outcomes as before the pandemic.
And after only six months, I couldn’t take it anymore.
The culmination of everything was too much (including some additional highly-stressful experiences with harmful and unethical behaviors from coworkers and leadership that I’ve not included in this post). I was waking up with a feeling of dread in the pit of my stomach each morning, feeling trapped, like the walls were closing in but unsure where to turn or how to get out of it. It got to the point where I would begin to feel physically sick to my stomach as I approached my desk to log on for work each day.
I realized that my mental health and well-being was the worst it had ever been. It was fairly obvious by this point that my situation wasn’t sustainable. But we were in the middle of COVID, so finding a new job would likely also require a lot of effort - and honestly, this one had taken so much out of me that I worried I wouldn’t have anything left to give.
So I spoke with my therapist at the time (who was aware of the intricacies of my work situation and how seriously it was affecting me) and they assisted me with the process of filing for a month-long absence from work. Which, by the way, I was getting paid only a tiny, tiny portion of my salary during. So I effectively sacrificed a month of salary because the situation was just. that. toxic.
But. Taking leave from that environment was the best possible decision I could have made.
Being able to step away from the toxic whirlwind allowed me to regulate my nervous system, recalibrate my emotional state, and remind myself what it feels like to be safe - which highlighted just how unsafe I’d been feeling for months now. Stepping away provided the distance needed for me to access something truly crucial: perspective. Now that I wasn’t in it and surrounded by it every single day, I was able to clearly see just how royally fucked up the work culture was for the employees trying to survive within it.
I came to the realization that I’d been experiencing a type of abuse that occurs far more frequently in American workplaces than we care to acknowledge, let alone solve. I then struggled with the guilt, shame, and embarrassment as I worked to process this realization, along with the insidious feeling of self-doubt whispering, what if you’re just overreacting? What if you just need to toughen up?
It was during this process that I began reflecting on my life as a whole and what had brought me to this point in it.
And so it transpired that during a global pandemic I was sitting cross-legged in the rumpled sheets of my twin-size bed in my New York City shoebox-sized apartment, still in my pajamas at 4pm, hair unwashed for who knows how long, blankly staring at the wall…
when I had the realization that would shift the trajectory of my life forever.
And the thing is, it wasn’t a big, foundation-rocking, explosive epiphany. It was small, and quiet, and calm. It came to me like a whisper on the wind, so soft and gentle I would have missed it if I hadn’t been paying such close attention. And it told me the following:
This is not the life you are meant for.
I heard it and instantly felt the bone-deep truth of it, my stomach and chest softening and expanding as something fundamental clicked into place. It didn’t feel like the frenetic energy of anxiety, or nerves, or stress. It felt like a butterfly, delicate and fragile as it landed ever so gently into my mind, tentatively resting there.
I sensed how easy it would be to disrupt it. So I didn’t grab at it, or chase it, or attempt any other method of control. Instead, I let it settle in. I gave it space. And I simply observed.
And over the next few days, I noticed something amazing: it started settling in.
It began putting down roots, and these new thoughts and ideas began to displace the previous thoughts and beliefs that had been deeply buried in my mind and subconscious. And now that they were being dislodged and forced to the surface, I was becoming aware of them - and I was able to see that many of them were severely outdated. And I realized that they may have served the person I had been, but they were no longer serving the person I was becoming.
As I released each outdated belief and thought, a sense of expansive openness was left in its place. In this quiet, calm space was the opportunity to plant something new. Something that would serve me in becoming who I wanted to be.
At some point during this process, I realized that after 8 years of living in New York City, I was ready to return home to New Orleans. And I knew, without hesitancy or doubt or fear, that I wasn’t running away. It was simply time. This chapter was closing, and it was time to thank it, bless it, and release it.
After living with and listening to my anxiety for so long, it was world-changing for me to experience my intuition so fully.
It showed me what could become possible for me if I allowed myself to hear my truth and honor it by bringing it into the world as best I could. It helped me realize that it was here to be my guide. That if I listened to it, it would steer me through life with love, confidence, and truth.
Which was when I realized something that stunned me: anxiety had never been my guide. It had been my protector.
Anxiety comes up when it senses a threat to our safety. It holds us back, keeps us safe. But sometimes it confuses comfort with safety, and discomfort with danger. And it’s in these moments that we need to be able to discern when anxiety is being overprotective. When it’s holding us back from the experiences we’re meant to go through so that we can become who we’re meant to be.
It’s in these moments that we are meant to hear our intuition. Intuition is that pull you feel to go deeper. That sense of where to put your feet next, or which cliff to jump off of into the unknown. Sometimes our intuition tells us to simply wait, knowing that the answer will reveal itself when we’re ready. Intuition is about freedom, expansion, evolution. It doesn't strive to keep us small because it knows and trusts that we have everything we need to respond to any and all situations.
Since reconnecting with my intuition, I have learned the following:
I have learned that anxiety is loud and fast. Anxiety yells and pushes. It feels like pressure and stress. Anxiety is our fear of what could be. It lives in all the potential future hurts and judgments. Anxiety comes from a place of constraint and fear. It strives to make us small in a misdirected attempt at keeping us safe from judgment and hurt. Because our inherent nature is one of expansiveness and seeks freedom, anxiety must exert force in an attempt to control us. If it doesn’t, we will automatically continue expanding into who we’re truly meant to be.
I have learned that intuition is soft and slow. Intuition gently waits. Intuition feels like freedom and expansiveness (even if it feels scary). Intuition is our knowledge of what is. It lives in the present moment with trust and confidence. Intuition does not need to force. It does not need to control. Intuition is calm and quiet and patient because it is secure in its truth. It does not need to yell at you; it only needs to wait until you’re ready.
What have you learned about your anxiety and intuition?
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Reflection Questions:
Have there been times that I may have confused anxiety for intuition?
Are there times that, thinking back on them now, I wish I wouldn’t have listened to my anxiety? I wish I would have ____ instead….
What am I worried will happen if I stop listening to my anxiety?
What am I worried will happen if I start listening to my intuition?
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