Fear vs. Intuition – How to Follow Your Inner Knowing
- Feb 2
- 6 min read
Tara Swann is an Emotional Empowerment & Embodiment Coach and three-time Author who guides women to alchemise emotional patterns, reclaim their inner power, and manifest a life that reflects their deepest truth.
Have you ever looked back at a decision you made and thought, “I knew I should have chosen the other option?” Something within you tugged you toward the other choice, like a string attached to your heart, but your mind entered the scenario and told you that the one you chose made more logical sense.
What weakens intuition
Every time you listen to your mind over that pull within you, you’re disconnecting from the part of you that is guiding you, your higher self. Each time you choose the more logical option, and then you beat yourself up for making the wrong choice, you’re losing trust in yourself. Then the next time this subtle inner tug appears, you don’t fully trust it.
Sometimes the tug doesn’t make sense. We are taught to follow the logical option, to stay in our minds, and to think things through properly. Still, maybe this advice comes from a patriarchal society, and a very masculine way of living, disconnected from feeling, emotional guidance, and intuition of the inner feminine. Maybe we need to lean into the mystery and say to ourselves, “This doesn’t make sense, but I feel like I should go here instead”, and see where it leads.
I called into one of my favourite cafés recently while driving South for a night away, and I thought, “I don’t need or want anything, it would be better just to keep driving.” But something within me told me to stop, and this time it wasn’t coffee, so I trusted it. There I met a woman who recognised me from my books, and she ended up buying all three of my books. We connected, and now something tells me this won’t be the last time I see her.
If you leaned into the mystery, what’s the worst that could happen?
Fear vs. intuition
Fear is often a trauma response that feels like intuition, but is actually your nervous system attempting to protect you from pain.
Fear often appears when we are making decisions, big or small. We live in a busy world, which instills hyper-vigilance in your nervous system, teaches you to use your mind over your body, and, as a result, most of us live in a constant survival state, not to mention past pain that has left imprints on your nervous system.
When it comes to discerning which thoughts are guided by fear and which are guided by intuition, we get stuck. We begin overthinking the worst, questioning whether it’s intuition, until it turns into anxiety.
The difference is that one is driven by emotion stuck in the body, and the other is a knowing without explanation.
Intuition isn’t here to replace logic, though, it’s here to lead it. When intuition speaks first, and the mind follows, decisions feel grounded rather than forced. The problem isn’t the mind, it’s when the mind takes control before the body has had a chance to be heard.
Neutralising emotion
Behind every fear is emotion. When you have a fear of rejection, for example, it may be charged by suppressed grief in the body. When you have a fear of judgment, it may stem from feelings of worthlessness.
Neutralising emotions is the third Pillar of Emotional Empowerment. It is the process of neutralising the emotion behind fear, thereby neutralising the fear itself. Once the fear is neutralised, it softens, and you can more easily discern what truth is. Was it fear or intuition?
To neutralise emotion, you first need to allow emotion. Whenever fear arises, can you pause instead of panic? In that pause, can you drop out of the mind and into the body? And in the body, can you feel where that emotional energy is located? Can you breathe into that sensation and allow yourself to be present with it? Lastly, will you allow yourself to cry, rage, scream, and let the emotion move you?
When you can allow, with presence, love, and non-judgement, you can release the energy that is alive within you and neutralise the fear that is clouding your intuitive knowing.
A deeper knowing
Intuition comes from a place of deeper knowing. Intuition shows up in big, life-altering moments, but also in the micro moments, such as the pause before replying to a message or the subtle heaviness when you agree to something that sounds good but feels off. If you can catch that moment, before the mind takes over, intuition has space to be heard.
For some, it appears as an impulse, a subtle instinctive pull. For others, it shows up as a clear yes or no, without logical reasoning. And sometimes people need the space to sit with it and feel into their bodies to know if something is genuinely the right call for them.
Even if you don’t believe in intuition as something mystical, your body is still constantly responding, expanding toward what feels aligned and contracting around what doesn’t.
Emotional guidance
Emotional guidance is the fourth Pillar of Emotional Empowerment. This is the process of sitting with a decision and feeling into the body.
With one choice in mind, ask yourself, “How does this feel for me?” Then, with the second choice in mind, ask again, “How does this feel for me?”
This takes the mind out of it for a moment and allows your body the chance to speak to you. Usually, one feels truer than the other, and then you have your answer. Just try not to overthink it when it doesn’t seem like the smartest, most logical choice. Trust.
However, a lot of us have so many suppressed emotions that sometimes one choice feels better because it feels less risky and therefore less scary. Sometimes, it will feel like the safer option to your nervous system, either because it’s familiar, or because you have a deeper emotional blockage and belief of “I am not good enough”, for example.
Removing the blocks
As I said, one choice will feel better to you, but if you know a choice feels better because it doesn’t feel as scary, go back to the neutralising emotion process. You can find a deeper explanation of this process in my book, Becoming Her, available on Amazon.
Removing blocks begins when you allow energy to flow through the body. We are energetic beings. We have energy channels throughout the body, and when we experience challenging situations in our lives and don’t fully process those experiences through the body, emotional energy becomes stagnant, stored in our cells. This creates blockages in the body, restricting the natural flow of energy.
The art of allowing is the most profound art you will ever embody. Allow what is alive in you to flow, be with it fully, allow it to vibrate through your entire body, feel its aliveness, even if it's uncomfortable. You’re human, discomfort is a part of life, and without discomfort, you wouldn’t know comfort. Without pain, you wouldn’t know pleasure.
How alive will you let yourself feel in this lifetime?
Emotion as medicine
The emotional energy that is dying to flow through you is the exact medicine you need to disconnect from fear and connect to your intuition. It is the energy that drives your life.
Suppressed shame drives fear of being seen. Suppressed grief drives surface-level connection, when you really crave depth. Suppressed anger drives a lack of boundaries and people-pleasing. Suppressed heartache drives insecurity in romantic relationships.
When you finally allow yourself to be present with what is alive in you, moment by moment, you drop into deeper layers of yourself, letting go of what no longer serves you, to make way for a more profound connection to your truth, your higher self, and your intuitive power.
Each time you ignore that inner pull, you abandon your truth. And each time you listen, even when it’s uncomfortable, you rebuild self-trust. Sometimes you follow your intuition, but the outcome of that isn’t what you expected. Can you trust those outcomes anyway, knowing that they’re a part of a bigger picture? Can you trust it’s always leading you in the right direction, no matter what? When you can trust yourself to be with discomfort, you can trust the natural direction of your life.
Connecting to your intuition is almost a rebel act, a rewilding, a letting go of a system that feeds on your fear and controls you through your lack of self-trust. It’s a reconnection to your feminine (whether you’re a man or woman), and a clearing and rebalancing of the energy within you that ultimately creates your life.
Where’s that string tugging you next?
If deepening your connection to your body and intuition is something you’d love to explore, connect with me on Instagram or apply to work with me privately here.
Visit my website for more info!
Read more from Tara Swann
Tara Swann, Emotional Empowerment Coach & Author
Tara Swann is an Emotional Empowerment Coach, Author, and Speaker known for helping women alchemise emotional patterns into personal power. She guides women into deeper confidence, clarity, and self-connection through her unique blend of emotional mastery, feminine embodiment, and manifestation work. Tara is the author of You Don’t Have Anxiety, Becoming Her, and The Ocean Is She, and is currently deepening her expertise through formal Tantra Practitioner training. Her mission is to help women remember who they are and consciously create lives that feel aligned, expansive, and unapologetically alive.
