Inner Work With MaryAnn Walker: Life Coach for Empaths, Highly Sensitive People & People Pleasers

The Truth About That "Bad Feeling" You Just Can't Shake

• MaryAnn Walker • Episode 161

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Here's the truth about that "bad feeling" you can't shake.. you know.. the one you had when you spiraled over that text, replayed a conversation 100 times, or felt a knot in your stomach and wondered—Is this my intuition warning me… or just fear playing tricks on me? 

Today you’ll learn how to finally tell the difference between your inner wisdom and your old survival patterns—so you can stop second-guessing yourself and start building real trust with your own intuition.

What You’ll Learn in This Episode:

  • Why many highly sensitive people mistake fear for intuition—and what to do about it
  • How past trauma creates "false alarms" that feel very real
  • The physical differences between fear and intuition in your body
  • Why intuition feels calm and expansive—while fear feels tight and urgent
  • How fear often disguises itself as logic (“I’m just being realistic…”)
  • 5 practical tools to help you tell the difference between fear and intuition:
    • The 10-second body check
    • The 24–48 hour time test
    • The “Best Friend” perspective shift
    • Journaling to connect with your intuition
    • The worst-case scenario exercise
  • How to know when it’s a true intuitive nudge vs. emotional reactivity

Challenge for the Week:

Choose a current situation where you're feeling uncertain or emotionally activated.
Apply the 10-second body check and ask:
💭 “If I say yes to this, how does my body feel?”
💭 “If I say no, what shifts inside me?”


Then journal using the prompt:
🖊️ What does my intuition have to say about this?
Let your body—not your fear—lead the way.

Work With Me:

If you're ready to stop living in your head and start living in alignment with your inner knowing, I’d love to support you.


My coaching packages are designed for those who want to reclaim their energy, trust their intuition, and create balance in relationships.

✨ Curious? email me at maryann@maryannwalker.life and lets talk! 

Don’t Forget to Subscribe:

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Links Mentioned in This Episode:

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Have you ever felt a pit in your stomach and wondered, is this my intuition warning me, or just my fear Trying to protect me? If you have wrestled with that question, you are not alone. When you can't trust yourself, you end up second guessing your decisions, doubting your feelings, or handing your power away. And the truth is that many of us were never taught how to trust ourselves. I remember going to a cacao ceremony with a very intuitive friend of mine, and at one point during the ceremony, she reached out and she touched my arm, and it was very nice. I felt a lot of affection in that touch. But after the ceremony, when we got to talking, then she said, well, when I touched you, I received the impression that we are not friends. And I was shocked because I had invited her. And I thought that we were friends, I invited her because I thought we were friends. So once I got over my shock. I could tell that she was really spiraling, even though in this moment we were really enjoying our time together. Then her insecurities about the time between our hangouts was feeding her fear about the relationship, which had her wondering if she was too much, too little or said the wrong thing. She was convinced that this was her intuition speaking, when really it was her fear. Insecurity. And I'm so glad that she said something so that I could speak up and kind of set the record straight because that wasn't how I was feeling at all. And while it can be really easy to see in other people when they're allowing fear to drive the train, then I wanna remind you that this is something that we all experience from time to time. We've all done this before. So think about that time when the other person didn't respond to your text right away, or maybe they didn't respond at all and you assumed that they didn't like you anymore. Or what about that time when you were at that party and then afterwards you kept replaying every single word in every exchange at that party, living in the insecurity around"I don't know if they're ever gonna call me again. I think I might have blown it," but these stories may not be true. So if you've ever sat there wondering whether that uncomfortable feeling that you're having is a warning sign, or if it's just an old fear playing tricks on you, then this episode is for you. Now, I want you to know also as we're talking about this fear, I'm not talking about those times when you are seriously in danger, okay? I'm talking about those times when we're experiencing a fear response, even when we're safe. Okay? There's a big difference there. So first, let's talk a little bit about understanding fear versus intuition. Fear comes from past experiences, trauma or conditioning. For example, you felt abandoned once before. So now when somebody doesn't text back right away, you immediately fear that you're being abandoned all over again. Or maybe after your relationship with your hypercritical ex, then even gentle feedback during your work performance review, it can feel like a personal attack. Or maybe because your mother-in-law often criticized your parenting, then you find yourself overreacting and feeling extremely defensive when a friend shares some well-meaning advice for something that really worked well for them. Fear is often loud and anxious, and it can often come with a big sense of urgency. Okay. The volume is usually attached to that level of urgency, and it also fills your mind with what ifs. So like, what if they don't like me? What if I lose my job? What if I say the wrong thing? What if they leave me? You probably have a lot of story around your fear. A story with the volume turned all the way up. You're thinking it's happening again, or you're thinking, well, I know it's eventually going to happen, and so you keep replaying that in your mind. So notice what's happening in your mind when you're experiencing fear, and also notice what's happening for you in your body. In the body, then fear feels tight. It can feel panicky and constrictive, and you may feel very anxious and have a hard time sitting still. Or maybe your body is sitting still, but your mind is still really racing and having a hard time being still and quiet internally. It can feel so loud and so intense at times that oftentimes we can actually mistake it for intuition, but intuition is gonna feel a bit different. Intuition is softer. It's more subtle. It is slow, quiet, and steady. It quiets the mind rather than overstimulating it. It doesn't force urgency, but instead then it's kind of just a deep calm knowing. In fact, you might even find that instead of feeling panicked by your intuition instead, you're almost curious about it. Curious about that idea that just came to you that you hadn't really considered before, but when you hear it, when it comes to your mind, you're almost kind of neutral about it because it's opening you up to possibility. You're thinking, wow, I've never considered that before. Could that possibly be true? How interesting! It shifts it towards that open curiosity rather than closing you off. When you're experiencing that fear response, so when you're experiencing intuition, you're feeling at peace, you have a clear head, you feel open rather than closed like you do with fear. It's a deep calm knowing, not a frantic urgency. In the body intuition, it feels open, clearheaded, and expansive. Now, some people might say, well, but intuition warns me too, right? So fear often is a warning sign. Intuition can also be a warning sign, but the intuitive warnings feel a little bit different. When it's an intuitive warning, it can feel more like a gentle tap on the shoulder rather than an emotional earthquake. So it might be a gentle, it's time to buckle up, or maybe you're thinking something like, I think it might be time to start looking for a new job. Or maybe, yeah, it might be time for a change. So notice that each of those thoughts, they're a bit more expansive, they move you forward rather than keeping you stuck in the moment. Intuitive nudges. Then they offer more expansive paths rather than trapping you in those old fear cycles and creating resistance around your current path. You might even notice that sometimes then fear disguises itself as logic. You might be thinking, well, I'm just being realistic, or of course this is true because I can see all of the evidence. But remember that your mind is constantly going to be looking for evidence that whatever it is that you're thinking about is true. And that means sometimes it ignores the things that seem obvious to everybody else because it's looking for all of the things to back up what it is that you are thinking and thinking that that is true, right? It wants to support your thought process. So remember my friend from that ceremony in my mind, then inviting her to this event, picking her up, bringing her with me, choosing her over others to attend this event with me was ample evidence to me that we were friends, that she was chosen. But because she had a different expectation in the relationship around how frequently we should be spending time together or how frequently we should be talking, then her fear was focused on the gaps rather than being focused on the quality time together and the intention behind dedicating time for us to spend together. Intuition looks at the whole picture, not a selected narrative. In fact, there might not be any story at all when it's an intuitive knowing. It's just a feeling. And so sometimes this feeling, it might even feel illogical, but it also feels deeply, right, like a new idea that you know you didn't come up with on your own. One other way to think about this is to just imagine yourself going to a haunted house. Now, we've all been to these haunted houses. Some of us love them, some of us hate'em. For me, it depends on the day, but it can be really interesting attending these haunted houses because there's basically two kinds of people that attend them. There's the people who attend and they scream through the whole thing because they just know that somebody's gonna jump out at any moment. And so they go through the haunted house reacting through their fear response. And then there's the other kind of people that show up to these where they do actually know that somebody is going to be jumping out around any corner. So when somebody does jump out, they're actually super chill about it. They might even wave and be like, oh, hey, how's it going? And it almost diminishes the experience because we're wanting to go in and be scared. So it can be very interesting to see the difference between someone who knows they're gonna jump out, so they're constantly in fear, versus someone who actually does know that somebody's going to jump out, and so they're able to just respond accordingly rather than react emotionally. And acting versus reacting is the difference between a fear response and a clear response. In fact, that can be one way to really think about this is, am I reacting through fear or am I feeling clear? They're very, very different. One of the main reasons why people have a hard time tuning into their intuition is because of past pain. For example, maybe they experience hurt or pain in a relationship. So now then their brain essentially wants to say, you should listen to me instead of to your heart. Your heart got hurt because you weren't listening to me. So stop listening to your instincts. Stop listening to your intuition and listen to me instead, and then you'll never experience pain again. Now, I wanna make it clear that just because you have experienced pain, it doesn't mean that you don't have access to your own inner knowing. Things can change, people can change. Life happens. It's part of the human experience. So when you have experienced pain, don't make it mean that something's wrong with you. This is part of the human experience and we're all learning and evolving together, and sometimes having those experiences where we have been hurt, it can actually increase our intuition and our personal awareness. I get it. That pain can be loud, so loud at times that it can be really hard to really hear that quiet knowing, but it doesn't mean that you should no longer trust yourself. So if you're hurting and if you're unsure how to trust yourself, again, working with a coach can really help. So come and work with me and let me remind you how powerful you truly are. We can look at those specific examples of the events that have occurred in your life and reset your nervous system around them, because oftentimes that fear does keep us stuck in the past, and then you can move forward with more clarity. Getting one-on-one support is honestly the most ideal. But until then, I wanna just kind of share a few practical things that you can do right now to help you to distinguish between your fear and your intuition. So the first tool I wanna offer you is the ten second body check. Just take a little minute to check into your body, see how your body feels and what's coming up for you. Remember that fear tightens and intuition expands. Practice taking the time to identify how both fear and intuition feel in your body. It's different for everybody, so take some time to dedicate to that. In fact, you might even wanna take some time in your meditation to just sit with what does fear feel like for me, and what does intuition feel like for me? And note the differences. Tool number two is the time test. Fear tends to get louder and more chaotic and more frantic the more you sit with it. Fear wants to scream at you and show you all of the ways and all of the reasons that you are not safe right now. It can serve a purpose when you're in actual danger. Fear can help us to get ourselves to safety, but today we're talking about when we're not in actual danger, but we're just experiencing a perceived danger, and that perception of there being danger or a potential danger is keeping us stuck. So fear over time gets louder and more intense the more you sit with it. Intuition, on the other hand, it stays steady, and it may even become even clearer over time. So if you're worried that a friend doesn't like you anymore and your fear is coming in, intuition may resolve that fear over time by reminding you of all the ways that you and your friend have connected in recent months. It quiets the fear over time and it brings peace and a deep inner knowing that everything is going to be okay because you're choosing to act rather than react emotionally. So if after 24 to 48 hours, just kind of notice, okay, do I feel more frantic around this? Am I experiencing a fear response or am I feeling more clear and more sure? That may be your intuition stepping in, right? Tip number three is the best friend question. Take some time to really imagine that your best friend is facing the exact same situation. What would you tell them? Sometimes having somebody outside of us, like a friend or a coach, can help us to see our situation more clearly when we have become hyper-focused on the singular mole hill that we have managed to turn into our own personal mountain. So love yourself enough to step back and look at the whole picture. Asking the question, what would I tell a friend in the same situation helps us to step out of that fight, flight, or freeze response or that fear response, and step into a clear response. Remember, ask yourself, am I experiencing a fear response or a clear response? Fear clouds, judgment and intuition is clear. So if you find yourself feeling more confused instead of less confused over time, you may be experiencing that fear response. All right. Tip number four is journaling. Journal to connect in with your intuition. So right at the top of your page, what does my intuition have to say about this? And then take a deep breath and then write freely without any judgment. You might be very surprised what comes up for you. And then also kind of notice are my thoughts as I'm journaling on this, are they calm and grounded? If so, that's probably your intuition speaking, or are they frantic and catastrophic? Then that's your fear speaking. So just kind of notice and observe what shows up for you in your journaling. And to be honest, sometimes in that fear does cloud our intuition. So sometimes it can be helpful to just journal on the fear and what it is you're so afraid of. Then take a break and come back and look at it and see if you can see things a little bit more clearly. It can be very, very helpful to just set a timer, write out all the frantic thoughts. And then once your mind is clear, ask your intuition to speak. So you can actually look at your journaling that you did before through the fear, and then come back through the lens of intuition and kind of argue with your fear, right? Reassure yourself that, okay, well that's not the whole picture. I can see that there's some things coming up here. You can poke holes in the story that your fear wants to write for you Now in closing, I just wanna share a few journal prompts that can help you to deepen your intuition. So the first prompt is, what does intuition feel like in my body? Am I clear on this or am I feeling fear around this? What lesson is the fear here to teach me? Do I need to get myself to safety, or is this just my nervous system wanting me to believe that I'm in danger when I'm not? One thing that can be really helpful around this is asking yourself two questions. Ask yourself, am I safe? And then ask yourself, do I feel safe? If you're not safe, take action. Get yourself to safety. But sometimes you are safe. Nobody's barging in. You're completely safe. Nobody's trying to attack you in this moment, but your nervous system doesn't feel safe. Addressing the actual fear versus the nervous system reaction to a imaginary fear is gonna be approached very, very differently. So acknowledging that the fear is unwarranted can really help to bring the prefrontal cortex back online so that you can act rather than react through that unwarranted fear. A few additional questions that you can journal on is, if I weren't afraid, what would I do next? Or if you are clearing out that fear, then just ask yourself, okay, well, if I were no longer afraid, What would I do next? And again, this activates your clear response. It brings the prefrontal cortex back online. It can help you to step into your heart space, which is where that intuitive knowing is. Another question is, okay, well, where in my life am I currently feeling an intuitive nudge? Am I fighting my intuition or am I working in alignment with my intuition? What action do I want to take right now that is in alignment with my intuition and who I am? It's reminding you what's in your value system and what's most important to you, so listen to those voices. Just to recap, fear is urgent, anxious, and constricting. Intuition is calm, steady, and expansive. Fear is in the head space with all those busy thoughts, whereas intuition lives in the heart space. And doing those little things, like dedicating time to meditation, can really help you to settle into that heart space and gain more clarity. Okay? That's one of the best things that you can do for your intuition is take time to meditate even if it's just for five minutes a day, and then to slowly increase it over time. Meditation can be huge for increasing your own personal intuition. So your challenge for this week is to just pick one tip from this episode and apply it. Maybe you want to journal on it and just kind of see what it is that you notice and what's coming up for you. I would absolutely love to hear what's coming up for you. I would love to hear what things you have noticed around your fear and your intuition. So send me a message, find me on social media, whatever, and share more of your personal experience. I would love to hear it. All right, well, I hope that you have a wonderful week and let's talk soon. Bye now.