Is This Intuition or Am I Spiraling Again?

On gut feelings, spirals, and the quiet voice that knows

The Second Act is a weekly newsletter packed with obsessively-curated recommendations and ideas—let’s get to it!

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🎥 I saw The Materialists on Saturday with a group of girlfriends, and while it wasn’t groundbreaking, it was a fun, glossy ride, exactly the kind of movie you want for a night out. It leans hard into the chaos of modern dating, ambition, and designer everything, with just enough wit to keep things interesting. Some of the characters felt a little over-the-top, and the plot didn’t always make perfect sense, but we laughed, we gasped, we whispered “he’s a walking red flag” more than once. It’s not a deep movie, but it knows what it is: stylish, messy, and entertaining. Perfect for dissecting over cocktails afterward.

📚 This Time Tomorrow by Emma Straub - This breezy read feels like ‘Thirteen Going on Thirty’ in reverse, Alice wakes up the morning after her 40th birthday back in 1996 as a sixteen-year-old. The do-over gives her the opportunity to repair her relationship with her dad, with plenty of ‘90s nostalgia. New York plays such a pivotal role in the novel that reading it transported me straight back to the Upper West Side.

📺 If you're in the mood for a moody, twisty drama that keeps you guessing, We Were Liars is worth a watch. Based on the bestselling YA novel by E. Lockhart, the show captures the dreamy, unsettling vibe of a privileged family unraveling on their private island, complete with secrets, betrayals, and a slow-burn mystery that hits even harder if you haven’t read the book. And if you have read it? You’ll still find yourself pulled in by the way it brings the story to life, layered with just enough nostalgia and tension to keep you hooked.

I saw a tweet the other day that said, “crazy that my body can’t tell the difference between answering a text and being chased in the woods,” and I haven’t stopped thinking about it since. Because… yes.

The messy inner life of “feeling deeply” in a world that wants certainty. You wake up with a heaviness in your chest. Is it a sign? A gut feeling? Your inner self whispering urgently in code? Or as your therapist gently reminded you last session, is it just the third iced coffee colliding with a very overstimulated nervous system?

I’ve lived that morning. And that afternoon. And, okay, that entire season.

For a long time, I thought anxiety and intuition were the same thing. They both showed up in my body with that same signature: tight chest, racing thoughts, the sinking-stomach kind of knowing that feels profound but, more often than not, is just…unprocessed emotion in disguise.

And because we’re taught to romanticize “trusting your gut,” I assumed every internal no was sacred. Every feeling of retreat was protection. Every spiral? A premonition. Spoiler alert: it wasn’t. Sometimes it was just a nap I didn’t take. Or a story I was telling myself out of fear. Or, let’s be honest, a caffeine crash in pretty lipstick.

Here’s the tricky part: anxiety is convincing. It shows up with a highlight reel of worst-case scenarios and a full supporting cast of imagined reactions. It sounds eerily like intuition. “Something feels off.” “My energy’s weird today.” “I just have a bad feeling.” If you’ve spent any time in survival mode, or grew up reading the emotional weather of a room before speaking, you know that voice. It doesn’t feel like panic. It feels like home.

But real intuition? It's quiet. Non-dramatic. It doesn’t arrive with fanfare. It doesn't need you to panic-text your friend or screenshot the situation for analysis. It simply nudges. A tug on your sleeve. A subtle shift in your body that says, maybe not this.

Anxiety contracts. Intuition expands. One isolates. The other opens. One demands urgency. The other offers stillness.

And yes, sometimes they overlap. Sometimes you won’t know until later which one was speaking. But I’ve learned (slowly, imperfectly) that when I let time pass, when I give the feeling a moment to breathe without immediately acting on it, the truth starts to sort itself out.

When I’m rested and regulated and not mid-spiral? That’s when my real knowing comes through.

There’s no aesthetic for this. No “gut check” filter. Just a pause. A breath. A choice to wait for clarity instead of grabbing un-certainty.

Sometimes, intuition feels like choosing not to reply. Not to react. Not to chase a narrative that doesn’t serve you. Other times, it’s a soft “yes” that doesn’t need explanation.

Not every spiral is a message. Not every discomfort is divine. But under all that noise is a quiet voice trying to guide you home. It might not sound poetic. But it will feel like relief. Like walking away without needing applause. Like saying no without guilt. Like choosing yourself, not because you’re broken, but because you’re finally ready to trust that you’re already whole.

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