that "trust your gut" is unreliable when you have anxiety?

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I have severe anxiety, mainly related to death, and have had it my whole life - have had various therapies, medications etc for it and it goes through stages where it's not too bad and stages where it's awful. I constantly see people being told to "trust their gut" when it comes to certain things (like health) - surely that is terrible advice when the person in question has anxiety? Like, when I'm in a bad anxiety phase my "gut" tells me every single symptom I have is cancer. When I'm in a bad anxiety phase and about to travel my "gut" tells me my car or plane will crash. If I trusted my "gut" about my health in particular I would be at the GP at least once a week and I'm not joking. Or like when you read a symptom of a heart attack/sepsis etc is a "feeling of impending doom/feeling like you are going to die". I feel like that every time I have an anxiety attack! Anyone else with anxiety get wound up by the phrase "trust your gut"? My gut has anxiety and is not trustworthy!

Don't trust your gut.

Some people think I'm crazy but I pray as a coping mechanism.

I agree. I spend most days actively trying NOT to trust my gut!

A feeling of impending doom is a well known symptom of anxiety.

It is, but so many times I've been told "better safe than sorry" and I should go to A&E regardless. Which I don't do because I know what my anxiety attacks feel like and I know that they pass.

Me too. My gut can fuck right off tbh, it's a paranoid, neurotic prick.

Yes I agree with you.

When you have anxiety, your gut instinct tells you the worse

Oh totally OP

I have been in treatment for A&D for years, and when anxiety is dominant, I can't listen to my gut, I'd do all sorts of weird stuff!

Totally agree and have said the same before, it's also a really triggering phrase for OCD too - OCD recovery is all about understanding that the physical sensations that come with anxious/OCD thoughts don't make them anymore meaningful/true, they are literally just thoughts. Being told to trust my gut makes me worry my worst OCD thoughts are true. If I'd trusted my gut when my OCD was at its worst I'd have spent all day staring at my oven!

My dad had a stroke and said he felt very calm throughout, almost like he was floating. He couldn’t remember much but he remembered feeling ok and good. My grandfather had a heart attack and also said he felt calm and serene.

This helps me because, if it’s anxiety then I’m not calm, so I know I’m probably ok because if it were serious then I would feel calm instead of anxious.

I have a friend with terrible germ related OCD who had been doing well for years but covid set her right back as all of a sudden everyone was telling her to do what she'd spent years learning NOT to do with constant handwashing.

Can remember another example - was recently freaking out as had breast pain in one breast - no lump, not even much pain, just a kind of ache like I'd pulled a muscle. I knew from previous obsessive googling that breast pain is not normally a sign of breast cancer and I have my own rule advised by my psychiatrist that I don't seek medical help unless a symptom has been present for 3 weeks (unless immediately life threatening obviously). Mentioned to someone and they were all immediately "trust your gut, I knew X person whose only symptom of invasive breast cancer was pain, better safe than sorry".

The pain went a few days later so that was that, if I'd followed that person's advice I'd have gone into a complete anxiety spiral.

I have a friend with terrible germ related OCD who had been doing well for years but covid set her right back as all of a sudden everyone was telling her to do what she'd spent years learning NOT to do with constant handwashing.

Ugh I can imagine how hard that must have been, I remember thinking about this at the time of all the messaging about handwashing and feeling so "lucky" that my OCD has never been germ focused. I hope she's doing a bit better now.

I’m the same getting on a plane. My gut tells me I’m going to die every time and the film final destination doesn’t help because I convince myself it’s a premonition. At least on a plane I can avoid it with whisky, I’m not sure what I would do if it was an anxiety I had to face on a more regular basis.

I agree OP.

I keep reading 'trust your instincts' on MN.

But quite honestly, there seems to be a notably high amount of MNetters who suffer from anxiety, and that can often really cloud their judgement.

Yes yes and yes

Op your friend who struggled with things during covid was exactly the same as me. I had spent years and years telling myself 'you can't expect you and the kids to live in a bubble'. Then lo and behold the world is telling me to live in a bubble. VERY HARD.

Also I always have a sense of impending doom but I will say when I did have sepsis I didn't really! Typical!

That is so true.

I'm saying this as someone who has only recently realized that i have suffered from debilitating anxiety since i was five years old. Or more precisely, I have only gradually learned what 'anxiety' actually means in medical terms, and identified something that I have been living with for over fifty years.

I am fortunate that it hasnt really included health anxiety until recently, but because it is recent, I genuinely don't know whether I should be worried about my healtorand gollow my gut feeling or not - there are so many little health niggles that individually seem trivial, but might be part of a bigger, scarier picture.

It's actually really hard to know when to listen to your gut, isn't it!

I spend a lot of my time trying to ignore my gut when I know deep down that it's really my anxiety spiralling out of control. Ive had general anxiety and social anxiety since I was a teenager which is mostly manageable but I now have terrible health anxiety since having DC. I can normally keep the GAD and social in check and rationalise but the health anxiety tells me I'm incredibly ill or dying about once a month for simple viruses, explainable aches etc. I can't trust my gut.

Trust your gut/trust your intuition is bat shit

Ive only ever seen people believe in such rubbish on here

Its completely mental

I made a post asking for advice about something pretty mundane. Every response agreed I was being reasonable but one poster actually asked me (quite rudely) what I’d have done if they’d all thought I was being unreasonable and would I really change my parenting decision if a group of random people online unanimously agreed that I should. They seemed baffled that, yes, I trusted their judgement over my own instinct because I’ve never been through this before but almost every parent will have been through it at some point. I wonder why these people even use this forum if they don’t believe anyone takes on board what’s said.

I don't have anxiety, and I still think that the MN trope of 'trust your gut' and 'trust your instinct' is a load of old bollocks a lot of the time! It's often advised when the person is being completely illogical, and when what's being proposed is a REALLY bad idea!

I'm in favour of logic and reason over my gut.

I trust my gut when I get flashes of inspiration (‘it’s time to look for another job!’ For example). Otherwise, I actively ignore my first thoughts and feelings. They’re bullshit. They’re usually reactions based on fear, not properly formulated responses.

TBF I trust my gut when it comes to PEOPLE because actually it's rarely wrong there.

But for everything else, no.

On the MN health boards there is way too much of the following sort of exchange:

Clearly anxious OP posts innocuous symptom that could be many things.

Sensible response: this is a very common symptom and is unlikely to be anything serious. If you still have it in 2-3 weeks visit the GP.

MN response: OP I don't want to worry you but my friend's cousin's sister's dog's hairdresser had this exact symptom and she was dead 12 hours later. I wouldn't wait, I would trust your gut.

I think Relationships is the worst topic for it.

State that you think your DH might be having an affair but you're unsure, and guaranteed you'll be told to trust your gut/instinct by loads of posters who don't even ask the OP for any more info.

As a fellow over thinker and catastrophiser, I definitely don't trust my instincts. They've predicted a non existent worst case scenario many times in my life!

However, when I had pre eclampsia and it suddenly started to worsen, it didn't feel like anxiety - I remember saying to the midwife that something felt very very wrong, but I felt quite detached and distant from the feeling that something was horribly wrong. So for me the "impending doom" wasn't like anxiety impending doom!

Also there's a lot of confirmation bias. Like someone saying "I'm so glad I trusted my gut as X innocuous symptom turned out to be life threatening".

But equally for that one person there will be thousands of people with anxiety who also had that "gut" feeling and whose innocuous symptom turned out to be something benign or nothing at all.

Realistically at some point in my life, unless I go in my sleep when I am old, I am pretty likely to get some sort of life threatening illness. When that does happen and it turns out my anxiety for the first time in my life was actually correct, it doesn't mean that my "gut" predicted it, it's just the balance of probabilities.