AIBU: gut instinct

[ShakyMilk]

Thinking about what advice I would give my younger self and one of them would be: go with your gut.
Have you ever been really glad you trusted your gut instinct? AIBU to ask you to tell me about it?

I always assumed that feeling was due to being able to hear footsteps subconsciously even if your conscious mind isn't picking up on them. If there's someone who makes you nervous, your brain can even start to distinguish footfalls and know when that person, specifically, is coming up behind you.

As a species that was both predator and prey, humans have some fine-tuned sensory abilities when it comes to knowing when someone has entered the room and whether that someone is friend, foe, or food.

(Also, thank you to all who wished me well. That was a long time ago. I feel almost awkward for having mentioned it, now. I rather thought many women might have similar stories. Everything seems "normal" when you've lived through it.)

I have only had it once. Never met the guy before and was in a public place with my back to the open door.

Turned out to be a person everyone should have avoided.

Has anyone had that creepy feeling up the neck (heckles rising) when someone walks in the room even though you haven't set eyes on them as you had your back to the door

What's creepy about it? You have other senses than sight you know! When someone walks in the door you heard them, even if you didn't register hearing it.

As I said, the retrospectoscope is an amazing instrument..........

Bertrand - I think you're taking the word 'gut' a bit to literally in the term 'gut instinct'. Nobody actually thinks their stomach is sending messages to them.

I'd say a gut instinct I had about someone but I was totally wrong (well so far so good!). But if I get a creepy vibe from someone I don't wait around to find out. Who knows my instincts may always be wrong.

Younger self, stay in school and bloody focus on school work, not boys, not friends, just grades, The rest will fuck off!

Bertrand - I think you're taking the word 'gut' a bit to literally in the term 'gut instinct'. Nobody actually thinks their stomach is sending messages to them."

No. Of course not. But they are talking utter boloney about "spidy senses" and stuff like that. The sort of people who "know" who at a televised press conference is guilty.........

I am not talking about anything like that at all.

I am talking about people I have met in my life who I have not had a good feeling about. I haven't treated or reacted any differently to them. They are people we have done business with or socialised with. People I have said to dp 'lets not do business with them because I don't trust them'. Or people we have met socially I haven't wanted to meet again. Or people my friends and family have become involved with I have instantly disliked and have turned out to be awful.

I am currently just writing off 30k of business debt from a company I never wanted to work with because I knew the director was lying. I told dp I didn't want to work with the company because I didn't trust the director. He said the same, that I was talking bollocks.

My friend is in a relationship with someone who is a heroin addict. I told her she should be careful with him.

My sister is recovering from thyroid cancer. I told her 3 years ago she should get her thyroid levels checked and something was wrong.

But it doesn't really matter what anyone else thinks. My gut feelings aren't based on prejudices or assumptions. They are probably based on tiny little bits of body language or verbal clues or other subtle bits of information the other person is giving off that some people are more in tune with than others.

I will carry on listening to my 'gut'.

That's just called thinking. It's not instinct. Well, the bits that aren't woo bollocks that is.

I am not sure about the term itself but yes there is a sense you get prior to making a choice sometimes that can make you hesitate and I think it has just been given a phrase or a term and that happens to be gut instinct. I don't think anyone really believes it to be something magical inside of us and clearly it is your brain. It just happens to have that particular teminology.

I have made some bad choices against my better judgement is how I tend to see it. That I knew were risky in some way but something made me decide the risk was minimal and it turns out it wasn't.

I think though there's also the aspect that you remember those you were right about and possibly forget those times when you were wrong.

I once did a (not huge but reasonably sized) survey on "gut instincts" on whether you thought you were having a boy or a girl and how certain you were-after pregnancy.

For people who were totally certain it was about 50% right-as you'd expect.

For people who thought they might know, but really weren't certain, they were about 90% right.

I think this was because they remembered if they were right from a vague feeling, but if it was wrong discounted it.
Interestingly, adding credence to this, a couple of people who'd said they hadn't remembered thinking either way, they'd mentioned it to friend/relative who had said "oh but you told me you suspected it was ".

I read somewhere that put "gut instinct" should never be ignored as it is a part of our brain picking up on something that we can't necessarily articulate but understand that it could be a threat to us.
Our brains are so complex and they are processing so much all the time.that we aren't really aware of that I'm willing believe that. I always listen to.my gut instinct and if something is telling me that situation isn't right then I will try and get out of it as fast as possible.

I always assumed that feeling was due to being able to hear footsteps subconsciously even if your conscious mind isn't picking up on them. If there's someone who makes you nervous, your brain can even start to distinguish footfalls and know when that person, specifically, is coming up behind you

I had no idea who this person was. I had never met this person before. It was a busy public place.

Told dp and we did avoid him. Those that didn't lost an awful lot. Not just financially

Yes, I do believe in it - whatever term someone wants to use.

I've been proven right so many times. Unfortunately sometimes I ignored it and regretted it later. Thankfully it's never led to any dangerous situations; just needing to extricate myself from a couple of toxic friendships.

Oddly, it usually kicks in the strongest when someone is TOO nice, usually in a business sense. As a result, if I've (now) got a choice between someone who is too sugary sweet and someone who might appear a bit more brusk, I'll take the latter. It's always paid off.

I have one 'gut instinct' moment that I will never forget.

When my DS was about 4 months old, I put him down in his cot on his back to sleep (as advised) for the night. He was well and happy when I put him into his cot, he smiled at me and I walked out and shut the door behind me. About five minutes later I had this incredible urge to go back and check on him, despite the fact that I would never normally check on him so soon because it may wake him up.

I opened the door and all was quiet, with no movement like he was asleep, but my instinct made me turn on the light.

He was lying on his back in the cot, silently choking on his own vomit. His face was contorted and his eyes rolling back in his head.

I grabbed him, flung him over my arm, hit him hard on the back and the vomit expelled with great force out of his mouth and across the floor. He took in a couple of huge sucking breaths and then started screaming.

We raced him to the hospital and he had aspirated vomit but was back to normal within a few days. The doctors made it clear that if I hadn't checked on him, he likely would have died, silently choking to death in his cot.

I can still remember the feeling that overcame me and urged me to check on him. It felt like pure instinct. I've never had the feeling before or since.

Onetitwonder - Wow. Glad you trusted it and saved your son.

OneTitWonder my mum tells a similar story about a time we were on holiday and she was relaxing on the beach and she just felt something was wrong. I was drowning, having fallen off a lilo in the sea. My brother was with me but he didn't see it and thought I had gone back to the shore.
I forgot about that until now!

Bertrand, there's actually some evidence for "gut instinct" i.e. listening to your subconscious.

www.newscientist.com/article/dn14615-why-you-should-go-with-your-gut-feeling/

Although like all psychological research it's probably a bit suspect.

My other comment was that women's brains are often overriding their instincts. I.e. "oh he seems harmless, I'm going to ignore the giant alarm bells ringing, I don't want to be rude after all".

There is loads of evidence for it. And its not suspect at all
It's called science, you might try it.

My other comment was that women's brains are often overriding their instincts. I.e. "oh he seems harmless, I'm going to ignore the giant alarm bells ringing, I don't want to be rude after all"

That isn't their "brains overiding their instincts" (where do you think "instinct" comes from if not brains?), its their social conditioning over riding their rational thinking.

OneTitWonder my mum tells a similar story about a time we were on holiday and she was relaxing on the beach and she just felt something was wrong. I was drowning, having fallen off a lilo in the sea. My brother was with me but he didn't see it and thought I had gone back to the shore

All that happened was that your mother realised she didn't know where you were and that she should find you (because you are supposed to know where your children are at dangerous places!) and then after the fact of there actually being a problem confirmation bias made the "instinct" seem like a much bigger thing. Perfectly normal.

Are you saying there's lots of evidence for gut instinct or there isn't? Aren't you trying to say that gut instinct isn't a thing?

Spartacus, no, it's their conscious thinking overriding their subconscious thinking.

I.e., if something feels wrong, listen to your instinct - don't override it by trying to reassure yourself!

And all psychological research is deeply suspect: www.theatlantic.com/science/archive/2016/03/psychologys-replication-crisis-cant-be-wished-away/472272/

Ooh, you found one article, that definitely invalidates billions and billions of hours of scientific research!

FFS.