Following on from "do you believe in evil" thread - do you believe in gut feelings?

[biscoffandpeanuts]

Following on from the "do you believe in evil" thread. This is my experience, however it's more to do with gut intuitions -

I don't know if I would describe this man as 'evil' but something inside of me didn't feel right whenever I was with him. It was something about his eyes and his general manner, I had a strong, bad gut intuition about him and I'm still not sure to this day whether it was just paranoia of if there was something more to it.

It was around 2 years ago, I met him on a dating site and we dated for around 2 months. Nothing he did or said in particular raised alarm bells but it was just this overwhelming feeling that something wasn't right with him, but I didn't know what it was.

He was nice, we had loads in common, and I was very, very attracted to him, we had immense chemistry but there was just a constant knot in my stomach (not a good one at all, like a sense of impending doom) the full two months I was with him.

I finished it one day as the previous night he has been over for some dinner and we were watching a film. He'd never met my DD but he would come over once she was in bed and leave late at night. This particular night it was about 1 in the morning and we were lying on the sofa and he said I just need to use the toilet (which was upstairs where my little girl was). I thought nothing of it, and then he was about half way up the stairs and I felt this drop in my stomach. And this overwhelming sense of dread and voice saying don't let him up there alone with your DD. So I bolted up after him said I was checking on DD, waited till he went back downstairs and made my excuses then broke up with him over text the next day.

He accepted it and went away quietly so never any issues. But I have never ever had that experience and will probably never figure out what happened. Now when I think of him I get shudders. Very bizarre indeed.

AIBU to think this was my gut instinct keeping me and my daughter safe?

I spent my formative professional years working in scenarios that taught me when to listen to my gut feelings and when to question them. For many years I worked with people convicted of horrible crimes and it weirdly taught me better to assess who was a threat and who wasn't. There was a big mix over about ten years of people who were unconvicted but who had done awful things and people who had been I the papers etc.

I started to recognise the feeling and I've trusted it ever since. I could be sat in front of someone who had committed a serious crime but not feel it and I see that as not feeling the threat to me personally.

It kicked in several times when someones mood changed or they were triggered and more than a few times prompted me to get out of the way before I got hurt (and several times early on when I didn't need it and got a wallop ).

I have never forgotten a scenario where I was working with someone with a serious sexual offence record (all sexual offences are serious but it was a long record ) , fine , this wasnt unusual and the risk assessment was made on certain factors as to whether I could work with him. One report was missing but everything else showed a picture that suggested I would be ok (factoring into my training etc).

When he came on I felt like I had been gut punched. I felt incredibly unsafe , I felt vulnerable and sick with dread. I was very used to working with people with his history and any form of serious crime (I'm not exaggerating my previous session before him had history of kidnap and torture ) so it wasn't that. 15 years ago it was just how my job worked and you got on with it. It wasn't considered unusual. Also my job was to support people to change and I truly believed in that. I still do.

I , for the first time went to my boss after the first session and told him I wasn't prepared to work with him. My boss was brilliant and particularly given that this was very unlike me (I knew the role meant this type of work and had fully accepted it and had been doing it for years) put him on to a male member of staff for the next session.

Fine , except as I went to my car that evening he was standing leaning on it. (No idea how he worked out which was mine). Fortunately we had clocked he would back down on front of a man so my colleague came straight over (thankfully he had happened to leave at the same time...sheer luck or so I thought), the guy wandered off.

Report came through the next day , his profile was completely different due to a screw up at another agency and him lying. He had history of following women home or to their cars and raping / assaulting / stalking them after a first meeting ( could be strangers , could be people he knew through work).

Apparently the fact that I had reacted so strongly on instinct I later learnt had freaked my team out (I was the deputy manager) and my colleague had deliberately left at the same time. Thank god he had.

[quote HelloILoveYou]There is a really good book related to this topic called the Gift of Fear
www.amazon.com/Gift-Fear-Survival-Signals-Violence/dp/0440226198?tag=mumsnetforu03-21[/quote]
I came on to mention this book! Truly fascinating