Gut instinct - is it real?

[Marmitelover93]

I am really interested to hear about whether you think gut instinct is real?

If so, what has led to you to believe in it?

In the context of love?
eg.. ‘I think he fancies me’ or he’s a goodun’ / ‘he’s bad news’?
I think it’s millions of little micro calculations we make based on past experiences/ chemistry. But yes, listen to it!

Agree with pp, it's our conscious and subconscious minds compiling a whole lot of evidence and experience and giving us sense of a situation. I so think it's important to listen to and explore what our intuition is telling us.

Yes but with conditions. You need to remember people can suffer mental,health problems..jealousy, anxiety, depression, paranoia etc and this can impact the reliability of their gut instinct. Ie it’s not gut instinct it’s mental illness driving the thought process. If you are not mentally unwell then I think it can be trusted, but if you’ve issues then not so much/

I believe in gut instinct, I ignored it twice and it cost me dear both times.

Trust it.

Your gut instinct is your feelings, your heart, your true response to things. Whether it's right or not isn't the point; we often can never know anyway (with questions like 'Is he trustworthy', 'should I be worried about this' etc, that have outcomes dependent on our decision, so we only get to see one path, without knowing if he would have proven himself to be otherwise, had we made the other decision)

Respecting your gut instinct is really important though. If you try to over-ride what you feel, or correct it, you end up anxious and unhappy, whether your instinct was right or not. You can't be happy if you're going against what your instincts are telling you.

“If you try to over-ride what you feel, or correct it, you end up anxious and unhappy, whether your instinct was right or not. You can't be happy if you're going against what your instincts are telling you.“ I love
this. Yes, this is so true.

There is a reasonable amount of research into type 1 (gut) vs type 2 (more rationalised thinking) eg Thinking Fast And Slow. Both systems have their strengths and weaknesses. Worth reading up about.

There have been very few instances where my 'gut' has been proved wrong. Nothing mystical about it, it's just subconsciously picking up on things that might fly below your conscious radar. We only consciously take in a fraction of the things we see and hear, but all sorts of other things are being taken in at another level, facial expressions, body language, glimpses of things from the corner of our eye, things we don't register that we've heard and so on. All of them sending us messages that can make us feel uneasy without consciously knowing why. Imo it's right to trust it and be cautious unless proved wrong.

Yes, I think so. I think when something’s ‘off’ people giveaway small tells.

Gut is never wrong. Never. When it's wrong, it isn't your gut, but rather your thoughts overlaying it. There's a different feel to both, but rule of thumb is that while your gut feel may be strong and unequivocal, it isn't panicky or frenetic. It is a simple, urgent instruction.

Sometimes it is wrong. Like when a person has had a bad experience with one partner, they might feel that others will put them through the same thing. Jealousy with a new partner (who is actually trustworthy) following an affair by the previous partner. It happens all the time.

We should still listen to it though. Staying with a partner you don't trust doesn't work whether the partner is guilty or not.

That's not gut, though. That's the mind caught in a pattern of fear.

I don't normally get strong gut instincts about people; more so about situations.

I do have a visceral reaction to some people though, the most recent being Liz Truss.

I'm not always right about people though and tend to overlook things in preference for what I want to believe. I saw a quote recently while I was overcoming a breakup and it was so very true for me at that time - One of the hardest things in life, is believing what you know to be true

How do I approach my dd dad who has reduced his maintenance?

My ds has recently left home to go to University. Me exh have agreed to support ds whilst they find their feet so ds will not need to work immediately. We both fully agreed and each contribute the same amount.
Dd is at home still and lives with me spending 2 nights every two weeks with exh Exh messaged to say he would no longer be paying maintenance to me for ds. Fine I expected this and said so. What I didn't expect was for ex to just half his maintenance payments (he only ever paid government amount so 16% of wage for both ds and dd). Our divorce was bitter and he was very money focused. Do I approach him and how without starting another war.

Read ‘Blink’ by Malcolm Gladwell. We are social creatures so the moment we are born we are absorbing and interpreting thousands of social interactions. The gut is really a rapid processing of those cues, the thing that tells us something is ‘off’. I absolutely know when my gut instinct has kicked in. I even know when I’m ignoring it and that I’ll need to take that consequences of doing so. Sometimes you actively want to deny it and will do all manner of things to rationalise it.

No, it's the other way round. Fear is a visceral response. The usual pattern is that we feel fear (or some other feeling) and try to convince ourselves that we're being silly. That's the mind.

We might be scared because there's something to be scared of, or we might be scared because we've been in a similar situation before and the result was scary. That doesn't mean the gut instinct (the fear) is wrong, it just means that we need to remove ourselves from the situation. Not that 'any person' would need to remove themselves, but that we, personally, do, because we've had past experiences that make us respond physically (i.e. with our gut) to that situation.

'Gut instinct' tells us something about ourselves, as individuals. It tells us what we need. It can't tell us about other things (is he having an affair/is this the right job to go for) because it can't know. It's not a magical crystal ball. It's our core response, and if we don't respect it, we won't be happy. Because if you keep seeing a bloke you think might be having an affair, it doesn't really matter if he is or not: it's a relationship that lacks trust, according to your gut.

I think if it's about fear or reluctance in an immediate situation that requires a quick decision (such as getting in someone's car) then yes, it's very real and very trustworthy. If it's about a longer term situation then I wouldn't rely on gut alone, but balance it out with careful logic and reason.

I wouldn't rely on gut alone

Never rely on it, but always listen to it and respect it. It's essentially your heart telling you what it wants.

I believe it's real, but I also think it's extremely difficult to tap into & listen to. Example, several years ago I had a gut feeling something in my life was "off". Couldn't put my finger on it, but I literally had this heavy feeling in my gut. At the time, I'd not long started a new position at work, so put it down to the stress of a new, higher duties job. Turns out my DH was having an affair. So that gut feeling wasn't the new job. It was my gut trying to alert me something wasn't right at home.

Is there a particular situation you're thinking of?

It's quite the opposite in my view. It's your logical mind telling you that what your heart feels might not be justified.

So you think that your gut instinct is your brain?

I do. It's your brain trying to over-ride your heart. It's your brain sensing danger from different sensory signals. It's often called the sixth sense, but is really a combination of all 5 senses coming together to suggest that something isn't safe.

I’m with @watchkeys on this one.

Nobody ever talks about times when their ‘gut’ was wrong, do they? The stories starring ‘gut instinct’, which is never wrong etc., are always told retrospectively. Like when a relationship breaks up: suddenly the injured party decides that when they first met the other person, they ‘had a gut instinct about them’, and that they should have trusted their infallible gut.

Let’s face it, if everyone had an infallible gut instinct, nobody would ever be fooled or swindled or deceived, would they? And yet, that happens all the time. Better to trust to common sense, which can be acquired, than a nebulous ‘gut instinct’.

That’s not to say that you can’t form an accurate view on someone or something without a formal evidence base, but as others have pointed out, that’s something that comes from experience and memories. So you may decide not to get into a minicab because you think that the driver appears to be a bit shifty, from what he says and does. It’s not some miraculous sixth sense though.

Nobody ever talks about times when their ‘gut’ was wrong, do they? The stories starring ‘gut instinct’, which is never wrong etc., are always told retrospectively. Like when a relationship breaks up: suddenly the injured party decides that when they first met the other person, they ‘had a gut instinct about them’, and that they should have trusted their infallible gut.
And this is precisely my argument that it's your brain. When you fall for someone, you don't want to see anything negative. Your brain is screaming at you, but you're in love! (the heart/emotions).

Gut instinct is the rational brain and the other side of thinking is the emotive brain.