#1
Got up to vomit, puked in the sink. Was going to just rinse it and go to bed, but thought I should turn the light on for some reason.
Good thing I did, sink was full of blood. If I'd gone back to bed that burst esophageal varice would have kept bleeding.
Luckily that bleed proved that my liver was shot and they finally listed me for transplant. 2 years of waiting later I got my liver. In September this year will be my 7th liverversary!
We often don't realize just how hard our body and brain are working to keep us alive. One of the things at play is our gut instinct. It's been that way since the dawn of time.
“Long before we had the ability to rationalize or weigh up pros and cons, our ancestors relied on fast, instinctive responses to threats,” explains psychologist, Smriti Joshi. “Today, we still benefit from that wiring. Gut instinct helps us respond quickly when something feels off, even if we can’t immediately explain why.”
Joshi and other experts say that gut instinct is your brain’s way of processing information quickly and subconsciously to ensure your survival.
“[It’s] processing all the things in the environment; the time of day, how well it’s lit, how well it’s not lit, the pace the person’s walking, for example, the shadows, the tone and a hundred other things," says Joel Pearson, a neuroscientist and psychologist at the University of New South Wales.
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Pearson has been studying intuition for more than 25 years and is the author of a book called The Intuition Toolkit. He says our intuition is hard at work even when we don't realize it. For example, when deciding whether or not to eat at a certain restaurant.
According to the expert, your brain makes predictions based on prior learning, situations you’ve been in, and even movies you’ve watched, along with everything that you’ve been through in your life.
“You’ve been to hundreds of cafes before and your brain’s processed all those things – the temperature, the music, the hairstyles, the coffee machine, the this, the that, how clean the floor is, how clean the windows are – and you just learned that some of those things predict better food and better coffee,” he explains.
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Joshi has a similar explanation. She says intuition is shaped by a combination of biological wiring and life experience.
“We often think of it as a feeling that comes from nowhere, but in reality, it’s your nervous system picking up on subtle cues — changes in facial expression, tone of voice, body language — and matching them to patterns stored from past experiences," the psychologist told Refinery29.com.
When it comes to keeping us out of dangers, Joshi says our brains create shortcuts based on what has felt safe or unsafe for us in the past. "That’s why gut instinct feels so personal: it’s not just general intuition, it’s your intuition, shaped by your own story,” she reveals.
#4
The guy that took it got robbed.
#5
30 minutes later the shop phone rings and it's my mom asking me how quickly I can get to the hospital. I was right. The ambulance had been going to my house to get my brother. He was gone.
#6
I immediately noped out of there and went to my friend's house, as I didn't want to be alone at the time.
When I finally got back to my own house, It had been ransacked. Things had been knocked over, lots of glass had been broken everywhere, and a window was left wide open.
Now I always take that gut feeling more seriously.
Because your gut instinct is unique to you and your own lived experiences, there are times it might lead you astray. For example, those who've suffered past trauma, or those with anxiety or unconscious bias, could find their intuition going into overdrive and sending sirens for for all the wrong reasons. "It’s also possible for gut instinct to misfire when we’re overly stressed or tired,” reveals Joshi.
However, she adds that it is possible to fine-tune your gut instinct. This takes introspection and self-awareness. Joshi suggests asking yourself, "Is this feeling rooted in fear, in pattern recognition, or something else?”
#7
I had a bad feeling about him being there. Almost as if he was waiting for her to come out. At work, he's a creep. He'll follow her, get mad when certain people talk to her and has gone through her phone. She has zero interest on being with him and has told him, but he's still convinced he has a chance.
Anyway I thought I was overreacting so I went home. Within 30 minutes of leaving, I got a strong feeling that I should go back and drive to her car. So I did and when I got to her car, I saw him trying to get in from the drivers side. She was already inside her car and was trying to kick him away from her (but it wasn't working). When he noticed me, he backed off and looked very angry at me. He stayed for a few seconds until he realized I wasn't going to leave so he left. After he left, she explained what had happened. Turns out, he followed her because he wanted a hug and she refused to give one. She was trying to get away, but he kept pulling her back. That I had "saved her life"... Yeah... I can't imagine what would've happened if I didn't show up.
Edit: we didn't call the cops or get him fired. Thing is, he's been harassing her for months. After the first incident, Ive been trying to get her to go to HR and tell them what's going on. Apparently I can go and say something to HR, but they need to have the person that's getting harassed to come speak.
#8
Even some police officers and society/">crime experts advise that we listen to our inner voice. “Gut instinct is a powerful thing and we often hear of women who felt a sense of danger or unease in situations when they were right to listen to their gut and get help,” reveals Maggie Blyth, a temporary chief constable in Britain who has been recognized for was recognised for her work in tackling violence against women and girls.
Blyth says it's important to inform police if something "doesn’t feel quite right” so they can investigate it themselves. “It’s never wasting police time,” she adds.
#9
Wife thought I was being cold towards him (I was definitely not wanting to hang around him and *not* being my usual gregarious self).
Come to find out he had been married before (but never told my wife's best friend), washed out of ROTC for mental *and* physical standards failures. He was also seeing someone on the side during their engagement and their "marriage" lasted less than a year for obvious reasons. Basically his was a dishonest weakling with mental issues (possible psychopathy/sociopathy).
Since then my wife had paid heed to my gut when meeting someone for the first time.
I have been right several times with a few others in my life as well and I always pay heed to my "feelings".
#10
Your intuition is one of the most powerful tools when it comes to self-defence, say the experts at Synergy Martial Arts.
"Your intuition is your body’s natural alarm system, alerting you to potential dangers before your conscious mind even recognizes them," notes the site. "For women, understanding and trusting this instinct can be a crucial factor in avoiding dangerous situations."
#11
#12
The last day of the trip my SO says he is going to take one last spin on it, and I knew something terrible was going to happen.
I told him exactly how I felt and he dismissed me, as he was leaving the house I said "Just promise me that you won't go really fast just because it's the last ride... I don't trust it and I think you will loose control".
Luckily, after he went too fast and lost control it was only his ankle that suffered. Finding him on that trail leaning up against a tree was the single scariest moment of my life. Thank god it was just his ankle.
Synergy's team advises that if you ever find yourself in a situation where you feel uncomfortable or uneasy, it’s essential to pay attention to those feelings.
"Your body and mind are picking up on something that might not be immediately obvious, and trusting that instinct can be the difference between staying safe and encountering danger," they warn, stressing that when it comes to your personal safety, it's okay to excuse yourself from a situation.
"[It's] not an overreaction—it’s a smart and proactive choice," reads the site.
#13
In the end I was convinced to do it by my friends. When I exited the tank there was a mistake (by me and the operator) and I fell and shattered my right leg. I needed surgery and was in plaster for 5 months total.
Now I listen to that feeling.
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#16
Either way, a split-second decision may very well have saved my life.
I'd been hanging out with my bunk mate, trying to put the finishing touches on a campfire story that we were going to tell later on that evening. He was seated on his cot, I was on mine, and we'd positioned a trunk between them as a sort of makeshift table. Notes and sketches on scraps of paper had been arranged in a fairly haphazard manner all around us, and anyone who happened to peer inside would have likely assumed that my friend and I were working toward a very tight deadline... which wouldn't have been far from the truth.
See, the two of us were supposed to be helping the rest of our Boy Scout Troop build an enormous tower out of nothing more than wood and rope. We could already hear everyone else shouting back and forth to each other as they sawed branches apart and dragged fallen trees from the forest, and we knew that it wouldn't be long before someone noticed our absence. I kept my attention half-focused on those sounds as we worked, listening for anyone calling for either me or my friend.
That's probably what triggered my intuition.
With no recognizable prompting whatsoever, my mind was suddenly filled with images of my head being smashed open by a thick log. I could see the scene playing out almost as though it was a memory: The battering ram was going to fall through the back wall of my tent, catch me squarely in the skull, then plow me into the floor before I could even think to react. It seemed like an oddly specific (and unlikely) sequence of events... but after hurriedly shouting to my bunk mate to follow my lead, I moved out of the way nonetheless.
Barely a second had passed before everything played out exactly as I'd imagined: A broad log came tumbling through the tent's rear wall, landing squarely between my cot and my friend's trunk. Our papers went flying, several of our belongings were crushed, and the Scouts who had been transporting the timber came running around to survey the damage. Nobody was hurt, thankfully, and my brain was intact (at least as much as it had been), but I was so shocked by the accuracy of my prediction that I almost convinced myself I could genuinely see the future.
In the end, my friend and I wound up using that near-miss as the basis for our campfire story.
**TL;DR: I was very nearly bonked by a tree.**.
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