Sometimes wild thoughts take hold based purely on instinct. It’s your gut telling you something (unpleasant) is looming.

What do you do when your gut is screaming beware?

I listen.

And so commences an terminable internal monologue that deprives sleep and threatens sanity, until I grab unpleasant question mark by the tail and either rule it out, or deal with the consequences.

The gut is like an internal alarm system. When it goes off it’s trying to tell you something. Unfortunately, it’s long been my faithful personal radar, picking up on vibes and warning me of potential dangers.

When I was younger, it was devastatingly handy at outing rogue boyfriends and mean girls.

These days, it works for complex family ties and the career, in cahoots with the wisdom and ‘I’ve seen it all before’ nonchalance (or is it disappointment?) that comes with age.

Regardless, our instincts are a primal, intuitive sixth sense that has been honed over millennia of human evolution. According to research done in 2022, the quality of someone’s gut instincts may depend on their overall emotional intelligence (EI). And by learning to increase our EI, we may therefore strengthen our intuitive decision-making.

Gut feelings can manifest in different forms: a sense of unease, a persistent thought that something is amiss, or even physical symptoms like a tightening or drop in the stomach. This happens when I sense something really dire is afoot.

While body and mind are interconnected, and your gut feelings are often a reflection of this deep connection, it’s important to balance gut feelings with rational thought. This bit, I’m not so great at!

You need logical analysis and research to confirm your feelings.

And if that fails, suck it up and confront someone with what your gut is telling you, and see if you’re right!