Experts Say Your Gut Instinct Is Real, Stop Second Guessing It

“My full intuition was ringing,” says Jade*, 33, recounting a traumatic sexual assault she experienced while living in Dublin, Ireland, aged 21. “I was leaving work, and normally I’d never feel unsafe but for whatever reason, when I came out of the store, I was on edge.” Jade called her then-boyfriend, and they spoke as she walked home. Just a few minutes into her journey, a man assaulted her. “A man came behind me and grabbed me around the neck and, oh my god, grabbed me there. I screamed really loudly…Then the man ran. I didn't see his face or anything.” Jade went to the police immediately. Despite CCTV evidence, he wasn’t caught. A year later, a news article outlined the same circumstances with a man attacking a woman in the area, leading Jade to believe this same man was still out there. 

Since that incident, Jade has never ignored her gut instinct. “I'm probably overly cautious, but you never can be too careful,” she adds. “It's a learned reaction.” Women all over the world will relate to Jade’s story and for many, intuition is part of the toolkit they rely on every day to stay safe. 1 in 4 women women have been raped or assaulted in England and Wales. In America, it’s estimated to be 1 in 5. A recent study published by Epowar, a women’s safety organisation, shows that 47% of women in the UK spend money on services and products to keep them safe. For example, that study also found that £420 is spent by the average woman on taxis (rather than taking public transport or walking), and other money and time go to therapy, self defence classes and rape alarms. Women invest in all of these things for good reason, but often when they recount occasions that they “had a bad feeling”, they are called into question. “Are you sure he wasn’t just walking by? How do you know you weren’t being paranoid?” people ask, making women doubt themselves.

Having spoken on BBC London radio numerous times about women’s safety in the city, I’m always asked about instinct. What does it feel like? How do I know when to listen to it? Why don’t some men understand? The first time I was asked this, it struck me as odd: Don’t we all have an innate sensor that kicks in when something feels off? But men typically don’t have the same thought processes or experiences that keep women hypervigilant, I realised. This might be why some of them don’t take the idea of a “bad feeling” seriously — and why I repeatedly need to explain instinct on the radio.

Karen Whybro, a women’s safety consultant, focuses her work on perceptions of safety and how women feel in their communities. Whybro, whose name feels like a clear example of nominative determinism, says, “Because men don't have those experiences, they don't have those same instincts that we do as women”. She adds: “I have to teach men that this is how women feel [because] they genuinely don't know. They don't live the same lives as us. They don't get this constant safety advice.” This isn’t to pit men against women, but the fact is that of crimes against women, the majority are committed by men. One dataset found the figure to be 94.4%. “Women are in tune with their gut instincts because we are taught from a very young age that there is this looming danger outside,” Whybro explains. “We don't get explicitly told it's men that we need to be scared of or that it's male violence, but we learn this.” 

One of Whybro’s main concerns is the marginalisation women experience when they avoid things to make themselves feel safer, even though the responsibility should lie with perpetrators. She says, “The easy thing most of the time is just opting out of being in those spaces.” 

While that doesn’t seem fair, we should listen to our gut instinct because it’s not just some out-of-the-blue feeling. Smriti Joshi, a psychologist for Wysa, says that gut instinct is your brain’s way of processing information quickly and subconsciously and it’s something early humans evolved for protection and survival. “Long before we had the ability to rationalise or weigh up pros and cons, our ancestors relied on fast, instinctive responses to threats,” Joshi says. “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.”

While intuition is a universal, evolutionary trait, how and when it shows up is different for everybody. “It’s shaped by a combination of biological wiring and life experience,” Joshi explains. “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. Over time, your brain creates shortcuts based on what has felt safe or unsafe 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.”

This personal nature of instincts is complex, and partly why they often aren’t trusted. It’s not possible to perfect the art of bad feelings. “They’re not always accurate because it’s based on previous experience,” Joshi says. “It can sometimes be distorted — especially if past trauma, anxiety, or unconscious bias is in the mix. It’s also possible for gut instinct to misfire when we’re overly stressed or tired.” 

A lot of the time, women are also navigating and contending with a culture that has taught them to be compliant. Both Whybro and Joshi agree that because women are regularly undermined or told their safety concerns are exaggerated, they override their instinct in order to seem polite and agreeable. This can mean they never learn to acknowledge, trust and respond to their intuition. “Rebuilding trust in your own instinct is important — it’s an act of self-respect and safety,” Joshi says, “but it’s also helpful to understand where that instinct is coming from. Ask yourself: is this feeling rooted in fear, in pattern recognition, or something else?” Even if that reflection comes later, Joshi says it can help us finetune our gut feelings. 

Yatna Ladwa, 38, who works in healthcare and lives in London, always takes note when her usual instinct of being friendly doesn’t kick in — it’s a sign something is unsettling her, even if she can’t put her finger on why. “I’m a friendly person who will say ‘hi’ if you say ‘hi’,” she says. But when she repeatedly spotted a man staring at her in the gym, her instinct told her to avoid him. “One day I was getting off the train and I spotted him standing at the exit. I kept my gaze down and walked faster. Then I heard someone shouting behind me and it was him. I walked faster to my car — my gut told me to keep walking.” She drove away on edge and fearful, but the interaction left her creeped out and wary of seeing him again at the gym.

Gut instinct isn’t hard evidence of a crime, but that doesn’t mean concerns shouldn’t be reported. Maggie Blyth, temporary chief constable and national policing lead for violence against women and girls in Britain, tells R29, “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.” She urges women to report something “that doesn’t feel quite right” so the police can check it out for themselves. “It’s never wasting police time,” Blyth says, though she acknowledges that trust and confidence need to be rebuilt between civilians and police. “We have been working hard to improve our response to sexual exposure and other non-contact sexual offences,” she says, which includes a new training module focused on non-contact sexual offences (such as sexual harassment, indecent exposure, and unsolicited sexual images). There has been an increase in arrests for these types of crimes, she adds.

So when somebody tells you that your instincts are unfounded or exaggerated, remember that while your gut feelings might not be spot on, they likely have been triggered by something — and that’s worth listening to.