Gut Feelings That Actually Saved Someone's Life
Reddit user guywhousesreddit09: 'What was the “Gut Feeling” that you listened too that saved your life?'
We've all heard of intuition or premonitions or "seeing the future," and a lot of us have laughed at it at some point.
It's easy to disregard these images or feelings as a symptom of anxiety about something coming up.
But for some people, by listening to a gut feeling they had, they were able to save someone's life, possibly even their own.
Redditor guywhousesreddit09 asked:
"What was the 'gut feeling' that you listened to that saved your life?"
The Kiddie Pool
"My mom and grandpa were putting out a kiddie pool for my siblings and me in our backyard when we were little."
"My grandpa had set it up, and my mom kept insisting that for some reason, she felt like they should move it to a different spot."
"Thankfully they did, because while we were all playing in the pool, a huge branch from a tree in our yard snapped and came crashing down exactly where the pool had originally been."
- WaitWut7
A Questionable Passer-by
"When I was around 13, I was walking to the bus stop in the morning. A car was going through my neighborhood very slowly, which made alarm bells go off in my head."
"When it passed me, I glanced over my shoulder to keep an eye on it and saw it was doing an immediate U-turn."
"I noped right out and dove through the bushes, crossed a bunch of driveways, and found a neighbor who was washing his car."
"I looked back to where I had been standing. The strange car had stopped, a seriously scary-looking dude had gotten out, and was looking in the bushes."
"I don't know if I would've died exactly, but I would not have had a good time."
- Symnestra
'Final Destination,' Who?
"I was driving uphill behind a flatbed truck carrying I-beams and I envisioned them sliding off the truck and hitting my windshield."
"I changed lanes so I wasn’t behind the truck and two seconds later, the I-beams were sliding off onto the road where my car would’ve been, sparking and gouging the pavement. Terrifying."
"To this day, I won’t stay behind a truck with anything that’s 'strapped down.'"
- Infj-kc
Thank Goodness for That Lock
"In middle school, I was up late one night. My mom and my brother were asleep, and my dad had gone on business. I had let the dog out, and when I went to go get him, I got a bad feeling like someone was out there."
"There wasn't really a reason to feel this way, it was just dark, and I got spooked, so I put the chain lock up on the back door when we got back inside. Back then, we never locked our doors."
"A few minutes later, the dog is drinking by the back door, and he suddenly stops and starts growling (like a low grumble) at the door."
"I was sitting where I could see the dog but not the door. Then I hear the door pull open and the chain lock catch."
"The dog started barking like crazy and I ran upstairs to wake my brother up. He went out and looked around, but no one was there."
"I think the dog's barking scared them away, but I don't know who it was or what would have happened if I hadn't locked the door."
- monaforever
A Mom's Close Encounters
"My grandmother accidentally saved my mom's life by not allowing her to go to a sleepover when she was young. During the night, the father murdered his entire family and would likely have killed my mother had she been there."
"Another amazing coincidence that I'm alive, is when my mother was in high school, she and her best friend were arguing over who was going to take a ride on the back of their guy friends' new motorcycle."
"My mom lost the argument and her friend got on the back of the motorcycle and rode away. She never saw them again because her friend and the guy were both killed in an accident during that ride."
- ekyrt
Wait a Second
"It was very late driving and there were minimal cars on the road, I came up to a red light, and as it turned green, something inside me said, 'Don’t go yet,' and a van blew through their red light."
- imbribecca
"Similar situation, but there were four of us in the car. My friend was driving and our friend in the back yelled to stop the car immediately even though we had a green light we were coming up on. A semi blew through a red light. He later said he felt like it wasn’t even him saying it and he had no idea why he yelled it other than a bad feeling."
- harlow2088
Mother Knows Best
"Not my life but my son's. I was 33 weeks pregnant and I noticed my son wasn't moving as much as usual. I waited a day and nothing changed."
"Despite advice by doctors and family saying I should just stay home and he wasn't moving as much because he was just running out of room to move, I went into the ER and had my son that night due to fetal distress."
"He had his umbilical cord wrapped around his neck eight times and weighed just three pounds. He spent 30 days in the NICU and now is a happy two-year-old."
- Goatintree
An Insistent Friend
"A friend's feeling saved me from my gut."
"I had just finished hosting a meeting (I swear it was productive) and a friend said, 'You don't look so good.'"
"I had just come off a weekend boat diving in the Red Sea and figured I was just tired. My friend said, 'Nah man, I'm taking you to the doctor.'"
"The doctor at our clinic poked me a few times and said, 'Take him to the ER and tell them it's his appendix.'"
"I was in surgery less than 90 minutes later. My surgeon said I was two to three hours from it blowing up. I lived alone and no one would have missed me until the next day."
- ksuwildkat
A Night Walk
"About two years ago, my dad and I loved going on night walks, It was something we’ve always done more or less every night."
"One night, however, as we were about halfway through our daily route, we got to an alleyway. Now normally, I’ve never thought anything of it, but something this night just told me not to walk through, I had a really bad feeling and I urged my dad to just go back home."
"He kept brushing it off and saying I was just scared of the dark and nothing was going to happen. After a couple of minutes of arguing, we finally turned back and walked home."
"Turns out about 20 minutes after we left, there was a completely random attack in that exact alleyway that left a poor young girl stabbed, thankfully not to death, but with life-changing injuries. I still dread to think what would have happened if we didn’t walk back."
- No_Project6675
Definitely Not a Black Bear
"Up in Northern Pennsylvania, I had a gut feeling I needed to turn around and walk out of the woods I was hiking."
"That turned out to be a good idea because I saw the big cat that was tracking me on my way back out."
"I was hiking a stream up around Emlenton, PA, checking it out to see if it's wadeable for fishing. I didn't know y'all had any wild cats around there; I was just worried about black bears."
- abspencer22
Protecting Her Own
"Years ago, I went into my garden at night, after my husband had left for a road trip minutes before, and saw a pair of sneakers in the dark, in the gap between the fence and our house."
"I didn’t think, I just said very loudly, 'What are you doing there?' When he didn’t reply, I shouted, 'GET OUT OF MY GARDEN!'"
"He muttered, 'Yes, ma’am,' and scuttled off. Also not thinking, I picked up a BBQ knife that happened to be right there, went through the house to the front windows, and saw him crouched by my car in the driveway."
"I called the cops, they arrived, and we discovered that someone, probably the same dude, had just broken into our neighbor’s house and stolen a gun."
"The cops gave me a condescending talking-to about the ‘risks’ of confronting a criminal, but I am convinced to this day that my instincts saved me from a life-altering and horrible experience. We humans are animals and one animal knows when another will fight like h**l."
"We got an alarm system after that. And the guy came back several weeks later. I looked up to see him on our porch, about twenty feet from the sidewalk. Called the cops again. They sent a SWAT team this time. And a helicopter."
"They got the guy."
- Fair_Leadership76
Medicinal Negligence
"I was pregnant in the very early weeks (five or six weeks), and started getting these intense pains on the right side of my abdomen. Like so extremely painful that I woke up in the middle of the night and couldn’t make noise or move."
"I went to my doctor the next day, and he said I was being hysterical and it’s completely normal to be in pain when you’re pregnant. He refused to get me to an OB-GYN, and said I could go private if it was such a big deal."
"I went to a private scan, and my pregnancy was ectopic (stuck in my fallopian tube), and my tube had ruptured and I was bleeding internally. I was rushed to the hospital and had surgery to remove my tube that night."
"If I hadn’t booked that scan, I would have died in my sleep that night due to internal bleeding."
""I reported him for negligence."
- Murky_Conclusion4210
Potential Robbery
"A guy asked me for help with bus fare and offered to take me to an ATM. I got a bad feeling and dipped. Then I saw him on the news a week later for robbing somebody at gunpoint."
- BurghFinsFan
A Chillingly Close Call
"My wife was going to go on a road trip with friends down to a bigger city for a concert. She had done this several times before."
"Friends were close friends of ours but for some reason, I felt off about it that one day. I said to her, 'Babe, I don’t know why and you can ignore me if you’d like, but I don’t think you should go. I don’t know why, but I feel like something is going to happen.'"
"She knows I’d never tell her not to do anything she wanted. It was out of the blue and out of character for me. So she decided to stay home and watch movies with me."
"About two hours later after the rest of the crew left, we got a phone call that they had gotten into a severe accident. Two friends were in the hospital and someone from the other vehicle died on the scene. Had she gone along, she would have been sitting in the seat where they had been hit by the other driver and most likely killed."
"Someone, somewhere, somehow was warning me. And I’m glad we both listened to it."
- Sperryxd
Always Stop to Look at the Rainbow
"I was driving along a rough mountain road heading home from work. The mountain pass ends at a lake, and you drive around the lake to meet up with the main road."
"I got to the bottom of the mountain and started down the lake road, and saw this stunning bright rainbow over the lake."
"I had this weird gut feeling and urge to stop and look at it, with the way the sun was shining, it didn’t make sense that there would be a rainbow, but it was mesmerizing. So I stopped and stared at it in awe."
"A couple of seconds later, as soon as I looked back at the road, a massive boulder came barreling down off the cliff above about 20 meters in front of me, hit the road, and smoked all of the concrete barriers as it went into the lake. I 100% would have been killed if I hadn’t stopped."
- Epantz
These accounts gave us absolute chills as we read about other people's close calls.
We never know when our time will be up, so we absolutely have to be careful with the time that we have.
'Something's Not Right Here' Gut Feelings That Have Actually Saved Someone's Life
Why do humans doubt the inner voice?
Or that sickening feeling in the pit of our stomachs.
That's our intuition at play.
Some are more in tune than others, though.
And most of us just act like it's not there.
But when we do listen, when we do take that feeling seriously, it can save lives.
The gut knows.
Redditor IChronoI asked the online community:
"Hey Reddit, When did your 'Somethings not right her' gut Feeling ever save you?"
My gut has never been wrong. Sadly, I never listen, so I'm always wrong.
Being Alive
Giphy"My mom and her entire family were saved from dying from Carbon Monoxide poisoning by her dad. He left for work, got a weird feeling and drove back home. Everyone in the house was unconscious, and he had to drag or carry them all outside one by one. They all survived."
bellrunner
"Hey, deer"
"I used to just drive around country roads when I would feel stressed out or sad as a way to just get away and listen to music. One evening I was driving with my best friend in the car and we're on a gravel road that has a huge hill. We were driving towards the sunset but it was winter and the light was fading fast."
"As the car started down the hill I had this moment where I thought to myself 'my brights should be on' and I flicked them on and at the bottom of this super steep hill stood 6 deer on the road. I slammed on the brakes and the car turned sideways and skidded to a stop like 4 feet from the deer."
"Those stupid deer didn't even move, they just stared into the passenger side of my car and my best friend pointed at them and said 'Hey, deer.' The car was fine, we were fine, and Bambi was all good. I don't drive around like that anymore."
unhiddenninja
On the Beach
"My sister since she was about 5 was always obsessed with Tsunamis and would always ask my dad every night before she went to sleep if there would be a tsunami that night (we lived on a beach)."
"About 5 years later when our family was holidaying in Samoa an earthquake struck at about 6am."
"It was only a dull low rumble but went on for over a minute. Everyone at the resort woke up and went outside for a few minutes then went back to bed. My sister having been obsessed with Tsunamis ran down to look at the water and noticed the sea going out and saved a lot of lives including my own."
"There was about a minute from her noticing till the Tsunami hit. Luckily for us there was a cliff right behind the resort if not alot more people would have been killed."
"So something like a gut feeling 5 years in the making."
MWizzle
Class is in session...
"Not me but my science teacher, when she was a teenager she was standing near some lights at a pedestrian crossing with her and her friend. Very chill but out of nowhere she had this gut feeling that both of them had to move."
"They moved just a couple metres away and the next moment a car had hit another car and had hit one of the street electricity utility poles and it had fell and exploded (minor explosion enough distance away that it didn’t hurt the girls) exactly where they were. One of the wires had also snapped and hit it exactly where they were standing as well."
"They basically were in a scene of car wreckage and snapped wires and electricity explosions and the pole collapse. Just real insane. If the pole had missed them, the wire would have hit them and if not that then most likely the cars."
"That gut feeling of moving away saved both of them. I remember this story so clearly from high school science class because it was such a WTF, pity I only paid attention to these things and not actually science... hehe."
Yanked to Live
Yelling The Goldbergs GIF by ABC NetworkGiphy"I was walking out of a grocery store when I saw this kid about to cross the road. Something came over me and I yanked him back onto the sidewalk. Not even a second later a truck came flying past. He was probably around 7 or 8ish."
incognito_polarbear
This is why I just stay home and order in.
An Ordinary Day
Baseball Referee GIF by StickerGiantGiphy"Few years back I went to uni in Brussels. I would always take the train to get there. One morning I just woke up and didn't feel great at all."
"Keep in mind I have had a horrible flair up of Crohn's for the last weeks. But this felt different. Guess it was my gut. So instead of pushing through it like I did with my Crohn's, I decided to stay home for once. This was the only day out of 2 that I ever stayed home from Uni. That day the terror attack happened on the train that I usually ride to get to Uni."
somuchgold
In the Storm...
"I woke up from a deep sleep at like 2AM during a winter storm, something wasn't right... I immediately went looking for my senior dog and couldn't find her anywhere in the house. My roommates had a tendency to let her out for a walk and forget about her, closing the door."
"I ran to the front of the house and found her laying on the welcome mat, she was hardly breathing and covered in snow... She had been outside alone for at the very least 5 hours. I moved out shortly after."
Cafilkafish
Out for Drinks
"I went out with my best friend on new years last year and were having drinks with her friends when I realized I was out of cigarettes. I left for a few minutes to walk over and grab a pack and ended up talking to a homeless guy for a while, and when I went over to the entrance of the bar she was outside and said something mean to me for no reason and walked off."
"I was confused so I decided it would be good if I took a walk to let her cool off and then figure out what she was upset about. I was going to walk down the street for a bit but something told me to turn left, walking behind the bar and then turning to the side of the bar when I see a girl laying down on the sidewalk and people walking by her."
"As I'm walking over to help I realize it's my friend and she's not very conscious. She was probably drugged while I was getting smokes and who knows what would've happened if I hadn't decided to go that way. Scares the sh*t out of me."
kornfanja666
Eat First
"I was walking to the barbershop, and for some reason, everything just felt off. I ignored the feeling but every step I took just made me feel like something wasn't right, so I decided to just go grab some food and come back. While I was eating I saw police cars and ambulances driving to around where I was before, it turns out there was a murder. Now I always listen to my gut feeling."
beastin01
I Was Right There
cougar Htown GIF by University of HoustonGiphy"I was building a fort in the woods near my house as a kid. Got this eerie feeling that something was wrong so I packed my stuff and made my way home. Next day, on my way to school on the bus, my friend mentioned a cougar his family saw running across the road that was within a couple hundred feet of where I was. It just so happened to be at the same time I was out there."
mc_freak2013
Listen to THAT voice... it knows all!
Do you have any similar experiences? Let us know in the comments below.
You've probably heard intuition described in a number of different ways.
It can be likened to a "gut feeling" or "a little voice in your head" and you've likely been told to listen to it when it speaks.
Why?
Because it can get you out of trouble, most likely.
Intuition has been defined as the ability to understand something immediately, without the need for conscious reasoning, and it's saved people more than once.
People shared their most impactful experiences with their intuition after Redditor throwawaystheway asked the online community:
"What has been your most spine-tingling, bone-chilling, 'I have a bad feeling about this' experience? What happened?"
"I was walking to get groceries..."
"I was walking to get groceries and expecting a message from my gf with a shopping list. Felt a phantom vibration from my phone, stopped for a second to check it and right then a chunk of ice the size of a grapefruit smashed into the street directly in front of me, where my head would have been."
ToxicosisJones
Ice is terrifying – I narrowly missed getting clobbered on the head by a piece of ice once myself.
It freaks you out!
"One week later..."
"Me and my friends were waiting for a bus when a group of guys came along. One asked us for a dollar (which we gave him) and then they just stayed to chat."
"They were perfectly nice, but all 3 of us had a really bad feeling. They asked us if we wanted to come to a party with them, we said oh no thanks, gotta get home."
"One week later, one of the guys was on the front page of the newspaper. He had just been released from prison for stabbing someone, and had done it again that night."
lorealashblonde
Thankfully you listened to your intuition and got out of there!
Terrifying.
"The one that was the most impactful..."
"The one that was the most impactful was the time everything in my body was telling me to go see a sick friend. They’d been diagnosed with cancer, and it wasn’t looking great, but last time we spoke they were getting by. I sat at my desk, gritting my teeth, and then went ‘f*ck it,' and bolted from work."
"In a house full of people, I was the only one with them when they passed."
Teacher_too
Hopefully the fact that you were able to be with them gave you some closure.
"I was solo backpacking..."
"I was solo backpacking within Inyo National Forest, I had just set up camp and was walking beyond this lake and up above the tree line. After walking about a quarter mile up this meadow the hairs on my neck began to stick straight up, instant chills."
"Didn’t know what reason but the gut reaction was enough for me to return to camp. Next morning on the way back to the car a Ranger asks me to be careful, mountain lion sightings in the area. I think I found out why my internal alarm went off."
Trav_Nasty
Mountain lions are terrifying and it's not likely you would have made it out of there alive or without, at the very least, serious injury.
Good thing you listened to your intuition!
"A few years ago..."
"A few years ago a group or friends and I went out clubbing. We went into this one bar, and the moment I stepped in the door I felt a sense of dread. Every cell in my body was telling me, 'Get the hell out of there!' so after about 20 minutes, I convinced my friends that something felt really wrong, so we left and went home.
"The next day there was a news story about the club. There had been a shooting on the street in front of it and the people who had committed the shooting had been inside the club while we were there."
100aliens
Assuming you are in the United States and considering how many mass shootings there are, it's a good thing you got out of there.
"I work in a bar..."
"I work in a bar in Southern California and while I was pouring a beer during the day shift I had this very weird feeling about an earthquake happening. Nothing was shaking or anything... I just got this weird image of everything coming down briefly."
"Seven hours later the shift is over and I'm at home on the couch watching TV (completely forgot about earlier) and WHAM massive earthquake hits and knocks a ton of stuff down in my apartment."
"Creepy to me!"
Grahf88
Earthquakes do not last long but they can be really unsettling!
"When I was 17..."
"When I was 17, I was hanging out with a friend and a decent looking college guy started talking to us."
"We both had this weird fantasy of wanting to date one of the guys from the local college (a decently well known college that caters to music/movie/animation/game design type stuff ---- I eventually married one, its not THAT cool, but I digress...)."
"Anyways, he invited us up to his apartment to watch one of his film projects and we agreed (like idiots). First off, he had NO furniture in his apartment. Just a couple pillows on the floor, and a TV and DVD player... also on the floor."
"The film was really REALLY uncomfortable to watch and I got really sketched out so I told my friend we needed to leave."
"A few days later she told me she hung out with him again. In a very serious tone, he asked her if he could film himself killing her and having sex with her corpse for a project."
"Maybe he wasnt actually serious, but who the f*ck asks that??? She managed to leave and we never did see this guy again. I wish I knew his name to see what he got up to."
StreberinLiebe
This is pretty terrifying and let's just say I'm glad your friend did not end up on an episode of Forensic Files or Dateline.
"He ended up being suspended..."
"I was always uncomfortable around a mutual friend at university. Nothing specific but whenever he was around, the hairs stood up on the back of my neck. He was friendly enough, but always felt off. When there was only a seat left next to him at lunch, I would go eat by myself."
"He gave me a hug once and it was like touching a dead spider, I felt disgusting afterwards. He ended up being suspended from campus due to sexual assault allegations."
manlikerealities
Some people can't help but give off a creepy vibe and if you do get that, run.
"On a random day..."
"On a random day, I don't even remember what I was doing, I suddenly had a very horrible feeling. I immediately thought of my grandfather, but I brushed it off because I sometimes have random bad thoughts for no reason."
"I kid you not, an hour later, my father calls me. He never does that. He goes 'I have bad news' and I just new it was my grandfather. It sounds mean when I say it, but I was relieved to hear he was just in the hospital and not worse. He had an emergency surgery and made it."
"He's still with us today, but that was quite the experience for me, especially considering I wasn't with him and I just knew."
MEsyas
Glad to hear your grandfather survived!
What a relief though this was certainly an unsettling experience.
I guess the moral of the story is always trust your gut.
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Sixth sense, hunch, spidey senses tingling, or gut feeling: no matter what you call it, we all have had that feeling at one point or another. Not everyone is as in tune with that feeling as some, but when we have that feeling it's important to listen to it. It could be life or death.
Science tells us that there's actual physical feelings associated with the gut feeling due to our gut-brain connection. Signals from our brain can actually cause intestinal signals to bubble up. It can come in a moments notice. Sometimes feeling a little like anxiety or even "hearing" a voice in your head telling you something might be off.
Healthline says:
"Research links these flashes of intuition to certain brain processes, such as evaluating and decoding emotional and other nonverbal cues."
We might need to listen to our gut specifically to protect ourselves. It's that intuitive knowledge that keeps humanity alive for centuries.
Antonia Hock, global head of The Ritz-Carlton Leadership Center said:
"Instinct is a powerful data point that can be a treasure trove of untapped generational knowledge in decision making."
Redditors shared their life-saving moments when they listened to their gut and trusted it.
Redditor TheGaySussyBaka asked:
"What's a gut feeling that saved yours or someone else's life?"
Intuition could save a life. Let's read some true stories about gut feelings that made all the difference.
It was worth being late to the party.
"Years ago, my wife and I were driving on the expressway that was under major construction. Traffic had slowed quite a bit and I saw a plume of smoke ahead. As we drew closer, I could see it was the beginning of a Carbeque, but the driver was still in the vehicle."
"I did a death defying move to cross multiple lanes of traffic to pull over, despite my wife's protests about being late to the event we were headed to."
"I approached the car, which was just starting to produce visible fire from the wheel wells and opened the door to the car. The guy was conscious, but in obvious shock and was unresponsive. I had to reach in to unbuckle him and pull him out of the car. Within seconds of me getting him out, the driver's compartment was completely engulfed in flames."
"In that moment, that's what your wife was thinking about?"
"I don't think she had malicious intent. She's just nuts about being everywhere 5 minutes early. She assumed the guy would get out of the car and all would be fine. I didn't get that feeling."
"Tipsy" driving is still drunk driving.
"Do not get into a car with someone who says 'they are just a little tipsy.'"
"The guy who was trying to convince us that he 'was totally fine to drive' didn't die that night but he did have to spend a two years learning to walk again."
"My story isn't as bad as that but I'm pretty sure I saved a friend from getting arrested for drunk driving. She'd been hanging out at my fraternity and had at least a couple drinks. She said she was going to drive to the bar, but I told her I wasn't going to let her and would find someone to drive her. But everybody else had been drinking. I hadn't, but I also didn't have a driver's license at the time (not for nefarious reasons, I just didn't get one until I graduated college)."
"Refusing to let her drive, I told her I would. She got in next to me and even though I hadn't driven in awhile, I drove slowly to the bar. After I pulled in to the spot, I finally noticed that there had been a cop right behind us. Luckily he drove off. But the cops in our college town were notorious jerks and even if she had been below the legal limit, she probably would have been arrested. But she was fine and I drove her back to her apartment after we were done."
"Also later found out that the car I was driving wasn't even hers - it belonged to her sorority sister. So there's a good chance I prevented her a) from getting arrested, b) getting into a bad accident, c) damaging her sorority sister's car or d) all of the above."
"You're really burying the good part."
"You prevented her from possible troubles by driving a stolen car without a license right in front of a cop."
Listen to your parental gut feeling.
"My son has leukemia and is on chemotherapy. He was just...off. Looked paler than usual and something just felt odd. Turns out chemo had obliterated his blood so much it might as well have been water and he would have died within days. Two blood transfusions, five days hospital and two weeks off chemotherapy and he was on the mend."
"I went into traumatic shock and the one thing that pulled me out was a debrief with my doctor, who told me I had just saved my child's life with my maternal instinct and never doubt it. Fast forward a few months and he got an infection and that same odd feeling woke me up. He spent a week in hospital that time."
"Parental instinct is there for a reason. Don't doubt it. When you feel it, it's not like feeling a concern or worry that something might be wrong... it's a deep primal knowing."
"My wife had the same thing happen with our 3rd kid. 3 days old. Something was off for her. She had a feeling, called the pediatrician and tested his blood sugar with her kit since she was a gestational diabetic. It was in the basement. Like the oh f**k basement. Verge of coma basement. Doc had us call 9-11 and they would have life-flighted him to a bigger hospital had the weather not sucked a**. Spent 9 days in the NICU. Now he's a wild 5-year-old boy. She 100% saved his life."
- Fleadip
"When I worked in peds, this was the mantra among the nursing staff. If mom (or dad) thinks something is wrong, something is wrong! You know your kid better than anyone else in the world."
"This is so true! When I had appendicitis, my doctor tried to send me home saying it was the flu. If my mom hadn't insisted something was seriously wrong, I might be dead. It was hours from rupturing when they removed it."
People Share The Most Selfless Thing They've Ever Secretly Done | George Takei’s Oh Myyy
A near miss.
"Scenario- driving myself and 2 coworkers back from lunch. Didn't immediately go when my light was green as I got this weird knot in my stomach like something was gonna go down. Car next to me went forward and got slammed into a brick building and post by a speeding car that went thru his red. Some debris rained on my car but basically was left unscathed. Shook but unscathed."
"My friends make fun of me for this, bc the 'light is green lol' but I've been involved in that type of accident, and am only alive because my dad, who was driving saw it in time to slam the gas and make them only hit the bed of the truck."
The man in the truck.
"This is before cell phones (think beepers). I went out one night and was meeting my bestie half way between my house and hers. I noticed this truck drive by me and he slowed down to a crawl. Another car was coming so he kept going. My spidey senses were triggered though. I saw my best friend and I grabbed her and pulled her into an old shed at an abandoned house. I shut the door quick and told her to be quiet. There was a space so we were able to see this truck coming."
"She is whispering rapidly to me asking what is happening. I told her that I had seen that guy a few minutes before and he made me nervous. He slowly crept down the street, pulled over and got out with a flashlight. That's when we saw the gun. The most terrifying thing, it was only moments, but felt like hours. He finally took off, but I was hesitant to leave yet. We stayed there for about 15-20 minutes and he came back 4 or 5 times."
"Finally we heard our names being called, her older brother and his best friend had come looking because it typically takes 10 minutes to get from my house to hers. I am convinced that she and I would both be dead if it wasn't for that shed and me trusting my spidey senses."
Caught it just in time.
"Was hanging out with my brother who was visiting from a few hours away. We went to one of his highschool friends house to shoot the sh*t."
"My brother's friend had a kid who was literally bouncing off the walls. After one bounce I heard a little scrape behind me. I looked behind me to see the 8 point deer head mounted to the wall just in time for another bounce."
"I snatched that head out of the air just about 3 inches from giving the kid 4 stab wounds to the skull."
"I was at a party my house was hosting back in the day. We had a back area that had a door leading to the backyard, the door swung inwards. Someone was bent over putting their shoe on and I heard someone coming up the stairs to come in. As soon as the handle started turning, I put my hand over the door to stop it coming in. The person putting on their shoe was so shocked because no one else noticed the door opening and their head was right near the handle. Maybe not exactly saving a life, but a solid concussion at least."
"Peacefully riding my motorcycle."
"'I don't think that guy is going to stop for that stop sign. I'll slow down just a little bit so he'd miss me if he didnt.'"
"Guy flys through intersection at 100km/h."
"'God wanted me to live this day, I see.'"
Don't cross just yet.
"This happened like a year ago but I still remember it clearly. I was walking to school and there was one of these roads where there's a little place in the middle for pedestrians to stop for a moment."
"I was waiting not at the pedestrian stop but at the edge of the road. This guy in a car gestured at me to cross the road but my gut started screaming loudly at me to not go. He didn't even have time to roll down his window before the guy behind him crashed right into the back of the first guy's car sending two cars skidding right across the road and over the pedestrian stop thing. Avoided something big there."
- chxaki
"Where I live it's called 'wave someone to their grave.'"
"Right of way is important. It's not 'polite' to give it to someone else, you want to be as predictable as possible in a car. In situations where someone stops and tries to give me right of way, I'll flat out refuse. They usually get frustrated with me because they stopped in the middle of the road for nothing, but that's their fault. I could've just waited the 2 seconds for the car to go by."
"If it's a pedestrian crosswalk it's required by law (I assume in most states) to yield to pedestrians. Even if you in particular would rather wait, many people will stop out of fear of getting a ticket."
"Sounds like it was just a regular road with a pedestrian island. People who give way randomly and trying to be kind, but often cause frustration and delays that would have been avoided if everyone had just followed the rules. The only exception would be politely allowing merging in bumper to bumper traffic."
Maybe not instinct, but good timing.
"Not much intuition but lucky instincts haha."
'I was in the car with my sister (7 and 5 years old, I'm the oldest) while our mom was buying something at the drugstore (we were parked in front of the shop, she usually took like 5 min, take the meds and back). She closed the car but we could still open from the inside."
'So I get a major urge to PEE. Urgent like now. I decide to go to the shop and ask to use the bathroom (we lived in a small town and the people of that shop know me, and in the end I was a 7 yo asking to pee. And It was like a few steps away from the car)."
"Well, so I take my sister, open the door, and when we are like a few steps away, a drunk driver crashed into our car. Destroying it totally. The people from the shop came to see and our mom was in shock, but calmed down when she saw me and my sister in one piece."
"You can imagine, all tears and relief. That much that I wet myself."
- Freyjann
Checking on a friend.
"I felt like I really needed to check on an old lady i sometimes give company to. She was having a heart attack in her house."
"How'd you get in? Were you able to see her from a window or something?"
"She left her front door opened. Like just wide open which she never does."
Decided to stay home.
"In 2015 there was a fire in the Colectiv club in Bucharest, Romania during a rock concert. It was free entry and me and my friend were supposed to go but at the last minute i decided not to. I just don't know why. I called my 2 friends and boyfriend saying I'm not going anymore and decided to meet at my place instead. 27 people died that night. The total number was 64. We lost 3 people we knew very well, it was a disaster."
"So sorry to read that."
"Wow. That's just wow...."
Toddler tantrum.
"Might not have been deadly and might have been a coincidence, but judge for yourself: when I was a kid I loved to go on walks around town with my aunt. One day I absolutely refused to cross the street to pick up some drinks at our usual corner store. Apparently there was a 'cat demon' inside the corner store who would kill us (in my defense I was about eight years old an obsessed with a fairytale/ story where a cat demon sets out to kill a hunter)."
"While we were standing on the sidewalk arguing about corner store demons, a driver lost control of their car and crashed next to the store. Nobody got hurt, but my aunt and I might well have been if we'd just crossed the street without me making a fuss."
"The only time toddler tantrums helped."
A fish almost started a fire.
"I'm not sure if this counts, but when I was younger I had this white betta fish named Dovey, one night I had an extremely vivid dream about waking up the next morning and finding her dead, as well as a very VERY strong urge to wake up! I woke up and went down the hall to check on her. She was lying on the ELECTRICAL SOCKET near the tank!"
"We always kept the tank a few feet to the side of the sockets and never directly in front of them in case some water splashed out, but I guess she jumped out and landed on one of them! I'm not sure if the small amount of water on her would have been enough to start an electrical fire if it got into the socket but safe to say I'm glad I woke up when I did! Also she was alive and had only a minor injury to her side where she landed on the socket."
"OK just wow on that one!!! I've never heard of that kind of connection with a fish before. Glad everyone was okay."
"You heard her commit seppuku in your sleep and your unconscious mind knew she was in danger and woke you up. Also you had probably, consciously or not, observed over days behavior suggesting she was thinking about taking the death leap."
"I don't know honestly, fish usually Leap out of the tank as a desperate attempt to find cleaner waters but since this was a live planted 10 gallon tank I don't think that was the case, I think she may have been startled by a small earthquake or my mom's dog."
Bad Tinder date vibes.
"I had befriended a very troubled girl when I was 18, she was two years younger and had horrible parents, horrible friends, and horrible judgement. She was on tinder (pretending to be 18), and showed me some conversations with a guy in his early 20s that she was planning on meeting. I told her I could not pinpoint why, but he gave me bad vibes. There was no red flags in the convo, but I had a horrible sense of dread about it (beyond the anxiety of her pretending to be an adult on tinder). Her nasty lil friends ended up convincing her I was jealous, so she went on the date anyway, but took some pepper spray I gave her."
"I was 100% correct, he followed her to her car after she cut short the very bad and creepy date, grabbed her, and she pepper sprayed his a**, and drove away. We aren't friends anymore (had to realize at a certain point that I am not a therapist), but I hope she's made better choices since then."
There are a few things you'll need to do to learn how to trust your gut. Part of it is recognizing when your gut is trying to send you signals. Body awareness, emotional awareness and cognitive processing is something that can happen intuitively, but we have to know how to recognize it.
Pay attention to when it is intrinsically emotional or when it might be clouded by bias. Know the difference so you can make choices that make the most sense for the situation.
And practice! Find ways to listen to your body and emotions and put the skills to the test.
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My number one rule in life has always been "trust your gut". Your body and brain know you better than anyone, and are able to warn you when something just isn't right. Your gut is there to warn you- listen to it. Here are a few examples, courtesy of the kind people over at Reddit.
u/IChronoI asked: Hey Reddit, when did your "something's not right here" gut feeling ever save you?
A good save.
I went to hospital with shortness of breath and my heart racing. They did a chest x-ray, blood test for blood clots, ECG, and a few other tests but all came back normal. After observing me overnight everything still looked good, oxygen saturation was perfect, my heart rate was still a bit elevated but nothing too crazy, and it seemed that it was likely leftover symptoms from a bad virus that I'd had a week or so earlier.
The ER doctor asks me how I would feel if they sent me home and I just had a bad feeling about it all. I told him as such and that I had no real basis for it except that I just felt off about it. He said fair enough, let's try one more test and if that comes back negative then we'll send you up to General Medicine and see if they can track something down.
That test was a VQ scan that found despite all other tests showing no results for blood clots, I actually had a whole bunch of them in both lungs. I ended up with a diagnosis of unprovoked bilateral pulmonary embolisms and am on blood thinners for life.
Super grateful both for the bad feeling and the ER doctor who was willing to listen to it!
Stupid deer.
GiphyI used to just drive around country roads when I would feel stressed out or sad as a way to just get away and listen to music. One evening I was driving with my best friend in the car and we're on a gravel road that has a huge hill. We were driving towards the sunset but it was winter and the light was fading fast. As the car started down the hill I had this moment where I thought to myself "my brights should be on" and I flicked them on and at the bottom of this super steep hill stood 6 deer on the road.
I slammed on the brakes and the car turned sideways and skidded to a stop like 4 feet from the deer. Those stupid deer didn't even move, they just stared into the passenger side of my car and my best friend pointed at them and said "hey, deer". The car was fine, we were fine, and Bambi was all good. I don't drive around like that anymore.
Glad the parents listened.
I was learning violin when I was about 10 from an instructor at my local music shop. I got the weirdest feeling from him even though he didn't do anything out of the ordinary. I wanted to vomit every time I looked at him, especially his hands. After 4 lessons I told my parents that I had a terrible feeling about him and I never wanted to go back. Luckily, they listened and didn't make me ever go to him again.
A few years later he was arrested for assaulting multiple of his students. I have no idea how I knew something was off. He never did or said anything but I just felt it.
Poor pup.
I woke up from a deep sleep at like 2AM during a winter storm, something wasn't right... I immediately went looking for my senior dog and couldn't find her anywhere in the house. My roommates had had let her out for a walk and closed door. I ran to the front of the house and found her laying on the welcome mat, she was hardly breathing and covered in snow... She had been outside alone for at the very least 5 hours.Good intuition.
GiphyI was walking out of a grocery store when I saw this kid about to cross the road. Something came over me and I yanked him back onto the sidewalk. Not even a second later a truck came flying past. He was probably around 7 or 8ish.
No more late night strolls.
When I was in college, I lived in a sketchy part of Chicago (Humboldt Park/Logan Square before gentrification).
I liked to take late night strolls, even when I was living in that neighborhood as a 20-year-old woman. Yeah, I know. Pretty dumb of me.
One night, I was feeling stressed out so I embarked on one of my late night strolls.
I was walking along a somewhat busy road. Cars were zooming past me. Pretty normal. I wasn't paying much attention because I was too wrapped up in whatever was stressing me out that night. Suddenly, a chill shot up my spine. Hypervigilance washed over me and I became more alert than I had ever been. Something was wrong. Someone was watching me.
I quickly spotted a car. It was driving in the opposite direction, a little slower than usual. It was too dark for me to see anyone inside the car, and the car was pretty unassuming. But I still knew something was off. They were watching me. I just knew.
The car drove past me and then made a u-turn. Now it was right behind me, creeping along the curb.
Luckily, there was a Walgreens a few blocks ahead. I started walking faster, and the car eventually sped past me and disappeared into a corner. I somehow knew I wasn't safe yet, so I still sprinted to Walgreens.
I told the security guard what happened, and we both went outside. The car was parked up the street, about 50-100 feet away. The security guard was a big guy who looked intimidating. He marched toward the car, and the car immediately backed up, made a u-turn, and then booked it out of there. The security guard called the cops, and they drove me home.
I never took a late night stroll again.
My gut made me more alert, but it was really the security guard who saved my life. I'm positive that if he wasn't there that night, something bad would've happened to me. I wish I could find that security guard to thank him.
A freak accident.
Not me but my science teacher, when she was a teenager she was standing near some lights at a pedestrian crossing with her and her friend. Very chill but out of nowhere she had this gut feeling that both of them had to move.
They moved just a couple metres away and the next moment a car had hit another car and had hit one of the street electricity utility poles and it had fell and exploded (minor explosion enough distance away that it didn't hurt the girls) exactly where they were. One of the wires had also snapped and hit it exactly where they were standing as well.
They basically were in a scene of car wreckage and snapped wires and electricity explosions and the pole collapse. Just real insane. If the pole had missed them, the wire would have hit them and if not that then most likely the cars.
That gut feeling of moving away saved both of them. I remember this story so clearly from high school science class because it was such a WTF, pity I only paid attention to these things and not actually science hehe
That's terrifying.
GiphyMy sister since she was about 5 was always obsessed with Tsunamis and would always ask my dad every night before she went to sleep if there would be a tsunami that night (we lived on a beach)
About 5 years later when our family was holidaying in Samoa an earthquake struck at about 6am. It was only a dull low rumble but went on for over a minute. Everyone at the resort woke up and went outside for a few minutes then went back to bed. My sister having been obsessed with Tsunamis ran down to look at the water and noticed the sea going out and saved a lot of lives including my own.
There was about a minute from her noticing till the Tsunami hit. Luckily for us there was a cliff right behind the resort if not a lot more people would have been killed.
So something like a gut feeling 5 years in the making
That is horrifying.
My mom and her entire family were saved from dying from Carbon Monoxide poisoning by her dad. He left for work, got a weird feeling and drove back home. Everyone in the house was unconscious, and he had to drag or carry them all outside one by one. They all survived.
It could happen to anyone.
I went out with my best friend on new years last year and were having drinks with her friends when I realized I was out of cigarettes. I left for a few minutes to walk over and grab a pack and ended up talking to a homeless guy for a while, and when I went over to the entrance of the bar she was outside and said something mean to me for no reason and walked off. I was confused so I decided it would be good if I took a walk to let her cool off and then figure out what she was upset about.
I was going to walk down the street for a bit but something told me to turn left, walking behind the bar and then turning to the side of the bar when I see a girl laying down on the sidewalk and people walking by her. As I'm walking over to help I realize its my friend and she's not very conscious. She was probably drugged while I was getting smokes and who knows what would've happened if I hadn't decided to go that way!
Scares the sh*t out of me.
Earthquakes are no joke.
GiphyThis also wasn't too bad of a something doesn't feel right, but an ehh it can wait till later in the morning.
November 30, 2018. Me, my husband and our kids drove down to Anchorage, Alaska. (We live in Palmer about an hour away and my husband's work is in Anchorage). We left at 7 am because we had an event at 5 in Wasilla, closer to Palmer but an hour out of Anchorage, so he needed time to drive back out.
The reason me and my kids drove down was because one of my sisters and her family were down and had a hotel with a pool (luxury to most people here). So that day we planned on buying swimsuits for the kids so they can go and swim.
As soon as we make it to my husband's work I contemplated whether I should head to Walmart then or later to buy swimsuits for my kids. I decided on later as I was still tired.
As some of you may know, we had a 7.2 earthquake that morning at 8:29 am. I watched as the trees sitting in front of me swayed back and forth, same with the huge lights in the parking lot. I looked over to watch all surrounding buildings swaying.
Had I headed out when I wanted to I would have been in Walmart with three children under the age of 5 with the shelves flying everywhere. Idk if anyone has seen pictures or videos, but the Fred Meyer Video made my stomach churn as I thought of us being in Walmart at the same time.
Had my husband left at his regular time that day he would have been near one of the larger road destructions.
That's devastating.
Wife called me while I was at work, just to say she was home from her night shift and planning to go to bed.
She had worked night shift for years and never called me just to say she was home and going to bed before. She also sounded weirdly detached on the call. I asked her if she was okay, she said yes — just really sleepy.
I got a weird feeling and told her I was going to leave work and come home. She told me I didn't need to, I said okay...and then I left work and rushed home anyway.
Found a suicide note taped to the garage door.
I got to her in time, rushed her to the ER, and got her the help she needed. A week of inpatient psych, followed by changes to medications and doctors.
This was about five months ago, and she is so much better now.
Always trust your gut.
Not mine, my old 5th grade teacher.
One day she was driving down the freeway on her way to the store, she was in the far left lane, traffic was light. Then she said she heard a voice saying to turn out of the lane, she ignored it and it went on a few more times before she finally gave into it and turned into the very next lane to her left. A few minutes later a car is speeding down the lane she was just in going the opposite direction. She had said she never listen to her gut before and after that day she said she doesn't doubt her gut for a second.
Always use your EpiPen!!!
GiphyAccidentally ate something I'm allergic to at a family get together. Never been one to use my EpiPen immediately (I know, stupid), so I just took a bunch of Benadryl in the hopes it'd be enough to curb the anaphylaxis that was starting. Luckily, it was. After that ordeal, I asked my father to give me a ride home so I could rest. At this point my only symptoms were intense nausea and cramps. Half way home, I get a "sense of impending doom" and immediately say "go to the ER."
He obviously asks why, and I just say "I don't really know, but something's wrong." He protests a bit, but I insist. Sure enough, probably like 30 minutes later I have a horrible relapse reaction, and end up stuck in the ER for roughly 8 hours because of it. Needless to say, never will I ever ignore that "sense of impending doom."
Never trust a white van.
When I was 13, I was walking home from school with my little sister and my best friend. We lived in a extremely safe neighbourhood, where nothing ever happened. While we were walking, I noticed something out of the corner of my eye. It was a white delivery van parked about 100 meters from us. Something about that van irked me and made me feel sick to the stomach. I told my friend and my sister to walk a bit faster.
About 10 minutes later I turn around and the same van is there. At this point my gut is screaming at me to run, so I grab the others and we sprint towards the mall, now that we are off the road, we are safe.
The next day we hear in the news that there has been several cases of vans trying to grab children and kidnap them. Two kids from a nearby school are missing. If I hadn't trusted my gut feeling, the girls and I probably would've been kidnapped.