What Are Gut Feelings & How Can You Know When To Trust Them?

Our gut feelings or instincts are similar to our intuition, though often a gut feeling will involve some sort of physical feeling as well—which isn't always the case with intuition.

From a physiological perspective, neuroscientist and author of The Source Tara Swart, M.D., Ph.D., says, "Your gut feelings are a combination of your gut bacteria communicating directly to your brain via chemical messengers in the blood (cytokine transmission1) and the gut neurons connection to the limbic (emotional and intuitive) part of the brain."

There's a reason it's called a "gut" feeling. That's where you'll probably feel it! According to Swart, "There is often literally a visceral sensation in the gut area—like butterflies in your stomach or just a deep feeling at your core."

However, for some people, she says, "This can be felt more around the heart or throughout the body." This intuitive hit can also cause your hairs to stand on end or goose bumps to form, for example.

From an evolutionary perspective, these sorts of extrasensory perceptions may actually have an advantage. Our ability to pick up on a potentially threatening or dangerous situation is certainly a helpful skill, and it's not uncommon to get that sinking feeling when you feel afraid.

Have you ever had a nagging feeling you were getting sick or something was off with your body, and it turned out to be true? We know our bodies better than anyone else and can often pick up on subtle changes and imbalances.

Are you feeling the urge to start a new career or move across the country? Sometimes our intuition knows what's right for us before our conscious mind does.

So, are gut feelings foolproof? Unfortunately, no, it's not that simple.

But as you start to listen to your gut and intuition more closely, you'll be able to better distinguish between what's real and what's not.

"You can't remember everything you have experienced in life, but you do store all this wisdom," Swart explains. "Gut feelings are pattern recognition systems designed to keep you safe and well, but sometimes they can hold you back from thriving based on old fears."

Allan echoes this point, telling mbg, "The main danger of giving free rein to your gut feelings is you could be projecting."

She offers this example: Say you were cheated on in the past and you're convinced your newest partner is a cheater, too. "You might be right—but it could also be projection from the previous trauma that you haven't processed, and you're just slapping it on the next person that comes."

Or, alternatively, you could be projecting your fantasy or idealization onto someone you're just meeting because you really want to find love. What you think is your intuition telling you "They're the one" could just be another projection.

With that in mind, pairing your gut with the logical mind or getting some outside perspective from a friend can help.

If you're someone who deals with anxiety, distinguishing between anxious fears and intuition may be a challenge.

But as Allan previously clarified for mbg, "Intuition comes from a calm and mindful state that is not emotional and is therefore objective to the energy or messages that come through [...] Anxiety is a screaming, vibrating, unbalanced force; it sends people into a state where they have a racing heart and jangled nerves."