Trust Intuition: How to Rely on Your Instincts to Stay Safe

University Chic’s Note: Erin Weed founded the Girls Fight Back program after her sorority sister was murdered in June 2001. Determined to prevent similar tragedies, Erin created Girls Fight Back to educate women about campus security, personal safety, violence protection and self-defense. She now travels the nation giving personal safety seminars and has spoken to over 100,000 women nationwide. The following column is excerpted from her book, Girls Fight Back!

The College Girl’s Guide to Protecting Herself.

Webster’s Dictionary defines intuition as, “the direct knowledge of awareness of something without conscious attention or reasoning.” I like to think of our intuition as our inner grandmother. She is soft-spoken, wise and always has our best interests at heart. Have you ever met a new guy and the instant you shook his hand you immediately knew he was a creep? On the surface he seemed very nice and polite as he said, “Nice to meet you.” But your inner voice kept saying, “This guy is shady.” Your intuition may be picking up on signals of his character and sending you warning signs. One of the most dangerous things women do is force themselves to trust someone their intuition warns them about within the first seconds of meeting them.

Sometimes the messengers of intuition are subtle and other times they are insistent, depending on the situation’s urgency. However it communicates, it is important to validate intuition for what it is—a survival signal sent to protect you from harm. Furthermore, intuition is always in response to something, whether or not you recognize it at the time. Intuition may come across in the following ways:

*A whisper in your head

*Nagging thoughts

*Humor (sometimes dark humor)

*Wonder or Curiosity

*Anxiety

*Doubt

*Hesitation or Suspicion

*Fear

If we listen to intuition, it will help us predict bad situations. If we can predict them, it gives us the recourse to try and prevent bad scenarios from materializing. Some women don’t believe they have the ability to predict violence. But in actuality, violence is just another form of human behavior, an area in which we are all experts.