I used to think 'trust your gut' meant ignoring everything logical and just leaping, but now I realize my gut was mostly trauma responses dressed up in intuition. Oh god, my "gut" used to be so loud. Turns out it was just panic, ringing and ringing like an unattended alarm. Took me years to even hear my own voice under that din. The worst part was defending those bad decisions, doubling down because I thought I was being BRAVE. Turns out, brave is feeling the fear and doing the dishes anyway, not setting the kitchen on fire.