Why Do We Trust Strangers on the Internet More Than Ourselves?

Your gut may be speaking...but are you listening?

One thing I’ve been putting “Under the Light” lately is this:

Why do we trust strangers on the internet more than ourselves?

Seriously though. If a relationship feels off, a friendship leaves us drained, or someone is giving us that strange feeling, what do we do? We open TikTok, we search Reddit, we text five friends or ask ChatGPT.

We look for someone, ANYONE, to tell us what we are already feeling.

We stopped treating our own experiences as evidence. Sometimes you don’t need the facts. You can just go off your gut, and how you feel about things. I guess it’s about being confident in not needing confirmation…if I feel it, I trust it.

And then being confident enough to make decisions off that. That can be hard to do.

I am guilty of this too. You probably have as well.

Maybe you’ve had a feeling about someone, or a situation and had a subtle sense that something wasn’t quite right.

And then almost immediately, another voice shows up saying, “you’re overreacting”, “you’re being too sensitive”, “you’re imagining things”… so we start gathering opinions.

Looking for proof. Building a case. Trying to convince ourselves that what we felt wasn’t real.

I find that truly interesting.

Because while we’re busy doubting ourselves and searching for evidence, our bodies are doing something remarkable.

Did you know your gut contains roughly 500 million neurons? Yes, 500 million.

Scientists call it the enteric nervous system, and many people refer to it as the body’s “second brain.”

And despite what most of us assume, the conversation between the gut and the brain isn’t one-way. No.

Your body is constantly sending information upward.

In fact, a significant amount of communication through the vagus nerve travels from the body to the brain, not the other way around.

Think about that for a sec.

Your body is paying attention all day long. To tone and nuances, to inconsistencies, stress, and to subtle shifts in behaviour.

To things your conscious mind hasn’t fully processed yet.

It’s collecting information before you’ve formed an opinion about it, and maybe that’s why certain situations feel wrong before we can explain why.

What if your gut feeling isn’t a feeling at all?

What if it’s data? Biological data.

But here’s the part I find most intriguing.

The science isn’t what fascinates me, though it is super fascinating.

Human behaviour does.

Why are we so quick to distrust ourselves?

Why do we assume everyone else has access to information we don’t?

A stranger on TikTok has never met your partner.

Your friend wasn’t in the room.

The podcast host isn’t living your life.

And yet we often trust their interpretation of our experience more than our own!

Maybe that’s because modern life has trained us to seek answers externally.

Everyone is telling us what to think.

Very few people are asking us what we think, or what we feel, what we’ve noticed.

That’s what’s got me putting “Under the Light”.

Our relationship with our own inner knowing.

I don’t think people necessarily struggle with intuition. I think they struggle trusting it and those my friends, are two very different things.

The quiet voice is there, it’s just competing with thousands of louder voices.

Perhaps that’s why so many people struggle and feel disconnected. They’ve become experts at talking over themselves.

I don’t think intuition is some magical gift, we all have it.

But it is the ability to hear what was there all along.

✨

When was the last time you trusted yourself before asking everyone else?