Have you ever been in a situation where you are 100% sure of what you are doing and why you are doing it, but the guy says that you are overreacting? Perhaps you should learn to trust your feelings.

My fiancé knew exactly what he was going to say to hurt me and unbalance me. Like many others, you sometimes don’t know how to stand up for yourself, and that was the case for me.

One evening at dinner, he startled me with a snide remark about my weight (I was a size 8). He sneered, “You know, the problem with fat people is that they never leave anything on their plate. When you’re done eating, you don’t even have to wash your plate.”

I told him his comment hurt my feelings. He replies, “Jeez, you said you wanted to lose weight. I was trying to help you. I’m going to leave you alone from now on.”

He made me feel guilty, but I knew in my gut it was his attempt to throw me off the track.

Sometimes children grow up with a poor sense of self. And when you don’t trust your intuition, you leave yourself vulnerable.

Growing up, I heard statements like, “You shouldn’t feel that way. You’re overreacting” and “You’re so sensitive, Nancy.” While these statements seemed harmless and insignificant, it was insulting statements like this one that told me my feelings were untrue and taught me to doubt, deny, and satisfy my hurt feelings.

As an adult, I doubted my self-esteem and doubted my ability to understand manipulative and controlling people. I even questioned my gut feelings.

Related: 5 Things You Can Do To Help Repair a Toxic Relationship

Even though my gut feeling told me so, I couldn’t stand up to a friend who treated me so unfairly. I didn’t know how to deal with a complicit co-worker. I struggled to maintain healthy boundaries with my overbearing mother and my sharp-tongued daughter.

I was afraid to stand up to the people I loved because I didn’t want to come across as inconsequential, inconsequential, or ungrateful. I was naive, naive, and confident. I didn’t trust my judgments about men. I rate men (and everyone else) with my impulsive and impressionable feelings.

When I dated a guy, I struggled to figure it out. I blamed myself for my relationship problems (because he told me I was wrong). I moan to my girlfriend, “Do you think he loves me?” “What should I say or do next?” “Do you think he’ll call me again?” “Why did you stop calling me?” And of course, “What did I do wrong?” I made bad choices in the relationship and got my heart broken repeatedly.

I’m used to the accusing, insulting, and embarrassing remarks a guy might hurl at me during an argument.

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He would yell, “That’s not what you said,” or “You heard that wrong,” or “I don’t remember saying that,” or “What’s wrong with you? I was just kidding!” In your reaction” – code: “What’s wrong with you?”

Was I being overly sensitive to his spiteful and wounded remarks, I wondered? Could I have misunderstood what felt like a heavy slap in the face? Am I the one who destroys our relationship as he says I am?

Then I began to ask myself: If I had misunderstood what he said, or if he had not said what I heard him say, why was I hurt so hard inside? Am I too far from reality?

Blink Book introduces the power of “fine chop”. It states that “thin-chopping”—that is, our first unconscious, split-second, knee-jerk reaction—is our most intellectual and subtle observation, the feeling we should trust.

The book explains that you must practice and master the skill of thin-slicing (taking a very thin slice of information and making an accurate prediction or evaluation) in order to instinctively weed out incoming confusing and unimportant data that could lead to a bad decision (for example, my fiancé’s charm and bragging pushed me and his sexy personality to the exclusion of the fact that he was, in fact, a scandalous dirty bag).

Related: 8 Clever Comebacks For Dealing With Rude People

Scum may fool your heart, but it cannot fool your ability to trust your instincts.
When your man says you’re overreacting or your boyfriend tries to put you down, know that the men ignoring, dismissive, or blaming statements are designed to make you doubt your ability to reason and understand a dysfunctional relationship.

Trust your inner knowing.

Don’t let a man or anyone talk you out of your feelings. Subconsciously you know the truth.

Trust your feeling

She suspects he is lying. You didn’t misunderstand what he said.

You are not overreacting to manipulative and disparaging comments made by your man. You correctly interpreted his insulting remarks. You feel he is taking the blame to hide his bad behavior.