Signals of "Creeped out"

Being "creeped out" is something to pay attention to and analyze. It is likely the brain’s way of getting you to pay more attention to something that could turn out to be a threat. My work with women who had been date-raped revealed that often they had some sense of dis-ease with the person or felt something was a bit ‘off’—and they ignored it or tried to rationalize it away. Estimates are that your brain is capable of receiving and decoding up to 10 million bits of sensory data per second—far more than you are capable of processing at a level of conscious awareness. It tries to get your attention when it picks up something it believes you need to become aware of and process. It is usually wise to avoid dismissing such reactions or responses out of hand. Pay attention even when you cannot specifically define the reason you are experiencing the sensation. Some even have described their reaction as “feeling momentarily cold, almost like having a chill.” The brain picks up millions of data points per second as it scans the background environment, as it were. You could not concentrate on anything if you were trying to decode and understand all those sensory stimuli. There can be many reasons for the brain perceiving that something is ‘off.’ When it does, however, the only way it can get your attention is by surfacing one of the core protective emotions in the hope that you ‘listen up.’