Are you an Intuitive?

I’m an intuitive. Although the word is commonly used as an adjective to describe traits in someone, it has recently taken on the status of noun, to describe people. To be an intuitive means that you have an abundance of distinct traits that are expressed in your personality that put you into a status that is emotionally different and far more sensitive than many other people. For instance, intuitives pick up energies and emotions of other people. That’s right, we actually feel what other people feel — and sometimes it’s very confusing. I’ve learned to discern as to whether or not what I was feeling is my emotion or someone else’s. I remember getting a massage once and the woman who gave me the massage was very unhappy. I could sense her inner voice cursing me. I sent her love. I felt love, so I knew it was her inner voice, not my own. I also feel other people’s physical pain. For years, I’d call my mother and announce, “Your right hip is hurting again.” She’d always ask how I knew that, as if knowing it each time was a new experience. I’ve learned to pull back from people if they are in extreme pain, whether emotional or physical.

Intuitives know and feel things that others can’t sense. All those emotions that intuitives sense can be among the dead or the living. Another friend, Henry, and I shared a friend, Louise, in common. Louise was suicidal and ultimately took her own life. It was one of those sad, closeted cases of mental illness that was exposed during a divorce. Henry called me after weeks of trying to keep her from acting on suicide and said, “She sent me an email. She killed herself.”

“No, she didn’t,” I said. “She either tried, and failed, or didn’t try and she left.” I could not sense her on the other side. An hour later Henry called to inform me that Louise had been found and indeed, she had tried and failed at her attempt. About two hours later I was able to pick her up on the other side. I called Henry and asked, “Did she pass? She’s talking to me.” Louise was actually in brain surgery when I picked that up. “Why is she dancing and saying your name?” I asked.

“That was our last conversation,” Henry said. “I told her about an exciting new dance company in an attempt to get her excited about her work.” Louise worked as a dancer. Although very sad, this example indicates how intuitives sense whether or not someone is still alive. I do this mostly with people I already know or with third parties in a reading.

An intuitive doesn’t necessarily know why she knows something, but it is often accurate. I’ve known more than one intuitive ‘feel into’ an experience when I described what I thought happened to a missing person. In one such case, I surmised that he was killed by wild game and both highly sensitive intuitives confirmed this as I was speaking. For one person, the hair on her arms raised and she went into a physical response, that appeared to be great fear. For the second, she simply told me she felt it, and pointed her finger towards her solar plexus. I felt nothing. I just ‘knew’. Indeed, once found there were indications that he was killed by a bear.

Many people have the experience of thinking of someone and then they call or text. For the intuitive, this is frequent, possibly daily, and spans much more than friends. I have a friend, who only writes or calls when I am home and available. He tends to write about what I’m thinking. I often know when I’m about to receive a package, when a relative is about to cross over, when something is wrong with someone I love, and if someone is near or in my home space uninvited — even if I am not there. Once I was thinking of an old flame from high school. I couldn’t get him out of my mind. So, I googled him for the first time ever (the internet wasn’t around when I knew him). I got his obituary and it had been posted within the previous month. It wasn’t the only time I knew of a death without really knowing.

In my early years of being an intuitive, I often wondered if I was going crazy, especially when I worked as a mental health therapist. I remember leaving a session with a client who was very anxious, and I felt anxious myself. I’d take the time to ground myself through deep breathing between clients so I could move out of the anxious feeling. But over time, with a very large caseload, I couldn’t get relief from all the difficult emotions. I started working in mental health in 1999, long before intuitives were acknowledged, let alone understood. I was prescribed Xanax for my ‘condition’, subsequently left the field to teach yoga and was ‘cured’. Because intuitives pick up the internal feelings and sometimes thoughts of those around them, being among the mentally ill can be a challenge.

I once did a reading for a woman who was mentally ill. I was doing a fundraiser for a yoga studio and about to wrap up for the day. A woman came over and it was one of those times when I should’ve listened to my own intuition say, ‘don’t do this’ and I didn’t listen. I am sometimes a rebellious teenager with my own guidance. I sat down to do her reading and I got really confused, and very angry as I spoke, and I knew neither of these were mine. The emotions were clouding the reading. After about ten minutes, I apologized and said I couldn’t read for her, refused her money, and kindly left. An hour later I got a phone call from the yoga studio for which I was doing the fundraiser and apparently the woman had banged on the closed door during their function, interrupted the end of their workshop, and begged to pay me for the ten minutes I’d offered her in a reading. I told my bosses to donate the money to the studio.

Intuitives are walking among us, once considered overly-sensitive, a bit of a misfit, or an introvert. Finally, we are getting more and more respect as we learn to use these gifts to help others, remain safe, save lives, and much, much more. No longer is a person simply ‘intuitive’. If she has several traits that mark her as someone who has an inner knowing, she is an intuitive.