Everyone has intuitive ability to one degree or another. Deciding if your feelings or sudden knowledge is from intuition, a gut feeling, a psychic premonition, or an overactive imagination is not always easy to determine.
The fight or flight response you experience is hardwired in your DNA to keep you safe. The response is physical too. Your breathing becomes shallow, your heart rate increases, your pupils dilate, you may get a panicky feeling, and you become much more aware of sights and sounds around you. The need to “fly away” or run is your body’s way of saying: “Danger! Danger! Let’s get out of here now!” Fight, on the other hand, means you want closure for the issue at hand and you are willing to stay engaged in the situation to resolve it.
Can I Trust a Gut Feeling?
Should you trust your intuitive gut feelings? The answer should always be YES. As human beings, we tend to second guess ourselves and overthink what we are feeling at any given moment. However, what we don’t realize is our senses take in a lot more information than we realize, which means our feelings can have greater accuracy than our thoughts.
One of the best ways to determine whether your gut feeling is on target is to decide whether or not you are having a physical reaction. What are you feeling right now? If it’s a good feeling, you will experience a lightness of heart and excitement. If it’s a bad feeling your stomach may feel a little sour or jumpy, and you may experience an unexplained heaviness across your shoulders.
Isn’t a Gut Feeling and Intuition the Same Thing?
Yes and no. While the two are intertwined, one is physical and the other is cerebral, says Aletheia Luna, owner and writer at Lonerwolf.com, “gut instinct is your primal wisdom. Intuition is your spiritual wisdom. Intuition is very cerebral – it is a calm and clear sense of knowing. On the other hand, gut instinct is very visceral and physical – you feel it in your body.”
“The only real valuable thing is intuition.” – Albert Einstein
When I was an investigative reporter, I listened to my gut feelings – always. Those feelings were accurate and kept me out of danger.
Luna says there are seven gut instincts you should never ignore:
- I’m in danger
- They’re in danger
- This isn’t the right choice
- I need help
- I need to help them
- Something feels off in my body
Intuition and the Empath
Being intuitive is not just a skill you develop over time; it may also be a product of your gene composition. A 1997 University of Cambridge study of 90,000 people discovered that women could look into a person’s eyes and determine their thoughts and feelings due to “genetic variants on chromosome 3, while men’s ability to do the same was not associated with the same genes.” I always marveled at my dad’s ability to look into a person’s eyes and know immediately if that person was worth his time. I believe the skill was one of the reasons he was such a successful salesman.
Intuitive people can be skilled empaths too. There are three types of empaths, according psychiatrist Judith Orloff, MD: physical, emotional, and intuitive.
Physical empaths pick up on others on the physical level and may even feel another person’s physical symptoms themselves. For instance, when I provide readings to people about a friend or relative who has passed on, I may feel the sensation of the individual’s manner of death. The feeling helps me verify that I am communicating with a specific person that has passed away.
Emotional empaths pick up on other people’s feelings. This can be particularly tough to handle, as you never know if the feelings are yours or someone else’s.
Intuitive empaths, on the other hand, are more perceptive and have an ability to “see” things on a different level. Intuitive empaths may have psychic ability, are skilled at telepathy, can talk to plants and animals, perceive information from dreams, and understand the difference between gut feelings and mental chatter. Edgar Cayce was a famous medical intuitive who could tune into medical conditions of people while he was sleeping. Known as the Sleeping Prophet, he provided 14,000 medical readings in his lifetime. He formed the Association for Research and Enlightenment, Atlantic University, and the Edgar Cayce Foundation in Virginia Beach prior to his death in 1945.
“Healing of the physical without the change in the mental and spiritual aspects brings little real help to the individual in the end. How true, because the mind and the body imprint and imitate each other. What we think, we become. What we become; we think. It’s an insidious process that can predispose us to illness or it can lead us to death.” – Edgar Cayce
If you are empathic, you know how exhausting it can be to feel other people’s emotions, feelings and thoughts all of the time. That’s why it’s important to rest. HackSpirit offers these tips to re-energize after prolonged exposure to others:
- Practice mindfulness (be present and stay connected to yourself)
- Meditate
- Stay hydrated and eat healthy food
- Know your own emotions (versus others)
- Create a peaceful, quiet place for yourself
- Step away from energy vampires and others that drain you
- Step into nature
- Schedule alone time
- Don’t neglect your own needs
- Ignore the negative voices in your head (practice self-compassion)
- Repeat mantras and positive affirmations
- Forgive and let go
- Determine what energizes you (nature) and what drains you (negative people)
- Ask who do these emotions belong to?
- Find a healthy way to release emotions (take a walk)
- Build strong boundaries
- Visualize a protective bubble around you
- Use control techniques such as visualizing two volume knobs – one for you and one for others – turn up the “me” knob and turn down the “others” volume