10 Signs You're An Intuitive & Don't Know It

Most of us are capable of being highly intuitive, but we may dismiss things we know without knowing how we know, especially if we've grown up highly rational or been influenced by scientific education or fundamentalist religions. As a physician with a physician father and three Methodist ministers in the family, I was one of those stealth intuitives. Here are a few clues that you might be too:

You're highly sensitive to what others are feeling and may not know how to protect yourself from the energies of other people. This may cause you to become withdrawn or reclusive, even though you like people.

You remember your dreams often, and, oh my, what wild rides they are! Some of your dreams may have come true before, as if you were predicting the future, and this might have frightened you, especially if you dreamed about a scary outcome and then it happened. If you experienced this, you might have cut off your ability to dream out of fear. But you can invite that gift to return if you can move from fear to trust.

If you resonate with that soul sense, you might be instantly drawn to someone without understanding why. If not, you're likely to pull away, even when it makes no sense to your mind. Later, you may get evidence that you were spot-on in your read. Others will be shocked, and you'll be shaking your head, trying not to say, "I told you so."

There are four types of intuition: clairvoyance, clairaudience, clairsentience, and claircognizance. If you're clairvoyant, you'll likely see visions or colors or pictures others can't see. If you're clairaudient, you'll hear sounds or voices or even music that other people can't hear. If you're clairsentient, you'll feel things in your body. But if you're claircognizant, you'll just know things you shouldn't know, which can make this the hardest form of intuition to recognize because you'll think it's just a thought. But these thoughts don't feel like you thought them up. They're more like flavors you come to recognize over time.

Do you ever feel like an object on your altar is talking to you? Or maybe you get communication from a tree or a cloud or a piece of jewelry? When you're tuned in and you don't know it, everything will try to get through to you.

Are you one of those people who is always bumping into psychics who pay unusual attention to you? This is often because they can see that your "third eye" of intuition is wide-open, but you may not recognize it. It's almost like one psychic can recognize another and they are vibrationally magnetized to each other.

In indigenous cultures, they call it "shaman sickness" when a shaman—the resident intuitive of the tribe—gets sick because she won't step into her calling. Often, in this culture, where shamans aren't recognized, the would-be shaman is scared of her power, reluctant to admit her gifts, or plagued by a sense that she'll be burned at the stake if she comes out with her intuitive abilities.

When you're intuitive and don't know it, you may try to tune out by drinking too much alcohol or caffeine, overeating, smoking, using drugs, or indulging in other addictive behaviors that disconnect you from your intuition.

When you're out in the natural world, away from technology and other people, your intuitive downloads have room to arrive. If all your best ideas and plans tend to come with you on long walks through the woods, it's a sign of intuition at play.

The good news about intuition is that it doesn't abandon you. Like a lover who never gives up on you, intuition will do whatever it takes to capture your attention and guide you toward your path of power, love, health, and the purest sense of purpose. And once you commit to strengthening your intuition, it will only get stronger.