What Is Intuition?
Intuition is a type of intelligence that comes from within. It’s derived from unconscious understanding as opposed to knowledge found externally through data or research. Intuition helps us to have access to information that might not be available to us at the moment to inform decision making. When people say, “Trust your gut,” or “I had a feeling,” “a sixth sense,” or “a hunch,” generally they are referring to their intuition. Others may call it their “conscience” or “inner voice.” Everyone has access to intuitive intelligence and, much like a muscle, this form of knowledge can be strengthened through practice. Intuitive intelligence gathers information from different sources including:
Instinctive knowledge — The innate or hardwired behavior that is not learned and is a direct response to external stimuli like the flight, fight, freeze, and fawn stress responses.
Experiential or tacit knowledge — The information gained from lived experience over long periods of time that allows people to learn and retrieve information from the past, then recognize patterns to anticipate or predict the future.
Collective knowledge — Wisdom understood or decisions by a group of people and passed down through communities.
Personality and psychological theories suggest that some people have a stronger or more natural connection to intuitive wisdom. Katharine Cook Briggs and her daughter, Isabel Briggs Myers, worked together to develop the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator (MBTI) personality test in 1962 using the foundation theories of Carl G. Jung’s Psychological Types published in 1921. According to the MBTI framework, each person has four psychological preferences:
Extroversion or Introversion in the way someone directs and receives energy.
Sensing or Intuition in the way someone receives and processes information.
Thinking or Feeling in the way someone makes decisions.
Judging and perceiving in the way someone views and interprets their external environments.
Those who have the intuitive psychological preference tend to be interested in big picture and abstract, futuristic thinking. They often enjoy reading between the lines and connecting ideas that may seem contradictory. According to the MBTI, there are two types of intuitives: those with introverted intuition and those with extroverted intuition.
What Is Introverted Intuition?
Introverted intuitives on the MBTI direct their attention to their interior worlds, the unconscious, and the subjective where they source and rely on information for meaning and decision making. Always asking “why,” they are often deeply imaginative and future-focused, often wondering how things could be. This helps them to be inventive, offering out-of-the-box ideas and often experiencing “aha” moments in flashes of inspiration. Their information-gathering process relies on patterns, perspectives, and hidden meanings that weave together to formulate future ideas and implications. Deeply relational, they prefer authentic connections, but also time to themselves to express both their individualism and independence.
Introverted intuitives receive external information then organize it within their own internal frameworks. They can communicate and predict future trends without the usual explicit information like facts and data that others rely on. The way introverted intuitives absorb and organize information can be confusing to others. They are often creating paradoxes out of contradictory information. Communicating these ideas can be challenging as each person’s internal framework is entirely unique.
What Is Extroverted Intuition?
Extroverted intuitives also receive wisdom and information through unconscious and subconscious communication sources. However, they are more interested and skilled at interpreting this information externally to others. Instead of choosing one objective thought, understanding, worldview, or way of proceeding, they can hold a number of different possibilities simultaneously. Extroverted intuitives then recognize the patterns between the various options and decide on a strategy based on this internal process of receiving information. Extroverted intuitives thrive in brainstorming sessions where they can contribute their big-picture ability to juggle a number of directions and help others to decide together the best way to move forward.
How to Use Your Intuition
Regardless if you identify as an extroverted or introverted intuitive or feel no connection to a sense of intuition, everyone has access to intuitive knowledge and can practice connecting and listening to their internal wisdom sources. For example, the next time that you feel a subtle nudge from your body, or an idea pops into your mind out of nowhere, pay attention. What is that feeling trying to communicate to you? How might the idea serve you or someone you’re with at that very moment? Your intuition may be asking you:
To form a boundary for self-protection.
To create something to inspire others.
To devote yourself to a cause.
To accept an idea as the next step to solve a problem.
To help someone by sharing an idea.
To embrace an interest or passion.
To go to a certain place to receive more wisdom.
What Is Empathic Intuition?
What is empathy?
While intuition is about how one can learn to listen and sense their own internal wisdom, empathy is how one might be connecting to someone else’s internal life. Empathy is the ability to emotionally connect with others, understand how they feel, and interpret experiences from their point of view. Those who are strongly empathetic can put themselves “in other people’s shoes.” The term empathy was coined by psychologist Edward B. Titchener in 1909 as a translation of the German term einfühlung, which translates to, "feeling into". People with this skill set are called empaths. However, just like intuition, empathy can be practiced and strengthened over time.
The Types of Empathy
There are three primary types of empathy:
Affective Empathy — The ability to feel what others are feeling and respond with compassion and care.
Somatic Empathy — Empathy felt not through the emotions, but in the body through physical reactivity. If someone is hurting, you may develop a stomach or head ache.
Cognitive Empathy — People who have strong cognitive empathy are able to discern what other people may be thinking in a situation.
As you observe your own empathic abilities, you may notice that you’re stronger in one type or another, however, you can practice developing all three forms of empathy.
How to Practice Empathy
There are a number of ways that you can develop better empathic skills. These include:
Active listening to others without pre-meditating a response or interrupting.
Observing both body language and non-verbal communication.
Asking more questions to learn about others and promote understanding.
Inviting others to share how they’re feeling.
Being vulnerable with others by sharing authentically how you feel.
Reading or listening to books or attending conferences and talks to better understand people’s experiences outside of your own.
Get involved in organizations that strive to improve the lives of others.
The Cost of Empathy
Being empathetic is a great way to put yourself in someone else’s shoes and have compassion for their situation. However, if practiced without boundaries, too much empathy can blur the lines between individual and collective identity. People can experience compassion fatigue or empathy burnout if they feel so much into the situations of others that they don’t have the time or energy to foster self-awareness and develop boundaries. That’s where combining and balancing both intuition and empathy can be helpful.
Combining Intuition and Empathy
Empathic intuitives are individuals who are able to attune deeply both to their own inner sources of wisdom, as well as the emotions, physical, or cognitive states of others. This can lead to a rich life experience of self-awareness and relational connection. However, it can also feel very flooding or overwhelming without learning boundaries.
Judith Orloff, MD, a psychiatrist who identifies as an intuitive empath, authored the book, The Empath’s Guide To Survival: Life Strategies For Sensitive People. In doing so, she hopes to help intuitive empaths to better understand themselves, as well as foster the right tools and behaviors to utilize their unique skill sets to help others, as well as foster a deep connection with themselves.
As your intuitive and empathic abilities develop, remember to take care of yourself so that you can sustain these intimate connections by taking breaks, setting boundaries, and choosing who you surround yourself with carefully.
Other Types of Internal Communication
Internal methods of communication and relationships with others can be complex. There are other emotional, physical, and cognitive signals that are also important to listen to, but may coincide or contradict with intuitive knowledge. Through practice, you can learn how to listen to the various internal voices and distinguish how to best listen and respond to each. Examples include:
Activations
Activations (or triggers) occur when events of the present remind a brain that’s hardwired from past trauma of the harmful event. Activations can make you feel emotionally elevated and physically tight or trapped, as if the event is still happening in the present. This can cause the more rational part of the brain to shut down, as the survival brain takes over. Although the brain is simply remembering the trauma, the event of the present may not reflect the same severity of the past nor similar intentions. If you feel activated, ask for space or support to calm down, learn to separate the past from the present, and address what’s happening in the present without the pain of the past.
Projection
If you have a traumatic past, your system may be wired to protect itself from potential threats. Sometimes, the mind will create hyperbolized stories and scenarios about people or environments that may not reflect the actions, intentions, or situations at present. Although the mind is just trying to protect itself, it can be important to ask for reassurance or clarification, or to communicate why you’re feeling as you are due to your past experience, as opposed to interpreting your perspective as objective and holding the person in the scenario responsible for your past pain.
Bias & Discrimination
Bias and discrimination are the results of poor conditioning by our cultures, the media, educational sources, etc. They both create hierarchies of harm that claim some are superior to others, then justify the mistreatment and oppression of the inferior groups. Sexism, racism, ableism, ageism, genderism, sizeism, homophobia, transphobia, and xenophobia are all types of bias and discrimination.
Mental Health Conditions
A number of mental health conditions also make internal communication difficult. Depression, anxiety, paranoia, borderline, bi-polor, PTSD and complex-PTSD, schizophrenia, and others can all cause someone’s internal state to shape their perceptions of the external world. Your intuition can help to guide you to manage or seek support from these symptoms, but it may take additional time and help to understand the differences between the communication of your condition versus your intuition.
Physical Health Conditions
Other physical imbalances like hormone changes, low-iron, malnutrition, IBS, dehydration, low or high blood sugar or pressure, etc. can also impact how the brain communicates with the body. So if you ever find yourself feeling low without reason, be sure to get your vitals checked by a physician to ensure none of these other physical health conditions are exacerbating symptoms, while making internal communication more difficult.
Incest Abuse, Empathy, & Intuition
Incest survivors, as well as others raised in the midst of significant developmental traumas, often have strong empathic and intuitive abilities. They can be astutely aware of their environments due to the hypervigilance necessary to protect themselves to survive. However, they can also find it confusing to foster an identity apart from the collective, as they were raised to take care of everyone else’s needs first.
In severe cases, they may have had to override their own desires and needs in order to address the needs of others. Often incest survivors experience a fragmented sense of identity and can go above and beyond for others, over extending their empathy, while neglecting themselves. Incest survivors can learn how to claim a whole identity, take good care of themselves while staying connected to others, and use the skills of hypervigilance and awareness to their advantage in personal and professional contexts to assess safety.
Incest Survivor Recovery Resources
You can find more incest survivor resources at Incest AWARE and other support organization in the Incest AWARE Alliance.
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