How to strengthen your intuition as a highly sensitive person
I believe every highly sensitive person is already intuitive. The sensitivity and the intuition come from the same place. The problem isn't that you're not picking things up, it's that overthinking, people pleasing and perfectionism get in the way of trusting what you're already sensing.
So strengthening your intuition as an HSP isn't really about learning something new. It's about clearing away what's blocking the information you already receive. Here's how I've worked on this in myself, and how I teach my clients and students to do the same.
1. Come back to the body
Forget the tarot cards and the oracle decks for now. The single most powerful thing you can do to strengthen your intuition as a highly sensitive person is return to your body. Most of us live in our heads, overthinking everything, and learning to trust the intuitive messages that show up in the body instead is where it starts.
For many highly sensitives, there's a reason we developed these traits in the first place, often because of threat in the home as a child, whether that was emotional, mental or physical. Being in the body didn't feel like a safe place to be, so we went up into our heads instead, learning to think and reason our way out of situations. Trusting what we felt and knew in the body was never a luxury we had.
So learning to drop out of the mind and into the body, to listen to the messages that are coming through, can be a journey in itself. Feeling safe in the body, becoming embodied, and reconnecting enough to register those messages, all takes time.
2. Know when you've been triggered, and start filtering
Once you start listening to what's arising in the body, it can get confusing. When I first started training my intuition this way, what I found underneath was layer after layer of past memories being triggered. Is this person untrustworthy, or is this five different unprocessed memories of people who let me down, all firing at once?
What comes with the gift of sensitivity is complexity. Learning to trust your intuition means learning to filter through that complexity, so you can tell the difference between being triggered and receiving a genuine intuitive message.
In my case, I realised that if five different memories were arising in me at once, I needed to resolve those unprocessed memories to get any real clarity. That's where ongoing personal healing matters. I still do mine today, even though I've resolved my main trauma responses, because I know that the more I clear, the more refined my perception becomes, and the more I can trust what's actually arising.
If, when you come back to the body, what you feel is blank or numb, that's information too. It's often a sign of a trauma response worth working with.
3. Be honest, and start to trust yourself
One of the biggest blocks to your intuition as a highly sensitive person is not being honest with yourself. We're so good at keeping everyone happy and keeping things nice and harmonious that we stop listening to what we're actually registering, about what we think, what we feel, or what our instincts are telling us about a person or a situation.
Honesty is your greatest ally here. The information is already there. You just have to learn to listen to it instead of talking yourself out of it, especially when it's not what you want to hear. We want to see the best in people, we want to like them, we want to keep the connection. So when our intuition is telling us someone isn't to be trusted, it's tempting to talk ourselves out of what we already know.
I remember when I finally stopped saying "it's fine, I'm fine, everything's fine" and trying to make everything perfect. When I let myself say, actually, I'm not happy about this, or I feel cross, or I don't want to do this, or I don't want to speak to that person, the intuitive information started to flow far more easily. I got my energy back too, because I wasn't spending half of it in denial.
It's surprising how much time even self aware people spend denying their own resentment, anger or shame, because those feelings aren't welcome or convenient or nice. If your intuition is telling you something isn't okay, you have to hear it, own it and then act on it. That honest voice isn't always comfortable, which is hard when you're wired to keep the peace.
4. Stay in your own experience
As I developed my intuition, I realised how much time I spent leaning into other people's energy and emotional experience, reading them, witnessing them, out of my own body almost the whole time I was with them. No wonder I felt drained.
I remember when I started noticing it, I was energetically jumping out of my body and into someone else’s experience and their feelings. I became drained really quickly. I was dramatically giving my energy and attention away.
I had to train myself to stay anchored in my body while I listened to someone else talk. It took time, because it was a habit. I see this in the highly sensitives I work with too, people who lose themselves because they're not anchored into their own experience, and end up completely absorbed in someone else's pain or problems.
Staying in your own experience doesn't mean caring less or being less attentive. It means you can register your own responses and reactions as they happen, while you're in connection with someone, and that's what lets you anchor into your embodied intuitive response. You can't do that if your awareness is floating outside yourself, fixed on someone else. When it does, it becomes easy to absorb other people's emotions and thoughts, which is why you can walk away from a conversation feeling heavier than when you arrived. You've literally picked up baggage that was never yours.
Start by noticing whether this is a habit of yours. As an intuitive healer, my own practice is simple. It's the refinement of it, learning to filter what I'm picking up, that's given me a level of detail that took real time and practice to build.
5. Let your intuition lead
Set the intention to build a relationship with your intuition and develop it. Let it be the first voice you come back to when you're checking in on how you feel, what you're thinking, and what you want to do. Decide to let it lead.
Keep coming back to the body and trusting what you feel there. Get out of your head, stop reasoning your way around it, and stop talking yourself out of what you're sensing. Over time, you'll learn to trust that voice that tells you this isn't a good idea, or, I don't know why, but this is the right one.
Your intuitive intelligence picks up on future potentials in a way your conscious mind can't. That doesn't mean you'll get a full plan, or a clear picture of what happens five years down the line if you go on that date. The information will be incomplete. You just have to trust it enough to take the first step.
I use my intuition to help me navigate all kinds of decisions in my business these days. When I need a new coach or a new training, I check in with what I sense about the person or the offer, because offers can sound very convincing, exactly like what you need, and my intuition will still say no. When that happens, I trust it. It's not the right person, or not the right time, or it's not going to be useful. If I do decide to go for something anyway, I'm almost always proven right, so these days I don't bother arguing with it, I just trust the feeling.
It's an excellent way to support your decision making, especially if you tend to weigh up every pro and con mentally and talk yourself into a muddle. Let your intuition guide you instead.
6. Start with low stakes decisions
I had a client whose very first question to me, in her very first session, was "should I leave my husband?" That's a good example of what not to start with. Don't begin by trying to use your intuition for the biggest decision in your life. Start small.
Some low stakes places to practise:
Use your intuition to walk around town
Use it to pick something off a menu
Which colour top should I buy?
Where should I look for a present for my friend?
Which day should I go into London to see that show?
Which place am I being drawn to for a holiday?
Do I actually want to go to that party?
Drop out of your head and into your body, and notice what happens to your energy as you offer yourself different choices. Don't let your thoughts jump in with "yes, but". Just notice your natural response to the stimulus. What happens in your body? What happens to your energy? Where are you drawn physically, or where do your eyes go? What do you instinctively want to do next, before you've thought about it?
This is also where you can start to practise filtering. My own process as an intuitive healer isn't complicated. I stay consciously in receiver mode and ask, what is this? What's registering in my body? What just changed? Where do I feel that, and what does it feel like, what shape or colour is it? How do I feel now? What thoughts am I noticing? I stay aware of what I'm picking up, and where, and I notice the change.
From there, I ask a few more questions:
Is this mine?
Is this from my past?
Is this absorbed?
Is this in the atmosphere?
Is this more than one thing?
Over time you get familiar with the basics, like noticing you're feeling someone else's feelings in your own body, being able to name where you feel it, and what it is. Instead of feeling overwhelmed or like you're going mad, you're simply owning your experience and learning to label it. That's what filtering is.
As a highly sensitive person, you're already reading people, reading the room, reading situations, all the time. This is really about building the confidence to trust that you're doing it, and becoming aware of just how much detail you're already picking up. That's what gives you clarity and confidence in what you're sensing, thinking and feeling, instead of self doubt and confusion.
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