Are You an Empath, Intuitive, or Intuitive Empath? Here’s How to Tell.

You’ve probably heard the words intuitive and empath thrown around quite a bit. In fact, chances are that if you’re reading this, you’ve likely used these words at some point, maybe even when referring to yourself. But what exactly is an intuitive, what’s an empath, what is an intuitive empath, and what’s the difference between them?

While these words are often used interchangeably, they mean something quite different. Not all intuitive are empaths, and not all empaths are intuitive. Though some people, known as intuitive empaths, are both. Let’s start by looking at the definitions.

Table of contnets

01 Empath

02 Intuitive

03 Intuitive Empath or Psychic Empath

Words like intuitive, empath, intuitive empath, psychic empath, highly sensitive person and others are very useful and fairly commonplace in the spiritual world(see clair abilities for more information). Like other terms, their meaning is shifting, and up for personal interpretation. How one person uses the word might be different than how another person uses it. In general however, these words are used to describe a person who is particularly sensitive to the energy around them — including (and especially, in the case of the empath) the energy of other people.

So what’s the difference between all of these different types of empaths and intuitives, and how do you know which one you are? Let’s dive in!

Empath

Empathy is, generally speaking, the ability to sense and feel the emotions and energy of other people and your surrounding space. Like highly sensitive people, empaths are attuned to the energy around them. And unlike intuitives, which we’ll talk about next, empaths are more externally oriented, as empathy itself necessarily involves other people.

Essentially, empaths are able to feel the emotions of others. They’re able to empathize with another person’s emotions or feelings — sometimes to a fault. Empaths can sense the emotions of another person because of their sensitivity, and feel it so deeply that they don’t even realize the emotion is someone else’s, instead thinking it’s theirs.

Like highly sensitive people, empaths can struggle with the merging of other people’s feelings into their own mind and body. The energy and emotions they absorb from other people mix with their own, and they can therefore take on other people’s stuff.

They can start to become like those around them because they cannot tell what’s theirs and what’s not, leading to poor boundaries, codependence, and a disconnection from the self. When it comes to empaths and relationships, they have to be careful not to let the boundaries between self and other blur too much.

Of course, this can also be an incredible gift, as it allows you to truly understand the struggles of others. Many popular careers for empaths make use of this very skill, such as therapists, counselors, and energy healers.

Intuitive

While highly sensitive people and empaths are attuned to the energy flowing around them, intuitives are attuned to the energy flowing through them. Intuition involves turning inward and tapping into your unconscious mind and ‘gut feelings’ to gain insight, wisdom, and understanding of a situation. It does involve a certain amount of sensing and processing the external world around you, but the intuition itself is a highly internal phenomenon.

Intuitives are able to “know” things that don’t necessarily make sense for them to know. They can rely on one of more of the clair senses: clairvoyance, clairaudience, clairsentience, claircognizance, and clairempathy. If you find you’re able to know or understand things in a spiritual or numinous way, you’re probably an intuitive person!

Intuitive Empath or Psychic Empath

So what is an intuitive empath? Well, it’s a mix of all of the above! An intuitive empath (also known as psychic empath) is a person who has both outwardly oriented empathic and highly sensitive abilities that allow them to sense the emotions and energies of others, as well as the inwardly felt experience of intuition toward a situation.

Intuitive empaths are often able to tell the difference between their own emotions and the emotions of others, as their intuition allows them to be so in-tune with their inner world that they are able to easily differentiate between their own energy and emotions and anything their empathic nature is picking up. They’re thus able to feel and understand the emotions of others without taking them on as their own. Ahem, boundaries!

Intuitive empaths are also adept at understanding the why behind an emotion. Empaths and highly sensitive people are able to feel and sense others emotions, but not necessarily make sense of them. The intuition gives you the ability to tune in and understand emotions and energies from a broad perspective, and which helps you see through the tangled web of emotions to understand what is actually going on.

Because of all of this, intuitive empaths are very well positioned to help guide others through their emotions and energies, and are often the go to person that others ask for advice. If you resonate with this, you’re likely an intuitive or psychic empath!