Intuition is a gift, no doubt. But sometimes, it’s the kind of gift you wish came with a return receipt. Because when you’re a highly sensitive person — when you feel things before they’re said, when you know things without being told — your intuition becomes both a lifeline and a leash.

I knew the exact moment each of my sister’s three kids were born. Not because someone called me. No, I was sitting in a meeting or folding laundry or walking to the store, and suddenly I just knew. My whole body went still. Time cracked open and there it was: a new life arriving. That’s the kind of intuition I’m talking about. Beautiful, profound, sacred. But also… exhausting.

I’ve known when a friend needed a call — before they posted anything, before they reached out. Just this pull in my chest, a whisper in my gut: Call her now. And sure enough, I’d call and hear the break in their voice before they even said hello. That’s what being highly intuitive means: you’re tuned in, all the time, to everyone around you. It makes you a phenomenal friend, a loving partner, the kind of parent who knows what your kid needs before they can even put it into words.

But it also pulls you into situations you don’t need to be in — but can’t walk away from.

I can’t walk through a room without scanning it like radar. I can tell who’s faking the smile. Who’s fighting a panic attack. Who just lost someone. I don’t even mean to — it’s like breathing. Like my nervous system is wired to pick up what others drop, to patch leaks in emotional walls I didn’t even build.

And here’s the part no one talks about: I can’t walk away from it! There it is – I just can’t! Not without guilt. Not without feeling like I’m abandoning someone. Intuition doesn’t just knock — it kicks the fucking door in and says, “You’re up girlfriend.”

It’s noble, sure. It’s caring, absolutely. But it’s also a bitch. Because you end up in emotional trenches that aren’t yours. You hold space for people who never asked, but you knew they needed. You carry weight you were never meant to bear. And when you’re tired? When you’re running on empty? Too bad. Intuition doesn’t clock out – bitch!

And then… we go to work.

Highly sensitive people show up in large numbers in caring professions — nursing, teaching, social work, counselling, child protection, customer service, community support, you name it. Places where empathy is a job requirement, not just a personality trait.

Why? Because our intuition makes us damn good at what we do.

We notice the kid in the back of the class who hasn’t said a word all day. We catch the patient’s micro-expression of pain before it hits the vitals monitor. We know when the conversation in a support group needs to pause because someone’s about to shut down. We de-escalate conflict before it even starts — not because we are trained to, but because we could feel the shift before it became a problem.

It’s what makes us exceptional in these roles.

On the flip side, it also makes us prone to burnout. Compassion fatigue. Emotional overload. Because we don’t just do our jobs — we absorb them. We leave work still thinking about that one client, that one student, that one situation that didn’t feel right. We lie awake replaying the conversation we wish we’d had more time for. We feel too much, too often, and there’s rarely a moment to breathe. Sound familiar?

And the hardest part? It’s invisible. The depth of what we’re carrying — the second-hand grief, the emotional labor, the constant hyper-awareness — it’s not listed on the timesheet. It’s not counted in KPIs or tracked in performance reviews. But it’s there, in our bodies, our sleep, our anxiety, our need for solitude no one understands.

We HSP’s  walk a strange line. We’re praised for our empathy, our compassion, our insight — but we’re rarely given the space to say this hurts. Because people don’t see the toll it takes. The mental tabs we keep open. The grief we absorb. The tension we carry in our bodies like it’s ours.

Don’t get me wrong — I wouldn’t trade it. Not really. That same intuition has saved me. It’s protected my people. It’s helped me do work that matters. It’s connected me to love, to beauty, to truth. But I want to be honest: it’s not all rainbows and unicorns. Sometimes it’s just too much.

So if you’re like me — if your gut never lies, if your heart has stretch marks from holding so much — I see you. I know what it’s like to feel everything all the time. And I know the cost of that kind of knowing.

Intuition is a bitch.

But in the right hands?

She’s also a force of nature.

– Hannah Marks is a HSP and writer with High Sensitivity Australia