Does anybody else just "know"

[Dizzylin]

I have this weird thing where I just know what's going to happen with certain things.

For example every job interview I've had I've known as soon as I've stepped into the building if I'm going to work there.

For years I have driven by a certain road junction and have had a pull to a road that I now live near to and have to use the road to get to my house from that junction.

The night I met my DH I knew we would get married and that we'd be together forever (17 years so far)

Most recently, last week my Mum passed away. It wasn't unexpected but she has been ill for a while. The night she died I looked out of my window, it was a beautiful evening and I thought "Mum is going to go tonight".

It's not something that bothers me, more interests me. Does anybody else get this?

I find this very interesting as, as a dyed-in-the-wool ISTP, I am not like this in any way shape or form. I am rather jealous of the empaths !

It’s not really that great, it’s mostly just people saying you’re imagining it to you for your whole life

An Dara Sealladh

Very much a Celtic gift which I fully embrace. OP, I can completely relate. Sometimes you just know.

I remember once l was going to a meeting and had to leave work early. l decided to move my car out of its usual space so l could put my parking pole up so nobody could nick my space which is something l would usually just do as l went out but on this day something told me to do it before l had breakfast. Less than 5 minutes later, a tile fell off our roof and landed where my car would have been parked. Had no idea there was a loose tile but something in my head told me to do it

I've had a couple of odd situations similar, when me and dh were teenagers, we were out with our friends, he rode a motorbike, one even I begged him to come in the car with us, and I told him I could see him coming off his bike, he didn't come in the car, and not even a minute down the road he flew off the bike on a corner. No idea how I knew.

Another time, I woke up to my phone ringing in the night, it was my mum, and I answered it asking if my Nan had died, and she had. She wasn't ill, it was a sudden pulmonary embolism.

When I was a child I remember having a dream about a new ta, and she had a tattoo on her side, a few weeks later, I was sat in class, and there was a new ta there with a tattoo on her side...

I don't really experience much of it now, il occasionally think that I haven't heard from someone recently then il receive a message or a call from them though

According to the 16 personalities test I took for my work appraisal I'm an ENFP-T (Campaigner). I do know that I feel other people emotions very strongly. My mums funeral was incredibly overwhelming as everyone's sadness was rolling off them in waves and adding to mine.

@MillionthNameChange2020 I'm very sorry for your loss. I feel terrible asking now, I was just really confused and thought I was being a bit thick and not understanding something.

Im celtic, ENFJ, an empath, total slí an croí
Trust my intuition now.

If i ever walk in to a job and feel, this is toxic, or this is fake, or I feel like i cant win. Or i feel like you are giving my words a different meaning from what i intended when i said them,then i walk

Have just endured too much bullshit as a result of ignoring my gut feelings.

Im apparently an INFP. I just "know" things. It's a gift and a curse

Yes! Me too!

Its not confirmation bias either because the things I knew were going to happen were so out there and unexpected, random and weird that they arent things anyone could ever predict. I just know stuff and I cant explain why but I get feelings that something will happen and they did.
Before covid was even in the news or even existed I had weird thoughts of apocalyptic stuff like food and toiletries running out in the shops and a feeling something would happen. Its creepy yet fascinating at the same time.

I'm currently having premonitions about a very famous Hollywood actor. They're very strong. He isn't old or ill. I'll be devastated if it comes to pass... I've never really been interested in him before but at least once a day his face flashes across my mind and I just feel grief. Weird.

Some of these examples are amazing.

My mum has always had incredible intuition or sense (not sure what to call it). We were 20kms from home one evening and she just announced "the horses are out". We got home and sure enough the horses were all loose (we had a foal who we later discovered had figured out how to open the gate).

Another time when staying at another property we owned when I was a child, she went to lock the front gate as we always did and had a feeling that she shouldn't. That night she made a point of keeping a pocket knife in her dressing gown pocket (not something she normally did). We were almost off to sleep when someone started banging on the door to the caravan we were staying in claiming his son was trying to kill him. I won't go into details except to say that my Mums intuition and instinct that night meant we and the old man all escaped without harm from a
very dangerous criminal.

I have had a few experiences of premonitions of sorts. Eg. A few weeks ago, I just randomly had a thought that my SIL was pregnant. 2 days later my brother rang to tell me that they were expecting their 3rd baby. I had t spoken to them in weeks, they had never talked about having a third.m, so I don't know why I had that thought.

I'm a psychologist and understand confirmation bias, and yet I can't help believe that some people have stronger senses, intuition etc than others.

I have had some premonitions, usually just knowing I've got a job or knowing someone's going to call me.

The weirdest one was I met a guy in a pub one night, we got on great and arranged to meet up for a date a few days later. On the day of the date he arrived at my house hours early in the afternoon, I let him in and offered him a coffee, he said he had something to tell me and at that moment a "vision" of a woman had known about 5 years previously appeared above his head, a bit like a thought bubble and very vivid. Without even thinking I said "you're in a relationship with Jackie Bell (not real name) aren't you?" He was surprised and then declared that I must have known, and had been leading him on or setting him up. I couldn't explain how I knew and he left, I could still see the image of her so vividly even after he'd gone.

Sime PPs knowing that someone dislikes them is down to body language, not any 6th sense of intuition. I notice body language all the time, and can tell when someone is lying even when I don't know which bit is the lie 😁

Yes I always knew when my sister in laws were pregnant. So did my mum. We’d look at each other and just know. To me it was very obvious in the way they held my babies and looked at them. I suppose there in lies the difference between someone who “knows” and someone who doesn’t. Some people really don’t pick up one on verbal signs or body language.

@JoesExotic

I'm currently having premonitions about a very famous Hollywood actor. They're very strong. He isn't old or ill. I'll be devastated if it comes to pass... I've never really been interested in him before but at least once a day his face flashes across my mind and I just feel grief. Weird.

If you say who it is it will be an example to the doubters that this isn't just hindsight or confirmation bias

I do this thing where I'll think I see someone I know, from a distance or in a crowd or something, but it turns out not to be them. But then I will see the person I know who I thought I'd seen the first time shortly afterwards. I can sort of predict when it's going to happen now, if I think I see someone and it's not actually them, I know I'm about to bump into them. I do tend towards accepting that this kind of thing is all psychological, but it does feel very odd.

Great thread. I used to dream of family or friends when they were about to die. I hated it & asked for it to stop. These could be young or old. So a cousin who had an accident. Lately I’ve been wanted to explore my more intuitive side but was wondering how to do it?

I’m an EFPT-T if that helps

Me OP.

It's not cognitive bias.

It's a bit like remembering but backwards.

You don't remember everything, you don't choose what you remember and you can't pick when a random memory will just pop up out of nowhere.

@GetOuttaMySwamp yes! That happens to me too

The other thing which is a bit weirder is seeing someone in a crowd who looks like someone who's passed away. Then later in the same day bumping into one of their loved ones.

I know logically, we live in the same town etc. It's still weird though.

INFP who just ‘knows’ things here too. This mainly takes the form of being able to read people and understand how they work, what their issues are and why they do things - all within minutes of meeting them for the first time. It’s my superpower and I have never been wrong.

I have had quite a few instances of knowing things before they happen too. Like others have said, this is subtle and it’s often a ‘wondering’ rather than ‘knowing’. I also have OCD so have to be careful with ‘knowing’ as it will often tell me that someone I love has died and my anxiety spirals - that is OCD talking. But the other stuff is weird. Many years ago I had a temp office job and used to go past a particular primary school on the bus in the way there every morning. I felt drawn to the school and ‘knew’ that I was going to work there despite having no interest in working with kids. A year later I split up with my boyfriend and on a whim did a teaching assistant training course just for a different focus. Where did I end up on placement and subsequently working? That school. The bus passed about 3 other schools on the route and I never had that feeling about any of them.

On my first day at that school I was shown around the empty classrooms while the staff and children were in their lunch break. In one of the classrooms, one of the children had drawn a portrait of their male teacher. It was. Reception class so think head on legs with giant circle eyes. I looked at that picture and, I shit you not, I instantly thought “I’m going to be romantically involved with him”. At this point I had no idea who this teacher was, what he looked like, how old he was or whether he was gay or straight. He turned out to be my age, and we ended up seeing each other for a while.

I always know when people I see regularly are pregnant, often before they do. The most recent one was a young girl at work (only 17). I offered her a biscuit one day and she said she didn’t fancy one and felt a bit sick. There was a tummy bug doing the rounds at work but my instant thought was “oh, she’s pregnant.” I forgot about it but over the next three months when I wasn’t thinking about anything in particular, the thought “I wonder when Hannah’s going to announce her pregnancy” would come into my head. Sure enough, she told us after her 12 week scan and said to me “do you remember when I didn’t want that biscuit because I felt sick? That’s because I was pregnant - only I didn’t know then, I found out 2 weeks later because I started being sick.” So even she hadn’t known before I did.

I'm so glad I found this thread and quite interested in the theories on here too. I've always wondered how the heck I knew things were going to happen!!!

• I knew my grandfather had passed before anyone called to tell me
• I sensed that my dear friend would have a recurring illness which sadly took her life away
• I knew I was going to miscarry before I even had confirmation of the pregnancy
• I heard a car accident on the radio and instantly knew it would be my friend that was involved
• I'm always pretty spot on with guessing baby's, genders, dates etc but maybe that's more of a skill!!

I have a strange thing, I'm not sure what you would call it but I can connect to another person's energy without them being present,through another person, Example I was talking to a group of men in a bar once and never met them before, I was able to tell them about their loved ones, one of the guys I told him his ex wife deeply regretted ended the marriage, she had a drink problem, I was able to describe her 3 dogs also. The second guy, I named the man he really didn't get along with at work and the third man wasn't interested in any relationship and was only devoted to bringing up his daughter. They were quite freaked out, I don't get this for everyone and some people I can connect to more than others.

@Shittestdriver I was working at my desk one day at work and a colleague came to speak to me. As I looked up at her, the thought "she's pregnant" came into my head. Thought not much more of it (wasn't even aware that she was trying for a baby) but sure enough, about three weeks later she announced her pregnancy. Looking back, she wasn't a lady I particularly got on with but on this occasion I looked up at her and she was smiling very warmly and spoke very nicely to me so maybe I picked up on some behaviour change that pregnancy hormones (or her knowledge of the pregnancy) had induced in her.

I get what you mean OP, I’m an INFJ and feel like I’m intuitive, but I’m sure there must be an element of confirmation bias in there somewhere too! When I think of all the times when something HAS happened I am most likely conveniently forgetting all the times it hasn’t happened.

One thing I will never do is to wish harm on anyone, as I had a spooky experience of this once! One night someone very unpleasant (in his early 70s) was making my close relative’s life a misery. I said I wished he would just hurry up and die. The next day I received a call to say he’d died suddenly in his sleep. No specific illness or reason to think he might die soon, other than being 70 ish. So that spooked me a bit . I’m very aware in a logical way that I didn’t cause his death, but the chances of it happening on the one day I’d ever said anything unpleasant about him have made me more wary of doing that!

Re knowing if someone else is pregnant or doesn’t like you etc I firmly believe our sense of smell is very widely underestimated. In the same way dogs can be trained to smell certain illnesses etc I’m sure humans can sense and smell illness, pregnancy etc - we all emit pheromones and it would make sense that a pregnant woman would emit something to tell potential mates not to bother going there as she’s already taken!!