11 Signs You Were A Spiritually Sensitive Kid Who Could Read Everyone’s Vibes & Mood
T.Vyc / Shutterstock Without the social norms, logical thinking patterns, and spiritual stigma to cloud their minds, it’s no surprise that children are often more spiritually connected than adults.
Children may be tapped into psychic abilities and a higher vibration that adults have dulled, subconsciously in many ways, through their dealings with the reality of the world around them and our culture. However, even if adult life has drained your sensitive side out and sabotaged you from tapping into your innate psychic gifts, chances are you still notice signs from your spiritually sensitive childhood, where reading everyone’s vibes and moods was innate.
Here are 11 signs you were a spiritually sensitive kid who could read everyone’s vibes and mood
1. You were easily overstimulated
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Without the weight of mental health stigma or shame adults take on, children often experience a more sensitive emotional experience than their parents and guardians. They’re tapped into their own emotions and others, without the buffer of a solid range of emotional regulation skills or a desire to suppress.
So, it’s no surprise that their highly sensitive minds make overstimulation more frequent, as a study published in Scientific Reports explains. Whether it’s loud noises or intuitive messages that they can’t yet make sense of when something’s not right, their coping with the noise is easily met with accusations of “tantrums” and “misbehavior” by adults unable to empathize with their experience.
2. You had easy access to intuitive messages
Similar to the way children adopt the beliefs and behaviors of their parents by simply watching and listening, their intuition follows a similar pattern. They’re tapped into a deeper sense of feeling and understanding than logical and analytical thinking, allowing them easier access to the gut instincts and messages adults overlook.
Even if they don’t have the words to verbalize that feeling when something is wrong, they feel it, and that’s a powerful superpower. They have an innate ability to tap into the minds of people and the energy of a room without needing to have a conversation or understand the nuanced social dynamics. They just understand, and if you were a spiritually sensitive kid, you know that feeling of clairvoyance all too well.
3. Your gut feelings were often right
Kids’ gut instincts and feelings start from childhood, when surrounded by sensitive feelings and parental guidance, at least according to a study published in the American Society for Microbiology. They feel things deeply and experience the mind-body connection without any kind of buffer or barrier.
While adults today have to weave through feelings of anxiety to find their gut instincts, they may still have glimpses of their childhood transparency and openness that serve as a reminder of what’s possible. Their childhood selves still linger and connect them to the open-minded, intuitive energy of gut instincts, shaping their morals, perspectives in the world, and interactions with others.
4. You experienced dreams in real life
While dreaming is largely underresearched, we do know that it’s somewhat shaped by a person’s subconscious and the repressed feelings, beliefs, and experiences we don’t always have the means of unpacking in our waking state. Many spiritual experts even believe that our dreams offer us intuitive messages and instincts, without the shield of stigma, suspicion, or emotional boundaries holding us back from noticing them.
As a kid, when that barrier between real inner intuition and waking experience is low, dreams may actually happen in reality. Especially for a spiritually gifted kid with a strong Intuition and a vibrational connection to higher beings or a higher state, their dreams may be a reflection of real life or some kind of underresearched psychic connection.
5. Strangers noticed your energy
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While many adults notice the spiritual meanings of strangers popping up in our lives to teach us things, the truth is that they may be drawn to a child’s spiritual gifts. From being able to notice emotional awareness to seeing a kid's inner intuition and wisdom with their own special powers, if you were a special kid in this way, chances are your parents have a million stories to tell.
They may remind you about an older stranger stopping them in the grocery store to spread wisdom about your gifts, or noticing weird coincidences every single day, with you dropping small nuggets of wisdom about things you could never understand. It’s all connected.
6. The vibe of your household deeply affected your mood
According to psychiatrist Judith Orloff, many people, especially empaths with a strong emotional sensitivity, absorb energy from other people. When they’re around someone struggling with sadness, they often take it on as if it’s their own. When around joyous people in a happy environment, their mood instantly shifts for the better.
Especially for kids with a heightened spiritual sensitivity, this absorption is often much higher. They cry when they see someone crying on television. They notice strangers struggling and feel it themselves, even if their parents overlook it entirely.
So, if your household and the people around you as a kid really affected how you felt on a daily basis, chances are you have a deep foundation of spiritual knowing, even if it’s only manifesting as empathy as an adult.
7. You could sense someone’s perception of you immediately
As an adult, social awareness is incredibly powerful. Whether you’re alone around strangers, navigating the workplace, or solving an issue with a partner, you sense the energy of people and the room around you without even having a conversation or saying a word.
For kids, this innate ability to read people’s vibes and energy can be confusing at times, but it cultivates the social awareness and intuition that adults thrive on as they connect later in life.
8. You felt mature from a young age
If you felt mature, without the typical experiences of parentification or trauma to serve as an explanation, early in your life, there’s a chance you were gifted with certain spiritual, energetic powers.
Even if you didn’t necessarily have all the words to verbalize situations or your feelings, you understood things that many adults still have struggles with acknowledging in themselves. From complicated relationship dynamics to an adult’s suppressed emotions, you understood things that caused you to mature early.
You might’ve had a happy childhood, but the innocence, or not always understanding or knowing the world around you, was taken somewhat by spiritual knowing and intuition.
9. You knew when something bad was going to happen before it did
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While gut instincts are often guided by experiences of self-trust in adults, for children, with no reason not to trust themselves and their inner sense of knowing early in childhood, intuition came through strongly. They had gut instincts that were usually right, without feelings of anxiety or self-doubt creeping in to overshadow them, as confirmed by evidence in reality.
You noticed someone’s bad energy before something bad happened. You sensed that a sibling or parent was hurting or ill before you spoke to them. You felt a gut feeling that you needed to go somewhere else or remove yourself from an interaction before it took a turn for the worse.
All of these experiences might’ve felt like second nature in the moment, but as an adult, they are usually perceived through a much more special, spiritual lens.
10. You felt a deep connection to art and media
If you cried while watching movies or listening to music a lot as a kid, there’s a chance you have a deep spiritual gift. Of course, this natural connection to art is written in our human DNA, in many ways, but especially for kids with a deep spiritual wisdom to the meaning behind these pieces, it creates even more meaning.
Especially when we are naturally drawn to experiencing complex emotions like sadness and shame through artwork and the artists' experiences, it’s not surprising that kids are often deeply moved by TV, movies, and artwork that adults don’t necessarily have the perspective or emotional bandwidth to appreciate.
11. You needed alone time to feel ‘normal’
Many people who are naturally spiritual and sensitive adopt naturally introverted habits, especially as children. Even if your parents forced you to leave the house and attend social gatherings, you noticed your social battery draining and the toll it took on you before you had the words to express it.
Of course, this appreciation and comfort with alone time offer powerful, energetic, and physical benefits in adulthood, but they're also powerful for tapping into intuition and spirituality that are largely overlooked in our rigid, analytical, modern world.
Zayda Slabbekoorn is a senior editorial strategist with a bachelor’s degree in social relations & policy and gender studies who focuses on psychology, relationships, self-help, and human interest stories.
