Readings can be a powerful tool for healing, transformation, planning, grieving, goal setting and a million other positive applications! Here is a list of tips to ensure that you get the most benefit!

1. Keep an open mind.
2. Research and find the best type of reading for your needs.
3. Trust your intuition – especially when finding the right reader for you!
4. Just because you know what the psychic or medium is talking about does NOT mean that we have the same understanding.
5. Don’t get stuck on details
6. Sometimes you get what you need – not necessarily what you wanted
7. Help your reader put the puzzle together
8. Leave room for it to make sense later
9. Playing test the psychic does not serve anyone. Leave that to the professionals.
10. Let go of the outcome.
11. Psychics are human beings with their own set of life experiences, biases, and strengths.
12. Just because you didn’t have the experience you expected doesn’t mean that your reader wasn’t skilled.

Mediumship, or afterlife communication, has a few more tips to help you enjoy your session.

1. Do Not Feed the Medium.
2. Some spirits are better communicators than others.
3. Seriously, it might make sense later.
4. Don’t withhold confirmation.
5. Some spirits may not feel comfortable coming through the medium.
6. If you’re still in the depths of grief, a spirit may withhold contact as it may do more harm than good.
7. Bring Tissues!

Let’s break this all down!

Keep An Open Mind

Keeping an open mind tops the list because it’s probably the most important piece of advice – not only for readings, but for life in general. It can be a fine balance of keeping your mind open, but not so open that your brains fall out. The reason for keeping an open mind in a reading is that we can fixate on a singular focal point. It’s just human nature to keep our focus on what we are striving to change.

This point of focus can have drawbacks though – such as missing or dismissing a piece of information because it isn’t pertinent to the area of life you’re most focused upon. This being said, you should be able to communicate your needs to the reader. Your reading should primarily focus on what you came in for, but be open to information that doesn’t fit the way you think it should.

Find the Right Reader for You

Not all readers do every form of reading available. Also, some readers are more skilled in certain areas of life than others. Referrals from friends with similar lifestyles as your own are probably the best way to find a great reader. But I tend to tell people to think of readers similarly to hairdressers: They may have similar skill sets, but if you don’t connect then it’s going to make for a less awesome experience.

While readers have similar skill sets, they certainly aren’t the same. Take astrology for example. An Astrologer can help you identify patterns and rhythms of success or challenge. They can also help you find the most opportune date for a big event – like a wedding or grand opening. They can help you understand your compatibility with a person – All of this (and much much more)! But if you’re looking to connect with someone who has passed away, you’re going to be disappointed.

There are no universal certifications or credentials for readers, which can make finding a well qualified psychic harder to locate. Generally speaking, you can get a sense of compatibility with an intuitive by seeing their website or social media. Trust your gut!

Understanding the Process

The next few checkpoints on the list deal with understanding the process of psychic intuition. Knowing how the process works can help you understand the kind of information that will come through, as well how to best engage with your reader during the session. Everyone’s process will be a little bit different. I’m writing from my own views and experiences, but these tips should apply to just about any reader you’d find.

Most people think and interact in very linear ways. This means that the thought process is pretty straight forward. Intuitive information comes through sort of like a spiral. We will get a broad piece of information initially, and then it will refine more and more. These singular bits of information often comes in without a great deal of context. For this reason, your psychic may land on a very exact and highly accurate piece of information that answers your question concisely, but we may not even realize that we’ve addressed your question at all.

(Lots of people used to joke about being afraid of me reading their thoughts. While I pick up stray thoughts here and there, it makes no sense without context. It’s usually a single word or a phrase that makes no sense and annoys the crap out of me. It’s sort of like having the punchline but not the inside joke.)

To add to the complexity of the situation, the psychic sensory information may not have a direct correlation to question you’ve posed. For instance, if you’re asking about a job and your reader receives the impression of a duck, you may feel a bit confused or upset. But if you’ve applied for a job at AFLAC insurance, then you will probably be excited because that’s a great nod to the job you’ve applied for. But if you don’t have the proper context to understand that bit of information, you may think that the statement was just “off”.

From my perspective, it’s important to engage and interact with your reader during the session. My favorite phrase to hear while I’m giving a reading is “I understand how that relates”. This bit of confirmation can help us from getting stuck while not frontloading the reader with too much information. Your reader may also ask you to elaborate. Before elaborating, you should already have received multiple statements from the reader that confirm that they are accurately perceiving your situation. In this case, it can help to situate some of the details into the narrative.

You’re probably not going to be able to confirm all of the information that comes up in a reading while you’re meeting with the reader. There should always be a baseline of information that you can relate to, but sometimes the best bits or the big “Aha” moments come days, weeks, and sometimes even months after the reading has ended.

Psychics are Humans Too

There is no way around it – Psychic are human, and humans are fallible. I’ve often seen people get very upset and throw their entire reading away. Usually, it boils down to two things – a trivial detail that they’ve become fixated on, or the reader told them something they didn’t want to hear. When I refer to a trivial detail, it’s something like the psychic saying “an older model green four door sedan”, and the recipient not relating to it because “the car was more aqua than green”.

This goes back to being able to relate and connect with your psychic. We also need to give some grace on those details. Is the statement inaccurate, or is the detail just slightly askew? Psychics can also be flat out wrong about something (remember – we are human beings). That doesn’t mean that the whole reading is bogus or untrustworthy.

Unfortunately, there are “psychics” and other metaphysical practitioners that are misleading or unscrupulous. This is true for every industry that exists. Some may try to upsell you from a reading to having a “curse” removed for an exorbitant amount of money. While I believe in the existence of magic and curses, I find these practices to be shameful and predatory. If you think you may be experiencing a curse or a crossed condition, you can find practitioners who will teach you how to remove that negative energy and protect yourself from it in the future. You should never be motivated by fear in ANY situation with a psychic or spiritual practitioner. It is our job and duty to help empower you – not control or manipulate you into parting with more of your money.

There are also psychics out there that make some far reaching (or just downright ridiculous) claims. For instance, I’ve seen multiple psychics advertise a 99% accuracy rating. This does NOT happen – no matter how skilled and experienced a psychic is. Most psychics have no idea what their accuracy rating would be. That’s because it’s a lot more difficult to test psychic phenomenon than you would imagine.

I’ve had the benefit of working as a research medium and psychic on a couple of studies. I also try to stay abreast of the world of parapsychology (the study of paranormal phenomenon, including psychic and mediumship). There have been countless studies conducted since the beginning of the twentieth century, and the results have been all over the board. There is no conclusive universal answer for how accurate a psychic is or isn’t. The studies done have to meet incredibly strict standards, and even then the way that the psychic brain works often eludes understanding.

In practice, I would say that a top notch, highly skilled and exceptionally gifted psychic medium would have an accuracy rate right around 80%. Most experienced readers are going to be between 65 -75%. I’m basing this on my own experience of getting readings, with rough estimations and highly subjective non-scientific data. I’m sure that there are some folks reading this and thinking “well, what’s the point in getting a reading then?”. Let’s put this into perspective.

My brother is a detective and polygraph technician. I did some digging into scientific studies, and the accuracy of polygraphs are somewhere between 70 and 90%. So my brother spent 5 months in highly specialized and advanced training to be able to use a technology that often isn’t even court admissible and could give him as low as 70% accuracy. And yet, it’s still a highly usable technology in his field that helps tons of investigations!

Another example comes from a Harvard study published in 2019 on increasing accuracy in medical diagnosis. They were studying how collective or team diagnosis improved with the larger number of members on a medical team. The average accuracy rating for a single doctor making a diagnosis? 62.5%. The accuracy jumps to 75% with just a team of two, and teams of nine clocked in at 85.6% accuracy in diagnosing patients.

What does this tell us about getting a reading? Well, for starters that if you work with your intuitive or psychic reader as a team, then you’re going to experience a higher rate of accuracy than if you are a completely passive observer. Also, accuracy is secondary to applicability when it comes to getting a reading. For instance, if a psychic tells you all about a pool of potential suitors but doesn’t help you really understand how compatible you are with each of them, then is that information truly helpful?

A reading should always have the psychic talking far more than the person getting the reading. But readings should feel like an empowering soul deep conversation, and not like a cool party trick.

Mediumship

Afterlife communication, or mediumship as it’s called, has a few more tricks specific to this type of work. Firstly, all mediums are psychic, but not all psychics practice mediumship. This is an important distinction when you are searching out a reader to suit your needs.

Don’t feed the medium. This doesn’t mean you can’t share some chocolates or candies or whatnot. It means don’t tell them about who it is you’re hoping to contact. If you give them the information, then they can’t give you that information as a confirmation or evidence that they are connected to a specific spirit.

When they do give you evidential information, then confirm that it makes sense to you. There will likely come a point when you are both confident that the spirit communicating is who you think it is. Once you are both confident, then is the time that you can share details about their life and how the impressions the medium was giving relates to the deceased person. (I always enjoy hearing about the spirit I’m bringing through, but only after I’ve gathered a hefty amount of evidence to confirm. I feel that this time of sharing can be an incredibly healing moment, but not all mediums share my views in this.)

Spirits are largely the same as when they were alive. There is a spiritual evolution that happens when we die, but our personalities are much the same. Spirits may also have their own biases and views. As a very obviously queer person, I’ve had the experience of a spirit withholding contact due to their homophobia. You don’t die and automatically become some super evolved ascended spiritual master. The dead have their own work to do to grow their souls. Spirits are just as unique and individual in death as they were in life. This also means that some spirits are going to be better or worse communicators than others. And if there is a spirit with a particular sense of humor, and the medium doesn’t recognize that they are joking – well let’s just say it can be incredibly frustrating for both the medium and the sitter.

I also get frustrated around the messages that spirits convey. My frustration stems from the fact that about 95% of spirits give incredibly similar messages. (By messages, I mean what the spirit wants me to convey to the sitter. Before I get to conveying these messages, I’ve already provided enough evidence for us to be comfortable in identifying the spirit.) Most likely, if a spirit is expending the energy to come through in a reading, you are important to them. They are going to want to show you all the love. They want you to know that they are continuing to live – just in a different way. And they are going to want to heal any hurts that their passing has caused, and to find and give forgiveness so that both of you can continue to grow.

You may be wondering why these messages frustrate me. Well, it boils down to this: ego. I feel more validated bringing through tangible, confirmable pieces of information. But guess what? It’s not about me. It’s about you, and that brings me to my final points from our list.

Sometimes, spirits can see that contact with them will push you further into your grieving process. Sometimes contact can be more harmful than helpful. In these instances, many spirits may pull away and not come through during a reading. I tend to tell people to give themselves at least 3 months – 6 months is even better – before going to see a medium. Everyone is different, and you may benefit greatly from a spirit contact after only a couple of weeks! Here’s the thing – it’s not up to the medium. The spirits are the ones in control of what and who comes through.

Any way you slice and dice it, readings (especially mediumship readings) can be very emotional. So, when you are getting set up for a zoom or phone reading, make sure you have a box of tissues nearby. Also keep something to sip on within reach, and you’re not going to impress your psychic with fancy clothes, so wear something comfortable. Make sure that the space you’re in will be free from distractions for the length of the reading so that you can give it the focus that it deserves.

Getting a reading is part of doing your inner work. It’s like working in your root so that you can grow your soul. It may get uncomfortable. You may cry or get angry. Ultimately, readings are a way to empower you with information that you wouldn’t be able to access otherwise. It’s important to remember that a reading can only be as good as what you do with it. Follow the tips from this list, and you will find that the Universe is chock full of opportunities to expand and grow.