5 Things You Should Know Before Consulting a Psychic............................................................................ BACK

Interest in psychics, mediums and all things paranormal is at an all-time high, especially at this time of year. Working as a professional psychic for the last decade, I'd like to offer some helpful tips to those considering a session with a psychic.

1. Don't have a specific agenda. It's okay to want to know certain things as a result of your psychic session; your psychic will probably allow you to ask questions as well. But if your sole intention for booking a session is to get "the" defining answer to a specific question, you'll likely end up disappointed. The reason being is that if the psychic is authentic, the information they communicate doesn't come from them, it comes through them. This means that the psychic has little control over what they are being spiritually guided to convey. You'll receive what you need, not what you want - which may be two very different things.

2. Let the psychic guide the session. You're paying a professional psychic for their time; allow them to do their job and lead the discussion where it needs to go. A good psychic should do most of the talking and asking you to validate or confirm the impressions they receive.  You would be giving a fraudulent psychic way too much information that can be manipulated to their advantage. When in doubt, politely ask the psychic if you may elaborate to underscore a point.

3. Listen for credible details. An authentic psychic will be able to spontaneously provide you with (sometimes odd or unusual) tidbits of information to affirm that they are indeed connecting with you properly. Don't expect to hear the exact "code" word you had with your deceased wife or the secret signal you had with your boyfriend. In fact, just the opposite may be true. Once during a session, I felt I was connecting with a gentleman's brother who had passed on when they were younger. I kept "seeing" activities centered on a tree house, climbing trees or jumping out of trees. The man confirmed that his brother used to always torment him by jumping out of trees to scare him when they were kids - a totally random thing. Also, be open to what is being communicated. Often people will develop "psychic amnesia," by which they become oblivious to the obvious for not having total recall in the moment. Grant that you might require process time beyond your session for recollections to surface in your memory bank

4. Are you booked with a psychic, a medium or an evidential medium? All mediums are psychic but not every psychic is a medium. A medium is someone who can willfully connect with one or more of your loved ones who have passed on; a psychic is someone who specializes in communicating intuitive information about your life, relationships and your future. Find out in advance if the practitioner with whom you'd like to book a session is a psychic, a medium, or both. It will aid you in tempering your expectations. As before, go in open-minded. While it's okay to have expectations of wanting to hear from a loved one, don't be surprised if your deceased alcoholic uncle who abused you when you were a kid comes through instead. This tends to be the way things work spiritually, and the communication from the uncle could very well be exactly what you're intended to receive as it pertains to healing your family and life in general.

5. Terminate any session that doesn't feel right. No reputable psychic will ever predict your death, foretell a tragedy, give you winning lottery numbers or inform you that you have a curse put upon you and your family and that to remove it, you need to return repeatedly. A reputable psychic will also not keep increasing their fee with each visit, or expect that you buy ancillary merchandise from them on a regular basis. Run, don't walk, from anyone who conducts business with you in a manner that does not feel authentic.

On rare occasions, I may be challenged in connecting with a client. In the past twenty two years, this has happened about four or five times. If this should happen within the first 3 or 4 mintues of the session, I will stop and ask the client how they'd like to handle it, an option of which may be to end the session at no charge to the client. An inauthentic psychic will bluff their way through for being focused on making a buck.

These principles are a good place to begin when considering a psychic reading. Don't hesitate to ask for references or to research a psychic online. Word of mouth is how I've always done business and I have received many clients as referrals from others who were satisfied customers. A good psychic's work will speak for itself.

Both the medium and the psychic have unique powers and abilities
You may be wondering what the difference is between a medium and a psychic. First of all, both psychics online and mediums have abilities that most of us do not possess. They may have psychic gifts of clairaudience, or hearing information that can help themselves and others. Psychics and mediums can have many different psychic gifts, such as precognition, or knowing the outcome of something. They may be able to see into the future, or they could be clairvoyant and be able to see things that others can't see.

Although they are both psychic, mediums have an additional ability
Mediums are psychics who have additional abilities to communicate with those who have left this world. Throughout the past, people have wanted to know if their loved ones were doing well, or if they were suffering. They have wanted to hear some message from them. A medium can tell you that your deceased parent, husband or wife, or child is peaceful and happy. If there is something important that only you would understand, the medium can also relay this kind of message.

Two main types of mediums
Mediums may go into a trance and allow the spirit of the deceased to take over their body. When this happens, the deceased person can relay their message directly to you. It is actually the person who has passed over that speaks to you directly through the psychic medium. The psychic medium who channels the spirit can return to their body whenever they wish, and the spirit can only enter their body with their permission.

Psychic mediums often combine their psychic and medium abilities
It is not necessary for a medium to leave their body for a spirit to speak. In fact, most mediums do not do this during a live psychic reading. Instead, most mediums communicate with the deceased in the same way that they communicate with the living. A clairsentient medium with the gift of clairsentience can feel the feelings of the spirit in addition to feeling the emotions of the person requesting the reading. In the same way, a clairaudient medium is able to relay messages from the spirit that they hear. They then communicate with the client to tell them what the deceased has said.

A medium who is clairvoyant will see images
A psychic who is clairvoyant is able to see things that others do not. He may see into the past, present, or future. In a similar way, a clairvoyant medium will sometimes see the spirit of the deceased. More often, they see with their mind's eye as an image in their mind. It is also possible that they may see symbols related to the deceased. For example, a deceased person who was known for having a special race car or racing uniform could send an image of their car as a symbol that communication has been made.

What Is the Difference Between a Medium and a Psychic?
The terms psychic and medium are used by the general population somewhat interchangeably to describe individuals who are intuitive and who use divination practices or communications with otherworldly beings. However, there are clear differences between the two terms.

Mediums
·        A medium has the ability to communicate with the spirits of the dead. This may be accomplished by channeling, in which the medium ...........acts as a go-between for the other side.

Psychics
·        A psychic works at an intuitive level. Individuals who are psychic claim to have the ability to perceive information hidden from the normal ...........senses via a "sixth sense" or extrasensory perception.

Clairvoyance
·        A medium may have psychic abilities, but a psychic may not be a medium. Some mediums or psychics also claim to be clairvoyant, ..........meaning they can see the spirits of the dead.

Altered State of Awareness
·        Psychics and mediums work in an altered state of awareness. Psychic abilities can be developed, while becoming a medium cannot- ...........it is purported to be a gift an individual is born with.

Foretelling the Future
·        A psychic may be able to foretell the future in many areas--love, money, career, or travel--by using a variety of tools or spiritual channels.

Mediums are Rare
·      While it is believed that all people have some degree of psychic or intuitive ability, mediumship is very rare. Reverend Arlene explains ............the difference between a psychic and a medium and why the distinction between the two is very important.

Whether one refers to him- or herself as a psychic medium, spiritual medium, intuitive medium or any other similar title, it's all essentially the same thing—the emphasis being on talking to spirits in the afterlife. There is a big difference between a psychic and a medium.

A psychic isn't necessarily a medium, but a medium is a psychic. This is an important distinction and a good place to start, because I meet clients all the time who misunderstand the difference and confuse the two.

Psychics tune into the energy of people or objects by feeling or sensing elements of their past, present and future. Simply put, psychics rely on their basic sense of intuition and psychic ability to gather information for the person being read.

Mediums take it a step further. A medium uses his or her psychic or intuitive abilities to see the past, present and future events of a person by tuning into the spirit energy surrounding that person. This means mediums rely on the presence of non-physical energy outside of themselves for the information relevant to the person being read.

The emphasis of my work is mediumship: making connections with and delivering messages from people who are no longer living to those who still are. I receive information primarily and directly from the dead, spirit guides and angels.

While there are a few different forms of mediumship, I work as a mental medium, which means I communicate with spirits through the use of my connection with God and the Holy Spirit. Spirits impress my mind and body with thoughts and feelings that come in the form of "clairs." I mentally "hear" (clairaudience), "see" (clairvoyance), "know" (Clair cognizance) and/or "feel" (clairsentience) messages from spirits. I like to say that I act as the bridge between the spiritual and the physical world, with the intention of healing both worlds.

You may have heard the word “medium” used during discussions about psychic abilities, particularly those involving communication with the spirit world. Traditionally, a medium is someone who speaks, in one way or another, to the dead.

Mediums obtain messages from the spirit world in different ways. Some receive intuitive information, in which images and words appear as mental impressions that are then relayed along to the living. In other cases, a medium may hear actual auditory messages or see actual images of these messages.

Rev Arlene is a spiritualist minister who lives in Southern California, and among her many services she has at times performed séances to help her clients communicate with lost loved ones. She says, "I've found that the dead are quite a chatty bunch sometimes - if they've got something to tell you, they're going to make sure you get told. What you choose to do with the information is up to you, but a lot of times, for me, feeling the love being shared from the departed loved one is so humbling and such an honor to be a messenger for spirit.

What is “evidential” psychic mediumship?
An evidential mediumship reading usually begins with messages that give you evidence that your loved one in spirit is truly communicating with the evidential medium.

The reading with the evidential medium generally starts with physical evidence, such as what your loved one looked like, how he/she died, age and sex. The messages then describe your loved one’s personality, including what they liked and disliked, identifying speech patterns and unique characteristics about them that serve as evidence that it is truly your departed loved one who is coming through in the reading. The evidential medium will likely even use words or phrases that your loved one would typically use. Then there will be some messages to describe your loved one’s history growing up, their family situation, marital status and possibly any children or pets.

The purpose of evidential mediumship is to help you overcome any skepticism you might have about spirit communication. Evidential messages are the messages that people often describe as, “The medium knew things about him/her that could never have known unless they were in direct contact with him/her.” Then, after the evidence has been delivered, the evidential medium will present the messages that are meaningful though non-evidential.