A couple of weeks ago, a healer shared the quote I’ve paraphrased below on Facebook:
No matter where we are when we meet, within 5 minutes I’ll know your pain, issues, hidden feelings and emotions. Because I’m a reader. It’s who I am and it’s what I do.
No. No. No. Not ok.
Healers must behave more mindfully if they want to take up their rightful place in the alternative and complementary healing field — a $14B service industry in 2016.
Know this: an ability to read people psychically does not confer permission to do so.
Healers who read people in social settings are unprofessional, and quite often untrained in psychic awareness. The leering quality of this behavior is especially toxic. When meeting someone socially, perhaps for the first time, it’s unlikely that they want to share deep, tender emotions and vulnerabilities.
The is an “off switch”
Psychics who read people continuously may not know how to avoid filtering the information they pick up through their own emotions, beliefs and judgments. Doing so skews accuracy in small, or perhaps, significant ways.
Too often I hear healing practitioners say that they can’t help reading people, the ‘lights are always on’. I’ve taught psychic awareness — seeing, hearing, feeling, sensing, knowing, tasting and smelling energy — for more than 25 years. Trust me, there’s an off switch.
When a practitioner studies psychic awareness, it requires deep inner work to refine perception. It’s difficult to master accurately reading others without doing this essential inner work to cultivate neutrality and non-attachment.
Healers
It is unethical and inappropriate to read people at a party, outing, chance encounter, over a cup of tea, or meet-and-greet with or without consent. If the person wants to be read, book an appointment.
Licensed therapists, doctors and other clinical professionals follow a code of ethics that applies to their professional practice and personal lives. Alternative healers are not exempt from ethical practice and appropriate conduct.
If you’ve been taught or you believe that your psychic abilities are spontaneous and cannot be controlled or regulated, please do some research. Find a course within your budget that hones and anchors these skills, and features an off switch! Psychic development needs to be supervised to calibrate perception and ensure clarity. Feedback from a skilled practitioner is essential for mastering psychic awareness.
Clients
No one can read you without your consent. You are entitled to respect. Your personal, emotional and physical issues and stories are yours to tell.
If you experience this infringement, know that the healer is:
- violating your right to privacy and choice to disclose
- unskilled and unethical
- boundaryless
- unprofessional
The intersection of the New Age with alternative and complementary healing has created an efficacy void that frustrates practitioners who have done the hundreds of hours of work it takes to learn, apply and master modalities.
Hopefully the information shared in this post will circulate widely and educate those in the healing field to further their learning. Consumers may have increased ideas about discernment and their choice of resources.
What’s been your experience with alternative and complementary healers? Share your stories with us here, but please do not name names!
Recommended Course
The Clairvoyance Course is open to all levels, and will assist you with developing, refining and expanding your clairvoyant skills. You can read energy.
This is such an interesting, eye-opening post! I’m relatively new to the world of energy and have been mostly reading through forums to get my bearings on where to begin. I have been a little worried and hesitant about how many people speak with the notion of this being an “always on” experience, and how you will feel overwhelmed at times due to absorbing all the energies around you. I have been feeling called to seek more guidance from actual professionals like yourself, versus other students who are still learning just like me, who are also giving out potentially inappropriate information as fact. I actually discovered you on a reddit forum where you gave some guidance to someone and led them to this site! I’m so glad I did! I like how your resources give me an easy to follow blueprint for my new journey, so I won’t be confused and doing guess work on how to get started. I’m also curious, is there a way to protect yourself and prevent the ability of others to read you without your consent? Kind of like a closed door on your energy, and only you have the power to open it and invite them in? Or do you have to unfortunately accept the fact that there are people out there who will behave unethically and read you without consent. Kind of like a “comes with the territory of life” sort of thing?
Hi Brie, I’m so glad that my post on Reddit was useful to you! It’s been a while since I posted there, so you must have gone back a ways! I think people can be
caught up with a very naive view of energy and how it works, what’s permanent and what isn’t. There’s no need to be ‘always on’, nor is there any appropriate response to someone who reads your energy without your permission. It does happen all the time! I’ve had a psychic push her business card at me in a shopping center parking lot, telling me she’d read some important energy in my field and wanted me to book a session to tell me about what she ‘saw’! Needless to say, I threw her card away and never called. Ethics, boundaries, professionalism…please! There are some things you can do to contain your energy, they’re made available in a free course I offer called The Present of Presence. Beyond that, you can take any information anyone shares with you with a massive grain of salt. People who read others without permission have little insight into how their own energy field is organized, and as a result, whatever they’re reading is mixed up with a whole lot of other ‘information’ that they’re not consciously connected to. If you want to learn more about how to read energy appropriately, I have a course called Clairvoyance that could be really useful to you. Thanks so much for checking in! I like the way you’re thinking about all of this, and I appreciate your innate wisdom!
This happened to me. An acquaintance went to a psychic to ask about my deceased relatives even after I showed hesitance. That psychic went ahead and delved into my energy and extracted information about them, contradicting what other psychics said in the past, then claimed that I just didn’t want to accept it. It was actually scary how much she saw considering she’d never met me or spoken to me, all because the acquaintance had asked. I believe that part of the acquaintance’s incentive for approaching her was because she herself is intuitive and she wanted to see if that psychic would echo what she said about my relatives, so she wanted some reassurance, but I hadn’t asked either of them. All I did was talk about my sister to my acquaintance. Next thing I know, both are all up in my business. I felt quite upset, but because I’m not psychic and don’t know the code of ethics within this field, I wasn’t aware back then that she should have asked for my consent.
If you think that wasn’t bad enough, then get this: a few months later when I reached out to her directly to book a healing session as the acquaintance highly recommended her, she rejected me because she only wanted to work with those who resonate with her and it would be a “waste of our time” as she wouldn’t be fully committed to helping me. Right, but it’s OK to tap into my energy without asking me? She doesn’t need to resonate for that, but as soon as I actually ask for help, suddenly resonating becomes important? And she calls herself a healer.
Wow, Georgia, the unethical nature of all of what took place in your experience makes me very sad. The ‘healing’ field is rife with this type of behavior, sometimes because the ‘healer’ is ignorant about professional boundaries, and sometimes because there’s a wild west mentality to spiritual healing. To be honest, you dodged a bullet when that healer turned you down! I can only imagine what might have occurred had you been accepted into her practice. Thanks for sharing your experience!
I know right?! I shudder to think how the session would have gone. Hope you’re having a good Christmas!
Sometimes discernment is hard won – but however it arrives, it’s always a blessing! Well done, Georgia! Happy New Year!
Thank you, this needed to be said
I appreciate your validation, Will! I agree with you!
Taking this a step further, I like to make my patients and my children aware of the fact that the feelings they are feeling at different times may not even be their own. Everyone is sensitive to some degree and pick up on the emotions of people around them. This can be confusing. I especially ask questions of patients who speak of having anxiety or panic attacks. They are often so surprised at the concept that it may not even be their “stuff”. It is very freeing to actually realize you may just be ok. We tend to think something is wrong with us. So I give them a choice or the awareness to tune into what they are feeling and own it and deal with it or let it go because it may not be theirs. When I realized this in my practice my work became way less draining. Food for thought. Blessings!! ????
Yes, Tessa, I agree. I teach my clients and practitioners energy skills to identify what belongs to them and to return what belongs to others. It’s an eye-opener for many people to understand how much energy they take on that actually belongs to others.
An off switch is also good boundaries for the practitioner as well. For me, being always On was draining and impacted my ability to really BE with my clients, my family, and myself, and contributed to a bout with insomnia for quite a while.
Learning boundaries and protections was the key to me choosing how and when I used my skills and now when I tune in it’s more powerful, focused, and effective. I learned that my own personal autonomy as I navigate this lifetime is critical to my well-being than me being subjected to any and everyone’s feelings just because I can- that’s just being a martyr.
I have a colleague who regularly reads people, includIng myself, when I have not requested him to do so and it feels violating, like my thoughts and feelings aren’t my own, and I no longer have the luxury of sharing from a deep, confidant space because he already knows. The intimacy is lost, the potential for really connecting on a heart level is lost because it’s the experience of being vulnerable when we voluntarily share our deep truths which creates the space for mutual trust and healing.
When it’s just taken, there’s nothing left to share.
Miranda, I love your last sentence, when it’s just taken there’s nothing left to share. So well said!
I so enjoy helping practitioners create their boundaries, own their space and reclaim their full selves. Being On all the time is exhausting, indeed, as you clearly discovered. It diminishes what can happen in the treatment space when the practitioner is fresh, vital and inspired by the work.
So glad you found your way out of the miasma of perceptive overload. Bodes well for the rest who need to find their way.
I hope you find a way to invite your colleague to grow in his capacity, to learn about the Off switch, and to realize that he’s driving people away by not turning off his ability to perceive energetically.
Thanks for sharing your comments with us!
I agree with you whether your a psychic medium, healer, empath, that doesn’t give you right to invade a persons space. barriers are important and can save you from some embarrassing painful experiance
Hi Jesse, I’m glad you feel that way, too. It’s important to me to see the profession take itself up a level or two. I’ve had so many experiences where I was attending ceremonies or spiritual gatherings and had people tell me what they were seeing in my field, or interpreting my stance based on past lives or other types of information. Without my request or permission. Invasive, inappropriate and slimy!