The Gift and the Pain of Being Psychic or Intuitive
I use the terms psychic and intuitive interchangeably.
First a little about discovering your intuitive ability, then how it can feel like both a gift and a curse, but is really truly a gift. It just helps to know how to manage it.
We all come hardwired with intuition (or psychic ability, which is the same thing).
It matters how we use it, whether for good or for personal advantage. I’m only going to write here about people who use it for good. Those are all of you! I call you light workers.
You always had this ability, but may not have known it until someone showed you. (You still may not know it.)
Many who come on this site say they are not psychic. I bet you are. I’ve watched those who try it out at our Read the Future Nights and are flabbergasted when they get a hit later on. (If you are a skeptic, that is okay. It means you are careful. But if you are a fundamentalist or rigid about your skepticism, then you are blocking your psychic ability. And you likely won’t have much success if you try unless someone can loosen you up.)
I did not know I had the gift until age 34. When I became aware of it, I looked back and realized that my entire life I’ve known things I had no logical way of knowing. When I was a child, I thought my ability was coincidence. When I grew up, I thought my gift was just some kind of intelligence I had, and I felt a little fraudulent that I knew things without evidence. Employers promoted me for my special knowledge, and I felt guilty about zooming to the top so fast so often. I didn’t think it was “psychic” until I met a professional psychic in 1984. Then I realized I’d had the gift all of my life.
Once you realize you have the gift, you may seem to get more gifted almost overnight.
That’s because you become more aware of your ability and start noticing things you were thinking or doing that you had previously ignored. Then when you think back on your life, you might realize you’d had this gift all along too.
The gift comes to you in the fields or subjects you are interested in. That’s because you focus more deeply on your interests. Until I realized I was psychic, I thought you had to be making world predictions like Edgar Cayce or Jeanne Dixon to be psychic. I didn’t realize I had been using my gift in the classroom when I was a student, in my health care policy job, and in research, and with friends and acquaintances who I could instantly read. The pertinent information just seemed to fly to me.
If you can learn to use the gift for good, then your life may take on new meaning, even with the difficulties it brings.
Berkeley Psychiatrist Elizabeth Mayer recounts in her book Extraordinary Knowing her session with a brain surgeon who never lost a patient because he’d see a blue light go off near their head before deciding to do surgery. The blue light meant that the surgery would be successful. If he didn’t see it, then he didn’t do the surgery.
But his gift came at a cost because he couldn’t tell his medical students how he was able to never ever lose a patient. Psychic power is taboo in our society. He knew he’d become a laughing stock. So he left the teaching hospital, became depressed, and sought the psychiatric help of Psychiatrist Elizabeth Mayer who recounted the story in her book, Extraordinary Knowing.
There are psychic people everywhere who keep their gift a secret either because they don’t realize they have the gift, or can’t talk about it. Climate scientist James Hansen is psychic. Yes, he uses science, but he has a gift of being able to see the climate future among all the volumes of data he gathers. Coming up with a hypothesis take intuition above all else. There are many stories in history of these epiphanies. Jonas Salk, who saved the world from polio, made no secret about his intuitive gift.
Intuitive people can see the woods from the trees just like I can glance at a Tarot card and see what Ruth Bader Ginsberg was feeling at that exact moment. It’s an instant knowing. It’s especially important in science, but it’s important in any life endeavor. Being an intuitive myself, I recognized James Hansen’s gift the first time I read his work. I also knew he was right although I could see that he was being conservative even though his predictions about rising seas were more radical than his colleagues. He has turned out to be correct, but I know that climate change will unfold even faster than he predicted.
The difficulties of having the gift:
1. It is painful to feel the world so deeply.
Light workers understand the radical interconnectedness of all beings. This is a high calling and involves a highly evolved psyche. We are empaths which means we feel what others feel. This is where it can get very painful and nerve-racking to be psychic. So, you have to protect yourself. In my Intuitive Way class, we spent an entire class on determining if you are an empath, and learning how to manage that ability to keep you steady.
2. Sometimes you feel you do not have boundaries. Guess what? You don’t.
That’s why you can feel other’s thoughts so deeply. I go to great lengths to protect myself. It takes practice.
During his administration, I stopped listening to Donald Trump’s voice or words or those of any of his apologists. The GOP spin became off limits for me. So are the Fox talking heads. When I hear them, I feel sick and angry. Why would I listen to gas lighters, liars and thieves anyway? They are just trying to get into your head and confuse you. They don’t confuse me because I know dark energy when I see it. But it is painful to take it in and it goes right into my heart when I do.
I do read the news every day, but I am selective. The Washington Post and most mainstream papers agrees that Trump and his enablers are liars, so they send news that is bad for him and don’t throw the GOP counter spin in your face. I also read The New Yorker, The Atlantic, Pro Publica.com, Democracy Now!, The NY Times, and the Boston Globe, as well as Politico and a wide range of smaller publications. But even these are not perfect and can be biased. But at least they don’t make me sick.
There is actually is a joy in not having boundaries, as long as you are discerning about when to put them up: that you truly can feel one with this world and your love can be boundless.
You can feel the animals, the birds, the trees, the forests, and the oceans as well as any human being you decide to focus on. This is beautiful, boundless love. You can really love everything and everyone. You can go into a forest and listen to them all and feel their peace.
You can heal with this gift.
3. The cost is that you will bleed for the downtrodden if you let yourself think about them. When I was a child, I used to listen to the radio all day for the rock and roll music. But when the news came on, I’d also hear terrible news. I ran downstairs one day crying to my parents that Mr. and Mrs. Smith had died in a fire with all of their children. At first, they were alarmed until they realized I’d heard it on the radio. “Oh, that’s just on the radio, honey,” they said. My parents and my siblings weren’t letting this information into their psyches, but I couldn’t keep it out.
When you do start bleeding for others there is a solution, not just for you but for the ones who are suffering:
Here’s what I do: I think of them and their suffering and I immediately contact the highest angels or healing presence (use whatever you believe in), and I imagine them sending healing to the afflicted. Sometimes I imagine them sending that healing through me to them. Either way works just fine. I start picturing the afflicted people getting stronger or being protected. I send them well-being and I tell them they are going to be okay, get stronger, get through it. You can get quite good at this practice. On the receiving end, people report that a presence helped them or an angel lifted them up.
The practice of feeling and sending healing and positivity to the downtrodden is a high calling for empaths. It is your gift that you feel their pain. It is likely the reason you came to this world at this time — to guide and heal others in whatever way you can. Just sending love to them is likely enough. You can decide at what level you want to perform this work. Choose what keeps you whole and happy.
I’ve made a meditation here that creates instant healing to you and all of those you love. It’s awesome. I didn’t do it alone so do read the credits. I also at this time hold a zoom loving kindness meditation Monday, Wednesdays, and Fridays at 7 pm Eastern time. You can find the links here.
4. When you first realize you are psychic, you may think you know everything. But you don’t and you will fall on your face.
Stay humble and know that you can’t know everything just because you proclaim it or see it in a Tarot card. Over time you will begin to understand how consciousness and perception can fool you into thinking that something you see is going to come true. Other times, you will be astonished at your accuracy. Practice makes perfect and even with a lot of practice, you still can’t know everything. For example, I’ve known for years that the IPCC climate reports were woefully underestimating, though not on purpose, what was going to happen. They are getting much better now.
So I have a strong knowing about the climate. But I don’t know how much longer the oceans will be able to hold all that heat. I don’t know how much humans will be able to stop burning fossil fuels or whether humans will find some interim solutions to save us. So my gift is not absolute.
I’ve also had a knowing from the beginning of his campaign that Donald Trump was compromised by Vladimir Putin. I just know it is true, yet I still don’t know when Trump will be gone. I’ve had some visions of a Congressional blue wave in November 2020 that will then prompt him to step down if he gets reelected. I know that the Russians, some other foreign entities, and the GOP will hack the hell out of the election in all the ways they can. But I don’t know whether they will be successful. So there is a limit to my ability to see the election at this time. Sometimes a gate lifts and I can see much more than I could before.
So it is good to keep trying and be patient with yourself when you can’t get an answer. Always write down what you see, the check it later for accuracy. You will learn so much from your errors.
5. Intuitive/psychic people feel and often behave differently than other people, and so the gift may isolate you.
We all need a “choir” of close friends with whom we can share our deepest feelings. Being psychic may change that.
When I first knew I had the gift, I told everyone. Big mistake. Lost friends.
Once I learned to keep my mouth shut, I noticed that I suffered from all the skepticism I encountered on the one hand; and became dismayed and angry at all the myopic people I deemed to be “not awake.” I thought, why can’t they see what I see? I felt so alone.
In Greek Mythology, Cassandra was a beautiful priestess of Troy who the besotted Apollo had given the gift of prophecy. But then when she rebuffed his advances, he added the curse that no one would ever believe her. When the Trojan Horse was placed outside the gates of Troy, Cassandra begged them not to bring it into Troy because she knew psychically that it would cause disaster. But no one believed her. It is painful when you see disasters coming and people don’t believe you because they can’t see it. Worse, they may shake their heads and ridicule you. The Greeks understood this problem even then.
To avoid isolation and feeling misunderstood, I urge you to assemble your “choir” of people you can share deeply with, even if they are new in your life.
6. Another problem for people who are openly psychic is that believers think you should know everything and never make mistakes. And if you make a mistake, then they think you’re a fraud. There so much to say about this issue, but the fact is that:
(a) Even Micky Mantle only got a hit one third of the times at bat. That’s 33% hit rate. I know my psychic hit rate is higher than that, but no psychic is 100 percent.
(b) Some things are unknowable.
(c) Some things can’t be determined until a certain time passes and possibly will never be known.
(d) Psychics have different specialties, depending on their interests. So I’m not going to be helpful with which movie will win the academy awards or most of the Royal Family issues. I can throw a card on these and often get the answer but it wouldn’t come to me normally. Sometimes there are exceptions. I was surprised to have seen the Nationals win the World Series before I even knew they were team. I readily see the climate change future, and I can read many of the political players, and sense a lot of what goes on behind the scenes in the political circles. We all have our interests. I can also read individuals in a healing way, and get messages from spirit for them during a private reading. It’s always been my thing to help people one on one. So it’s no surprise to have a gift in that way. It’s what we care about that we do best.
(e) You can’t go around reading everyone all the time just because they ask you. You’ll collapse! Learn to set boundaries on your services.
6. Finally, the most common complaint of psychic people is that they feel like a freak and/or are afraid of the things they see.
Many people who hate being psychic tell me that they tend to see impending illness, accidents, disasters, and death. This type of gift is very difficult, especially if you had this happening to you as a child.
But it too can be a positive gift. In one of my classes I witnessed one of the most magical experiences of my life when one of the participants saw another woman’s departed sister standing at a portal with a message for her living sister. Two others, including myself, had also seen the portal. But participant saw much more. I wrote about it in this article: http://jeannemayell.com/spirits-among-us-how-an-intuition-exercise-opened-a-portal/.
I too have sensed people on the other side, many times. But this event had a magical quality that took my breath away. The woman who had the vision, a young Iranian dentist who came to the US as a toddler told us that she has always been able to see when a family member was going to die. She has a huge extended family, so her gift has happened many times during her life. She feels fine about it. When she saw the woman’s deceased sister, her revelation had a healing effect on the living sister who was in my class. It also affected everyone in the room. It wasn’t just another mediumship event which I’ve had, and I’ve witnessed. It was a spiritual miracle that healed the living sister, and profoundly changed the rest of us.
People who hate being psychic because they usually see bad things, might want to consider that they are unconsciously performing a healing.
When we see someone in a reading, we connect with that person. We are there with them in some way. If we see a national disaster unfolding, as I unknowingly dreamed I was running around a World Trade Center tower desperately looking for a way down a few days before 9/11, we are connecting with the people in that disaster. In my dream, I was in the tower. I became the person there. I believe I was there with them, drawing their pain into my psyche by becoming part of them. I awoke frightened, but I was safe. I believe I took some of that fright out of their tender psyches as they faced the event.
We intuitive empathic psychic people are like trees sending nutrients to the other trees in the forest. We draw from their pains by feeling them, even sometimes becoming them, then we send them love. We don’t have to know we are extending healing when this process happens. But we are.
Hi Jeanne.
I saw a clear hit in the May 2020 list: “people are wearing medical masks due to all the fires” in California. Very accurate vision, if not quite for the right reason.
Thank you for this heads up, Steve!