Psychic Addiction: Warning Signs You Could Be Addicted Plus Tips to Break Your Habit

April 27th 2021

Many people, particularly those who count themselves as ‘spiritual but not religious’, enjoy getting readings from psychics, mediums, tarot readers, astrologers and other psychic readers. There’s nothing wrong with that – I’m an astrologer myself, and I hope my clients find my services useful and life-affirming. However, for a small minority of people, an enjoyment of psychic or divination readings can quickly turn into a dependency, and a dependency can quickly turn into a psychological addiction.

A 2008 study by the University of Auckland found evidence that psychic addiction does exist, and that it can cause psychological harm – as well as creating financial difficulties for some addicts, who will go into debt to fund their addiction.

The vast majority of responsible, ethical psychics and divination experts are aware of the dangers of psychic addiction and will have policies in place to ensure that they don’t inadvertently facilitate it. However, the psychic industry is big business. Some of the more unscrupulous giant readings firms have good reason to encourage you to keep using their services, and indeed will pay bonuses to their readers for keeping clients coming back time and time again. Some private psychics also encourage dependency, whether simply for a profit motive or because their own ego issues cause them to want clients to be dependent upon them.

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Enjoyed responsibly, psychic readings, divination readings and mediumship sessions can all be useful, uplifting, positive events which can bring you peace of mind, inspiration, and good advice. Taken to extremes, however, a psychic addition can damage your self-esteem and self-reliance, paralyze your emotions, inhibit your intuition and create a toxic dependency which prevents you from living a fulfilled, autonomous life.

Could you be at risk from psychic addition? Here are some warning signs to think about:

Psychic Addiction Warning Signs

You may be at risk of psychic addiction if any of the following apply to you:

You feel that you need another psychic reading, rather than just would like one
You’re getting a reading more often than once every couple of months or so
You have one particular reader that you use and you will not countenance seeing anyone else
“Your reader” encourages you to visit more often or withholds information ‘until next time’
You question your own memory if a psychic tells you that something different happened
You are in debt due to paying for psychic readings
You feel that you mustn’t make an important life decision without first consulting a psychic/reader

Any one of the above should be treated as a warning sign; if you’ve ticked more than one of these, you may well be psychologically dependent on psychic readings to an unhealthy degree.

What to do about it?

First of all, recognise that it is a problem.

Secondly, try to understand why you feel dependent on psychic readings. What is it that is dis-empowering you and preventing you from feeling able to make your own sovereign decisions most of the time? If you are going through a really tough time emotionally, for whatever reason, then this may well be the root cause – but endless psychic readings will not help. Seek counseling or therapy instead.

If you feel that you are not yet dependent on psychic readings, but could head that way, here are some tips to help break the cycle of dependency:

Tips for Avoiding/Reducing Psychic Dependency

1 – Don’t Visit the Same Reader/Use the Same Service Every Time

Hearing from a variety of readers will help you see your issues from different angles, which in turn is more empowering to you than hearing the same old attitude from the same old reader every time. Using a variety of psychics will also make it easier and more obvious to spot if one of them is using unscrupulous tactics to encourage your dependency.

2 – Never Go Back to Someone Who Encourages Dependency

A good psychic, medium, astrologer, or reader of every kind will leave it up to you how often you visit/use their services, and indeed will gently tell you that it’s too often if they think it is. A bad one will actively encourage ever more frequent visits and may even withhold information unless you book to come back again promptly. Run like the wind and never go back.

3 – Don’t Only Use the Same Type of Reader Every Time

If you enjoy psychic readings, experiment – try a clairvoyant this time, a tarot reader next time, an astrologer the next, a psychic artist the next, and so on.

All psychics access information via their higher consciousness; the tools they use are largely irrelevant (the exception being astrologers, most of whom, like me, don’t claim to be psychic in the first place and have merely learnt to interpret astrological symbolism). Through a blend of interpretation, symbology, intuition and higher consciousness, psychics and readers can offer you useful advice for your current life circumstances. Mediums on the other hand access information via your deceased loved ones in the spirit realm – who do not know what will happen to you (see free will, below), and if they did, they probably wouldn’t tell you! The role of a medium is therefore rather different: to provide evidence of life after death, which can be a great comfort. Do try out a variety of different types of reading will also protect you against becoming too dependent on just one type.

4 – Develop Your Understanding of Free Will

Very few people believe that the future is set in stone; the majority of us believe that our own free will can and does influence future events. Read up on free will – both the science of it (which is in its infancy) and the psychological and spiritual aspects of it. The more you understand this, the less vulnerable you will be to anyone telling you that such and such WILL happen to you. And this should lessen your dependency on anyone who claims that they CAN tell you this. They can’t.

5 – Develop Your Own Divination Practice

Divination can be practiced by anyone (and divination is not fortune-telling – see free will, above). Some forms of divination take many years to master, but others can be learned in minutes. There are many positive reasons to start your own daily divination practice, and doing so will definitely help to curb the dependency you feel on asking others to do this for you.

6 – Develop Your Own Psychic and Mediumship Abilities

Just as divination can be practiced by anyone, anyone can learn to access their psychic and mediumistic abilities too. You can do this for yourself. There is a massive industry around teaching you this, but one of the best, most honest and most sincere ways to begin is via your local spiritualist church. They will invariably teach both basic psychic awareness classes and more advanced mediumship classes, usually at very low cost.

7 – Develop Your Own Intuition

Intuition can also be developed in your own time. There are many excellent books on this topic, and you can also make it fun by trying some daily intuition exercises.

8 – Develop Your Self-Confidence

If the main reason you visit psychics is to help with decision making, then taking a course in self-esteem or self-confidence may be helpful to you. Psychics and readers can indeed provide useful advice, but you must be able to make these decisions under your own steam, without relying on such advice. Choosing to ask for it is one thing, and that’s fine, but feeling that you need it is dangerous.

If you can work on your own spiritual development and your own personal development, you’ll soon figure out how to enjoy psychic readings on a healthy basis, with succumbing to the pitfalls this path can hide.

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About the author:

Nikki Harper is a spiritualist writer, astrologer, and editor for Wake Up World. She writes about divination, astrology, mediumship and spirituality at Questionology: Astrology and Divination For the Modern World where you can also find out more about her work as a freelance astrologer and her mind-body-spirit writing and editing services. Nikki also runs a spiritualist centre in North Lincs, UK, hosting weekly mediumship demonstrations and a wide range of spiritual development courses and workshops.