Ask the (Former) Professional "Psychic"

[Shirley_Ujest]

Lots of people could, if they bother to think about it, to be mentally organized about it.

If I didn’t have this thing called Ethics and a Conscience, Such a burden. I could easily be a cold reader and a hot reader. I could go into starting my own church, except for the fact I think the bible needs a major overhaul and I think Most Major Religions have lower ethics than con artists. But the tax-free status is so appealing.

I have the ability to remember the strangest stuff about people and the wonderful ability to be invisible at parties ( it is important to be forgettable) and just tune in on a group of people a few feet away watching, reading lips ( before I lost part of my hearing, Now my skills have increased.) and the talent for dropping bits into the convo to bring everything around. Suddenly, I’m popular and wonderful and funny! Hey! I am!
Things I have learned about human nature are:

People tend to say the same thing nearly the same way all the time. It is like a program in their head. They are too lazy or dull to ever find a new way to say something or try something new. ( I swear on all that I hold sacred the topics of convo I encounter are : I’m fat, I’m broke. The Kids drive me nuts. My husband is a (X) and the ever popular Did you see Survivor/Idol/Reality TV last night. That is the gist of the suburban housewife convo. Here is a newsflash: **EVERY WOMAN IN AMERICAN IS FAT! The ones that are not are employed by the entertainment and fashion industry. EVERYONE IS BROKE AND NOBODY’S HUSBAND EVER DOES EVERYTHING THEIR WIFE ASKS, NOT BECAUSE HE IS TRYING TO DRIVE YOU CRAZY, IT IS BECAUSE HE HAS OTHER THINGS TO DO THAT ARE MORE IMPORTANT THAN YOUR FUCKING TO-DO LIST, M’KAY? JUST SHUT THE FUCK UP AND DO THE FUCKING TO-DO LIST YOURSELF! **
Sorry, that turrett’s rant just burst out of me.

Everybody thinks they are special and that their kids are too. ( The kids are, but you, well, you might as well kill yourself now. )

People are inherently lazy. This is why infomericials ( positive upbeat perkiness selling us another kitchen gadget that will save one millionth of a second in the kitchen all for $19.99 plus s&h.)

People are inherently cheap. See infomercials.
I think lower than con artists and Most Major Religions ( some have good intentions and are decent sort.) are the home party companies.

God. If I had zero ethics, I would sell all the home party shit (Mary Kay, Amway, tupperware, candles, baskets (!!!), designer purses, kids stuff. Pampered Chef. Zango or whatever the health drink stuff is.) and I would be awesome at it. Bill Gates would be my cabana boy. I mean, why do cons on the street, when you can go into peoples homes and sell them shit they don’t need at inflated prices AND get to sign up others to do parties in their homes in the future!!!111!!! What.A.Racket.
Alas, I want to see Valhalla-Nivrvana-Heaven and don’t want to be reincarnated as Paris Hilton’s future children when I die.

Fascinating thread.

[Maastricht]

It’s sad, really. When you’re an older woman, the only decent way to be touched lovingly is to go to a hairdresser. And if you feel seeing a shrink is for “mad” people, and the only way to get loving attention is to go to a psychic.

I sometimes gave my dear mother-in-law a neck massage, for this reason.

[Ensign_Edison]

Hey everybody, hope I’m not bumping this if it’s too old. I had to go offline for a bit because other threads here were really starting to get to me, so I knew it was break time.

Viridiana: As far as I know, I never got a real skeptic, no. People who didn’t believe just didn’t engage with me, because most people aren’t confrontative. Even if they weren’t convinced, as I could see sometimes they weren’t, they were too polite to say so.
As for your friend on her period, women often have a scent - I’m not talking about anything nasty, just a slight difference in their sweat or something that could give it away. On preview, I see Corvin addressed that already. Also, women are on their periods roughly one-fourth of the time. Those aren’t bad guessing odds at all.

Anne Neville would like to know about people whose body language is out of whack. I think it’s interesting: absolutely, some people, especially those on the autistic spectrum or who were oddly socialized, are very hard to read.

What’s interesting about that is, people who think they are “real” psychics report the same phenomonen, and to me that suggests that a human talent is at work, not a supernatural force. Simply because in the latter case you then have to add yet another supernatural force, the ability to block/be blocked, and that’s adding complexity when a simpler answer exists.

SparrowHawk had a question about technique, adding very concrete things in with vague things. Yeah, that is part of cold reading much of the time, because the more vague hits they credit you with, the more likely they are to forget all but whatever of your bold statements (based really on your knowledge of chance and human behavior) end up being true. She also could have just believed she was psychic and had something to tell you.

Okay, this is long, splitting into another as I dive a bit deeper back in the thread for anyone I missed.

[Ensign_Edison]

There’s a lot of questions here, so I’ll handle it in one.

@The Scrivener

I also think this is a fascinating thread, Ensign Edison. While I basically agree with your moral condemnation of your previous line of work, I wonder if you aren’t being a tad too hard on yourself. Most of us will never know the temptations stemming from having a talent for cold reading – and fewer still assiduously will develop it, or choose a career so dependent on it (and those are the choices where the morality is weighed). Any moral comparison between those who can “cold read” and those who basically can’t is essentially pointless, like aesthetically comparing oranges and apples.

I’m sure I’m not being too hard on myself. I feel I’m being exactly the right amount of hard on myself to be completely sure I won’t ever forget that I don’t enjoy being unethical. I do appreciate your kind words, however. And I disagree that moral comparison is completely pointless, because I think a cold reader’s ability doesn’t excuse them from basic human decency. What you say about temptation may be something for people to bear in mind when judging those of us who slipped, however.

If you don’t mind divulging, would you tell us if your talent has affected your personal relationships? Are you in one now? Have others broken up with you for reasons having to do with your capacity for psychological or emotional manipulation? Do some people sense or readily understand this aspect in you, and shy away or quickly reject you for it, even as others may find it fascinating, irresistable, or flattering to their narcissism? Do you find yourself feeling, even against your better judgement, a certain baseline disdain or even pity for those who lack your ability? (Much has been made of “emotional intelligence” as a complement to the traditional “I.Q.” concept. It sounds as if the “E.Q.” of cold-readers might be in the genius range; do you agree? Although some of them might well also be sociopaths, if all they want to do is to manipulate others.)

I am in two happy, long term, committed relationships, one of which is mostly long distance at the moment, but has survived as such for many years. I’ve always done the breaking up, except in the very first relationship I had, but my willingness & ability to be manipulative absolutely did hurt some of them. In addition, because I was young and intense and strange, people did often react to me as you say, by either shunning me or sweating me.

But as I grew up more I gradually shed all that and decided just to use my talent for observation to be a better friend, and person. Now I “read” to see who needs a beverage and who should sit in the comfier chair; I use what I learned to try to appreciate and understand my friends better, so I can provide the right kind of support at the right times. This, to me, is the right way to use it.

No, I absolutely do not look down on people who can’t do this, because I really don’t find it all that impressive a trick. I do sometimes get frustrated when others can’t see what is obvious to me, but everybody feels that way sometimes. I don’t think cold-readers are of high EQ universally at all, in fact I’ve known some who were insensitive and emotionally immature in their daily life. Honestly, it’s just a parlor trick. Some people have better hands and nerves for sleight-of-hand, and so too with cold reading.

My guess (oh dear, does this mean I’m cold-reading you?) is that you find first dates (and especially blind dates) akin to a child’s game which you’ve long since aced, but that your moral capacity shrinks from any deliberate application of cold-reading skills to manipulate a date – either to get her to reveal more of herself than she otherwise might, or to enhance your likeability in her eyes. (You want your love, and especially her love, to be real and genuine, and untainted by your cold-reading talents per se, right?)

Since I personally feel that two is about what I can handle, even as a poly person, I don’t date anymore. Also, you’ve assumed I’m straight, so you totally fail your psychic test. (I have loved women and female-spectrum people and could do so again, but I’m definitely not straight, and my partners are both other men). The heart of your question, though, I think, is about what the honing of my skills did to my personality, and you’re correct that I began to lose my sense of what was authentically me and what was a put on for the other person.

Since I could figure out who they wanted me to be, I could become that for a little while very quickly. I would do this without even really thinking about it, realizing that I was doing it, eventually. But it would begin to disintegrate, since love can’t survive when it involves someone who doesn’t actually exist. Anyway, all this was part of why I quit.

And if you could choose who you would love, would it be someone who shares your abilities (but let us stipulate, without exploiting others) – or would you rather love and be loved by a person with average perceptive abilities, or even someone who has no capacity for it, as a tone-deaf person lacks a musical prodigy’s perfect pitch?

Heh. Both my partners are actually at the other extreme, they’re emotionally tone-deaf. And that hasn’t been uncommon for me, so I wonder if there’s a reason, now that you mention it. Hmm, it could be simply that they are hard for me to read, and that’s attractive to me, perhaps for some of the reasons you’ve mentioned.