Folks from the Bay Area may have been following this story. Phony psychics are everywhere. They will gleefully separate you from your money and most of the time there is nothing you can do to get it back.
I often meet people who tell me about getting scammed by so-called psychics. Besides taking their victims for a financial ride, scamsters often do tremendous emotional and spiritual harm to the vulnerable people who've turned to them for help.
Here are some tips for avoiding the con artists:
1. Do your research. Take a look at the psychic's website. Does their approach resonate with you? If the website is full of flashing lights, incoherent sentences and misspelled words ... move on. Find someone who is thoughtful about explaining what they do and why they do it. The approach you see on their site is probably a good clue to how they'll treat you in your session. Do you want all flash and no substance? Or someone who knows what they're doing?
What is the psychic's experience and training? Don't take their word for it, either. With the power of Google, you can quickly check out claims of publication, media and personal appearances, for example.
Check them out on Yelp or other sites where you can read online reviews from clients. Don't just pick someone at random out of the phone book or call a psychic hotline on a whim. You don't know who you'll end up talking to.
2. Keep an open mind, but use your common sense. Once you've booked a session and are talking with your psychic, keep an open mind. One of the most frustrating things people can do in a session is to try to stonewall the psychic to make them "prove" their gifts. I call these the "what color is my car?" clients. If you're looking for an insightful answer to whatever question you called me to work on ... ask the darn question, already! The more willing you are to be specific and open energetically when you're expressing your concern, the more in-depth and accurate your answer will be.
With that said, though, you need to remember to use your common sense. Phony psychics often use a technique called "cold reading," in which they gather information about you from what you tell them, as well as your non-verbal cues, and then repackage the information with a few likely guesses to make you think they're magically reading your mind! Do a search on "cold reading" to get some examples of how this works.
(to be continued ...)
