Monday, October 29, 2012

How to Cope with Being Psychic


Overview

Many people imagine that psychic abilities such as being able to talk to spirits or knowing the future can have a lot of advantages. However being psychic can also cause problems too. It can cause someone to feel different, isolated, confused, and at times it can be frightening.

The remedy for these difficulties is knowledge. If being psychic is causing problems for you, learn as much as you can about being psychic and what other people have experienced. When you know more about the kinds of phenomena that can occur, that there are other people who have the same experiences, how to control them where possible, and how to use them, you will begin to feel more comfortable with psychic experiences.

In particular, learning about the following subjects can make it easier to cope with being psychic:

However, there are limits to what can be accomplished by an article like this. If you are having problems caused by having psychic experiences and want to seek help from a mental health professional who has experience dealing with psychic and spiritual problems, there is a list of such professionals here.

Introduction

There are a wide variety of psychic abilities. If you are psychic, you might see and hear spirits, or sense them in other ways. You might have intuitions about future events. You might know what other people are going to say before they say it. Objects around you might move for no apparent reason, or electrical equipment may malfunction. You might have dreams of future events that come to pass, or dreams of events at distant locations that you can confirm. You might feel the emotions other people are feeling, or have other types of paranormal experiences.

If psychic phenomenon is not something you have studied before, you may feel alone, confused and frightened by this. If you don't know anyone else who is psychic and you have not read anything about being psychic you might not understand why or how you experience what you do. If you find yourself developing psychic abilities suddenly and unexpectedly, it can be confusing and frightening. Some people may wonder if being psychic is demonic, sinful, or a symptom of mental illness. Friends and family may be wondering the same thing. Peers, friends and family members may not believe psychic phenomena are possible, or they may have negative reactions to psychic phenomena. These things may cause someone who is psychic to feel confused, frightened, isolated, or abnormal.

This article is intended to help you learn to cope with psychic experiences and it is based on my knowledge of the difficulties experienced by people with psychic abilities. I have met many people who developed psychic abilities because I have been a member of several different Spiritualist churches. Spiritualist church services usually include a demonstration of mediumship and many of the people who attend the services are psychic too. Spiritualist churches usually offer classes in mediumship and healing and I have attended those types of classes so I have some experience with psychic abilities myself. I have also communicated over the internet with many people who have developed psychic abilities and I am currently a moderator of the Psychic Support Forum. This article discusses subjects you can learn about that will help you cope with being psychic and includes links to other articles with more information on many of these subjects.

If you are the parent of a child who has psychic abilities, you should also become familiar with this information and try to explain it to your child in a way he can understand. You should also understand that there is nothing evil about being psychic, many people have these kinds of experiences. If your child reports psychic experiences, react to them as if they were ordinary. You should not discourage your child or punish him for being psychic, but don't treat his psychic experiences as something very special either because you don't want to encourage your child to make up stories. You should also try to explain to your child that other people might not understand about his being psychic so he should be careful about who he talks to about his abilities.

If having psychic abilities is causing problems for you, there are several areas that you should learn more about:

How to Control the Phenomena.

Section Contents

Unfortunately, many psychics never develop the ability to completely shut down the phenomena or to turn them on at will. However there are things you can do to develop some control over them.

General Techniques

  • Meditation If you are not a regular meditator you might try meditation because it can be calming and relaxing and this may help you cope better with your experiences. However be aware that meditation can also make one more psychically receptive because it quiets the analytical mind allowing greater awareness of the intuitive mind. If you are a meditator and you want to reduce your psychic receptivity you might try doing less meditation or stopping it completely.


  • Listen to music. Listening to music can distract you from psychic perceptions when you don't want to be aware of them. If necessary turn the volume up but use head phones so you don't disturb the people around you and don't play the music so loud that you damage your hearing.


  • Practice using your abilities deliberately. If you can learn to use your abilities when you want to, you may also improve your ability to not use them when you don't want to. This may help reduce spontaneous occurrences.


  • Pray for guidance, assistance and protection. If you are not comfortable praying, you should try it anyway. When you are dealing with spiritual phenomena you must use the tools of spirituality. Just tell God what is bothering you or what you want. If you want help from divine or spiritual forces, often you have to ask for it before it can be given. Don't be afraid to ask for help. Part of spiritual maturity is understanding your part in the hierarchy of advanced beings helping less advanced beings. This means you should help other people when you can, but it also means it is your responsibility to ask for help when you need it. Cooperation, working together to accomplish something that cannot be done by an individual, is one of the most important spiritual values. Cooperation includes asking for help when you need it. Obviously, not every prayer will be answered but it is still useful for keeping communication open, for maintaining spiritual contact with the higher planes.

    • The most powerful prayer is to ask to be shown how to do something. This is almost always more effective than asking to be given something.

    • A good prayer for protection is: "Oh God, please watch over me and protect me so that only the highest and best forces can influence me."

    When you ask a question in prayer, try to be open to receiving an answer when you pray, but also understand an answer may come later when you might be more receptive or when circumstances can provide a symbolic answer or some other type of sign.

  • In extreme cases medication may be helpful in curbing psychic perceptions.

Sensing Spirits

  • How to Get Rid of Spirits

  • If you are hearing voices, talk back politely.

  • If you are sensing the presence of spirits, understand that you can be an active participant in the communication. You don't have to be a passive, silent observer:

    • If you would prefer the spirits to leave you alone, politely but firmly tell the spirits to stay away from you. If it is just an inconvenient time and you wouldn't mind if the spirit came back later, say so. If you don't like a certain spirit and want him to stay away permanently, say so. When you speak to spirits you can do it mentally, like with prayer, you don't have to speak out loud.

    • If the spirits are doing something you don't like, you should tell them, they may not realize the effect they are having on you. One medium I knew was so sensitive that when the spirits tried to explain to her how they died, it could be very unpleasant. She felt what they felt causing their death too strongly. She had to learn to tell the spirits not to communicate so intensely. The spirits didn't realize how they were affecting her but they would be more sensitive when she explained what the problem was.

    • Don't do something just because you think a spirit told you to do it. It is your life and you are here to learn from experiencing the consequences of your actions. Spirits may remind you of factors to consider, but they should not be giving you too much advice about how to run your life. Not every spirit has your best intentions in mind, and sometimes it is possible to misunderstand a spirit or to mistake an ordinary phenomena for a psychic perception (see below).

  • Suggestions on how to handle possession.

Psychokinesis

If you are experiencing objects moving unexpectedly, hearing raps, or electrical equipment is turning on or off or otherwise malfunctioning, this may be due to unconscious psychokinesis (PK). If these phenomena are restricted to one location, and or do not depend on the presence of any one person, they may be caused by a spirit. If the phenomena seem to occur in different locations and only occur when you are present it is more likely to be psychokinesis. Psychokinesis is often a consequence of emotional upsets and dealing with the issues that are upsetting you may reduce the occurrence of unconscious PK.

  • You can also try to use a psi wheel to develop control over psychokinesis. The linked article describes how make a psi wheel and turn it by placing your hand near it. If you can turn the wheel without placing your hand near it, practice that way.

Empathy: Sensing the Feelings and Emotions of Others

  • Try to continue your daily routine and keep busy as much as possible so that your mind will be filled with mundane thoughts.

  • Try sending spiritual healing energy to the person you are sensing the feelings of. The way you can do that is explained here: Spiritual Healing: You Can Do It. Taking practical steps to help the situation may make you feel better about it.

  • Visualize a shield of white light surrounding yourself that protects you from outside emotions and feelings.

  • Pray for, or ask your spirit guides for, help shielding you, or to help you understand how to shield yourself. I have found that asking to be shown how to do something myself is one of the most effective forms of prayer. Try to listen for an answer immediately after asking, but also be aware the answer might come later at an odd moment when you might be particularly receptive to perceiving it. See the section on Prayer for more information.

Psychic Self-defense

My article on psychic-self defense has additional information and links that may be helpful.

Phenomena that Might not be Psychic

Learn to distinguish between genuine psychic phenomenon and ordinary phenomenon that may appear to be psychic. People who are psychic are more likely to confuse ordinary phenomenon with psychic phenomenon, Because they have so many psychic experiences, psychics have a low threshold for accepting that something is psychic. There are two phenomenon you should be aware of that are relatively common and while they may seem psychic they may not be. Just like sometimes dreams may be precognitive or be communications from spirits but many dreams are not psychic at all, the first two phenomenon below may or may not be psychic.

  • Sleep paralysis

  • Hypnopomic hallucinations - are hallucinations that occur when waking up from sleep. They may seem very real but you should be suspicious of any type of psychic perception that occurs immediately upon waking, it may not be a psychic perception at all but just a hallucination.

  • Hallucinations

  • Fears or wishful thinking. One common mistake beginners make is that they confuse their own fears or wishful thinking with psychic perceptions. It can take a bit of experience to tell the difference. Genuine psychic perceptions are usually a type of "knowing" without emotional content. You might react emotionally to the information but your sense of the information does not come from an emotional part of your mind.

Understanding, accepting and finding purpose in having psychic abilities.

  • Understand that you are not alone and that many other people have had these experiences.

  • Learn more about the evidence for the afterlife.

  • Learn more about the evidence for ESP and some of the different types of psychic perception.

  • Learn more about what it means to be psychic and what people like you experience.

    • Get to know other people who have had psychic experiences.

      • The Psychic Support Forum is an on-line forum where you can meet other psychics and people who are interested in psychic phenomena and discuss anything you want.

      • Spiritualist churches are a good place to meet other psychics. The services usually include a demonstration of mediumship and offer spiritual healing to those in attendance who desire it. Spiritualism is a very tolerant and undogmatic religion. You can be any other religion or even an atheist and still go to Spiritualist services. There is often a social hour after the services for people to meet and get to know each other. Spiritualist churches also usually offer classes in mediumship and spiritual healing.

      • IANDS The International Association for Near-Death Studies has local groups in many locations. People who have near-death experiences often have psychic experiences too.

      • You may be able to meet other psychic on-line through Internet discussion forums.

    • Read biographies of psychics so you can learn about what other psychics have experienced and how they coped with it.

    • Reading about scientific studies and other investigations of psychic phenomenon can also be helpful.

    • Here are some web sites and blogs with articles on psychic phenomena:

  • Find meaning in your abilities.

    • Some psychics learn to use their abilities to help other people by giving psychic readings, helping people to communicate with spirits, or giving spiritual healings. If you want to use your abilities to help other people, you should find a competent teacher who can help you develop your abilites and guide you on how to use them ethically and responsibly.

    • Some psychics find meaning in their abilities by studying them scientifically to contribute to humankind's understanding of the phenomena. If you become involved with scientists studying paranormal phenomena, make sure they have a set of guidelines on the ethical treatment of human subjects in scientific experiements. Read and understand those guidelines. Know if your privacy and anonymity will be respected. Also find out if the investigator will profit from your participation through books and lectures about his research on you. Avoid any type of public contest or challange designed to prove the reality of paranormal phenomena. The mass media and skeptical organizations are not interested in helping psychics. They are interested in promoting themselves.

      Further reading on participating in research:

How it is Possible for People to Have Psychic Abilities.

It is possible for you to have psychic experiences because a human being is a spirit incarnated in a physical body. Psychic abilities are abilities that come from our spiritual nature. They are the abilities we have before we are born into the physical world and that we will have again when we leave the physical world after the death of the body. People who have near-death experiences experience expanded consciousness while they are out of their bodies and experience many types of psychic phenomena such as precognition, clairvoyance, and spirit communication. For most people, the brain filters out these abilities while they are in the body but in some cases these abilities make it through and we have access to them while we are incarnated.

More Information

If you are interested in spirits and the afterlife, there is a lot more information on those subjects at my web site.

Copyright © 2012, 2013, 2014 by ncu9nc All rights reserved. Texts quoted from other sources are Copyright © by their owners.