Hi,
I only had three professional readings in my life.
Each time, I was going through a rough time personnaly, and was hoping to get useful insight from the readings in order to make my conditions better.
Two readings (the very first, and the last in date) were very good and gave me food for thought and hope. The cards were not all sugar coated, but both times the readers pointed out the problems AND suggested ways to avoid it or go around it, or look at it from a different viewpoint.
But one reading (the second one) was bad.
I felt much worse after having the reading, and that is saying something because I was not feeling great when booking the reading in the first place.
I had given information to the reader about my specific situation and what I wanted help with, and she gave me advice that I did not ask for, and that I truly think came from her own point of view and not from the cards.
At that time I was having serious problems at work with a person who was trying to have me fired and who was making my life miserable on a daily basis, and I was asking how to best deal with the situation in order for the harassment to stop.
She point blank told me that no matter what I did the harassment would never stop and I would always be miserable, and she urged me to resign from this position and leave this company (when I had specifically told her that leaving or loosing this job was not an option !)
Looking at the cards she draw, I was pretty sure that this advice was not in the cards, but that the reading had been totaly biaised by her own opinion.
In any case, it left me completely dejected : I was already under a lot of anxiety and pressure at the time, and I really did not need a reading that left me even more depressed.
As a reader myself, I knew before this experience that it is bad practice to let your own point of view interfere with the reading ; and that giving people definitive life changing once sided advice is NOT recommanded either.
I think it is much better and much more deontologicaly acceptable to give the querent food for thought, to enlight an aspect of their question that they might have overlooked, and in the end to leave them free to act according to their own free will.
But, this experience was a good lesson to me, because it gave me first hand experience on how terrible you can feel when you had a bad reading ; it can be traumatic and even dangerous to say this kind of thing to someone who is emotionnaly fragile !
So now I am even more careful than ever, to not let my personal opinion interfere with a reading, and to refrain from giving definitive and one sided advice.
It is important to stay open minded and objective, and always let people know that their decision is their own to make - without imposing a moral judgement or a sense of doom on them.
After all, querents come to have an insight from the cards, not to have my personal point of view on what they should or should not do - otherwise they would ask for my opinion and not for a reading.
So out of three professional readings : two good and one bad. But the bad one served me as a lesson on my own tarot practice, so now I count it as a positive experience even if it was a bad reading.