Affirmation vs. Accuracy?

[celticnoodle]

I agree with you, Barleywine. I think it is better to give the truth to the customer coming in for a reading and when I do see things that look rather bleak and awful, I try to do deliver the information as kindly as possible.

Its never easy to hear the bad things, but at least the person is prepared for it (hopefully) and can as a result deal easier with this. It doesn't always happen, even for me--as I've been told of bad things coming my way and thought I was prepared to deal with it until it occurs and a few times I was still really knocked down by it. Those are readers that I hold on high--because I know that they will tell the truth as they see it in the cards and so I will continue on with them as a customer and pay more attention to the things they tell me.

As for my own customers--I can only hope they will be the same way. I have to tell them what I see and try to deliver the harder parts of the message to them as kindly as I can. If it does come to be, I can only hope that they are prepared to handle it and get pass it all and remember that "wow! she saw that in her reading!" and continue to search me out for their readings. If they can't do that--*shrugs* its their choice and I don't worry about that either. I'd rather be as truthful about what I see then to just tell them what they hope to hear.

 

[Absynthe]

I'd like to hear your thoughts on the subject.

People in general are pain avoidant. That's where this whole positive thinking movement is spawned from. People basically running away from their pain and in denial. I was there too for a good decade, positive affirmations everyday, manifesting my own reality etc. I made a good go of it too, until I realised it was a lie. Accordingly I think a lot of readers are motivated in a way to not rain on someone's parade for fear of being labelled 'negative'. There is a whole culture around censoring negativity in case we accidentally 'catch it', too. It all comes down to pain avoidance.

But life isn't sunshine and rainbows. Very frequently it's filled with harsh realities and cold light of day moments. We do ourselves a disservice when we only want to see the positive in something. We have negative emotion for a reason, it's part of the spectrum of life. Trying to endlessly block it out does us no good at all. Negative emotion performs a necessary function, it tells us when we've gone off track. It helps us to grow. People don't grow by feeling happy all the time.

Accordingly I don't believe in shielding people from something that is ultimately to their benefit.
Even if it doesn't feel good in the moment. It's like never allowing a child to grow up by keeping it indoors wrapped in cotton wool. Certainly don't be harsh about it if at all possible. But no, don't soften a blow by sidetracking into some kind of ridiculous affirmation. This is particularly why DV's treatment of tarot irritates me greatly. Lets not call a spade a spade, lets call it a magical staff of power because the word spade is confronting . That kind of thing does not foster growth IMO.

 

[Barleywine]

We're losing a sense of reality. "Don't worry that you're suffering - everything happens for a reason"? Crap. Sounds like an excuse to blame the victims and let the culpable off. Sounds, in fact, like the Witchfinders of Mediaeval Europe, who said that the punishments for witchcraft were so horrible that God would never let anyone who was innocent be accused. (ref. "Malleus Malificarium" by Kramer and Sprenger.) Yeah, yeah, you chose this suffering, don't you know. The Jews chose to be born in a time and place that had Hitler. It's all good. Rubbish, I say.

It's politically correct, these days, to look after the poor, tender souls and pull golden angel or fairy cards and tell them everything's all right. Me, I pull the Seven Wands or the Ten Swords, and I tell it like it is. Plus looking for ways in which they can become more in control of their lives. And you know what? My clients leave GRATEFUL that the reading actually expressed the uncomfortable realities of their lives, which apparently no one else's readings ever do, and showed them what options they could take, instead of just doing what every other reader around here does and telling them that everything was "karma" and "happened for a reason", and sending them off $50 poorer and with nothing they can do about it.

Well-stated in its entirety. Thanks for the observations. But the thing that really jumped out at me was "$50 a pop?" Could I actually (or even hypothetically) get that if I went back to doing this stuff for money? (I'm planning on moving closer to a small-scale urban area during the next year where this might be feasible, since I don't do on-line reading.)

 

[DownUnderNZer]

There are a number of schools of thought and we had to learn a few like Freud, Skinner, Piaget, Pavlov, and Erickson. Others too. (Been over 20 years).

I think "strategies" are implemented for sure, but advise is not something I was trained to do nor to give an opinion.

We were also taught how some Psychiatrists and Psychologist's abused that power to actually cause damage to a client.

With counselling that was hands on practical experience and no theory whatsoever, but based on certain principles from the above.

The exercise I enjoyed doing and working with the most was: "The Arm Chair".

A client could vent and say anything to "whoever" they imagined in it.

Strategies are put in place with most Therapists once a rapport is built. It should only take 1 to 6 sessions to complete with the exception of clients with PTS, suicide tendencies, or those forced to be there. Eg Court rulings.

Maybe some do have different approaches for sure, but with my training in NZ then the UK it was all about being in the clients shoes etc.

DND

I worked as a Tarot reader, astrologer, and Bach Flower therapist in close cooperation with a psychiatrist/psychotherapist during most of the 90s, plus I had the opportunity to watch quite a few others as well. Based on that, I would say, it really depends on the therapist whether any advice is being shared or not. A Freudian psychoanalysist is not supposed to be anything but a blank screen for a patient, whereas a behaviourist may emphasize working out practical solutions together with them. In practice, many take a position somewhere in-between.

Tarot can also be used in a way that has the querent simply tell whatever they associate with a certain (possibly even consciously chosen) card. Of course, this is quite different from a classical reading. I found that what works best for me in a therapeutic setting is a middle way between telling the querent how I read the card, and giving them space to develop their own thoughts. In other words, I like to use the cards as a foundation for a dialogue.

And yes, I do say what I see in the cards, even at the risk that the client doesn't come back (but they do, as a rule). Working with psychotherapeutic patients taught me that it doesn't always matter what is being said as much as how it is being said though. There is an upside to almost everything, there are opportunities for growth in most situations, and there are very often ways to turn a wsell understood condition to the better. For that matter, I do emphasize advice over prediction - for little is set in stone.

Talking about the advice that Tarot can offer, again, I consider that I wouldn't be doing my job properly if I would twist what I'm seeing in the cards in a way that would make the most sense to my conscious mind. To give you an example:

A member of a therapeutic group, a young woman, wanted to know if she should approach her father whom she didn't have any real communication with for a number of years. The cards gave a clear warning, and I told her so. No, there were some "professional" therapists present, trying to do things by the book; they were truly shocked by my discouraging the young woman from taking that step now, and critisized me rather heavily. Only in the aftermath of my reading, and with the help of aforesaid psychiatrist, did it turn out that there were some heavy issues regarding that relationship that needed to be addressed first in the patient's psyche. The psychiatrist concluded that approaching the father prematurely would only have reinforced those problems - and applauded me for foreseeing this.

So yes, being honest about what the cards tell you is crucial. Even when they don't give you the picture you/your sitter would like to see, it might lead to something really helpful - which would never occur if you would have glossed over the negativity. But how you say something may indeed make all the difference.

 

[nisaba]

Well-stated in its entirety. Thanks for the observations. But the thing that really jumped out at me was "$50 a pop?" Could I actually (or even hypothetically) get that if I went back to doing this stuff for money? (I'm planning on moving closer to a small-scale urban area during the next year where this might be feasible, since I don't do on-line reading.)

In this region, that's about the minimum. Many readers ask $70. If you go to the capital city (Sydney), you'll get little change from $180. And generally speaking, I do better readings for fifty.

 

[Farzon]

I try to be an optimistic person myself. That said, optimism is very misunderstood nowadays... no crisis that wouldn't be a chance, but nobody can tell which kind of chance... I agree that there is a chance in most crises, but in order to take it wer must face the unpleasant side first.

Lately I had a lot of bad readings for myself, some of them discussed here. I didn't know if I could trust myself and my reading skills anymore, since I'm very biased on the topic. So I decided to make it a question in an exchange, let an outsider read for me. The reading was still a bit negative and the reader tried to give it a positive spin, when I said I saw hard times coming towards me.

The point is, it really got hard. There was no way it wouldn't be hard and anyone with common sense could tell so from the beginning. It wasn't as difficult as I expected, but had I been optimistic about it all the time, oh my... no way, I could have coped with it that easily.

To cut a long story short: negative emotions show us where we have lost our way. Where something is wrong. Negative expectations frighten us but they prepare us. And I think we deserve that.

 

[Lerena]

Something I've found is that tarot cards cannot fix all your problems. I've had problems in the past as a result of relying on people older than me to have the answers to everything and lately I've been treating Google the same way. Well, a person being older doesn't mean they know everything. There are times you have to figure things out yourself and often the tarot can only be a source of guidance. It cannot do anything for you.

Why is ignorance said to be bliss? Is it because the truth hurts? I was once in a situation where I could have chosen to remain blissfully ignorant and I chose the truth over ignorance.

Telling a client what they want to hear will only hurt them more later on. In the same way I used to want all the answers from older people, I had to learn that tarot cards cannot help me if I refuse its advice or if the answer is a specific action that I have yet to perform.

Simpy put, a client can choose to be ignorant or they can choose to hear the truth. Since I can read tarot cards to some degree, there would be certain readings where I would not take a positive response. If the answer isn't what I want to hear, tell me anyway. Why else did I seek a reading? I don't want affirmation.

However, I've had cases where the tarot echoed my opinion on things. I've also had readings that were more positive than I initially believed.

Things can go both ways. Sometimes the cards really will give you affirmation and that affirmation will be accurate. I've interpreted the Lovers card in a non-romantic way before and I ended up falling in love later that week. So, even if telling clients what they want to hear is not always helpful, the cards don't always have a bad message. A message can sound more negative than it actually is and tarot readers can be wrong. After a reading, the future can be changed if the client wishes to alter the outcome.

I understand the value in the truth, but the truth isn't always painful to hear. In my case, I'm a pessimist, so what I look for is mostly the negative. Things are rarely all bad though. A client can be just as much in need of a positive message than a harsh truth. It can be difficult to know for sure what the client needs to hear so the tarot can be beneficial in terms of figuring that out.

 

[lightsofblue]

*****

 

[Michael Sternbach]

There are a number of schools of thought and we had to learn a few like Freud, Skinner, Piaget, Pavlov, and Erickson. Others too. (Been over 20 years).

I think "strategies" are implemented for sure, but advise is not something I was trained to do nor to give an opinion.

I am not sure how you would develop strategies together with a patient, while entirely avoiding to give them advice.

We were also taught how some Psychiatrists and Psychologist's abused that power to actually cause damage to a client.

There is always that risk when working with people in a psychologically intimate way. Damage is usually done unwittingly, despite best intentions.

With counselling that was hands on practical experience and no theory whatsoever, but based on certain principles from the above.

The exercise I enjoyed doing and working with the most was: "The Arm Chair".

A client could vent and say anything to "whoever" they imagined in it.

Strategies are put in place with most Therapists once a rapport is built. It should only take 1 to 6 sessions to complete with the exception of clients with PTS, suicide tendencies, or those forced to be there. Eg Court rulings.

Maybe some do have different approaches for sure, but with my training in NZ then the UK it was all about being in the clients shoes etc.

DND

A lot of therapists seem to be eclecticists nowadays - at least in Switzerland.

 

[violetdaisy]

We also have this new "affirmations" in child rear here in the USA. It's like everyone needs a medal or a badge for participation. We have to include everyone. I think this sets up false hopes for the children and now we have an entire generation of people who think they are entitled to things that they never.

^^^^^^Exactly this in the form of tarot.^^^^^^^^^^^^

It's not constructive or helpful to try to make a difficult set of cards pleasant.

My cards forewarned me last week was going to be a s*** week at work but I also asked a kind of "what do I need to be aware of and what can I do about it" kind of Question.

Its good to empower people when you can, but it's important to make them aware of possible upset, turmoil, and (gasp) failure if the cards are essentially screaming it.

I can't begin to estimate the number of early 20somethings around here who don't even attempt to keep a job because whatever the job is -is beneath them. Never mind that they barely graduated high school.

I have a responsibility to Not enable bad behavior and decisions, this includes being honest about what I'm being shown. I also don't read professionally so I'm not super concerned about frequent customers. But I know I'd rather have someone come back to me because they were prepared for bad than having a lot of needy clients who come to me because I know how to say the same thing, 10 different ways, and they are desperate to have someone of the same opinion as them.


ETA: $40-$50 is average here for reads at (badly named) "Psychic Fairs" - and they generally limit you to 30min max if you're lucky.