Can you get too dependent on psychic and angel messages? Yep, and it's not healthy

illustration of pink-haired woman with third eye prominent

When I was learning to give angel card readings, we were warned not to work with clients who repeatedly booked appointments asking the same questions they’d asked at previous sessions.

I was reminded of this recently when a client, at the conclusion of her reading, immediately wanted to book in another reading. I gently explained that she needed to go away and take action based on the messages she’d received in *this* reading first. Not easily dissuaded, she emailed a week later wanting to book another reading – this time on a different subject. Alarm bells were ringing. I explained that the angels had already told her everything she needed to know for now. She seemed satisfied with this.

I do understand why she was so eager for more information. That ‘whoa!’ moment when something deeply resonates gives you a real high. When what’s happening in the world is unpredictable and doesn’t make sense, having a means of accessing higher wisdom and gaining reassurance is highly appealing.

But there’s a caveat.

Black and white photo of 1920s woman looking over a crystal ball

While the angels want you to call on them for support and advice, they don’t want you to lean heavily on them. The reason: if you get too dependent on cards, for example, horoscopes or guidance from a spiritual entity, you’ve stepped out of the driver’s seat. You won’t learn to trust your own intuition. And, most importantly, you’ll stop letting your life unfold as it’s meant to. The thing is, you’re not supposed to have ALL the answers right now. You can't go running to a spiritual guru every minute something happens that doesn’t make sense right away, or doesn’t align with what you expected to happen. You need to allow room to make mistakes, too (which is how we learn, after all).

When I first started reading angel cards for myself, I used to draw THREE cards a day. This was too, too much information and I’d feel completely overwhelmed as I tried to absorb all these messages, most of which didn’t totally make sense to me. I’d end up feeling like a failure because I’d forgotten/run out of time to put all the messages into action by the day’s end. On several occasions I threw the cards across the room because they weren’t telling me what I wanted them to tell me, or because they were giving me cards I just didn’t understand. Then I realised the angels were deliberately giving me cards that were completely wrong – they were trying to tell me that I was overdoing it. In effect, they were saying ‘we’ve already given you what you need, now go and work with that’. Basically they were the parents cutting off my allowance, forcing me to go out and get a job (lol). As a result, I only draw one or two cards if I have a specific question. (Unless I'm doing a longer-range reading on a particular issue – and I usually get another angel card reader to do that for me, anyway).

woman reading male client's tea leaves in tea cup

When I googled ‘psychic dependency’ I found an intriguing Vogue article about some American women who had felt unable to make any decisions for themselves without consulting a horoscope, tarot card reader or psychic medium. I’m sure I don’t need to point it out, but this is extremely unhealthy. These women were, in effect, refusing to run their own lives.

Here in Australia, I’ve heard of people bouncing between psychics at spiritual festivals until they find one who gives them the answer they want to hear. In other words, they don’t want to know what they need to change in their lives, they want someone to tell them that everything will change *for* them.

On a related note, I know of someone who was told by a psychic the name of the man she would fall in love with, and the month it would happen. She spent the entire month looking for this guy, dismissing any of the perfectly good men she met, then feeling disheartened and short-changed at the end of the month when this ridiculously specific prophecy didn’t come true. Ruh-roh. Be very wary of any psychic or spiritual reader who gives you such prescribed information – instead of empowering you, this will overly influence the way you make decisions. Incidentally, this girl did meet and fall in love with a wonderful man many months down the track – and his name *was* similar to the name predicted. But she would have identified him as her soulmate without that prophecy anyway – because her intuition told her right away when they met that he was the one.

head-and-shoulders shot of spiritual looking woman blowing a kiss

Here’s the deal with angel cards. They are designed to empower you to make better decisions for yourself, solve your own problems and tune into your own intuition. They are not there to forecast your life – which is changing all the time, anyway, as a result of decisions you make. Nor are they there to make any decisions for you.

We are here on this planet to grow and learn, and we do that by making peace with the uncertainty that is a part in parcel of being a human being, and trusting in our own abilities to cope with whatever is dealt to us, having faith that the Universe is supporting us all the way. It makes sense to ask God, the Universe, spiritual guides and the angels or any other spiritual entity or messenger for advice and support, but ultimately we must take ownership of our own lives. No one else can do the work for us.