How to prepare for a psychic reading

Have three things ready and the rest mostly takes care of itself: his first name, roughly when the thing happened, and the question you actually want answered rather than the presentable one. Then do the two harder parts. Let the reader be wrong in front of you instead of steering her towards the answer you came in for. And notice what you flinch at, because that's usually where the reading is.

Everything else on this page is detail hanging off those two.

There's a separate page on what to ask and how to word it. This one is about all the things around the question. What state to be in, how much to hand over and when, how to hear what comes back, and what to do with it the next morning.

Why most disappointing readings were not bad readings

Here's the honest version, and it isn't a criticism of anybody.

You arrive wanting one specific sentence. He's coming back. She didn't mean it. You were right about the job. Once that sentence is what you're listening for, everything else arrives as noise, and most of what she says is everything else. So you come away certain you got fog, when what you got was forty minutes about a situation you'd asked one closed question about.

That's what wanting something does to your hearing. It happens to everyone, including the people who work here.

We can see this from a place most of the trade can't. We have whole conversations, beginning to end, and then the same person again three weeks later. So what we can compare isn't which reader is better. It's which chats went somewhere and which ones stopped dead with everybody being polite, and it's rarely the reader who decides that. Same handful of women on both sides of the line, often within the hour.

The ones that go somewhere have a few habits in common, and none of them are mystical.

They correct her early. Somewhere around the second message they say no, that's not it, he isn't avoiding me, and the reading turns there rather than at the start.

They answer the question she asks back. A reader almost always ends on one. In the chats that stall, that question gets stepped over and the original is retyped in slightly different words.

They stay on one thing. The stalled ones sweep. Him, then work, then her sister, then him again, four topics in nine messages and none of them opened.

And they stop while there's still something left to think about. The long ones aren't the good ones. The good ones end with somebody going quiet for a minute and closing the tab.

What to have ready

Not much, and nothing you have to go and get.

A first name. Struan, my sister, the woman who runs my team. A name does something a pronoun can't and you'll hear it in the first reply.

Roughly when. Not a precise date. February is enough. The week after my birthday is enough.

The question, which is the other page's subject. If you only get one thing right, get that one.

A birth date if you happen to have it. Stella works from the chart and will ask. The others manage without.

One thing you already know the answer to, held in reserve, so you have something to score her against. The method is in how a reader actually builds a reading.

And the things you don't need. Cleansing, candles, meditating first, setting an intention. Other places will tell you to. If they settle you, enjoy them, and know they aren't changing what comes back.

What does help is dull and physical. Charge your phone. Sit somewhere you won't be interrupted halfway through her answer, because the readings people quote back to us months later were not the ones read in a queue at the Co-op.

How much to tell her, answered honestly

This is the question underneath the question, so here's a straight answer. Tell her the facts. Telling a reader what happened is not cheating and it doesn't make what she gives back less real.

A reader isn't a machine that scores higher on less input. She's reading how a situation sits, and the situation includes what happened in it. Hand her the facts and she reads your particular mess. Withhold them and the first four or five messages go on working out what she's even looking at, which you pay for and learn nothing from.

Now the tension, because it's real. Once you've handed over the whole story you can no longer easily tell whether she read it or handed it back in nicer language. That's a genuine cost and anyone who waves it away is selling you something. The way round it isn't to starve her, and the next section is what to do instead.

What matters more than how much you say is the order. Give her the situation first and your theory about it last. Open with what you think is going on and she's reading inside your version from that point, and you'll have no way of knowing whether she agreed or saw it herself. Say what happened. Then, four messages later, tell her what you've decided it means and ask where you've got it wrong.

Two things people leave out and shouldn't: what you did when it happened, and what you've already made your mind up about. The second saves you both twenty minutes of circling.

One thing you can leave out entirely: his surname, where he works, where he lives. No reading is built out of that.

Why testing a reader usually costs you the reading

Testing is fair and no decent reader minds. Maren will tell you outright that she's noticed you doing it and then read you anyway, which is roughly what you'd want from someone who claims to notice things.

The problem is that there are two kinds of test and only one tells you anything.

The kind that works: something already settled, where you know the answer and would spot her getting it wrong. A situation that resolved last year. A person whose behaviour you understand perfectly and have never managed to explain to anybody. Give her almost nothing, let her read it, mark it. Two messages, and it costs nothing.

The kind that doesn't work is the one nearly everybody reaches for, which is holding back on the live thing. The thing you're desperate about. You can't score that test, because you don't know the answer. That's the whole reason you're here. So the only measure you have to hand is whether what she said matched what you were hoping for, which means the test is measuring your hope.

There's a second cost and it's the one that stings. A reader reads what's in front of her, and when you're withholding on purpose that's a woman with her arms folded. So that's what she'll read. She'll read it well, it will be accurate, and it will not be what you came for.

Then there's the arithmetic. The audition is the part you paid for, and nobody has ever come back and told us the twenty minutes of making her guess were the good bit.

When to do it, and when not to

The best time is whenever you'll actually take the answer in. That's the only real criterion, and it isn't a time of day.

Most people here do this after midnight and there's always someone on. There's a page about the small hours if that's when you're reading this.

So the hour isn't the problem. The state sometimes is, and it's worth being honest about which one.

Upset is fine. Upset is most of the traffic, and readers work in it all night without flinching. Crying while you type does not make it a worse reading and nobody on the other end is put off.

The state that doesn't work is narrower. It's the one where only one sentence will do. You can usually spot it: you've rewritten the message four times and each version is more like an argument you're winning. You're not ready to hear an answer at that point, you're ready to be agreed with. Ask anyway if you want, plenty of people do, but plan on reading it back tomorrow, because your transcript stays in your account. It says considerably more in daylight than it did at three.

And if it's gone past upset, if tonight is frightening rather than painful, a reading isn't the thing you need and a reader will say so instead of carrying on. That's her doing the job properly rather than turning you away.

How to hear an answer you did not want

Almost every honest answer arrives hedged, and it isn't evasion. A reader gives you a stretch rather than a date, and a state rather than a verdict, because live situations move. What people do with the hedge is the interesting part.

Most translate it into the answer they wanted. He hasn't closed the door becomes he's coming back. There's a pull and it's passive becomes he wants me. A few translate the other way and hear an ending in everything.

Both are you writing the last line yourself and then attributing it to her.

The fix takes one message. Make her cash it out. What does stalled look like on a Tuesday? What would I see happening if you're right? If she can turn the abstraction into something you'd notice, she's reading. If it stays smoke, you've learned that too, cheaply.

Then the other half, which is the more useful instruction on this page. Somewhere in her reply there'll be a sentence you skimmed. It usually isn't about him. You'll know it by the small drop in your stomach as your eyes go past it, and you'll know it again when it turns up in your head on the way to work. Go back and quote that line at her. Ask her to stay on it. That's the reading, and you very nearly closed the tab on it.

How to disagree usefully

Disagreeing is the highest-value move you have and hardly anybody uses it, because it feels rude, or like correcting her ruins the whole thing.

It doesn't ruin anything. It's the input.

Do it with a fact rather than a verdict. That's wrong gives her nowhere to go. No, he isn't avoiding me, he texted on Sunday and it was warm gives her something to read against, and you'll usually see the read change shape in the next message.

What she does next is the real test, better than any of the ones you were planning. A reader who takes the correction, says it moves her read and shows you where, is reading. One who folds it in and implies she meant that all along is performing, and now you know at a cost of one message. There's more on judging that in how to tell an accurate reading.

Here's the trap in it. Don't only push back on the parts you didn't like. If every correction you make bends the reading towards your preferred ending, you've written the answer yourself, and you'll know it later, usually at about four in the morning.

Let her be wrong in front of you. It's the cheapest information you'll get all night and you can't have it if you're steering.

The follow-up, and the next day

Before you close the chat, do two things.

Answer her question. Readers here nearly always end on one and it's aimed at the thing you haven't said. Answering it is the most skipped move in the whole conversation, and the people who do get a different reading from the people who don't.

Then ask her what she's least sure of. Not what she can't do, which is in our editorial standards, but which part of this read she'd put least weight on. A good reader will tell you, and it's worth more than another prediction.

The next day, three things.

Read it back in the morning. It will say more than you heard, and that missed sentence will be sitting there in plain sight.

Do the small thing it implied, if there is one. It's almost never a message to him. Usually it's duller and closer to home, and the deciding stays yours either way.

And don't come straight back with the same question. If the urge is there again on Thursday, it's telling you how much this hurts rather than that the answer was faulty. Nothing will have moved by Thursday except you.

Ask the one you came in with

You don't have to be ready for this. You have to be honest for about four messages.

A first name. Roughly when it changed. The question you'd type if nobody were going to see it. And a willingness to be told something you didn't order, which is the only preparation that ever changed a reading.

A reader is on now, the chat opens in seconds, and the first 200 credits are free with no card.