For those of you who read for others and see your role as similar to that of a counselor (as opposed to a fortune-teller), I was wondering if you'd be willing to share your approach in the following situation.
A querent comes to you distraught over their relationship with another person. Your understanding of the cards you pull is that the situation won't get better. Your intuition about the client is that they are emotionally unable to accept or benefit by this message in their current state.
Do you tell them the truth anyway, or something else?
(Note that although the professions aren't the same, psychotherapists do not tell the whole truth as they understand it. They only share insights they feel their client is able to process productively. Of course tharapists typically have an ongoing relationship with their clients, which readers often don't.)
Ok.
As I see it there are a number of different issue here. And yes, of course, the answer a querent may most want to hear is not always what comes up in the cards.
Interestingly, the question was about being a counselor instead of a fortune teller. But any questions focusing on the future has that element of fortune telling in it. To me, if someone comes to you distraught over a relationship, asking the cards what they have to say that can make the querent feel better about where they are in the relationship might be more of a counselor question...than just what will happen in the future, but I know what you mean.
First, if the querent was very distraught and it was evident from the start and if I had any doubt that they may not be able to handle anything that came up, I would either not do the reading at all. OR I would ask them directly if they were sure they were ready to handle anything that comes up as I can't guarantee them beforehand they will get the answer they hope for.
I have at times done this in the past, ASKED someone if they were sure they really wanted to know and could handle anything that comes up. A few have decided they were not ready. So to me that is the first option.
If we decide to do the reading, then I would trust in the powers that be to give the information that the querent needs to hear. If it comes up, then they need to hear it...as I see it. I have that faith in Tarot and how it works. Sometimes people need to hear things but they may only fully process it a week or a month later. Sometimes they wont get what they are meant to from what you tell them until later on when they are ready to process it properly, but the benefit may still be there. But I do have that faith in the cards, that what comes up is what they need to hear.
And yes, that means not hiding things. If it comes up they are meant to know it, as I see it.
But there are ways to word things when people are distraught too. Wording is important in a reading. We can tell the same story in many different wants, some more caring and some more blunt. Yet both versions may be true. How we tell things counts too.
So that is my belief, that we need to tell what we see, but how we tell is is important. We need to talk to people in the ways WE think would be most useful to us to hear the same information in. Empathy is a good thing in a reader, imo.
Also I don't believe there are any negative cards. All cards have different sides to them. It is important imo to show the positive side of things too. There is always one there I believe if we look.
Eg the Death card for me means something will end and it HAS to and is meant to. For their own higher good. This thing has to end to make room for something better that is trying to reach the querent. It's like losing a job and then when you look for the next one from one that it much much better for you. You have to lose the first one to find the better one, or you would not have been looking and in the right place at the right time.
That is what Death means to me. All cards have a positive side to for me.
So yes, if the relationship they want to keep is showing the Death card, that it will end...To me you have to show both sides. I think you don't JUST tell the distraught person that tough luck the relationship they value is going to end and there is nothing they can do about it.
I think you need to show that currently heading towards and ending BUT that something better will come from it and it will make them happy in the end and they can have faith in that.
Also, I would not tend to say that things are ending and there is nothing they can do about it. First of all because there may be. At best in a reading on the future, I would just say that that is the current future they are heading towards.
Reading on the future, the future can change often enough. Sometimes we can do a second reading and see if there is anything to do to fix things. That is my belief on readings on the future. That the future is flexible most times and all the cards can do in readings on the future is show one possible future, the one they are currently moving towards. I tend to explain all this before I even start to read on the future...
So I guess those are my thoughts and beliefs, hope they help in some way.
Readers are there to read, as I see it. That means telling the querent what you see and not hiding parts. Tact and empathy are important tools to me. If therapists hide things so that we can find them ourselves, that may not be so much the role of a reader. But parts of the answers I get may come up as questions for the querent to ask themselves of think about. The answer doesn't always come out the same way.
Sometimes it might look like: "Something in your past is affecting the way you view this situation." Sometimes it can be more like: "If you stop and think about it, what do you think that stems from your past is affecting how you view this situation now? And why?"
Sometimes the answers end up taking one form, sometimes the other. I never know why, but just follow what comes to me.
Babs
