I Had a Mediumship Reading That Was a Disaster. I’m the Reason Why.
I’m going to tell you something that practitioners in this space don’t often say out loud.
I had a reading recently that did not go the way anyone hoped. Not the client. Not me. It was the kind of reading that stays with you afterward, not because something dramatic or harmful happened, but because I could feel exactly where it went wrong and I could feel that the wrong turn was mine.
I fucked up.
I forgot the disclaimer and in forgetting it, I set us both up for something that felt like failure when it didn’t have to.
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What I Forgot to Say
Before a mediumship reading, there is something every client deserves to hear clearly, before the session begins and before expectation has a chance to take root and organize itself into a specific hope.
I can’t control who comes through and what comes through.
I can’t guarantee that the specific person you’re hoping to hear from will be the one who steps forward. I can’t promise that your mother will come, or your child, or your partner. I can’t promise that the message they bring, if they do come, will be the one you think you most need or most want to hear at that moment. Mediumship isn’t a telephone service with a direct dial to a specific number. It’s a channel and the channel is guided by Spirit, not by my preferences or yours.
I also cannot guarantee what the messages will be. Sometimes what comes through is comforting. Sometimes it is challenging and sometimes it’s mundane in a way that is actually its own form of evidence, the specific detail that only they would know, that has nothing to do with what the client expected and everything to do with what Spirit chose to offer.
I know this. I have known this since I began this work. I teach it. I believe it deeply and in this particular reading, I didn’t say it before we began.
Review from a recent mediumship reading
What Happened When I Led With Expectation
The client came in with a specific person in mind. A specific hope. A specific need for a specific message. I could feel the weight of that need before we even started, and instead of naming it, instead of gently redirecting toward openness before we opened the channel, I moved forward.
I led with expectation instead of with guidance through Spirit.
What followed was a reading that kept reaching toward something that wasn’t quite arriving. The connection felt thin in the places where the client most needed it to be clear. The messages that did come through were real, I believe that, but they weren’t the ones she came for, and without the disclaimer having been set, without the expectation having been gently released before we began, neither of us had the framework to receive what was actually being offered.
She left disappointed. I sat with the session afterward feeling the specific weight of a lesson I should not have needed to learn this way. I ended up feeling like a failure and I refunded her for the time.
The Honest Truth About Mediumship That the Industry Doesn’t Always Say
There’s a version of mediumship that promises outcomes. That sells the reading on the certainty of contact, on the guarantee of closure, on the specific assurance that your person will come through and say exactly what you need to hear.
I have never made those promises but I didn’t make the counter-promise clearly enough in this instance, the honest caveat that protects both the client and the integrity of the work. I didn’t explictly state that I don’t control what happens, what’s said, and who shows up, Spirit does. In my 16 years of experience Spirit always offers what is needed rather than always what is wanted, and those two things aren’t always the same.
The disclaimer isn’t a confinement and it’s not a way of lowering expectations so that anything that happens feels like a success. It’s the truth of how this works, and clients deserve to have that truth before they sit down and open themselves to something this intimate.
When I forget to offer it, I’m not protecting my client and I’m setting them up to receive a real experience through a framework of expectation that will distort it.
What Leads With Expectation Does to the Channel
Here is the practical, experiential truth of what happened in this reading from my side of it.
When a client’s expectation is strong and unaddressed, it creates a kind of energetic pressure in the space. It’s not malevolent and it’s not innately the client’s fault. It just creates a weight of a specific hope that hasn’t been released and when I as the Medium haven’t named that pressure and helped to gently set it aside before we begin, I can feel myself reaching toward it, trying to find the connection that will satisfy it, rather than staying fully open to whatever is actually present.
Reaching is the problem. Mediumship requires receptivity, a particular quality of openness that is incompatible with grasping. The moment I am working toward a specific outcome rather than simply being available to whatever Spirit brings, the quality of what comes through shifts. It becomes thinner. Less precise. More effortful in a way that doesn’t serve anyone.
The disclaimer is not just for the client. It’s for me too. It releases both of us from the expectation that distorts the channel before the session even begins.
The Lesson, Simply
I won’t skip the disclaimer again.
Not because I am trying to protect myself from accountability if a reading doesn’t meet a client’s hopes. But because the disclaimer is an act of care. It’s the thing that creates the conditions for the reading to be what it actually is, rather than what anyone in the room is hoping it will be.
Every client who sits with me deserves to know before we begin that I’m not the one in charge of what comes through. I’m a channel and I will offer what I receive with as much clarity and integrity as I can. What arrives is guided by Spirit, and Spirit, in my experience, always has a reason for what it offers. That reason may not be immediately clear. The message may not be the one you came for and that isn’t a failure of the reading. It’s the nature of the work.
I owe every client that truth before we begin. I owe it to the integrity of this practice. And I owe it to myself as a practitioner who is still, after all of this, learning.
If You’re Considering a Reading
If you have ever sat with a Medium and left feeling like something didn’t quite arrive the way you hoped, I want you to know that your disappointment is valid. I also want to offer this; the absence of a specific message isn’t the same as the absence of contact. Sometimes what comes through is not what we came for, and sometimes, with a little distance, it turns out to have been exactly what was needed.
If you’re considering a mediumship reading with me, I will say the disclaimer now, here, as clearly as I can.
I can’t promise who will come through. I can’t guarantee the specific message you are hoping for. I will bring everything I have to the session, my full presence, my full training, my full commitment to offering what I receive with integrity and care. What arrives will be guided by Spirit, not by either of our expectations and I will trust that what Spirit offers is always, in some way, what is actually needed, even when it’s not what was asked for.
That is the truth of this work and it’s the foundation every reading deserves to be built on.
Book a Reading
📞 Mediumship Reading with Amber. Evidential, grounded, held with full ethical accountability and the disclaimer I will not forget again. Available worldwide. [Book at www.healingwithamber.co/mediumship-readings]
🌿 The Grief Sanctuary. For women who want ongoing community and support around the spiritual dimensions of grief, including what it means when a reading doesn’t give you what you hoped for and how to continue the relationship with your person beyond any single session.
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PS: I’m still learning and developing even after 16 years. That’s not a disclaimer. That’s the practice.
With care and intention,
Amber Choisella
