Stop Reading People in the Produce Aisle
and other guidelines for mediumship with integrity
Theresa Caputo has a new show on Lifetime, and unsurprisingly, it’s terrible. (She’s the Long Island Medium, in case you don’t recognize the name.) It joins a growing list of programs (including Seatbelt Psychic and Life After Death with Tyler Henry) portraying the worst possible habits, practices, and boundaries of mediumship.
If all we’re seeing is what not to do, how is someone ever supposed to understand and develop these abilities for herself? For many, books and television are their mentors when it comes to grasping this aspect of their lives. Relying on Reality TV is a bit like learning about sex from porn or dating practices from Sex and the City. (Yep, I put those two things in the same sentence.) But for some, it’s the only option.
How many mediums do you know in your life? Now, how many of those discuss it openly? Of those, how many are able to articulate best practices and help others navigate? The pool grows smaller.
Muttering heavily at the television, I made it through the first two episodes of Theresa Caputo: Raising Spirits, in case there was a marked improvement in the second one. There was not. I wanted to be able to articulate for myself and for you exactly why I find these portrayals so irksome, along with providing healthier (and way more polite) approaches for anyone with such abilities. Here goes nothing.
Learn Some Self Control
No matter how much I love a song, sitting front and center at a Broadway performance IS NOT the appropriate time or place to belt the lyrics. A sharp elbow to the rib from my theatre companion would be an appropriate reaction, along with some snide looks from the rest of the audience. We have a shared understanding of decorum, and those who don’t know learn quickly.
Want to know what I mean? Try clapping between movements during an orchestral performance surrounded by lovers of classical music. While slightly less egregious than singing along with your favorite musical, the askance glances will be deafening.
Yet when it comes to mediumship and how one should conduct herself, we lack the knowledge.
Reality TV isn’t helping.
Countless examples exist of celebrity mediums walking up to total strangers and giving them readings. What!?!? No. Stop it. (Now you’ve glimpsed what it’s like watching this stuff with me in real time, except all of that is out loud and at the television.) I can’t even begin to express how inappropriate this is.
Now, I understand that everyone on screen has opted in and signed waivers for the “reality” of Reality Television, but that doesn’t always translate to the viewer. So when we see Theresa Caputo interrupt an aerial silks class to announce that she is receiving a message for someone, that’s supposed to seem normal. It’s not.
Caputo can’t get through a meal or a trip to the grocery store without Spirit forcing her to convey incredibly generic information about a dead loved one to a stranger. This is weird. Can you imagine if other professions did this? You’re riding the bus when suddenly the hairdresser sitting behind you begins to chop your locks. A therapist, overhearing your conversation at dinner, leans toward your table and begins dissecting your relationship dynamics.
This is not how we as a society operate.
Don’t go looking up everyone’s skirts. It’s up to you as the medium to put checks on what you perceive. Rude doesn’t even begin to describe how intrusive it is to read the energy of someone who hasn’t explicitly given consent. Show even a few exchanges of this nature in a program and my approval rating increases roughly 3%. I won’t hold my breath waiting for this to happen because it’s not as “alarming” and doesn’t make for shocking television.
If this is the pressure that Spirit, Caputo’s term for the voice(s) she hears, places on you to relay information, check your sources. Hearing her description of what is being asked of her, which shares a lot of commonalities with the terrible practices of the Medical Medium, makes me incredibly leery of who and what is bending her ear. It’s the energetic equivalent of high schoolers getting a third grader to smoke a cigarette because they think manipulating someone is fun.
Roaming around being told that you have to convey information at all times isn’t healthy. It means that you’re being exploited by the beings speaking through and to you. I can walk through a busy airport and not glean a single piece of information about anyone in my proximity because I choose not to tap into their energy. There’s no need for you to be an open sponge.
Cold Reads Are Not Superior
Enough with the Twenty Questions! This notion that it’s somehow beneficial going into a reading with no information on your client or subject is ludicrous. It does not make you a better medium if you aren’t provided with background or context. More information doesn’t taint a reading. It gives you additional context to go deeper. In actuality, you end up wasting a ton of time establishing information on meaningless topics instead of forging into deeper conversations.
What’s worse, the bombardment of questions typically focuses on a guessing game of how a loved one died. Why? That information is already known. If you need to prove yourself by pulling this information from the dead instead of the living, I’m left wondering what insights you actually have.
There’s nothing impressive about making someone relive her trauma.
Which brings me to the point that far too many of the guests on these shows are folks with open grief. They’re sad and desperate and haven’t come to terms with any aspect of the death for themselves. Closure for them lies in a total stranger, be it Theresa Caputo or Tyler Henry or some other supposedly well intentioned medium, telling them generic affirmations that the person they love is okay.
Everything about this feels exploitative.
Grief is hard. There are no shortcuts. But we have to metabolize it for ourselves. No one can do that for us. As much as it sucks at times, and it certainly does, we need to experience the whole range of emotions in order to make sense of the death in our lives.
Part of the role of a medium is to put people at ease even when delivering difficult information. What I see portrayed on screen is quite the opposite. It’s mediums seeking out open wounds, pouring salt into them, and then rubbing it around. Again, this is the nature of the genre, but that doesn’t mean that I have to like it.
Not All Signs Are Created Equal
You’ll hear me yammer on about this topic until I stop seeing this egregious mistake. We hear Caputo state that, “If someone shows me a flannel shirt, it always means…” Nope. Nope. Nope. There are no hard and fast meanings for what a medium is shown.
The same sign or image can mean completely different things to various individuals.
When I lived in LA and flannel was hitting the bar scene, it evoked feelings of being home and all things Northern Michigan. The taxidermy at Bigfoot Lodge did the same. If you were to ask me now, flannels remind me of my dad. They comprise a hearty portion of his wardrobe, and thinking of him wearing them brings a smile to my face. I’m one person and the meaning changes based on the timing and context. So how can flannels have a universal meaning for everyone? They can’t, nor can any other image or symbol.
Instead of a medium emphatically stating a meaning of what she is being shown, convey that information and let it stand on its own. Offer additional context of feelings or emotions that accompany it leaving the recipient to interpret for herself. People are highly capable.
Find Better Role Models
One of these days, I’ll find a show on mediumship that doesn’t make me mutter in annoyance. Until that day comes, I will continue to break down why I find the current fodder so irksome. The thing that gets me is that it isn’t a one off portraying mediumship in these horrible ways. It’s the vast majority of shows. Maybe all? I can’t think of an exception off the top of my head.
By nature of giving these people their own programs, we’re positioning them as experts — we being the television networks and talent agents but also us that are watching and encouraging this perpetuation of crap. Now, again, it’s Reality TV so we know that’s not entirely true. But unlike the genre of cooking shows where you can tell the difference between shock factor and solid kitchen skills, we lack the cultural references when it comes to mediumship to know the difference.
Communicating with the dead is much richer than what we’re seeing portrayed on screen. I move through my days interacting with ghosts in all sorts of fun and unexpected places. It’s the same joy of communicating with the living, these folks just happen to be dead. There are ways to approach this subject that aren’t gross and exploitative. Let’s make a show like that!
I remain optimistic that as this topic becomes more mainstream, or at least less taboo, that we’ll begin to see a wider variety of representations. While I would love to wipe some of these shows from existence because engaging with the dead (or malicious beings masquerading as ghosts) in the way it is depicted can be incredibly dangerous, that’s unrealistic. For the time being, we’ll keep having conversations like these in our own little pocket of the internet so that when you do come across dodgy mediumship, you can spot it instantly and turn the other way.
Have questions about common themes you’re seeing depicted in mediumship? Ask them here or drop them in the comments below. I answer as many as possible.