I believe that one of the biggest hurdles a person can experience early on in their intuitive development is dealing with the judgment and labels our society places on someone who publicly admits that they have such abilities.

It’s not easy coming out of the Psychic Closet, especially since our collective consciousness has a lot of fears around going public. I mean it wasn’t long ago that people were burned at the stake for such things.  It’s no wonder so many people have a lot of hidden fears about this.

It’s very interesting how people have cleverly hidden away their psychic abilities behind less charged phrases such as:

• “My intuition tells me that…”
• “I just have a gut feeling on this one…”
• “It just didn’t feel right to me…”
• “Somehow I just knew I should do this…”
• “A little voice in my head just told me to stay away…”
• “I had this dream about…”
• “I just had this inkling that I should tell you about…”
• etc.

These are all phrases I’ve heard most people I know say at some point in their lives, yet if you asked them point blank “Do you think you just had a Psychic impression?” they would probably say “No! I’m not saying I’m Psychic.  I just had this feeling.”

I know people who have made everything from business decisions, relationship decisions, medical decisions, career decisions to which house they’re going to buy based on nothing more than a “feeling”.  In almost all cases they listened to the “intuitive nudge” or “gut feeling” they had in direct opposition to logic or common sense.  They chose to make a decision based on this feeling or intuitive insight and it turned out to be the right decision for them.  Yet most of these same people scoff or laugh at the label of “Psychic”.

I think a lot of people still equate the word “Psychic” with a palm reader dressed like a Gypsy at the local fair who read Palm Reading for Dummies three days before the fair started, or perhaps that Jamaican lady that used to come on TV at 2am in the morning to offer you relationship advice by calling a 1-900 number.

I have nothing against palm readers at the local fair, or the Jamaican lady on TV, but there is a lot of skepticism associated with these types of “Psychics” and for good reason.  If that was the only exposure I had to Psychics and Psychic abilities I’d label and judge them too.  In fact, I used to do exactly that.

When I saw some of these Psychic hot-lines advertising on TV, my intuition told me that they were most probably scams.  The funny thing is that I had no actual proof as I’ve never called one of those hot-lines, but it was my intuition that was telling me this.  The irony of the situation was somewhat humorous.

Deep down, behind the curtain of TV Psychics I always knew that intuitive abilities did exist because I’ve personally experienced many situations in my life where my own intuitive abilities kicked in and in some occasions even saved my life.

When launching this website, I had to make a decision if I was going to register a domain name that included the word “Psychic” in it, due to all the skeptic and negative charges against that word which exist in our collective consciousness, or whether to choose a softer, more “open for interpretation” type of word such as “intuition”, “spirituality” or something of that sort.  It was actually during a meditation that my intuition told me to specifically use the word Psychic.

My intuition told me that it would take a lot more courage to connect myself directly with that label, but that it would lead to a lot of growth on my part and also help a lot more people than if I chose a “less specific” label that isn’t as charged.

I was told that using this very specific word would instantly polarize and filter my audience.  Anyone who wasn’t open minded enough to get past the label would instantly label me and my website as “scam” or “idiot” or “weird” or “crazy” and probably never visit, but at the same time I would build a much stronger connection with the growing number of people who are in the same place I am right now where they know that there’s a lot more to intuitive abilities than most people are willing to speak about publicly.

If there’s just one person out there that my site can help, who’s feeling alone, disconnected and different from their friends and family due to their unique gifts or experiences they’ve had then it’s worth it for me to take on any criticism or judgment I make have to endure due to associating myself with the “Psychic” label.