Mediumship Development: Why Fear, Ego and Perfectionism Can Block the Flow
The more I develop my mediumship, the more I find myself questioning what development actually means.
Is becoming a better medium about learning more techniques?
Opening the energy more effectively?
Developing clairvoyance, clairsentience or clairaudience?
Learning how to get more evidence?
Of course, all of those things can have their place.
But increasingly, I am beginning to believe that some of the biggest breakthroughs in mediumship happen not when we learn to do more, but when we learn to interfere less.
Recently, I sat down again with medium and teacher Charlie Kelly for the Soul Sync podcast.
Charlie has been on the show before, and one of the reasons I enjoy talking to him is that he has a wonderfully direct way of stripping mediumship back to its foundations.
Our conversation this time made me think deeply about something I recognise not only in other developing mediums, but very much in myself:
fear.
The fear of being wrong.
The fear of hearing no.
The fear of looking foolish.
The fear that what we are receiving is our imagination.
And perhaps underneath all of that, the fear that we may simply not be good enough.
Is Fear Taking Up the Space Mediumship Needs?
During our conversation, Charlie described beginner mediumship as often being “saturated in fear.”
That phrase stayed with me.
Because I remember it incredibly well.
You become aware of something.
Perhaps you see a car.
And almost immediately, the mind arrives.
Is it a car?
What colour is it?
Why am I seeing it?
Who does it belong to?
Does this even make sense?
By the time we have finished questioning the information, we may barely be connected to the original experience anymore.
Charlie made the point that as confidence and experience develop, some of that fear begins to occupy less space. Instead of simply becoming aware of a car, perhaps there is suddenly room for the red car, the memory associated with it and eventually the person in the spirit world telling their story through it.
I recognise this enormously in my own mediumship.
There have been times when I believed I was concentrating incredibly hard on the spirit world.
Looking back, I wasn't.
I was concentrating incredibly hard on getting mediumship right.
Those are not necessarily the same thing.
The Perfectionism Trap in Mediumship Development
One of the fascinating things about mediumship is how quickly something beautiful can become something we judge ourselves by.
At the beginning, getting one piece of information that somebody can understand can feel extraordinary.
Then we develop.
Our expectations grow.
Suddenly the evidence that once amazed us is no longer enough.
We want names.
Dates.
Relationships.
Specific memories.
And development is important. I believe we should care deeply about the quality of our mediumship and continually challenge ourselves to grow.
The problem comes when development turns into perfectionism.
Charlie gave an example I see all the time: a student might deliver a reading in which almost everything is recognised, yet the tiny piece that isn't understood becomes the only thing they remember.
I have done this myself.
You can receive ten beautiful pieces of evidence and then spend the journey home thinking about number eleven.
Why?
Because the ego doesn't particularly like being wrong.
The Ego Isn't the Enemy
Spirituality can sometimes create a strange relationship with the ego.
We talk about transcending it.
Dissolving it.
Getting rid of it.
As though becoming spiritual means somehow ceasing to be human.
Charlie uses a far more useful image.
He talks about putting his ego in its cage when he works.
I love that.
Not destroying it.
Not pretending it doesn't exist.
Managing it.
Because the ego has a job.
It wants to protect us.
It says:
Don't say that. You might look stupid.
Change that word. This one sounds safer.
You had a no. Fix it.
They don't understand you. Try something else.
The problem is that every time we obey that voice during a communication, we start editing the information.
And once we start editing, something very subtle changes.
The reading starts becoming about us.
The Need to Understand
This was perhaps the biggest realisation I took away from my conversation with Charlie.
As mediums, we have an extraordinary desire to understand what we are receiving.
But why?
If I become aware of a woman in the spirit world showing me a particular pair of shoes, perhaps my job isn't to work out the significance of those shoes.
Perhaps my job is simply to describe them.
The recipient owns the memory.
Not me.
Charlie put it beautifully during our conversation: the need to know where the narrative is going can become the very thing that stops the communication.
That made me think about how often I used to receive something and immediately try to place it.
Who is this?
What does this mean?
Where does this fit?
And every time I did that, I was moving from receiving into analysing.
The communication became sticky.
More recently, I have been experimenting with doing the opposite.
Receiving.
Speaking.
Allowing.
And then receiving again.
The difference can be extraordinary.
Stop Making the Evidence Fit the Story
Another important part of mediumship development, for me, has been learning the difference between what I actually receive and what I think it means.
Imagine I become aware of a nurse.
If I say:
“I have a nurse.”
That is what I received.
But perhaps my mind immediately translates nurse into hospital.
So I say:
“I need to talk about somebody being in hospital.”
Those are not the same statement.
The first belongs to the communication.
The second may belong entirely to me.
And perhaps the person wasn't in hospital at all.
Perhaps their mother was a nurse.
Perhaps they trained as one.
Perhaps there is a photograph of them wearing a nurse's uniform.
Perhaps “nurse” activates a memory I could never possibly reconstruct intellectually.
This is where mediumship becomes fascinating.
The smallest detail can contain an entire world for somebody else.
Mediumship Is About Activating Memory
Charlie spoke during the episode about activating what he describes almost like a flick-book of memories.
I think that is a beautiful way of understanding evidential mediumship.
A medium doesn't necessarily need to tell an elaborate story.
Sometimes one word does it.
A stance.
A particular sweet.
A football.
A piece of jewellery.
A ridiculous family story.
Something that means almost nothing to the medium can unlock an entire emotional landscape for the recipient.
I've increasingly noticed this in my own readings.
There is a difference between saying:
“I feel I have a gentleman who could be quite serious.”
and allowing the person in spirit to become much more alive:
“Your grandad is showing me that stance he used to do when you knew he was being serious.”
One describes.
The other activates.
And when that recognition happens, the energy in the reading changes.
The person is no longer an abstract “spirit communicator”.
For a moment, they are Grandad again.
That, to me, is where some of the real beauty of mediumship lives.
Confidence Isn't About Believing You're Brilliant
We also talked about confidence.
For a long time, I misunderstood what confidence in mediumship needed to look like.
I thought confidence meant believing completely in my own ability.
Charlie offered a very different perspective.
He compared the medium to a phone.
When we send a text message, we don't congratulate ourselves on our extraordinary ability to transmit information across the country.
We trust the instrument.
In mediumship, Charlie's confidence isn't necessarily in “Charlie the medium” knowing everything.
His confidence is that the person communicating knows their own story.
I find that incredibly freeing.
I don't need to know somebody's memories better than they do.
I don't need to understand their life.
I don't need to manufacture the communication.
My responsibility is to become as clear an instrument as I can and give what I receive.
Perhaps Mediumship Development Is Really Self-Development
This brings me to something I now believe very strongly.
You cannot separate mediumship development from personal development.
You can learn techniques.
You can attend circles.
You can practise linking with the spirit world.
You can learn presentation.
But sooner or later, you meet yourself.
Your fear.
Your need for approval.
Your insecurity.
Your competitiveness.
Your comparison with other mediums.
Your desire to be impressive.
Your discomfort with being wrong.
I certainly have.
And perhaps that isn't an unfortunate side effect of developing mediumship.
Perhaps it is part of the development itself.
Mediumship has forced me to look at parts of myself I might otherwise have avoided.
It has taught me about surrender.
Trust.
Patience.
Humility.
And increasingly, about allowing myself to be imperfect.
How Much of Life Does Fear Stop?
Our conversation eventually moved beyond mediumship.
Charlie said something that has stayed with me ever since.
His daily challenge is essentially:
How many times can I beat fear today?
Think about that.
How many things have we not done because we were frightened?
The job we didn't apply for.
The relationship we didn't pursue.
The boundary we didn't set.
The conversation we didn't have.
The idea we never started.
Fear frequently doesn't announce itself by saying, “Hello, I'm fear.”
It says:
Maybe later.
You're not ready.
What will people think?
Wait until you're better.
What if you fail?
And mediumship puts us face-to-face with exactly the same voice.
Perhaps that is one of its greatest gifts.
Because every time we receive something, feel the fear and say it anyway, we practise choosing trust over control.
From Performance to Service
Ultimately, this is where the conversation landed for me.
Why are we doing mediumship in the first place?
Is it to demonstrate how accurate we can be?
To impress a room?
To prove that we are a good medium?
Or is it to serve the person sitting in front of us and the person trying to communicate with them?
The more my own mediumship develops, the less interested I am in performance and the more interested I become in relationship.
Who was this person?
How did they love?
How were they loved?
What made them laugh?
What memory will make the person sitting opposite me instantly recognise them?
What needs to be communicated?
For me, mediumship at its heart is healing.
Not because it removes grief.
Not because every reading provides every answer.
And certainly not because a medium can control who communicates.
But because sometimes one piece of evidence, one memory or one familiar characteristic can remind somebody that a relationship of love is bigger than the physical body.
Learning to Get Out of the Way
Perhaps the mediumship breakthrough isn't always another course, another technique or another exercise.
Perhaps sometimes it is simply this:
Trust what you receive.
Stop trying to make everything fit.
Allow yourself to get something wrong.
Notice when fear is speaking.
Recognise when your ego wants to take control.
And then gently get yourself out of the way.
I am still learning this.
I expect I always will be.
And perhaps that is the point.
Mediumship is not something I believe we ever finally “complete”.
It continues to reveal more about the spirit world, but it also continues to reveal more about ourselves.
And for me, that has become one of the most fascinating parts of the journey.
Listen to My Conversation with Charlie Kelly
This article was inspired by my recent Soul Sync conversation with medium and teacher Charlie Kelly: The Mediumship Breakthrough: Moving Beyond Fear, Ego and the Need to Be Right.
Charlie and I explore fear, ego, confidence, evidential mediumship, validation, surrender and why learning to work on ourselves may be one of the most important parts of developing as a medium.
Watch or listen to the full Soul Sync episode by clicking here
Exploring Mediumship for Yourself?
You don't need to be developing as a medium to be curious about the spirit world.
If you are looking for a mediumship reading in Bristol or online, my private readings are centred on evidence, personality, memories and the individuality of the person communicating.
My intention is always to create a natural, compassionate space in which the communication can unfold without forcing a particular person or outcome.