By Travis Sanders
I am 32 years old. I have been reading professionally since I was 16, and full time since 2012. I haven’t had a vacation in nearly a decade. I am burnt out….I started working psychically, and even though I’d had some training and a few experiences in readings with spirit “breaking through,” I didn’t really start going full-steam with mediumship until spring of 2012.
For the past year, my mediumship had been inconsistent. It became a struggle, it started to effect my confidence. Was I broken? Did I just suck? No, I was mentally blocking myself because I was burnt out. Out of balance. On top of writing my books, juggling phone clients, in-person clients, and students, I manage a metaphysical center 5 days a week- and I was really beginning to slip at both and feel resentful towards something I was once very passionate about. This wasn’t right. I needed to reflect and re-evaluate.
The obvious didn’t dawn on me until one day, out of the blue, meme’s, videos and podcasts about burnout, as well as just the word itself, seemed to haunt me, and pop out everywhere I went. I guess I didn’t think about it, I mean, I have struggled off and on with chronic fatigue since my teens, at this stage in my life I just took being chronically tired as the default state of functioning.
But now the Universe/Spirit couldn’t be more clear. I’m the type that I can trust my intuition clearly and confidently for others but often times when it comes to myself, I need to be bopped over the head with a spiritual 2×4. I was burnt out and I needed to make adjustments and plans to ease this burnout. So I did.
Below I will list several conclusions and actions Ive come to and am working on still. If you yourself are dealing with any type of spiritual or psychic burnout, see if any of these actions and thinking points resonate with you. Perhaps it will help. At-least that is my intention!
1) Take a break!
It seems obvious right? Like, duh! But like many of us who are self employed on a spiritual path, I had fallen into the trap of “I cant afford to take a break.” or “When I have x amount saved up, then I can take a break.” But guess what, if you’re at the point where your ability to be of service isn’t at it’s best, or you find yourself dreading your passion, then you cant afford to NOT take a step back,
I used to think that if I stopped I was somehow letting Spirit down. But by not being the best channel I could be for my clients, I was already doing that. I remember about a year ago I considered taking a step back, and every time I went LIVE to make the announcement my internet cut out, and I couldn’t, perhaps that wasn’t the time, but now it certainly was.
I wasn’t quitting, just taking a step back from mediumship to regain clarity. I was still offering psychic readings as I found this took little effort or energy to perform. And It gave me a chance to focus on Spiritual Healing, which I enjoyed practicing but was rarely sought by clients as most people know me for my readings. This allowed me to ignite a passion for spirit-healing, and begin to explore new avenues of trance healing which I have become very excited about!
2) Do “un-spiritual” things
How often do we see “spiritual” people living in the mind/spirit 24/7 and neglecting the earthly, physical, and mundane? It’s easy to do, but we have to be balanced. It is all about body, mind and Spirit balance. I have always been heavily into mind and Spirit and the physical side of things was lacking. I found that getting outside with fresh air, sunlight, and moving the body was helpful. I couldn’t remember the last time I stood barefoot on the earth, or just sat outside and watched the sky. I have tried to make daily walks in a nature a part of my routine.
With the exception of my once a week sitting for Spirit session with a friend, I also decided to put a temporary halt on my daily meditation practice. I needed to give myself permission to be “un-spiritual” (which isn’t really a thing, we are all Spirit therefore we cant not be spiritual). I needed to just chill. So perhaps instead of meditating and reading Spiritual books, I would binge on Forensic Files or Kitchen Nightmares and read some fantasy (something I did a lot of as a teenager but rarely have as an adult as I am avid in metaphysical and spiritual non-fiction research and study).
This can also benefit you down the road as you resume your practice. Spirit can only utilize what is already in our subconscious. When we engage in mundane things such as fiction stories or television, we are often creating references/parallels/and symbolism that Spirit can later use.
3) Invest in self care
It’s funny how “spiritual people” wont bat an eyelash at dropping hundreds of dollars on unnecessary crystals, card decks, and books, but become frugal at the idea of investing in themselves. Get some energy work, a massage, a manicure, go to the spa! Your body is just as much an instrument as the mind and it needs to be kept in tune. This means exercise too, in whatever way is best for you- be it a gym membership or the yoga studio. You will feel better for it! This may also mean investing in healthier food options that nourish the body.
4) Supplements and Substances & Energy tools.
Lifestyle changes in regards to what we put into our bodies can be beneficial. In meditation a message I received was that my nervous system was taxed. As psychics and mediums our nervous system is already delicate, but when we over-work it consistently, we can very much fatigue our nerves into a state of exhaustion.
Now with any herb or supplement its always recommended to seek advice from a medical professional. For me I found magnesium to be very beneficial for the the nervous system. I also found that a low dosage iron supplement helped boost my physical energy (this was a hunch) as well as the herb Astragula. I also started taking Ginko for mental clarity and hemp seed oil for overall health.
I am a big fan of the work of Edgar Cayce. In his medical readings what he said in regards to what we would today call exhaustion or chronic fatigue is that the liver, kidney and lungs act as the “batteries” for our bodies. Now what took some honesty on my part was looking at how frequently I drank, and how that effected that liver, and how much caffeine I consumed and how that might effect my kidneys. I have cut back on caffeine and stopped drinking alcohol to give my body (both physical and etheric) a chance to heal.
Burn out can also be a Solar Plexus issue, so any energy work like Reiki, spirit-healing, or even Emotional Freedom Technique aka tapping, can be wonderful (there’s wonderful EFT videos on YouTube by Brad Yates). I also worked with visualizations such such as liquid gold, honey-like light coating my nervous system, working with color therapy, especially with the colors green and teal, imagining calling my energy back to myself, cutting cords to those who pulled on my energy, and tracing meridians in the body via Donna Eden’s energy medicine techniques.
5) Explore other passions
Do you have any new or old passions that you’ve put on the back burner? Explore those! Ive used this time off to start reading more on herbalism and folk healing, as well as painting and other creative projects like restoring and re-purposing thrift store furniture pieces.
6) Make a plan for moving forward
If you’re burnt out and take a break, but then go right back to the same structure you were working from before, then you will inevitably end up burnt out again. Take time to reflect on what wasn’t working for you, journaling can be helpful for insights. Perhaps you need to limit the number of clients or days you work? Perhaps you need to prioritize other aspects of your services? Do you need to readjust your boundaries with certain people? Contemplate, make a plan and put it into action!
This self-care detour has been an interesting journey for me so far, and I’m sure will continue to be as I slowly move back into my mediumship work. I know these are just some of the things that work for me and I hope that maybe they will help you to.
Take care of yourself, there is only one YOU!
Travis James Sanders
My Truth 