Since my pay-per-minute advertising is often juxtaposed with those of phone-sex ads, I often get to thinking about the social similarities in Western society between sex work and fortune telling. In other countries such as China, large corporations may enlist in the help of a fortune teller, but in the United States, many look down on it with horror or disgust, and fortune telling is illegal or restricted in some areas, such as New York. The stigma in both lines of work takes a toll, I'm sure.
In my first decade of work as a fortune teller, I've seen many faces come and go in my local community of professionals. The combination of fighting a negative image with honing a craft, with gaining confidence in the business side of the trade has proved too much for many readers. Regional hostility from competitors can also be disheartening. In light of this, I began an apprenticeship program in my area not long ago, and thus another parallel between the two oldest professions was brought to mind after reading a recent Blog post by sex-positive author Mistress Matisse regarding an email she received from someone looking for her help entering her business.
True of perhaps any job, Matisse writes that, "If you have self-esteem issues, there are plenty of people in the industry ready and willing to treat you just as disrespectfully as you think you deserve. Men and women both, clients, co-workers and employers. They will reinforce your negative feelings about yourself." In any industry where people are reviewed according to how a client felt emotionally after the meeting, and yes that happens on-line for both psychics and sex-workers, somebody new to the business can be tempted to shrug personal values aside to look good on a review and garner more business.
Reviewing the email from a perspective sex-worker further, Matisse continues, "The challenge of sex work in our society is to do it while staying happy, healthy, safe and sane. Many of the difficulties are external and require only observation and cleverness to evade. But you also need a certain psychological makeup. The impression I have from this email is of someone who is really not wired to get up every morning, put out a lot of emotional energy to create intimate experiences for people she met five minutes ago, and whom she may or may not even like, and go home every night feeling good about that."
It's hard to say which were the first counselors, fortune tellers or prostitutes, but each has to immediately go about creating an incredibly private space for clients in which they can feel relaxed and comfortable enough to share their deepest desires, and perhaps even weaknesses. I know that as a spiritual advisor I am a psychological dumping ground for many people, whether they are broken people or not. Many entering the psychic industry, empathic to begin with, are quickly leveled by the force of such emotion and flee to the hills. Along similar lines, Matisse wrote, "Most sex work, especially at the entry level, demands much and gives little, emotionally... Learning the skills to create mutually positive experiences/relationships takes time, and in the interim, you must have the emotional reserves."
If you're new to the fortune telling business, hang in there, and know that it will take some out of you in the beginning. If you're a client who has noticed your spiritual advisors disappearing, I'm still here and it is getting easier for us every day. If you'd like to help all of us, help to fight the stigma and the laws that contribute to the high turnover in this, one of the world's oldest professions.