This may sound silly, but Theresa Caputo (a.k.a. the Long Island Medium), completely changed my life one Saturday afternoon.

At the time, I was the owner of a fairly successful and super fun soap company whose tagline was, “Being Dirty Has Never Been This Much Fun.”

Cheeky, don’t you think?

Anyway, the opening day of the local farmer’s market was coming up and I had a lot of soap to make in order to be ready for the season. Normally, I would have been super (overly) prepared at that point, but after moving out of a haunted house (read about that here) a few months prior, I had been suffering from traumatic physical ailments.

I would feel tingling all over my body (like I was being electrocuted), numbness and extreme weakness in my right arm, and sudden overwhelming bouts of anxiety.

I would be fine one minute, and having a panic attack out of nowhere the next.

I had seen plenty of doctors, physical therapists, and even a neurologist, but not one of them could help me with my weird physical ailments. No diagnosis. No proper medication. Nothing.

After going through all of this for months, I was in desperation mode trying to get my soap made between the physical attacks. My awesome husband packed our toddler up for the day to give me uninterrupted soaping time, so I flipped on the t.v. for some background noise, and got to work.

The Long Island Medium was having a marathon that day and I was casually listening as I prepared my batches. All of a sudden, I heard Theresa, the Medium, say (paraphrasing here),

“After suffering from debilitating anxiety and trying to manage it on my own, I was introduced to a spiritual healer who explained I was suppressing Spirit’s energy, which caused a lot of my anxiety. Once I learned to channel Spirit through my Chakras, I began to heal and come into my own”

BAM. My life changed in that one moment.

Holy crap. This was it! I was not suffering from a neurological disorder! I didn’t need medication or physical therapy! I needed to pay attention to Spirit!

Spirit was literally shaking the crud out of me in order to pay attention to my gifts!

This made perfect sense to me as the symptoms started happening after the incidents in the haunted house and not before. I had always been sensitive to energy and had some experiences with the deceased randomly in my youth and teens, but these physical ailments were new. 

Immediately, I got on my computer and started reading every single thing I could find about anxiety and psychic ability. Here is what I learned:

1. Spirits naturally have a higher vibrational energy than we do. When Spirit is trying to connect with you, and you aren’t raising your vibration up to meet them, they can do it for you! Um, hello sudden onset anxiety attack!

2. Many gifted psychics have no idea they have abilities and think they have a neurological disorder so they rely on medications and therapy to help…which usually doesn’t work.

3. Many psychics suffer this type of ‘Spirit Anxiety’ through the psychic gift of Clairsentience (also known as ‘clear feeling’).

4.       4. If you are experiencing too much from Spirit, you can ask them to turn down the vibration, by saying something to the effect of, “Spirit, I can feel you trying to connect with me, but the vibration is too much for my physical body. I promise I will do what I can do communicate with you, but I need you to please dial it back a bit.” 

5.       5. In order to combat the overwhelming feelings you may be experiencing, you can also work on grounding yourself. One of my favorite techniques comes from this grounding meditation by Amanda Linette Meder.

6.       6. You don’t have to develop your abilities in order to get rid of the anxiety. You can just ask Spirit to stop and that you aren’t interested in connecting with them at this time. They will listen.

7. Developing your abilities is a lot of hard work, dedication, and trust and also one of the most rewarding things you can do for yourself and others.

Once I embraced my gifts and started actively learning how to connect with Spirit and develop my gifts, my symptoms all but disappeared. Seriously, just like that. I asked Spirit to turn down the vibration, studied anything I could get my hands on, learned to mediate (which I still suck at!), and the numbing, tingling, weakness and anxiety were gone.

Now, I know that if I start to feel a little anxious out of the blue, I immediately ground myself, ask Spirit to chill, and take some time to meditate and hear the message that needs to come through.

Just like that.

Oh, and in case you were wondering, I didn’t make a single bar of soap that day.

Whoops!