New Yorkers are ditching therapists for psychics: ‘I just kind of gave up’
No one could have seen this coming — except, perhaps, those with the gift of second sight.
Some New York area residents are fed up with their therapists, ditching their shrinks for psychics who give them “real” guidance instead.
Aria D’Amore, 35, an artist and model living in Jersey City, was dissatisfied with therapy for nearly 30 years, so she decided to seek guidance from an intuitive healer practicing tarot and astrology.
“I just kind of gave up on therapy after a while because I don’t find it helpful,” D’Amore told The Post.
“Therapists are in no rush to get your problems figured out,” she added. “It drags on. It’s a very long process.”
In fact, D’Amore doesn’t think therapy is ideal “for many people” due to the “cost barrier.”
“Seeing a therapist every week is like a habit, like they want you to keep coming back. It’s almost like an addiction in a strange way,” she said.
D’Amore also believes therapists “are very disconnected from their patients,” especially those who chose a “more artistic life path.”
“That divide will lead to disconnect at best, judgment at worst,” she said.
NYC psychic Dante Sabatino, 55, who has been reading tarot cards for over 40 years, told The Post he’s seen an uptick in people seeking alternative healing during the pandemic and the years leading up to it “when things were changing with the economy and political scene.”
“A lot of people have just been seeking out more into the unknown and more kinds of healing from different modalities, including tarot, astrology and all the other ones,” Sabatino explained.
Before finding her “own internal compass” through her psychic, D’Amore began a traditional psychotherapy journey when she was 5 after her parents divorced. As an adult, she saw several therapists but felt “frustrated” by the process.
She admits some therapists she saw were “very good” but “there was something missing” because they didn’t give her the “mobility of heart and spirit” to “move forward.”
D’Amore now consults with her healer/astrologer about twice a year — an hour-and-a-half session with him costs her $125 — and feels as though she’s viewed “in a more holistic way,” despite being skeptical at first.
“Over time, I sort of felt like I was getting something very real. Somebody spoke to me as if they knew my soul, something that transcended any experience of therapy that I’ve ever had,” she said.
Sabatino said clients typically come to him two to three times a year with specific questions or general readings “about the next chapter of their life.” His specialty is tarot card readings — which he calls “a form of divination and prediction” — and a full 60-minute session costs $250.
While his approach to reading tarot is “therapeutic and predictive,” he said it “doesn’t replace what traditional psychotherapy could do for people.” Sabatino focuses on the next two years of a person’s life, while therapists help people “heal from their past.”
“I’m a very pro-therapy person,” he said. “I’ve helped many clients explore the potential of entering therapy or recovery or some form of psychological help if I see that it’s needed.”
Betsy LeFae, a 44-year-old psychic in upstate New York, was an NYC social worker for 10 years before becoming a psychic, coach and founder of the Trust Yourself: INtuition School to help others master their intuitive gifts.
LeFae — who was named a top psychic medium by Time Out New York last year — has clients who see her for readings over psychotherapy as well as those who do both. She also recommends some clients see psychoanalysts, too.
“I do not shy away from suggesting therapy if my intuition or my logic and clinical background suggests so,” she said.
LeFae was a social worker for families of homicide victims as well as a domestic violence counselor, but quit her job in 2011 as her growing psychic powers left her feeling burned out.
“I had all these gifts and in my social work job, all my gifts are like Niagara Falls,” she explained. “I wound up having vicarious trauma because I was taking on the trauma of all my clients for 10 years.”
In 2009, she opened her first psychic mediumship practice after learning how to master her gifts.
While she “learned to talk to dead people accurately,” LeFae said she’s grateful she never had to use psychic mediumship abilities when she was a social worker for families of homicide victims — but grew tired of having to bite her tongue when she was receiving intuitive downloads with some clients.
“A therapist can’t really feed you information that’s not sort of like clinical,” she said. “Really they’re not supposed to put their opinion in even at all.”
Now able to give information she had to hold back in therapy, LeFae charges $497 for one-hour psychic readings — though she said people shouldn’t be seeing a psychic more than every six months.
“If you don’t put limits on this, people will wind up calling psychics to see if they can cross the street or not,” she said, noting she hopes to help people so that they “never need to see a psychic again.”
“I’m trauma-informed. My education in psychology and my 10 years in social work really gave me ethics and morals,” she said.
“Not just psychics, but many people in the field of spirituality and self-help really don’t have that. It’s unregulated and sometimes, or a lot of times, can do more harm than good if you don’t know what you’re doing.”
Both LeFae and Sabatino said spotting a scammer is easy: If a psychic approaches you versus the other way around, that’s never a great sign. And pay attention to what they’re charging you, too.
Sabatino said while some psychic scammers may have some intuitive gifts, they’ll use their knowledge as a hook to tell people they “need to pay more money to heal their blockages.”
“There should be absolutely no upsells. A price should be sent in advance,” LeFae said. “And if 80% of someone’s reading was accurate but 20% wasn’t, don’t go back to that person.”
