How do you stop a binge?

[russianred]

I have been on a binge over the last week.  It is so easy to just keep adding money and figure that I've already wasted $500, what's another $50 more?

I do not wish to offend but I really don't believe any of these readers (at least the ones I've spoken with) have true psychic abilities.  There are a couple who are more "coach" types who have been helpful to me, and I do believe some people are able to make good guesses based on the general energy of a situation, but I also often end up spending 30-45 minutes on the phone with the coaches/advice givers and paying so much money... more money than their advice is worth.

I want to just ACCEPT that there is no way to know the future (even if a psychic knows it, how would I know that psychic is correct and I can trust her?) and what will be will be.  I regret ever signing up for Keen.  I closed my first account, then opened my second because I wanted to speak to some specific advisors again and now am binging again on some of my second-string advisors and a couple random others.

The psychics don't make me feel better or more secure and the amount I've charged on my credit card since this fall is getting scary.

What helps you?

Some things I'm trying to think of:
- POI would not be spending thousands of dollars on advice or psychic predictions about me
- None of the calls so far have helped me much in this relationship despite thousands of dollars spent
- Ultimately I'm spending this money on a man who is not treating me totally right
- I often can't even recall 90% of what is said on a phone call and everything starts to blend together

[russianred]

Prior to that I would binge with go-to readers and what made it so hard to stop was that I was all caught up in the emotions evoked by what they were telling me. If I thought about it logically, I knew they were wrong about things, but the emotions were so overwhelming I couldn't stay logical about it. It took a long time for me to get over that but it got to the point where I had to look at the cold hard facts of various situations and just accept that it is what it is. Regardless of whether those things may change in the future all you can do is accept where you are and go from there. I was constantly putting that off that with speculation and what ifs.

The future is what we want to escape to when there is something we don't like about the present (whether it is a situation or even just not wanting to feel a certain way.) When you fully accept being in the present moment it is easier to let go of what the future will be.

The best way that I found to curb binging and eventually stop getting readings altogether, is to write down what they say...not just recording the readings, but taking notes, so you have to think about putting it into words that make sense, and will still will make sense when you read it later. Then go back and revisit those notes to see how much actually comes to pass or can be proven with direct experience.

On your notes, write down the price you paid for the reading. When you read over the notes, consideer wherther the information you got out of it is actually worth the price that you paid. If you knew ahead of time what information would be contained in the reading, would you still want to pay that amount?

A lot of times while I was getting a reading, I thought they were saying things that were really sharp and on point, but when I read over it later I realized there was a lot of repetition, generalities, filler, platitudes, fishing, cold reading and absolute BS. Sometimes there were nuggets of real insight mixed in, but it wasn't worth the total price I paid to obtain those.

The more you can quantify the actual information you are getting, and the price it is worth to you, the easier it will be to stop binging. Ultimately I stopped altogether because it was such an absurd waste of money I could no longer justify doing it anymore.

2
Thank you so much.  I am still binging today, but I have written down everything; I never did that before.  I am going to try to work up the nerve to put a price tag next to each of my the notes this evening. 

In my case the information that advisors are giving to me is likely not wrong (it's about something yet to be determined, but if I had to place bets, I would bet they will all be right that this thing will happen within 1-3 months), but I still don't find that anything they are saying is giving me the reassurance I seek so what is the point of spending the money?

[njlady]

I love to eat but I am very short so I have to be very careful with my weight.  5 extra lbs and none of my pants will fit.  On a tall person, they probably wouldn't even notice they had 5 lbs extra.  When I go into bored/anxious/sad eat everything in sight mode, I deflect.  Push-ups until I drop or writing my feelings out.  Both methods work well.