My friend Simon, who is psychic

You need yang to master a yin skill

Simon helped me move to Berlin 2 years ago, before we had ever met or even spoken to each other: I vaguely knew of him through my Twitter network, and I knew that he lived in Berlin, so I asked him for help getting my visa. He has been one of my most solid and reliable friends since I moved, and we are now very close. Simon also happens to be able to read my mind.

flow snobbery

When two people interact, meaning and understanding flow constantly between them, carried not just by words but by tone, silences, noises, breaths, microexpressions, body language. This happens inevitably among all humans all the time.

With Simon, those currents of understanding flow notably smoothly and elegantly. Both of us are very sensitive to these currents, and we nudge them more actively than most do—Simon more so than me—and we both find great joy and beauty in co-creating the currents with each other.

I would say Simon is more skilled at shaping this flow than I am. I think it's like partner dancing: if I'm decent at it, I can dance nicely with anyone who's at least as skilled as me; whereas Simon can make the most two-left-footed beginner look like a natural.

The skill is not the same as just being charismatic or entertaining, though Simon is those things too. The real skill is more subtle and dynamic: it requires grounded attunement. You have to receive all the other people's verbal and nonverbal signals (which may contain all manner of anxieties or blockages), subconsciously process them while not being overwhelmed by the anxieties and blockages, and then send out your own verbal and nonverbal signals that convey your grounding in the face of all those anxieties and blockages, in addition to any other things you want to signal.

Another prerequisite, I think, is a deep care for the people you talk to. You can be grounded and attuned and use your skills for selfish or shallow purposes (like charming everyone you talk to); but if you also prioritize care and relationship, people will end up not just enjoying their conversation with you and thinking you're cool, but also feeling good and nourished.

I think most people wouldn't consciously perceive the thing Simon does in conversation. I'm not a wine drinker, but maybe it's like drinking a really good smooth wine, as someone who has developed a palate for it. To 99% of people, it'll just be a normal not-bad drinking experience. To someone who really cares and has spent years thinking about all the different specific ways a wine can be unpleasant, and who experiences most wines as minor disappointments, it's a sublime experience not to be taken for granted. The supersensitivity of wine or conversation snobs means they might be having a bad or mediocre experience the majority of the time...but to them, the magic they experience on the right tail makes it all worth it.

psychic care (and its shadow)

Attentive conversationalists like Simon are rare and I treasure them immensely when I have the chance to talk to them. But the really mindblowing thing happens in group settings. The conversation might go in a direction someone subtly doesn't like, or someone is grating on someone else, or someone is feeling hurt. Maybe nothing in particular happens but someone feels off. The off/hurt/annoyed/upset person might withdraw. None of these things are explicit, and some people might not notice, but Simon notices, and he will try to shift the dynamic in a direction that gives everyone more space or lets them feel seen. In any group, he always has eyes on the whole and on each individual, checking that everyone is feeling alright.

I've seen him do this both for other friends and for me. When I'm the recipient of this care, I feel incredibly seen and safe: attunement is my love language; I am rabid for it; I can never get enough of my mind being lovingly skillfully read (in exchange, I offer the same service back).¹

The most spooky thing Simon does is that in addition to checking in later about how I'm feeling, and telling me he noticed my mood shift—even just this level of attention is far beyond most people—he will also tell me his guess as to what caused it, often to an astonishing level of fidelity, and he is almost always right. He can also do this sort of thing over text alone or through a group chat, and even when we haven't talked in a couple days he can read my state from across the city.

I feel slightly conflicted celebrating the levels of care I receive from Simon, because I know that he too feels conflicted about it. All this attunement and attention and vibe management take effort. Maybe managing your friends leads to friends who need to be managed. For a long time he has been caring for others in this way, because he's good at it and it brings him joy, but I know he also needs to receive the same care back sometimes—to not always be the caretaking adult, but to sometimes let others to take care of themselves, each other, and even him. So I will just say that I am very supportive of his evolving relationship with the caregiver role, while also deeply appreciating what his care has done for me.

leaders and followers

While Simon is reevaluating his high-capacity role, I'm exploring how to step into greater skill and capacity myself. If Simon and I are kind of psychic with each other, but Simon is better at it than I am, what can I learn from him?

One obvious answer I already mentioned is grounding: I have the attunement part down pretty well, but I'm less stable, less able to feel safe and solid and okay in the presence of others, than Simon is. That is an active work in progress.

But a more interesting angle came to mind, one that didn't really follow logically but a strong gut instinct told me was a path worth sniffing out. I don't know why, but I believe that in order to become more psychic, I need to be more yang. This is a counterintuitive hypothesis, since mindreading is a receptive yin skill: most people would need more yin, not yang, if they wanted to develop it. In any case, the ability to be an active rather than receptive player, to take opinionated action rather than accepting things as they are, is the biggest differentiator between me and Simon.

Here we can go deeper into the earlier partner dancing analogy. Like a dancing follower, I am strongly receptive, a yin conversationalist. I let the leader make broad directional choices, but it's my responsiveness to their cues that brings the collaboration to life. Interpersonally I am hesitant to unilaterally steer a conversation or to try to advise people, but I also have a large capacity to enjoy being led, or to mirror people and build rapport through subtle cues. The shadow side of this is that if the dynamic is too challenging for me to yin my way through as a follower/receiver, I feel completely helpless to change it at all, and get overwhelmed and upset very fast.

By contrast, Simon is very clearly a leader. He is practiced in nudging group and 1:1 conversations according to his own preferences. And I think what makes him so powerful is that attunement is inherently a yin skill, but he performs it with yang intentions: he is balanced, and harnesses the power of both the feminine (reading everyone’s mind) and masculine (looking out for everyone).

I am very yin by nature, and it's afforded me a lot of powerful capabilities, but I'm now finding that I'm at the limit of what I can do through pure feminine receptive power. And while I am very skilled as a follower, I'm realizing there are some things I cannot do unless I take the lead and learn where I need to be the adult, and take charge, because nobody else will do it. Even Simon's magic trick of guessing what's on my mind feels like a yang move: in my most yin moments, I would never dare, I would consider it hubristic, to even offer a suggestion that might color another person's narrative. But you need to have a firm hand in order to take care of people.

Maybe the thing I need to learn is masculine care, the way I have become very skilled at feminine care. Growing into my full psychic and interpersonal power feels very intertwined with balancing these two poles, which feels inextricable with growing up and maturing (and what is maturity but the ability to care and be cared for?). And maybe you can only fully know another's interiority when you can empathize enough to care for it—what else is being psychic for?

1. People have read my mind unlovingly before, and this feels very bad. The obvious way is to read my mind without charity, without love or care of any kind. But a more subtle way is to withhold the fact that you know things about me, like you would with a child or someone you don't respect enough to handle truth. The intention may be caring, but creating an information asymmetry is patronizing and disconnective.