Psychic Debts. What Are They? Do We All Have them?

What is Psychic Debt?

To put it simply, it is a process where you feel you owe someone or someone owes you something which you cannot exactly measure. This is the most common in friendships and romantic relationships, where one person seems to have contributed more to the connection. Usually, the one who perceives himself/herself as contributing more would feel like the other owes them. Or sometimes, depending on the mindset of a person, they may feel like they do not deserve what has been given to them by the other party, they feel they owe the other party. Remember this is perception and may not be true, at all.

But have you heard yourself or someone else say this: I don't want to feel like I owe XXX something. Or: I don't want to be indebted to XXX, they will use it against me.

These are psychic debts. They are not anything visible but they are certainly felt.

Some things can happen if we allow our perceived psychic debt to weigh us down:

• We get sleepless nights because the burden causes our emotional and mental beingness to become tense
• We can feel emotionally burdened by the psychic debt and the pressure from it makes us want to run away, blow up or terminate the friendship/relationship
• The burden can cause us anxiety, stress leading to hormonal imbalances which then results in physical illnesses
• If we feel that someone owes us, then we feel we can't hold on to the imbalance and we can't stop ourselves from gossiping and even garnishing these talks with more fillers than necessary
• And more...

Since these psychic debts are happening all the time, how do we deal with them? How do we then manage our perspectives about them?

First and foremost, we ALL must accept that we all deserve to be here. We all deserve space on this planet. Sometimes, we feel we owe people or places or things because we feel undeserving. This is a very unconscious thing that people do, they feel they don't belong, or they feel they are taking too much space, and so they think they do not matter as much as someone else.

This has a lot to do with a sense of self-worthiness. When someone is unsure about their own worth, they can flip flop between two ways of thinking and being. Firstly, they feel they don't deserve to be in a space occupied by people they perceive as better than them, and so a sense of inferiority and some emotional psychic burdened is felt.

And when at some point they feel they have done a favour for the "better" person, they expect to be acknowledged and if the acknowledgement is not forthcoming, they go into an overinflated sense of self-worthiness. They have suddenly become better than the other, now keep in mind that, this is all happening within their own minds. And somehow the person he/she has put on the pedestal is no longer worthy to be there, and that they themselves now are to be put on the pedestal.

This entire scenario is just a mind game that people play with themselves, very much on an unconscious level. But then this is made into their reality, and so the way the world is perceived is twisted, and not how things actually are and they have become enslaved to these thoughts.

People get caught in this vicious game, far too often, unfortunately. So as humans living in this world, we owe it to ourselves first and foremost to develop a balanced sense of self-worthiness. The lack of it can make us carry too much psychic debt, and an overly inflated sense of worthiness can make us feel like everyone needs to make way for us.

Psychic debts also occur when we have a lack of communication and a lack of clarity of thoughts. In some Asian culture, people can feel insulted if you thank them for something they have done. For eg. if a loved one does something for me, and I thank them for it, I may get chastised for it for treating myself like a guest or outsider. And that somehow as a loved one there is no need to thank, as doing something good for people you love is an obligation or duty. But I personally, although Asian, much prefer to communicate my gratitude to avoid any build-up of psychic debts. Even if I do not feel it, I do not want a projected sense of "being owed" coming from the other party.

For me, personally, communicating my appreciation and having clarity is of utmost importance. Of course, this is not to say that I never encounter problems, if the other party does not communicate, and I have no idea why and what the other party is thinking, and they feel I am indebted to them, this was a scenario happened exactly with one of my previous staff. In situations like these, there is nothing you can do, except be clear that you have done your best for the other party, and if you have not, strive to do better the next time! This can be applied to all situations in life.

No one is here to make enemies so why create them within our own minds. It is all about having clarity of intentions with self, and then in our interactions with others. The more conscious we are about these psychic debts, the freer we become, and the more relaxed we can be in our interactions with each other.

©2020 Shamala Tan

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Shamala Tan is an author, spiritual entrepreneur and healer. Her work focuses on transforming the lives of others on the spiritual, emotional, mental and earthly level.

One of her success stories as an author is to being featured alongside New York’s bestsellers Sonia Choquette, Robert Allen, Arielle Ford, Marci Shimoff as well as Christine Kloser in the book Pebbles In The Pond.

Shamala’s clients include small business owners, holistic practitioners as well as those seeking to find more significant meaning and value in life. Shamala offers laser coaching to her clients on a one-to-one basis or in a group environment, offline as well as online.