How Long Island Medium Theresa Caputo Really Got Her Start

Theresa Caputo, better known as the Long Island Medium, has become one of the most recognizable psychic mediums. Though she is calm and collected, often entertaining, and always down-to-earth as she relays messages from those who have passed away, becoming a medium was anything but easy for the New York native.

Caputo had been seeing dead people since she was a child. "I didn't realize I was different, I've been seeing and sensing spirits since I was four so for me it was normal to see someone standing at the foot of my bed at night or talking to me and there was no one else in the room," she explains (via Daily Mail). "It wasn't until later in my twenties when I realized not only was I able to connect with my departed loved ones but everyone else's." 

Once she absorbed what was happening to her, she didn't quite know what to do with it. "I realized I had this ability and then I struggled for over five years." It took a world tragedy for her to figure out what she had to do, and that didn't come until she was well into her 20s.

While she knew that spirits coming to her randomly was something that has always happened since childhood, she didn't immediately connect it to being able to communicate with spirits. However, in her 20s she started to have bouts of anxiety that forced her to address it. 

"I found out I was a medium through going to a spiritual healer," Caputo recalled on her show. "I was constantly having anxiety. I would be just driving in the car and we would stop at a light and I'd say to my husband, 'Oh my God, I don't feel good, I gotta get out of the car.'"

Those anxious feelings forced her to examine what it all truly meant and what she might be capable of. "I went for five years back and forth from the spiritual classes and for going for the healings cause it took me a long time to accept what it was because I was like what do you mean I can speak to dead people."

Theresa Caputo says a tragic world event directed her on how to use the gift she was given. "After 9/11, I had a spiritual experience, where I was told that this was my soul's journey; that I had the gift to be able to give peace to people and be able to move on after the loss of a loved one," she told 068 Magazine. She says that experience allowed her to be open to whatever her abilities would bring her.

Since then, Caputo has found a way to make it her life's mission. In 2011, her reality show "Long Island Medium" premiered, and it remained on air for 14 seasons. Today, she still tours to share her expertise in communicating with loved ones who have crossed over on the other side. 

She says there are good things about being a medium, like being able to give people closure. "What I learned is that, unfortunately, we here in the physical world are left with burdens and guilts," she said in an exclusive interview with The List. "Maybe a should've, a could've, a would've, an only if. And at the end of the day, all of these negative emotions and burdens do not give us the ability to heal." While Caputo initially struggled with her gift, she's now using it to do a world of good.