There are two techniques that do a lot of the heavy lifting in most readings.
The first is the Barnum statement — observations so broadly applicable they feel personal: "You present a confident face to the world, but privately you're harder on yourself than most people realise." True of roughly half the room, but it lands like a portrait.
The second is fishing: a tentative offer — "I'm getting something around a loss, perhaps a figure on the father's side?" — followed by silence. The sitter does the work. If they correct it, the reader adjusts and claims to have been close. If they confirm it, it becomes a hit.
Knowing these techniques doesn't make genuine experiences disappear. It does make them easier to identify — because they're the ones that don't need any of this scaffolding.
Has anyone caught either technique in the wild, whether aimed at them or someone else? What gave it away?