Transforming Anxiety in Our Tarot Practice
Have you ever worried you were getting it wrong while working with your Tarot deck? Have you ever pulled a Tarot card and worried about whether or not it represented something negative? Have you experienced the pain of not being any to trust your instincts when you tried to connect with your Tarot deck? If so, you are certainly not alone.
In the 25+ years that I have engaged in a Tarot practice, fear has (perhaps surprisingly) been my greatest teacher.
Anytime I've experienced anxiety or trepidation around a card, it has wound up being one of the most transformative teachers and allies in my life. After many years of teaching and reading Soul Tarot to thousands of folks, I can definitively say that I have seen the same kind of transformation occur in the great majority of my students and clients.
Fear doesn't show up for all of us in our Tarot practice. We may not all feel the intense spike of panic when we pull certain cards, or consider relating to our decks in deeper ways. But what about anxiety? What about worry? What about doubt?
Anxiety, worry, doubt, and trepidation are four branches on the tree of fear, and can show up in our Tarot practice in simultaneously pervasive and subtle ways.
When anxiety and worry around our practice are left unchecked and ignored, they can quietly turn the volume up on the story of the mind, and the volume down on our intuition, leaving us less clear on our instincts regarding a card. These experiences can create dread and insecurity around pulling certain cards when we read for others. It can leave us confused and frustrated with our practice, and may even encourage us to avoid certain cards, or the Tarot all together.
However, when anxiety and worry are honored and witnessed, they can be hugely powerful gateways that can radically expand our Tarot practice. When we understand that the presence of anxiety around a certain Tarot card is actually a kind of mindfulness bell, gently alerting us to a place that we are ready to grow and evolve, it can be a profound transformation, rather than something that stops us in our tracks.
The next time you experience anxiety, worry, or doubt around a certain card in the Tarot, I invite you to pause. Get curious. What is happening within you? Is the source of the fear a particular interpretation of a card that you learned from someone? Does that interpretation actually match your truth? Is it the imagery in your card? Would it be supportive for you to begin working with a different deck, one that aligned with your soul?
How would it change your Tarot practice if, rather than immediately believing your anxiety, you got curious about it? How would it liberate you? How might it totally shift your understanding of a card, or the Tarot in general?
To drop even deeper into this practice, I invite you to try out the Tarot spread below.
Holding Ourselves Through Fear Tarot Spread
A message from my anxiety, worry or fear
How can I sit with this experience?
What are these feelings inviting me to pay attention to?
How might I tend to these feelings and caretake them?
What is the evolutionary invitation under the fear?
What card can help me simultaneously hold the fear and leap into soul growth at the same time?
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