Can a Tarot Reading Make Things Worse?

I’ve written and spoken extensively all over the internet about how and why tarot belongs in your personal support ecosystem, so it may be a little surprising that I’m even asking this!

Y’all know me: I’ve read tarot for 20 years, read professionally for 5ish years, I’m rarely caught without a tarot deck on my person, in my bag, or under my pillow.

I love tarot and teach about tarot, and every moment I do this I am the happiest person ever.

So, it may be just slightly surprising that I’m even bringing this question up at all.

How can someone who loves tarot so much even consider that tarot might make things worse?

Well, because it's true.

Tarot can, sometimes, in the wrong hands, make things worse.

Who we let into our energy is a big deal.

Who we let into our energy and trust when we are feeling sensitive, hurt, triggered, activated, is a big deal.

When we’re in a tough mental space, even the slightest thing can completely throw us off, and ruin our day or our week.

It may sound like I’m being a little alarmist, but picture this: You’ve just experienced a break up out of the blue and are completely decimated by it; the life that you thought was ahead of you is now gone. You call a friend who you expect to be real with you yet sympathetic; they tell you to shut up, to stop whining, and that it’s your fault. This upsets you more, but you feel a little bit of peace knowing you have therapy in the evening. You spill your soul to your therapist, who is standoffish, shrugs, and just tells you you’re clearly meant to be alone.

Would you feel worse?

If you’re like me, you would feel a lot worse after those encounters!

What I’ve just described involves a deep disrespect of vulnerability, in addition to the lack of a safe, constructive container in which to honestly process emotions, hopes, fears, and a way forward.

Sometimes, we’ll encounter external bad listeners who are also unsupportive – friends, family, community members, or even health professionals like therapists or counselors, or even a bad tarot reader or spiritual advisor.

Sometimes, this bad listener and bad spiritual advisor is us! Ourselves, the crappy tarot reader!

I’ve written about what to do when you can’t read tarot for yourself, and yet a lot of folks push through anyway – and/or don’t know how to assess where they’re at and what to do about it.

Sometimes when we’re upset even the most talented readers can have a hard time.

So, here are three ways you can approach a tarot reading that can, indeed, make things a whole lot worse:

You interpret the cards in such a way that it supports your absolute worst case scenario

Sometimes, when we’re stressed out or upset, we can become completely disconnected from our intuition – and as a result, we can confuse worry or paranoia for intuition.

This is far less likely to happen when we have a strong handle on the differences between how intuition feels in our body, and how worry, fear, paranoia, and anxiety feel in our body – and, for most of us, they’ll feel completely different once we slow down our processes of noticing and sitting with our energy.

If you have no idea how to discern this, don’t worry – most folks don’t!

Basic energetic noticing skills such as these are left out of more witchy and spiritual books than those where they’re included!

What to do instead?

The easy answer is to invite someone else to read for you, but if you want to push through the discomfort and build the amazing skill of being able to read confidently for yourself no matter what you’re going through, try to focus on what’s going on for you in your body before you turn any cards over.

How does fear feel in your body, mind, and soul? How does intuition or gut knowing feel in your body, mind, and soul? Where do you feel each emotion or gut feeling bubble up in your body - your chest, your stomach, your throat?

Slow the process down, and you’ll have a much better chance at distinguishing all of these different very valuable energetic impressions from one another, so you can interpret them with more accuracy.

I teach all about how to do this in my Tarot Without Bullshit online course and group coaching program.

You interpret the cards as depicting something definite, unavoidable, and absolute, despite the actual meaning of the card

Every card has a plethora of meanings.

Am I saying that each card means whatever the hell you want it to, and the distinctions between cards are absolutely meaningless?

Absolutely not!

I’m not a relativist, and I don’t believe any skilled tarot reader is.

The tarot contains multitudes – patterns, messages, symbolisms; tarot reveals fears, hopes, dreams, opportunities, pathways we might do best to close off, as well as new swaths of bramble we’d do best to cut down and trample through on our way to a new beginning.

If we know how to look – and if we are able to wade through the fog of insecurities, and connect instead with our intuitive and energy reading skills, coupled with what we see in front of us in the cards – we can see possibilities, lessons, and ways forward in any reading, no matter how many ‘bad’ cards come up.

Some of the skill behind this comes from knowing how to ask better questions, and some of it comes from actually having a nuanced and deep understanding of the cards themselves rather than a memorized list of keywords.

In Tarot Without Bullshit, I teach my tarot students how to significantly improve their question-asking skills – the questions we ask can transform a reading from apocalyptic and hopeless to productive and problem-solving.

I also teach a method of reading cards that doesn’t rely on memorization and buzzwords – because a little list of words won’t help the cards come alive to you when you’re doing a reading for yourself when you’re super stressed out.

You leave your curiosity at the door, and miss out on seeing any opportunities presented in the cards.

One of the most critical skills of a talented and effective tarot reader is curiosity.

And, when we’re super stressed out – and maybe coming to tarot for quick-n-easy reassurance that we’re not about to spontaneously combust – oftentimes, we don’t lead with curiosity, we lead with desperation and a desire to feel more in control, less in chaos, discomfort, and the unknown.

When we’re curious, we see openings and possibilities, not just closures.

When we’re freaking out, often what we think we want is closure – we want definite answers, we want to be told what to do, we want the confusion to stop, we want our brain to stop spinning out, and we think the definite will lead that to happen.

The problem here is, it doesn’t help to approach things that way.

And, truth be told, we’re most connected to our agency when we can see, access, and examine multiple options, multiple paths forward out of our situation.

And, yes, that might at first glance seem like just replacing one type of unknown for another, but it isn’t: it’s the crucial replacement of panic and fear with a connection to our own power, brilliance, and resiliency.

Have you ever come to your cards like this - when stressed out, disconnected from yourself, and ended up walkiing away from the reading more upset, hurt, and confused than when you first sat down to read? How'd it go?

Are you interested in learning how to avoid making these mistakes in your tarot readings?

I teach all about it in my online tarot course and group coaching program, Tarot Without Bullshit.

The way a lot of readers teach – and read – will leave you a bit foggy and perplexed, going back to them for answers, or reading a bunch of tarot books and ending up much more confused than when you started.

Maybe you've experienced this once or twice?

Instead of selling you fish, I’m much more interested in teaching you how to fish for yourself, so you can do it for yourself for a lifetime.

(Sometimes you may wanna come and buy one, just to give yourself a break, as some of my students sometimes do when they’re stressed out or just lookin’ to treat themselves – but once you take my tarot course, you’ll know how to read for yourself!)

Are you interested in learning more?

Awesome - the best way to find out about my next Tarot Without Bullshit launch is to sign up for my newsletter. As a special thank you, you’ll get instant access for my guide to to 4 Easy Tarot Spreads when you sign up.