Tarot and your mental health – learn how it can help you. We’ll also show you a sample spread so you have a great understanding of how to use tarot for this.
You want to take good care of your mental health like you want to care for physical health because both are intertwined. Unfortunately, at one time, mental health was not taken as seriously. Still, after more awareness has shed light on the importance of good mental health, fortunately, attitudes have shifted towards mental health for the better.
It is about time that mental health conditions such as depression, anxiety, and bipolar disorder are taken more seriously as being illnesses instead of attitudes.
Even those who don’t have mental illnesses struggle with their mental health from time to time, especially when they are struggling with very stressful moments, and those who are mentally healthy are also not immune from grief. Therefore, when anyone’s mental health is poor, they will find therapists to speak to to get the needed help. And those who struggle with mental illnesses require therapy to help them with their mental illnesses, and some may need medication.
However, other tools can help manage mental health that is not replacements for therapy and medication, if needed. And tarot cards are one of those tools you can use to help your mental health, and you can use them between therapy sessions if you are in therapy.
Tarot Is An Excellent Tool For Managing Mental Health
There may have been many people who have found tarot to be helpful for their mental health, but back in the latter part of 2019, Today featured an article about how a social worker name Jessica Dore used the tarot to help with mental health. She also is the author of the book, Tarot For Change: Using the Cards for Self-Care, Acceptance, and Growth.
Dore has over 100,000 Twitter followers, and she posts a card of the day, the meaning of it, and how it applies to your mental health. And that was when the awareness came about regarding using tarot for mental health instead of only for predictions or other forms of psychic insight.
Even though tarot readings aren’t a replacement for therapy, it can provide you with the guidance you need. So let’s delve further into how tarot can improve your mental health.
Tarot & Mental Health – Help Nurture Your Soul
You do know how those who are dealing with daily struggles that are religious lean on their religion to seek comfort and nurturing. Likewise, faith has helped religious people find strength during troubling times. However, the Pew Research Center has found that more and more people are becoming more spiritual than religious, and tarot falls into that category.
A tarot reader named Cindi Sansone-Braff out of New York calls the tarot practice a spiritual practice for people to understand themselves better. And she says that those anxious and depressed need extra nurturing for their soul. Sansone-Braff states that tarot profoundly connects with the soul and can tap into the subconscious, giving them the guidance and awakening they need. Therefore, tarot can be a great tool to do shadow work, and you need to do it as uncomfortably as it is to help your mental health improve.
So you can see how tarot can complement therapy, but it is not a replacement. Now that you know how tarot can be excellent for your mental health, let’s go over a spread that can be helpful to you when you need to nurture your soul.
Mental Health Tarot Spread
Another excellent tarot spread from Emerald Lotus Divination is the mental health tarot spread. Here is a six-card spread: you will take cards one to three and place them horizontally, as card one is on the left, card two is in the middle, and card three is on the right. Then you have another row of cards, four to six, as you will place the row beneath the first row. Card four will go beneath card one, card five will go beneath card two, and card six will go beneath card three.
The first card represents your current mental health, and the second represents an emotion blocking your perception of reality.
The third card guides how you can make your perception of reality better and how you can think more clearly.
The fourth card shows how you can change your environment and situation, which can help your mood.
The fifth card will show how you can be happy daily, and finally, the sixth card will show you how to improve your connection with yourself.
Now, let’s do a sample reading of a querent who wants to learn more about improving their mental health.
Sample Reading With The Mental Health Tarot Spread
Let’s talk about Chloe, a young woman struggling with poor mental health and considering seeing her doctor. However, she also knows perhaps she can make some positive changes within, which may help her. Chloe has been through many traumatic incidents throughout her life, and she also has been through many disappointments.
So it is not surprising that she is struggling within and believes that nothing works out for her while she watches everyone else thriving. First, however, she wants to clarify why she is facing her struggles, what her subconscious is hiding, and what she can do to improve her mind. But, of course, she needs to know what she is facing first, so let’s spread the mental health tarot on Chloe.
As I shuffle the cards, I focus on Chloe’s concerns about her mental health. Here are the six cards I pull, hopefully giving Chloe the insight she needs.
Card one represents Chloe’s current mental health: The Hanged Man.
Card two represents whatever is blocking Chloe’s perception of reality: Hierophant.
Card three represents how Chloe can improve her perception of reality and become more apparent in thinking: The Tower.
Card four represents how Chloe can change circumstances around her to help improve her mood: Eight of Swords.
Card five shows Chloe can be happier each day: Two of Pentacles.
Card six represents how Chloe can improve her relationship with herself: Lovers.
As you can see, Chloe feels her life is on hold, and everything is suspended. And that is shown by the Hanged Man indicating her current mental health. When that happens, you will become depressed, resigned, and go through the motions, which is detrimental to mental health, and this has been the case with Chloe.
The second card represents whatever is blocking Chloe’s perception of reality, and the Hierophant emerges. Therefore, it shows she is sticking to old daily functioning methods, and there is no indication that she is thinking outside the box. In other words, she is sticking to outdated ways of doing things that no longer work. That can easily make her feel stuck.
For example, if she is trying to lose weight and is sticking to the standard 1,200-calorie diet, which has been proven not to be healthy, or at the very best, a one-size-fits-all approach, she is starving on that. She may not be losing weight because it is causing her body to hang onto every calorie she consumes. Therefore, she is extremely depressed because there is no progress, which explains the Hanged Man.
Card three represents how Chloe can improve her sense of reality and what can give her clarity, and she got the Tower. It is time that she seeks help for whatever it is that she is going through, and she will be shocked to learn that her way of doing things is causing her more harm than good, and perhaps she needs a wakeup call to break her out of the way she is living. For example, if Chloe is struggling with her weight loss, then it is time to do more research or visit a professional, as she will be shocked to learn that this weight loss method is not working for her and is causing more harm than good.
The fourth card shows how she can improve her circumstances and mood, and the Eight of Swords emerges. This is a clear message that Chloe needs to get out of the victim mindset, and as you can see on the card, the blindfold can be pulled off easily, which is a sign that she can get out of her victim mindset.
The fifth card shows how Chloe can be happier each day, and the Two of Pentacles comes up, which means she needs to do a better job of prioritizing what is important to her and can do a better job with multitasking which can be a good for her mental health. That suggests she may be on the verge of burning out by doing too much, as her to-do lists may be too large. She needs to prioritize.
Finally, the sixth card shows how Chloe can improve her relationship with herself, and the Lovers came up, which means that she has to choose to commit to working on herself. That means seeing her doctor or a therapist may be to help her get back on track to being healthier mentally.
The gist is that Chloe is stuck in old beliefs, which causes her to take actions that no longer serve her the way she believed (the weight loss example was only an example), and she feels stuck and that nothing is working out for her. Therefore, this is depressing. She needs to learn new ways of doing things, which means for her to reach out to experts or those more experienced than her to give her advice.
She will be shocked at what she hears about how stuck thinking keeps her trapped and that there is a way out, but she must put in the work. She needs to believe she is not the victim of anything, and she can improve her life by prioritizing what is important to her, and making the commitment to herself to get better.