The Tarot Diagnosis

Hey there! You’re listening to The Tarot Diagnosis! We’re your hosts – Luna and Shannon. We’re both clinical psychotherapists who trained together at Johns Hopkins and now we are both in private practice in Tampa, FL and Baltimore, MD. We also both happen to have a love for tarot. Each episode we work to demystify tarot and explore its connections to mental and emotional health.

If you are listening to our podcast, you’re probably someone who is already into tarot or someone who wants to be into tarot. You might also be someone interested in mental health and personal development and who is committed to building their own best life. You might even be a therapist who wants to learn to use tarot with their clients or to develop a tarot practice that helps you process the challenges your clients face.

Our vision for this podcast is to help demystify tarot while exploring and implementing its inherently helpful tools to better understand ourselves, our behavior, and our clients. As therapists, we often see common roadblocks, concerns, and struggles that our clients experience. Throughout this podcast, we will talk about many of these themes and utilize tarot to help us dive deeper into root causes and to help facilitate action steps to move forward or out of a struggle.

It’s important to note that we don’t believe the cards themselves are magic. Tarot holds familiar symbols and forms of art that have been seen for centuries. These symbols are meant to help tap into our unconscious – the thoughts, ideas, and solutions we already have, but that may not be at the surface or within our reach. Tarot essentially unravels these thoughts that you already have and brings them up to the surface so we can interact with them. This is what is actually magical about tarot – it’s tapping into our own inherent strength, knowledge, and thoughts, which allows us to make decisions, experience epiphanies and feel empowered.

We’ve been talking about starting a podcast together for a few years now. It all kind of started a few years after grad school, we reconnected and became each others’ weekly accountability partner’s regarding our private practices. We just always kind of got each other. Luna is the type of person who just feels familiar – you just want to be around her and you just want to listen to her talk – so naturally when I was gifted a new tarot deck and became inspired to explore tarot and mental health she was the person I wanted to start a podcast with.

Oh, and here’s our disclaimer: the themes and identifying characteristics of the clients and therapy sessions we talk about have been modified for confidentiality. This podcast is not therapy, nor is it medical or mental health advice. This podcast is not meant to replace mental health care from a licensed mental health practitioner. We always recommend seeking therapy from a licensed therapist.

Subscribe to our email list to get all kinds of free mental health related tarot goodies on our website www.TheTarotDiagnosis.com

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Audio edited by Anthony DiGiacomo of Deep Resonance Sound

Contact: [email protected]

Luna and Shannon explore the intersectionality of Tarot and Psychology in this week’s episode. Listen in as they highlight some of the pioneers of psychology and compare their well-known theories and research back to the practice of Tarot. Luna and Shannon explore the works of Sigmund Freud, Carl Jung, Alfred Adler, and Fritz Pearl and even share some details into what it is like being a therapist who pulls not only from these major psychological principles, but also from Tarot.

Subscribe to our email list to get all kinds of free mental health related tarot goodies on our website www.TheTarotDiagnosis.com

Follow us on TikTok and Instagram @TheTarotDiagnosis

Audio Edited by Anthony DiGiacomo of Deep Resonance Sound

Contact: [email protected]

Shannon and Luna tackle everything from communication, sex, and childhood trauma in this episode that focuses on the differences in perspectives in our relationships. Relationships can be tough and we learn a lot about ourselves, our partners, and the world around us as we navigate through them during the good times and the times of conflict. As psychotherapist Esther Perel says, “The quality of our relationships determines the quality of our life.” Join Luna and Shannon as they incorporate principles from psychotherapy, developmental psychologists, and tarot to help increase insight within ourselves and our relationships.

Highlighted in this episode are the following:

Gottman’s Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse - https://www.gottman.com/blog/the-four-horsemen-recognizing-criticism-contempt-defensiveness-and-stonewalling/

Subscribe to our email list to get all kinds of free mental health related tarot goodies on our website www.TheTarotDiagnosis.com

Follow us on TikTok and Instagram @TheTarotDiagnosis

Audio Edited by Anthony DiGiacomo of Deep Resonance Sound

Contact: [email protected]

We’re back! It feels like it’s been forever since we released a new episode, but it’s really only been two weeks. During that time we launched our very own, private membership community: The Symposium and have been thrilled and overwhelmed at the response. Keep an eye on your emails for when we open this community to new members later in the year!

Now, on to podcast news. . .

This week on The Tarot Diagnosis we are talking about magical thinking. This is a term used often in the therapy and psychology world and when a listener heard it mentioned on a previous episode, they wrote in to request an episode on the topic.

The question was so good, we couldn’t wait to dive in.

The listener asked, “Where is the line between spirituality and cognitive distortion? Does all religion inherently involve some level of cognitive distortion? I’m curious about how to gauge magical thinking vs. spiritual engagement.”

We dive right in with Shannon pulling The Magician alongside the Queen of Swords. Luna helps us explore the important role of The High Priestess, which then takes us on quite a journey as we discuss Obsessive Compulsive Disorders (OCD), manifestation, call out fake gurus, and nod to Harry Potter.

We then meander through some nerdy talk about developmental psychologist, Jean Piaget, and make a few pit stops with the Four of Cups, Knight of Pentacles, Three, Nine, and Seven of Swords, The Hermit, Reversed Hierophant, and the Seven of Cups. The King of Pentacles emerges and may essentially solve the dilemma laden question posed by the listener.

It's quite the adventure and we are grateful to the listener whose question inspired such a fun and meaningful discussion highlighting two important aspects of the human experience.

So, come join us as we walk a tight rope in-between the world of “woo” and the world of Psychology.

*Side Note: We had a minor audio hiccup, so the audio might sound slightly different.*

Don't forget to subscribe to our email list to get all kinds of free mental health related tarot goodies on our website www.TheTarotDiagnosis.com

Follow us on TikTok and Instagram @TheTarotDiagnosis

Audio Edited by Anthony DiGiacomo of Deep Resonance Sound

Contact: [email protected]

Music by Timmoor from Pixabay

This week on The Tarot Diagnosis, Shannon and Luna get into the weeds with the question- when does positivity become toxic?

We thought we were going to have some disagreements getting into this one (and frankly - were kind of hoping we might get some sparks flying). Instead, it’s a conversation about how positivity and happiness are seen in our culture - and how it has both light and dark sides to it. As always, we talk about this through the tool of The Tarot, loving how this simple deck of cards can give us ways to think deeply about the wide range of emotions we all experience as humans.

Spoiler alert - Shannon can’t stop referencing Parks and Recs, so if you don’t want to know what happened in season 7, save this one for later!

Luna and Shannon peel back the veil on their own lives this week, by pulling cards about themselves and asking what is blocking happiness and positivity in their own lives.

So here’s a question to ponder (which, btw- you will be seeing on Instagram later this week). Is it possible that The Sun is one of the most difficult cards to work with in Tarot, because although we all say we want to be happy- we actually have a very weird relationship with that desire.

We also invite you to participate in the Mental Health Awareness Daily Tarot Challenge on Instagram!

Final note- if you have a moment, it would mean so much to us if you could rate and review our podcast on whatever platform where you are listening. We are stunned and humbled by the response we continue to get from our listeners and feel honored and privileged to be able to share bits of our knowledge, experience, and passions.

Studies and Assessments explored in the episode:

https://www.viacharacter.org

http://thehowofhappiness.com/

https://positivepsychology.com/big-five-personality-theory/

https://positivepsychology.com

https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2017/04/over-nearly-80-years-harvard-study-has-been-showing-how-to-live-a-healthy-and-happy-life/

https://positivepsychology.com/happiness/