The Tarot Diagnosis

In this episode of The Tarot Diagnosis, I’m back with our collective monthly tarot reading for November, and this month we're exploring grief, ancestral patterns, interdependence, and the emotional complexity of giving and receiving care.

November has always been a particularly grief-stricken month

for me. Last year, I wrote an essay on Substack called Everyone Dies in November, reflecting on the many people I've loved and lost during this time of year. And while November carries a lot of grief, it's also a month when I feel especially connected to nature, ritual, and...

In this episode of The Tarot Diagnosis, I’m exploring the psychology of shame, childhood wounds, and how our earliest experiences shape the way we show up in adult relationships - all through the lens of tarot.

This episode was inspired by Come Closer by psychoanalyst Dr. Galit Atlas, a book I recently devoured in two days and immediately started recommending to anyone who would listen. Atlas explores six childhood wounds and how they influence our experiences of love, intimacy, and relationships. And, naturally, as I was reading, I couldn't stop thinking about which ta...

In this episode of The Tarot Diagnosis, I’m pulling cards for our collective monthly tarot reading for October and this month, we’re exploring the psychological space between who we’ve been and who we might be becoming.

For this October tarot reading, I’m revisiting a spread I originally created for my Tarot as a Transitional Object workshop, inspired by psychoanalyst Donald Winnicott’s theories of transitional objects, transitional phenomena, and transitional space. Winnicott was interested in the psychological territory between our internal and external realities, which he viewed as the space where play...

In this episode of The Tarot Diagnosis podcast, I’m exploring tarot clarifiers and a question I don’t think we ask often enough: Why are we pulling clarifying cards if we already understand the card in front of us?

This episode came about unexpectedly after I pulled the Seven of Wands during my weekly tarot practice and immediately felt my body reaching for the deck again. But I already knew what the card meant and more importantly, I knew what it meant to me. I didn’t actually need more information. Eventually, I realiz...

In this episode of The Tarot Diagnosis, I’m back with another collective monthly tarot reading, and for September, I’m exploring The Courage to Become, which is a four card tarot spread I originally created around identity, existentialism, and the often uncomfortable process of growth and change.

Spoiler: Apparently, September is the month of Pentacles - I’ve been pulling them personally and three of them show up in the reading!

Pulling the Knight of Pentacles, Six of Cups, Page of Pentacles, and Six of Pentacles, I explore who we...

In this special episode of The Tarot Diagnosis, I’m celebrating 200 episodes with someone who has quite literally been behind the scenes since the very beginning: my cousin and the podcast’s audio engineer, Anthony DiGiacomo.

Anthony and I grew up together - our moms are identical twins, we lived a few blocks apart, went to the same schools, and spent our teenage years immersed in the local music scene. So, naturally, a conversation celebrating the history of the podcast turned into a much bigger exploration of something the two of us talk about all...

In this episode of The Tarot Diagnosis, I’m exploring self-sabotage through a psychological and therapeutic tarot lens and challenging the idea that self-sabotage means we’re just getting in our own way.

We tend to label procrastination, avoidance, staying in unhealthy relationships, overworking, turning down opportunities, or repeating painful patterns as self-sabotage. And when we notice ourselves doing these things, we tend to ask the same question: Why do I keep doing this to myself?

But I think there’s a different question that actually might help us better...

In this month's collective tarot reading on The Tarot Diagnosis Podcast, I explore one of my favorite concepts from Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT): the idea that two seemingly opposite truths can exist at the same time.

Inspired by the emotional chaos of Mercury retrograde (but designed to be relevant no matter what's happening in your life) I use my Tension of Opposites tarot spread (below) to explore how we can stop searching for certainty and instead widen our capacity to hold ambiguity, complexity, and contradictions.

Throughout this collective, DBT-inspired...

In this episode of The Tarot Diagnosis Podcast, I ask: What actually deserves our emotional investment?

This question, inspired by pulling the Ace of Cups and King of Cups, became the starting point for this episode and a much deeper exploration of why we emotionally invest in certain people, relationships, friendships, jobs, and family dynamics even when those investments leave us feeling depleted.

Drawing from psychodynamic theory, attachment theory, and Parts Work, I explore why we unconsciously recreate familiar emotional patterns - often hoping that this time we'll finally...

On this episode of The Tarot Diagnosis, I discuss how I believe we are collectively living through one of the most significant periods of disorientation in modern history. Between political upheaval, personal and collective loss, illness, trauma, and rapid cultural, religious, and spiritual change, many of us are finding ourselves in the liminal, and trying desperately to claw out of it. 

But…what if we’re not supposed to leave right away? What if there is something to gain from existing in this space of disorientation, so when we do find our way to the o...

Personal note before you listen: To be honest, I sat on this episode for weeks. I almost didn’t share it - mainly because it felt too honest, too personal, too vulnerable. And I think there was a part of me that felt guilty. Despite the hesitation, here it is…

In this episode of The Tarot Diagnosis, I explore what it means to be an adult child of emotionally immature parents and how tarot can help us understand the roles, defenses, wounds, and longings that form in emotionally unpredictable homes.

Th...

In this episode of ⁠The Tarot Diagnosis⁠, I’m pulling for June’s collective tarot reading where I explore a Summer Solstice inspired spread designed to help us step out of the shadows and into the growth of the sun. As we move toward the longest day of the year, I wanted to create a spread that examines what we've been avoiding, the fears keeping us stuck, and the growth that becomes possible when we're willing to move forward anyway.

Pulling the Two of Wands, Eight of Swords, and Seven of Pentacles, I explore the psyc...

In this episode of ⁠The Tarot Diagnosis⁠, I explore a question that has been lingering in my mind for months: What do the pillars in tarot actually symbolize on a deeper psychological level?

Using Viktor Frankl’s famous quote - “Between stimulus and response there is a space…,” I reflect on how the pillars in cards like the High Priestess, Justice, the Hierophant, and even the Moon might represent more than just duality or balance. I explore the possibility that these pillars symbolize psychological thresholds or liminal spaces where uncertainty, intuition, morality, projection, fear, and meaning...

In this episode of ⁠The Tarot Diagnosis⁠, I walk you through one of my favorite creative tarot practices: building a tarot spread in real time and then using it for our collective month-ahead reading for May!

Instead of starting with a pre-made spread, I decided to let the cards guide the questions. As a therapist, I’m used to being a professional question asker, so this felt like a natural way to show you how tarot spreads can emerge directly from tarot and the human experience. I pull cards one at a time, listen to wha...

In this episode of ⁠The Tarot Diagnosis⁠, I explore the Moon archetype through the lens of perception, ambiguity, and psychological insight. I also get super personal about my early experiences as a therapist.

This episode was inspired by pulling The Moon after not seeing it in my readings for quite some time. That experience opened the door to a flood of memories from my early days as a therapist and the powerful lessons I learned about perception, symbolism, and uncertainty from a very dear, late supervisor of mine. I reflect on how working with ambi...

In this episode of ⁠The Tarot Diagnosis⁠, I continue my monthly collective-reading tarot series with the classic Celtic Cross spread for April, using the truly stunning and special Earth Magick Tarot. 

This month’s reading felt intense from the start with multiple Major Arcana appearing throughout the spread (six in total omg), the themes that surfaced centered around uncertainty, systemic instability, collective exhaustion, and the deep craving for clarity and truth. The Hanged Man set the tone immediately, reflecting the liminal, upside-down feeling many of us are navigating as we find ourselves caught between the wor...

In this episode of ⁠The Tarot Diagnosis⁠, I share what happened when I found myself in a creative slump and did what I often encourage others to do…just shuffle the cards and follow what shows up. What surfaced were court cards, which led me back to a recent workshop I created on understanding the Pages, Knights, Queens, and Kings through the lens of psychosocial development and Jungian Psychoanalysis.

This episode offers a glimpse into how I move beyond seeing court cards as simple personality types and instead view them as developmental archetypes that mirror...

In this episode of ⁠The Tarot Diagnosis⁠, I’m kicking off March with a new series for the pod: a monthly collective tarot reading. A lot of you asked for more frequent check-ins after my 2026 year-ahead reading, and honestly… I don’t know why I didn’t think of doing this sooner. So, thank you for the suggestion!

If you’ve been around my work for a while, you know I don’t read predictively. My relationship to tarot is rooted in its therapeutic components and how archetypes help us access unconscious material, think outside the box...

In this episode of ⁠The Tarot Diagnosis⁠, I explore why asking better questions might be the most important tarot skill you can develop.

As a psychotherapist, I often joke that I’m a “professional question asker.” It’s half joke, half truth because the arc of a therapy session (sometimes even the arc of an entire therapeutic relationship) can hinge on one well-timed, well-crafted question. And I’ve come to realize the same is true in tarot.

We spend so much time mastering card meanings, memorizing spreads, studying symbolism, and refining i...

In this episode of ⁠The Tarot Diagnosis⁠, I explore a concept called “poisoning the well” and how it can inconspicuously shape the way we interpret tarot, often before we’ve even given the cards a fair chance to speak, or ourselves an opportunity to be curious about the card. Poisoning the well can happen when we learn to fear a card before encountering it in its specific context, which makes anything that follows feel threatening, prophetic, or untrustworthy.

In tarot, this shows up when cards like The Tower, Death, The Devil, or the Three of Swords...

In this episode of ⁠The Tarot Diagnosis⁠, I'm exploring something that’s been stirring in me since a recent book club event inside The Symposium: the way we unconsciously project motherhood onto tarot’s female figures.

 After an insightful conversation in the book club (shoutout to Darcy for naming it so clearly: “Tarot doesn’t need another mother”), I couldn’t stop thinking about how often cards like Strength, the Empress, and all four Queens get flattened into maternal archetypes.

And of course, we’re not just doing this in tarot. We’re doi...

In this episode of The Tarot Diagnosis, I discuss an epiphany I had after pulling the Three of Cups. It led me to reflect on the feeling I have when I’m in the middle of a crowd at a concert. Or, back in the day, when I’d wait in line for hours to be front and center of the stage at the barricade. It was such a euphoric feeling, everyone sharing in excitement and joy at the same moment in time for the same reason. And then it hit me…the three of cups is collective effervescence. 

In this last episode of 2025 for ⁠The Tarot Diagnosis⁠, and I’m offering a collective reading using my annual New Year spread. This reading is for all of us - a shared reflection on what we’re carrying forward, what we’re releasing, and how we can meet the coming year with more awareness, regulation, and intention. At the center of the spread is our 2026 collective year card: The Wheel of Fortune, an archetype that speaks to change, movement, uncertainty, and the reality that life keeps turning whether we feel ready or not.

Throughout the episod...

This week on⁠ The Tarot Diagnosis⁠, I explore 2026 as a Wheel of Fortune year, with The Magician as its companion archetype - an invitation to step into the new year embracing change, adaptability, resilience, and meaningful participation. I keep returning to the idea of finding the center of the spinning wheel: not perfect stillness like we’re often led to believe we should be finding, but nervous-system regulation that allows us to observe, reassess, and respond with intention rather than react. 

I also unpack key symbols from the Wheel of Fortune that fe...

I’ve had “Timekeeper” by Grace Potter & The Nocturnals stuck in my head, and it sent me down a rabbit hole about how we experience time - psychologically, somatically, and through tarot. In this episode of The Tarot Diagnosis⁠, I explore why time isn’t a single, objective thing we all live the same way. Instead, our nervous systems, mental health, creativity, grief, and even neurodivergence shape how fast or slow life feels. Plus, tarot gives us language and imagery to work with that reality.

I explore how time is deeply subjective and shaped by the nervous...

This week on⁠ The Tarot Diagnosis⁠, I'm taking you behind the scenes of writing my new book, Dark Shadow, Golden Shadow (available for pre-order now, out December 8, 2025!).

In this deeply personal episode, I share what happened the day I received my author copies: yes, including the moment I froze and couldn’t open the box. But more than that, I offer a director’s cut of the book itself - reading passages aloud, reflecting on what surprised me as I wrote it, and unpacking the emotional and psychological process behind writing about the shadow being an...

This week on⁠ The Tarot Diagnosis⁠, in honor of my upcoming book Dark Shadow, Golden Shadow, which releases on December 8, 2025, I’m reading a portion of chapter 2 (Roots of the Shadow) right here on the podcast.

In Roots of the Shadow, I dive into the foundations of shadow work through a deeply therapeutic and psychologically grounded lens. I explore how Carl Jung’s original concept of the shadow intersects with Internal Family Systems (IFS), Freud’s ideas of the id, ego, and superego, and even Brené Brown’s research on shame. Throughout this chapter, I explore aca...

What if the real root of evil isn’t money, but power?

This week on⁠ The Tarot Diagnosis⁠, I take a deep, psychologically grounded look at the Six of Wands, a card typically associated with success and recognition, and reframe it through the lens of shadow work, power and control, neuroscience, and social dynamics.

Inspired by a spread I pulled during a recent shadow workshop and influenced by current global events, I found myself asking: 

What happens when power becomes addictive? 

When does celebration become complicit? 

How does...

What does it mean when tarot archetypes are blindfolded or their vision is obscured? In this week’s episode of The Tarot Diagnosis, I explore the often over-looked symbolism of obscured vision in tarot - where sight is blocked, avoided, invited or even denied. Inspired by six cards (Two of Swords, Four of Swords, Eight of Swords, Nine of Swords, Ten of Wands, and Strength), I take a psychological and symbolic deep dive into what it means when our eyes are closed.

Together, we’ll unpack:

This week on⁠ The Tarot Diagnosis⁠, we’re exploring one of the most commonly misunderstood behaviors that exist in many of us: people-pleasing. Inspired by real conversations in the therapy room and the archetypal patterns of tarot, I explore people-pleasing through a trauma-informed, psychological, and tarot-based lens.

While people-pleasing is often viewed as a virtue and praised as kindness or empathy, the truth is way more complex. From a clinical perspective, people-pleasing is often rooted in early childhood conditioning, or what therapists might consider as part of the “fawn response,” as well as the developmen...

This week on⁠ The Tarot Diagnosis⁠, we’re getting delightfully nerdy. Inspired by a conversation with a dear friend, I explore tarot through the lens of developmental psychology, focusing specifically on Donald Winnicott’s concept of transitional objects, transitional space, and transitional phenomena.

Traditionally, transitional objects are things like blankets, stuffed animals, or toys that help children move from total dependence to early independence by offering emotional regulation and symbolic comfort. But what happens when we grow up? We don’t stop needing comfort. It turns out our transitional objects just evolve…

En...

After a rejuvenating break in nature, I'm back…and tarot wasted no time in offering a message that couldn’t be ignored. In this reflective episode of The Tarot Diagnosis, I share how three cards - The Devil, The Three of Swords, and The Lovers - kept showing up across multiple decks, pointing to a powerful arc about relational stuck-ness, emotional pain, and the freedom of conscious choice.

We explore how The Devil archetype can represent cognitive distortions like all-or-nothing thinking and overgeneralization, which are those internal thought loops that keep us locked into outd...

This week on The Tarot Diagnosis Podcast, I pulled two seemingly contradictory cards (the Knight of Wands and the Seven of Pentacles) and found myself reflecting on the very human tension between urgency and patience. At first glance, these archetypes appear at odds: one races forward, fiery and eager; the other waits, steadies, and tends. But beneath the surface, they share a common root: passion.

In this episode, I explore how both cards express passion differently - one through movement, the other through stillness. I unpack how this polarity often shows up in relationships...

When you think of the Wheel of Fortune, you might focus on the wheel itself - the chaos, the symbols, the turning of fate. But what about the soft, billowy clouds that frame the card?

In this week’s episode of The Tarot Diagnosis, I take a journey into the symbolism of clouds in tarot, exploring how they quietly anchor some of the most profound archetypes in the deck. Far from being just background art, clouds emerge as powerful metaphors for transition, liminality, and the unknown.

Together, we’ll expl...

This week on The Tarot Diagnosis Podcast, I’m unpacking why “just think positive” advice often backfires and offering a more sustainable approach rooted in both Dialectical Behavior Therapy (DBT) and tarot. Together, we’ll explore why lasting change doesn’t start with your thoughts, and why it actually starts with your actions.

I’ll walk you through how trauma wires the brain to anticipate harm, how DBT helps us hold two truths at once, and why micro-moments of safety and agency are the real building blocks of healing. You’ll learn how tarot can be more th...

[TW: Discussion of death, grief, suicide.] This week on The Tarot Diagnosis, I sit down with the Five of Cups and a whole host of other cards, but not in the way we usually expect. Instead of offering a clinical take or a tidy metaphor, this episode is more of a free-flowing love letter to the messiness of grief: the kind that arrives with dreams, dead batteries, wildflower fields, and the unshakable ache of remembering (those will all make sense once you listen, I promise).

Inspired by a recent pull of the Five of...

This week on The Tarot Diagnosis, I had every intention of doing a neat little compare-and-contrast between the Five and Seven of Swords. But in true Swords fashion, what began as a tidy intellectual exploration turned into something much more raw, spiraling, and unexpectedly revealing.

In this episode, I invite you into a descent through the second half of the Suit of Swords: from the Five through the Ten. What emerges is a psychological narrative about the cost of self-protection, the seduction of avoidance, and the long-term consequences of abandoning ourself.

<...

This week on The Tarot Diagnosis Podcast, I’m unpacking the emotional aftermath of the Summer Solstice Summit and diving deep into one of the most powerful psychological and tarot-based concepts I explored there - the Golden Shadow, which I expand on as a type of abandoned archetype.

I begin by reflecting on the special magick that unfolded during the Summer Solstice Summit and how a weekend meant for learning and connection blossomed into something collectively sacred and transformative. From heartfelt comments in the chat box, to “aha!” moments during presentations, it became clear that t...

This week on The Tarot Diagnosis Podcast, I’m diving into the nuanced and often-confused archetypes of Judgment and Justice (especially for newer readers). Plus, these are two major arcana cards that are especially relevant given the state of the world. Fun fact: this episode was inspired by a listener request, and I went full nerd-mode by pulling out lots of books I thought had unique perspectives on these archetypes in order to dig into these cards from psychological, therapeutic, and archetypal lenses.

After a brief life update about my recent trip back to Fl...

This week on The Tarot Diagnosis Podcast, I’m sitting down with the Two of Cups, but not in the romanticized way we often think about with this card. Sure, this card speaks to connection, mutual care, and being seen, but in this episode, I’m more interested in what is hiding underneath all that sweet relational imagery. Inspired by a lively (and opinionated!) book club discussion inside The Symposium, I revisit Jessica Dore’s take in Tarot for Change, where she explores the Two of Cups as a mirror - one that reflects not just the other person, but al...