Pulling My Compass: How a Tarot Spread Became My ACT Values Exercise
-
I’ve been working night shifts at UPMC lately, and the quiet hours between patients gave me space to finally play with something I’d been circling for months. I mapped out a seven-card spread specifically to mirror Acceptance and Commitment Therapy values work. It wasn’t about prediction. It was about drawing a compass from the felt sleeves.
In ACT, you’re supposed to identify what actually moves you forward when the noise gets loud. So I laid out seven spots: three for core values, three for the friction that keeps me stuck, and one center card for the bridge between them. I shuffled until my palms felt warm and let the deck speak. I keep a rough piece of selenite on my desk while I journal, just to ground the energy, but the real work happened in the layout.
The Empress came up for nurturing. The Chariot for forward momentum. The Star for quiet hope. They felt less like fortune-telling and more like archetypal lodestones. Carl Jung wrote about how these symbols tap into the collective unconscious, and honestly? I’ve felt that in my bones. When I pull a card, it’s not telling me what will happen. It’s handing me a metaphor to journal around. After my breakup last year, I stopped treating spreads like crystal balls and started treating them like prompt cards. It saved me from the anxiety of needing certainty.
The obstacle cards were heavier. Five of Swords. The Moon. Eight of Pentacles reversed. They mapped perfectly onto my cognitive distortions—rumination, perfectionism, the fear that I’m not doing enough. In therapy terms, it’s all just experiential avoidance. But seeing the Five of Swords face up? That’s the internal critic I’ve been carrying since nursing school. Naming it takes the teeth out of it.
I wrote in my notebook for an hour after. The center card was Temperance. Alchemy, patience, mixing the bitter with the sweet. I think that’s what Acceptance and Commitment Therapy really asks for: willingness to sit with the dissonance while still steering toward what matters. The deck didn’t give me a life plan. It gave me a vocabulary.
If anyone’s tried blending structured therapy frameworks with divination, I’d love to hear how it lands for you. Does the symbolism shift when you approach it intentionally? Or does the deck just reflect what you’re already carrying? I’m still figuring out how to keep it grounded without sterilizing the magic. But for now, this little ritual feels like breathing.
Hello! It looks like you're interested in this conversation, but you don't have an account yet.
Getting fed up of having to scroll through the same posts each visit? When you register for an account, you'll always come back to exactly where you were before, and choose to be notified of new replies (either via email, or push notification). You'll also be able to save bookmarks and upvote posts to show your appreciation to other community members.
With your input, this post could be even better 💗
Register Login