
The Tarot Diagnosis
Hey there! I'm Shannon - a licensed psychotherapist in private practice who also happens to love tarot. Each episode I work to demystify tarot and explore its connections to mental and emotional health while implementing its inherently helpful tools to better understand ourselves and those around us. Join me as I unravel common struggles related to our behavior, thought patterns, emotions, and relationships while pulling cards to facilitate growth and to help create the life and relationships we all desire.
Latest episodes

Sep 6, 2021 • 46min
Stressed Out {Hacks for Uncertain Times}
This week on a slightly abbreviated episode of The Tarot Diagnosis, we tackle a topic on lots of people’s minds right now: Stress. Join us for another half serious, half hilarious conversation about what leads to stress, the different types (nerd talk) and most importantly, what the hell we can actually do about managing it. We also answer questions directly from listeners about how to manage stress in their own lives, avoid absorbing other people’s stress, and pull cards for a custom spread we wrote just for this topic and episode (sneak peek- you’ll hear some therapist tips and learn what Luna and Shannon do in their own practices to keep healthy boundaries).
Grab your deck and get ready to pull cards along with us as we go toe-to-toe with this issue that, frankly, all of us are facing in one way of or another right now.
And we want to say a HUGE thank you to the many of you who have already visited our new shop at www.TheTarotDiagnosis.com. We are so overwhelmed and grateful for your support, and for all the amazing feedback we have been getting! Thank you!
And if you haven’t had a chance to check out some of our awesome new Tarot and Mental Health offerings, head on over! Don't forget… as a member of our email list you get 10% off of your entire purchase. Use code TTD10Launch
Stay tuned for more goodies on the way! We’re already knee deep in the next offerings- and they will be epic!
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: DeepResonanceSound@gmail.com
Music by Timmoor from Pixabay

Aug 22, 2021 • 55min
Dishes, Sex, & Money
This week we tackle the dishes, talk about sex, and explore conflict with money - all through the lens of couples therapy and romantic relationships. Luna and Shannon have found in their therapy practices that the majority of conflict couples experience manifests as "dishes, sex, and money" - but, spoiler alert: it's never actually about the dishes, the sex, or the money.
Join us as we pull cards, talk theory, and tell you exactly what you should and should not do in your relationships if you want them to survive.
In this episode we explore:
https://www.gottman.com/
https://www.estherperel.com/
https://www.ambiguousloss.com/
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: DeepResonanceSound@gmail.com
Music by Timmoor from Pixabay

Aug 15, 2021 • 1h 3min
The Meaning of Life {and why we avoid it}
We decided to keep it light this week on The Tarot Diagnosis and chat about death, existential dread, and fear of nonbeing.
Actually, for real, though - this was a really fun conversation and it’s one well worth listening to. Because, let's face it, we all have to deal with it.
And as much as it seems heavy, so much of our work as therapists, and so much of our practice in working with tarot, comes down to the very core issue of searching for meaning. What we discovered in this conversation is that this is both a very simple and a very complicated thing to do.
Join us as we pull some cards, talk some theory (heads up- Luna geeks out on her very favorite therapeutic framework of all time and Shannon talks a lot about Freud and "a poet"). There is also some interesting and comforting hilarity in a few spots where Shannon battles with a lawnmower.
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: DeepResonanceSound@gmail.com
Music by Timmoor from Pixabay

Aug 9, 2021 • 54min
Tarot and Typology {How Neurotic Are You?}
Originally the name of this week’s episode was “You’re Neurotic, Not Crazy." The other open is “What’s Your Type”- both are a good fit because this week on The Tarot Diagnosis we get real about the labels we like to claim and the types we want to be.
In clinical psychotherapy, we like to be able to give names to people’s experiences and ways of being in the world. But, really - doesn’t everyone? Don’t we all take the time to take some ridicules Buzzfeed quiz to tell us what type of pizza topping we are? Or which Hogwarts house we should be sorted into? We love to have labels and identifiers that describe us and we like it when other people do too. It's like having a fun secret code that we think will demystify ourselves and our relationships.
And, it does… sort of.
From Myers-Briggs, The Big 5, Enneagram, Holland Codes, and more- we talk about all the ways we have tried to classify personality. And, of course, we do this all through an examination of the tarot- pulling in seemingly all of the court cards this week. We go into how mental health’s habit of rebranding all its lingo every ten years or so. We have a great conversation about the wonderful paradoxes of being a human and how tarot let’s us explore this more deeply.
You can learn more about you Myers-Briggs typology and its correlation to Tarot here: https://www.dagankenaz.com/zulu.php
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: DeepResonanceSound@gmail.com

Aug 1, 2021 • 1h
Do You Trust Me? {and what to do if you don't}
This week on The Tarot Diagnosis, Luna and Shannon venture into the harrowing and complex landscape of trust.
How do we know when to give it, what do we do once it’s been broken, and how much of this is really about our own expectations? Clearly, it’s a complicated topic. But, that’s what we love to do - get into the weeds with the complicated stuff and see how Tarot can offer us a lens to better understand our own experience of trust.
From Three of Swords to The High Priestess, and from Freudian developmental stages, to the idea of financial infidelity - we cover a ton of ground; including how to learn to better edit trust in all of our relationships in order to have realistic expectations and clearer boundaries.
In the end, when it comes to trust it seems to come down to what renowned pediatrician and author Dr. Spock said, "Trust yourself, you know more than you think you do."
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: DeepResonanceSound@gmail.com

Jul 25, 2021 • 53min
The Curse of Overthinking
This week on The Tarot Diagnosis, Shannon and Luna do a lot of thinking about...thinking. Specifically, overthinking. Magically, they explore tarot, therapy, and neuroscience all in under an hour!
This episode was inspired by an overthinking moment in our own lives, when we did a little mutual hand wringing about the word “the” vs. “our” (we went with “the”- we second guessed that decision too).
Why do we overthink about some ideas more than others? And - why do some people do this more often? Maybe we sometimes give ourselves a hard time and say we are “overthinking,” when actually something just really needs very careful consideration.
Sneak peek - we talk about security blankets, how Socrates expanded human consciousness, name some of our pet peeves about the therapy world, and explain why The Magician is the almost always the answer.
Weirdly, we never mention Nine of Swords…
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: DeepResonanceSound@gmail.com

Jul 19, 2021 • 60min
You Mad? {The Anger Affair}
[Content Warning - domestic violence is briefly discussed beginning around the 40 minute mark. Please see resources below if you or someone you know has been impacted by intimate partner violence.] This week on The Tarot Diagnosis, Shannon and Luna go for the jugular on the topic of anger. We all know what it's like to be angry- it is an emotion that is inescapable as humans. It’s programmed deeply into all of us, and yet, there are so many contradictions and inconsistencies in discussions and research about what anger is (and perhaps more importantly) how we should treat it.
A quick stroll down Google avenue offered two quotes about anger, side by side:
First: “Keep your temper. A decision made in anger is never sound”- Ford Frick
Second: “Sometimes, you have to get angry to get things done.” - Ang Lee
Holy mixed messages, Batman
Chances are you have probably already experienced anger several times, just today. How do you think about that anger? Does it make you embarrassed? Self-righteous? Guilty? Do you try to move past it? Or do you take some pleasure in feeding it? And - have you ever really thought about your relationship with anger? What about how you saw anger growing up?
Come listen in as tarot helps guide us while we share our take on anger - what it means and what to do with it. Plus - we coin the new phrase “my bird/ Starbucks pastry rage.” Oh! And - we discuss all of the Wands. Because that's exactly what tarot offered us.
If you, or someone you know, has been impacted by domestic violence, please reach out to the National Domestic Violence Hotline 1.800.799.7233 or visit their website https://www.thehotline.org/
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: DeepResonanceSound@gmail.com

Jul 5, 2021 • 60min
Not So Hot Girl Summer
Dog days of summer are upon us, and to be honest, we are not really feeling it.
We think that’s true for many of you too - which is why we initially thought to talk about this idea floating around of having a "Hot Girl Summer." At first it sounds fun, but it quickly becomes problematic (sorry Megan Thee Stallion & Nicki Minaj). So was born our take on it - a conversation for those of us having a Not So Hot Girl Summer.
Once again, Luna and Shannon get real about self image, our expectations of others, and the wonky ways we think others expect things from us. Also featured, a fun little mini lesson in Schema Theory and what we love about it. Join us as we unlock the mysteries of eyeliner, the trick to real sexiness, and our complicated feels about The High Priestess.
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: DeepResonanceSound@gmail.com

Jun 27, 2021 • 1h 5min
What We Get Wrong About Grief
This week’s episode on The Tarot Diagnosis is a little different. Usually, we are full of laughs, a bit of sarcasm, and fun - but this episode is heavy....heavy in all the right and necessary ways.
In Ep. 19 we talk about grief - how we can experience it, ways to manage the false expectations of what it should be, and explore potential pathways to continuing to live our own lives – all while still having our grief exist with us
every damn day.
One of our listeners wrote to us and shared their deeply personal and tragic experience with grief. We sat with that message for days - processing what was an intimate glimpse into their life - and frankly how much it rubbed uncomfortably against our own stories of grief.
We knew we wanted to explore this for the listener and for others who have, who are, and who will inevitably experience the suffering of grief that comes with loss. To be totally honest though, we also ended up exploring it for ourselves (maybe even a little uncomfortably) through the process of pulling cards and talking about what it means to grieve and what it looks like to live with our grief.
We wanted to do this story of grief justice, and to honor it though tarot, coupled with our knowledge of mental and emotion health, in the best possible way. We hope we did that here.
So, we (along with your fellow listener) invite you to listen in on our most intimate (and emotional) conversation yet. Our hope is that this episode helps heal any grief in your own life, to develop more compassion for the experience of grief in those around you, and perhaps to better prepare for your own
inevitable fate of grief.
Final note, although we have done so already privately, we want to thank the listener who trusted us with her pain. We are truly privileged and forever grateful to you for your vulnerability and your courage.
Resources:
https://www.samhsa.gov/find-help/national-helpline
https://www.griefresourcenetwork.com/crisis-center/hotlines/
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: DeepResonanceSound@gmail.com

Jun 21, 2021 • 50min
The Psychology of Friendship {Making & Breaking Them}
As we all come crawling out of our COVID Caves, a lot of us are reassessing different parts of our lives, including our friendships. It’s… weird. But then again, there’s nothing new to this. Having a good friend is such a gift, but we rarely talk about what it’s like when a friendship goes sour. This week on The Tarot Diagnosis, we talk about the experience of friendship, why we crave it, and why it hurts so much when we lose it. The truth is, friendships can go from being Three of Cups to Ten of Swords - sometimes without warning.
What about you? Are you questioning some of your friendships? Are the wounds still stinging from a past friendship breakup? How are you doing with maintaining your current friendships? Whatever area of platonic intimacy you're needing guidance on - we got you. Come listen in as we explore the highs and lows of having friends. Oh, and best part? When Shannon talks about how sex therapy relates to maintaining a friendship. It’s awesome... and relevant in it's own way - we promise. Come hang out and explore The Psychology of Friendship with us!
Be sure to check out our Summer Solstice Retreat! We designed this retreat to be self guided, and really you can do it any day you want- not just on the Summer Solstice. Head over to our website to sign up today!
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: DeepResonanceSound@gmail.com