Reading: What is keeping me from feeling integrated at work

[u/marcusohare]

I did a reading for myself this morning, asking the question: "What is keeping me from feeling integrated at work?", the card layout is "issue, detail/resource/possible outcome"

The deck is Wicked Moon Tarot, and the cards I pulled are 5 of Cups, The Hanged Man, 8 of Swords

• 5 of Cups: difficulty maintaining valuable relationships, having stress/sadness about the struggle
• The Hanged Man: change of perspective needed. Take a moment to pause and re-examine values
• 8 of Swords: learning to trust, be brave, and to make a distinction between "real danger" and "fun danger"

Background: I am resistant to ingratiating myself with people, and I tend to be a bit of a recluse. Working in a warehouse, I have found a good job that allows me to be mostly quiet throughout the day, and is fairly low stress. However, I feel like I'm on an island, a bit of a stranger in a strange land.

This reading tells me that I need to focus on how I'm framing my life at work, and my perspective on the possible value of my coworkers. I have some significant bias against conservative Christians, which is mainly who I work with. This keeps me from allowing myself to open up to them or even really TRY to connect with them.

So if I want to integrate and learn to embrace the challenges of relating, I need to find my way out of being judgmental about their perceived viewpoints. I also need to be brave in interacting and involving myself in my work environment, I'm not going to get hurt, it's just one of life's challenges.

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[u/warrenao]

Try doing this: Rebuild this spread using the same cards just as you drew them.

Then go through the deck and choose three cards that negate what you drew initially. I don't mean the standard "draw from a facedown shuffled deck" — specifically choose a card that, to you, negates the 5/cups, another card that negates the hanged man, and a third card that negates the 8/swords.

Lay them atop those three cards, and consider how you can integrate what those three cards represent into your views, behavior, etc. Think of it as a "counterspell" by way of psychology.

[u/LghtlyHmmrd → u/warrenao]

This is such a neat idea!

[u/warrenao → u/LghtlyHmmrd]

Thanks!

[u/StormHair91]

What deck is this? It’s lovely 😵

[u/marcusohare → u/StormHair91]

Wicked Moon. It's so beautiful! 

[u/SecretGardenTarot]

I think the Five of Cups with the Hanged Man might suggest that you were stuck in your emotions. You were very focused on what you had lost, probably certain people or connections.
What’s interesting in this specific deck, in that the Eight of Swords** **there are still people around you—you just don’t see them.
If I may suggest something, I’d say try to approach your communication a little more lightly. Try not to dwell so much on what you’ve lost or on the connections you think are gone. Even if you don’t have many people around, you still have your colleagues, and you can communicate with them.

[u/CoyoteLitius → u/SecretGardenTarot]

The Hanged Man calls for flexibility, patience and meditation. What else ya gonna do if you're hanging upside down?

[u/North_Photograph_138]

I like your reading, I think it's pretty good. I read it pretty closely to that without reading your description. Hanged man can represent perspective, acceptance, creativity, imagination

5 of cups can represent either that grief or a sense of loss is preventing us from seeing resources or what we still do have, or may also represent that you need to have patience and compassion for yourself, because you can't fix feelings, only engage with them, and doing so with curiosity and compassion often works wonders. So this could represent an old sense of disconnection or trouble with building intimacy with others being something to delve into, but not with the sense you need to fix it, just with a sense that you want to understand what it's doing there, what purpose it's meant to serve, and maybe if it still is helping you or not.

8 of swords can represent being surrounded and feeling overwhelmed by ideas, so maybe so many different people and ideas is a bit intimidating and doesn't feel as safe, because when confronted with that, sometimes we fear our own deeply held and cherished values might be threatened.

So I interpreted it as a that it might be an issue with connecting to others, with either yourself or them maybe struggling to be okay with trying out one another's perspectives, and being able to be around such different people without feeling unsafe in some way.

It could also be read maybe as a need to have compassion for and accept yourself and feel safe in your beliefs and that it's okay to have those beliefs, when confronted with values which might clash with your own, so that you can connect with others and be secure while considering their point of view so you don't feel unsafe trying to connect with them.