Spread: Some Bullsh*t About the Grind
A tarot/oracle spread for workaholics ready to face their shadows
If you’re one of those people who feels compelled to work late into the night or early in the morning beyond whatever your normal work schedule is, and there is no material need to do so (and in fact there may not even be material gain from it!), you might be a workaholic. (I mean that in the colloquial sense, not as a clinical diagnosis of work addiction.) In learning to read my court card shadow, I started to see that workaholic tendency in myself and some of the costs.
Working late into the night or early in the morning because you’ve been faffing around the rest of the day does not make you a workaholic. That’s just time-shifting. That can be great if it serves your needs, but it can also be a kind of avoidance.
And working constantly because you can’t afford not to is not being a workaholic. That’s survival in a capitalist system in which you are not properly compensated for your labor because the point of capitalism is to get more value out of resources than they cost you—low wages is a primary way companies maximize profit. But I digress.
Being a workaholic assumes some kind of compulsion to work. I don’t know the source of it from a clinical perspective, but to this layperson, it often seems to be tied to the need to prove oneself within a culture that celebrates productivity and sees stress as a badge of honor. We love the grind.
I tried the spread for myself using the aptly named That Might Hurt Tarot. It read me so hard.
That celebration can also lead to positive external motivators, but those are not usually enough to justify the work. I mean, does anyone really think that hearing the words “Good job!” is sufficient motivation for someone to work an extra twenty hours? No, there’s something deeper at play. And it’s usually not solely greed for more money, even if money is a driving factor.
Some aspects of workaholism may be rooted in a proverbial martyr complex, a need to suffer in order to feel valued or loved or otherwise worthy and special. There may also be an element of control, as there is with so many disorders or behavioral problems. That can often be tied to a desire to escape other aspects of life that feel less easily managed, such as a challenging love life or responsibilities that requires focus on someone else. (Yes, workaholics can be totally self-involved.)
You can also be a workaholic because you absolutely love something and want to spend as much time as possible engaging with it, and that happens to be a form of work. This is probably both simpler (a kind of addiction) and more complex (it’s seen as productive and personally positive, not destructive). So is it workaholism?
I don’t know. I’m not a psychologist. But I am a tarot reader who likes to reflect on the things that affect the psyche, so I wanted to create a shadow work tarot spread around the topic.
Ask the following questions and, for all but one of them, draw a card in response and place it within the incomplete pyramid structure. Note that we start with the middle row.
How does my workaholism show up?
What motivates me to be a workaholic (or How am I rewarded for being a workaholic)?
What deep-rooted need does my constant work address?
In what ways am I compelled to work, irrespective of the actual rewards?
What’s missing from my life as a result of all this work? (Try to articulate this for yourself rather than pulling a card. Then find the card that represents what’s missing. If you start crying, you’ve probably uncovered something quite meaningful. If you have to pull a card, you can.)
What is the most I can hope to get out of this pattern of work?
Once you’ve asked those questions and compared the answers, particularly any disconnect between what’s underneath your work behavior and what’s the rationale for it on the surface. And really sit with what’s missing. The structure of this spread is meant to demonstrate that you can’t really go any higher than that final card because you’re missing a key support. That doesn’t mean that you should fill in the void of that support so that you can build up greater burdens. But you may discover that what you can achieve through the workaholic’s strategy is less than what you could enjoy if you were able to fill in that missing piece through something other than work.
As I said, being a workaholic is not really about getting more money to spend on things you enjoy or acquire status in a transactional way; there’s something more irrational to it. Looking at what you really need and that missing piece could open up new opportunities for self-development and longer-term happiness.
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