A little backstory
My whole life, I have been overcompensating, masking and working harder than my peers just to perform "normally." And even then, the mask often slips, and I CRASH OUT. I fall into deep bouts of depression and burnout, sometimes so debilitating that I become quite literally fearful of the outside world. In the past, this led to suicidal ideation and moments where I quite literally hated being me. I hated being different so much that I didn't want to be at all.
Why, you might ask?
Because I am autistic, and I have learned over time that many spaces neither accommodate my needs nor necessarily want to be reminded of them. So I contort myself and my way of being to fit into environments where I can provide an income and stability for myself through a career.
Luckily, I have found healthier ways of coping and perceiving myself and my life. A lot of that is thanks to some amazing mental health practitioners and my tarot practice.
I still work a part-time job outside of tarot, but it isn't without friction. And let me be clear: my employers are not the problem. They are not discriminating against me or being unsupportive. The problem is that the majority of my job skills and experience reside in hospitality, food and beverage service, and tourism. These are all very front-facing, people-focused, high-volume and high-sensory environments that require me to mask my needs and quirks in order to be successful.
When my pattern recognition makes me great at remembering orders, prices, the flow of service or standard operating procedures, it makes me an asset to the team. But the moment I become overwhelmed and my senses can't seem to shut off, my autism becomes a barrier to enjoying my job and performing consistently.
And running a business isn't easy. Naturally, if you have an employee who can become overloaded and need a sick day, that doesn't necessarily scream dependable to an employer. So I overcompensate a lot of the time by pushing through when I'm already overloaded because I don't want my disability to undermine my capability.
But the truth is, in this particular line of work, it does.
Years of masking, pushing through sensory overwhelm and experiencing major dissociation just to work full-time in the service industry eventually pushed me to a breaking point. I couldn't maintain it any longer.
And while all of this was happening, people were often so excited to get a tarot reading from me. Friends, family and friends of friends would ask me to read their cards. Something that had always been my own little world slowly opened up a whole new world of possibility: a career path that played to my strengths and reframed what had historically been seen as a sensory issue into a sensory perception skill.
So I started doing tarot readings professionally.
Me At A Psychic Fair
And that's when I realized that many of the parts of myself I had learned to see as negatives were actually positives in this line of work.
My inability to turn off my senses isn't necessarily a problem when the nature of your practice and profession encourages you to have your senses tuned in. My intense empathy and intuition contribute to the way I experience and interpret the cards. My years of studying human behaviour as a way of masking have also made me acutely aware of other people's perspectives. I can put myself in someone else's shoes, sit with them through difficult or polarizing experiences and feel comfortable exploring things that others might find difficult to discuss.
So how did tarot become the career exception and not the rule?
Often, the messages autistic people hear throughout much of their lives sound something like:
"You will have to work harder to accomplish the same things as normal people."
"You will have to settle for a career that suits your needs and compromise on what you love."
"If you want better pay, you may have to learn to mask to get it."
And so on and so forth.
But tarot has become my exception. And here's why.
14 Reasons Tarot Works With My Autistic Brain
1. The mask isn't needed.
I can space out, tune into what my senses are telling me and allow myself to experience things without constantly worrying about how I'm presenting myself. In fact, this often helps me pick up on things during readings that I might otherwise miss if I were too busy trying to present in a very normative way.
2. My pattern recognition makes me exceptional.
Tarot is full of symbolism, patterns and layers of meaning. With 78 cards, that's a lot of information and detail to sort through. But my brain naturally sees patterns and makes connections, allowing me to access deeper memory recall and intuitively recognize a through-line in a reading without needing to spend ages pondering every individual card.
3. My heightened senses are seen as a strength.
Psychic tarot reading encourages you to perceive, observe and take in information through your senses. Being highly attuned to subtle details, feelings and shifts in energy is something I can actively incorporate into my practice rather than constantly trying to suppress it.
4. I'm not told that I'm "too sensitive."
When you're helping people process difficult parts of their lives, a little sensitivity and the ability to sympathize and understand someone on a deeper level can be a gift. Being emotionally receptive isn't something I need to apologize for. It helps me create a space where people can feel heard and understood.
5. My sense of moral justice and honoring the truth is needed.
In Tarot it's your job to be able to speak honestly about what you see. Sometimes that means choosing truth over comfort, and my strong sense of moral justice makes that a lot easier for me. It also means I find it very difficult to compromise my ethics as a reader for a quick buck. It simply isn't worth it to me to be untruthful or deceptive.
I will express what I see with support and compassion, even when it's difficult to hear.
6. I don't care if you decide I'm not the tarot reader for you.
My whole life, I've learned the lesson of not clinging to people or things that don't choose you. I'm a little polarizing. People either love me or don't quite jive with me, and sometimes that's because they don't particularly enjoy some of my more autistic traits.
And that's okay!
I'm not here to be everyone's cup of tea, and I no longer feel the need to make myself palatable to everyone.
7. I will fully embrace you if you like my style as a tarot reader.
If you get a lot out of our tarot reading sessions, I will embrace you as you are, even if you aren't particularly typical or have parts of yourself that you feel ashamed of.
I know what it's like to be fearful of not being accepted. I know what it's like to feel like you need to hide certain parts of yourself to be loved, respected or understood. I want my readings to be a space where you don't feel like you have to do that.
8. My whimsy is beneficial.
In tarot, we often process memories, present experiences and sometimes the inner child in all of us. Having a sense of whimsy, with my inner child always just below the surface (and sometimes boldly dancing right on top of it), allows me to bring a little wonder and playfulness into my readings.
I love helping people reconnect with that part of themselves, evoke curiosity and find moments of lightheartedness, even when we're exploring something difficult.
9. I can set my own schedule.
This one is important!
I can limit the number of readings I do in a day to accommodate my needs and maintain a healthy life balance, particularly when it comes to my executive functioning and energy levels.
That makes it much easier for me to arrive at a reading feeling calm, present and ready to give someone my attention. I have a level of control over my workload that I haven't always experienced in other jobs, and that makes a world of difference.
10. It lets me socialize in ways where my personality shines.
I can't do small talk to save my fucking life, lol. And tarot is practically the opposite of that.
We're digging into what makes you YOU, what makes you tick, exploring your experiences, finding solutions to your problems and uncovering your inner potential and possibilities.
That's where I am actually exceptionally social and impassioned. Give me a meaningful conversation over small talk any day!
11. My special interests are now generating me income.
I've always been interested in psychology, philosophy, nature and the esoteric. Tarot combines all of these interests in a way that I hadn't previously found a place for.
All those years of deep dives, research, collecting information and exploring different subjects now have somewhere to go. During a tarot reading, I get to draw on all those interests and put them to use in a meaningful way.
12. It lets me collect things that bring me joy.
I love collecting things, and let's just say my tarot decks have become quite the collection!
Now I get to generate income from something I genuinely enjoy collecting, while incorporating those decks into my career and practice.
It's like if I collected figurines and made an entire career out of showing them off to people. It's a brilliant way for my collection to not just take up space and be ridiculed, but actually have a purpose!
Although I will say I have my limits. My home does not need any more clutter.
13. I'm not at the mercy of systems that don't make sense to my brain.
My mind likes to create systems for itself. Having the autonomy to build my own standard operating procedures, routines and processes around my career is incredibly freeing and stimulating.
I can experiment with what works, adjust things when they don't and create an environment that supports the way I naturally function instead of constantly trying to force myself into someone else's system.
14. I can finally be me, and it's only a good thing.
Perhaps this is the biggest one of all.
I don't have to separate who I am from what I do. I don't have to constantly monitor my behaviour, suppress my personality or worry that the way my brain works is going to undermine my professional capabilities.
I can just be me.
Embracing the Exception
I was initially wary of sharing my autism and ADHD on my tarot page and within my business. Honestly, I was fearful that it would undermine my abilities, turn people away from me or cause people to judge me through that lens and assume I was somehow less legitimate, less capable or less able to offer guidance.
But eventually, I had to liberate myself from that fear and say, fuck it.
If you also think “fuck it" and like my style you can gain free insights and messages by joining my mailing list
If being open about who I am turns some people away, then so be it. I don't want people to be my clients if they are going to discriminate against me for being neurodivergent. I want clients who choose me because they think I'm good at what I do, connect with my approach and feel that I'm the right person to guide them through a reading.
I'm not suggesting that tarot is the perfect career for every autistic person, or that working for yourself magically eliminates the challenges of being neurodivergent. Running a business has its own demands, and I still have to be mindful of my capacity, energy and limitations.
But I have found something that allows me to work with my strengths rather than constantly working against them.
I'm happy and accepted and whole in this space. And for the first time in my life, I have hope that I can provide for myself in a way that supports me being myself.
I don't have to become less sensitive, less curious, less whimsical, less intense or less myself to be good at what I do.
I can build a career that accommodates the way my brain works rather than constantly trying to work against it.
And perhaps most importantly, I can offer other people a space where they don't have to feel like they need to do that either.
That's what tarot has given me, and that's the kind of space I hope to create for others.
Book a 1:1 Tarot reading if you'd like to support yourself and me.
