Ten of Swords: Rock Bottom

You Fucked Up, and It’s Going to Be Okay

It’s 12:30am, a weeknight. I’m snuggled up next to Mash, one of our three delightful rescue kitties. His short fur is white with irregular splotches of gray. The new cat food has done wonders for his coat; he is bunny-soft to the touch. He’s rubbing his nose on my hand, desperate for even a sliver of my attention. I talk to him in that baby talk voice that I use for all animals. I can’t help myself. He is a baby. He’s our baby. The only kind of love he knows is unconditional, and the only kind of attention he knows is constant.

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I am not a medical professional, licensed counselor, or addiction specialist. I am simply someone who has found that Tarot cards help me with recovery.

This post contains references to phone addiction and bullying.

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I should already be upstairs. (“Should” is the enemy of positive self-talk, but I’ll save that for another time. “But” is the enemy of dual thinking. But And I digress.) I don’t have to be anywhere in the morning, sure. And I deserve a full night’s sleep.

Time has no meaning when something devoid of meaning has you in its clutches.

I have been staring at my phone for, what? Is it already two hours?

I know I need help. I just don’t know what that help looks like.

Everything is fine.

Tap. Swipe up.

Everything is fine.

Look away. Look back.

Everything is fine.

Scroll. Sigh. Blink. Adjust. Swipe. Tap. Swipe.

You’ve Got the Receipts

“Everything Is Fine” from Modern Witch Tarot by Lisa Sterle.

Phone addiction is unique among compulsive behavior disorders in that it is reliably measurable. Most smartphones come equipped with a tracking app that records not only how much screen time you log each day, but also when and what. Review your stats for a few weeks and patterns start to emerge. You might discover that you’re prone to doom-scrolling through social media for an hour or so around 3:30 pm on weekdays, playing Words with Friends on Sunday nights from 10 pm until the wee hours of the morning, or checking your Substack stats every five minutes mid-morning. What rises to the surface is a story of your peak phone use, your most vulnerable times of day and types of apps, and the places and social settings that turn an otherwise benign behavior into one that causes harm.

A screenshot of my recent phone use stats. Look at how much time I’ve been spending playing games at work.

The Ten Interventions Spread

This three-card spread asks us to sit with the realities of our pasts, the challenges of the present, and the possibilities of the future.

Shuffle your cards any way you like. Feel the cards in your hands and, as you do so, think of an unhealthy behavior you want to change.

Place the shuffled deck on a flat surface and begin turning over the cards, one by one, until you reach the Ten of Swords.

The card immediately preceding the Ten of Swords represents your past decisions and actions, as well as those of people around you. The Ten of Swords grounds this reading in the present moment, or the moment you decided to seek help. The card immediately following the Ten of Swords invites you to imagine a future free from your unhealthy behavior.

Observe and Describe

Does one suit or element dominate the trio of cards? For cards that depict people, what are they doing? Are they resting or in motion? Do they appear thoughtful or mindless?

Adding Depth with Numerology

1. How many even-numbered cards are present? How many odd-numbered cards? Which even- or odd-numbered cards are majors, minors, court cards, number cards, or a particular suit/element?

2. If you reduce the sum of the card numbers, which number results? Does this number bring a message about past traumas, unhealthy behaviors, the present moment, or your long-term recovery plan?

Participate

If you were to have a conversation with one of the cards you pulled, what would you say? How do you think the card would respond? Does the card come across like an enabler of unhealthy behaviors or like a trusted ally who supports your recovery journey?

Call to Action

Now that you’ve analyzed your cards and had a lively conversation with one of them, it’s time to name a specific action you can take to move toward recovery. Write the action down in a journal or, better yet, use a dry erase marker to write it on your bathroom or bedroom mirror.

The Ten Interventions Spread for Phone Addiction

The Cards in Position

Past traumas, decisions, and actions: The Emperor

Present moment or turning point: 10 of Swords

Future healthy choices: The Hanged Man, a.k.a., Hanged

Observe and Describe

The 10 of Swords is flanked by a pair of majors. From left to right, the elemental correspondences are Fire, Air, and Water, so no element dominates. All three cards depict a person at rest, be they seated, stabbed, or suspended. While the Emperor projects authority, the person on the 10 of Swords appears to be bleeding out if not deceased, and Hanged seems perfectly content to look at life from a different vantage point.

Adding Depth with Numerology

1. All three cards are even-numbered, a sign of stasis, rest, certainty, finality. Interestingly, from left to right, the cards arrived in numerical order, suggesting that some aspect of my phone addiction and/or eventual recovery is linear.

2. 4 (Emperor) + 10 (Ten of Swords) + 12 (Hanged) = 26, and 2 + 6 = 8. In the Rider-Waite-Smith tradition, 8 is the number of Strength, momentum, and sustainability. I was a victim of bullying all throughout school, including college, which adversely shaped my sense of self-worth. As a result of this repeated and prolonged trauma, I learned to cope by seeking escape from the present moment. The momentum of habitual phone use must be stopped in its tracks before I lose any more of my sense of self to its glowing screen. Whatever interventions I attempt, I must commit to them in order to achieve sustained recovery.

Participate

If I were to have a conversation with the Emperor, it would go something like this:

Me: Why did you just sit there? Why didn’t you speak up when my classmates made hurtful comments about my clothing, my perceived sexuality, my curly hair, or my weight?

Emperor: My job was simply to teach you. I didn’t get into education to make friends with my students. That would have undermined my authority. Life isn’t supposed to be easy, and if you can’t stick up for yourself, what do you expect me to do about it? Grow up.

Me: Well, that was uncalled for! I mean, aren’t adults obligated to make sure children feel safe and valid as human beings? (Pause.) You cared about what the popular kids thought, didn’t you?

Emperor: I don’t want to talk about this anymore.

Me: That’s too damned bad, because I need answers. If you won’t talk to me, I’m going to make you listen to every terrible thing that ever happened to me: mean-spirited notes passed during class, that time Martin smacked me on the rear and you blew it off as nothing, all of the times Brad and Adam got in my face and made animal-like noises as if I were subhuman. You weren’t exactly innocent either. Remember when I was in modeling club in the 6th grade and you called me “monkey girl”—to my face—and said I needed to smile (even though professional runway models decidedly don’t smile)? How about the time you reminded me that you were teaching the choir rehearsal, and not me, simply because I raised my hand too many times for your taste? If you didn’t want students to participate, it wouldn’t have been a requirement on the syllabus. Oh, wait—you didn’t want me to participate. I wasn’t the ideal choral singer in your eyes, because I openly rejected Christianity in favor of Wicca and had no interest in dressing like a typical undergraduate student. How about the time you blamed my eyebrow ring for the fact that I caught a cold on campus and then laughed at me when I said that couldn’t possibly be it? I could go on and on. I’ve made my point. I’ve said my peace. You don’t own me. You don’t control me anymore.

Call to Action

Healing from bullying necessitates activating my sense of self-love. As I take my first steps in recovering from phone addiction, I will write down one thing I love about myself, every day, in my Moon journal. I read the previous day’s entry before I write each morning, and looking back over the ways that I love myself will not only provide a much-needed sense of continuity, but also will embolden me to keep going and to look up from my phone and out into the world.

Don’t forget to heart, restack, and subscribe—we are stronger together! Click on the story below to see our Summer Support Community schedule. Hope to see you there!

-Margaret Estelle

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