This card is often read as a warning, that doom is a lightening strike away. Instead of random and out of our control, I would challenge you to see this tower as walls. To see it as a tower, you have constructed around yourself to keep you safe. Take a look at your defence mechanisms and begin to dismantle them, one brick at a time, starting at the bottom.
Our earliest warning system would have shown up in the form of anxiety. A messenger from our brain that says, “Be careful, stay alert. Something is happening”. So as the brilliant babies we were, we learned that the feeling of anxiety is bad. That anxiety is to be avoided at all costs so that we remain safe. Now, instead of fearing something threatening, we learn to fear anxiety itself and start to build defences against it through patterns designed to keep us safe.
We start to organize ourselves around anxiety. Afraid you won’t survive being rejected? Build a system of behaviour that allows you to perpetually monitor and scan the relationships around you for early warning signs that people may become displeased with you.
Does the Tower You Have Built Still Serve You?
While these may have seemed helpful in early life, as an adult we need to learn that anxiety itself will not kill us. Nor is it the voice of truth or wisdom. Think back to the last time you felt anxiety, then suppose the situation got solved. Were you cured of anxiety? Not a chance. You may have felt a few hours, a few days, of relief, but then your anxiety just moved to the next thing. When we stop solving for the symptom, we can start to see it as nothing more than a warning from your brain. Rejection will not kill you. Neither will disappointment, grief nor abandonment.
In what ways have you organized yourself around anxieties today? What are the patterns you use to keep anxiety at bay? What if you could let go of the pattern just for today? Besides the anxiety, what else might you feel? Are any of your emotions keeping you from looking at anything in your life? What else are you afraid to feel? Instead of making “feeling better” your focus today, what would it be like if you could get better at feeling?
