What are OH Cards? They are neither tarot nor a psychological test
When you first see OH Cards, you might ask, “What can a card tell me?” If work, a relationship or an emotional difficulty has left you stuck, you may have a more pressing question: can they actually help me understand what is going on?
For me, OH Cards use images and words to open a conversation. Their value lies not in delivering an answer for you, but in helping you express what you already feel and cannot yet describe clearly.
Why might an image help?
When we explain a difficulty, we often begin with its easiest-to-name part: “I cannot decide whether to resign” or “My partner and I argued again.” Beneath that may be hurt, fear, hope, or several conflicting feelings.
An image can sometimes let the conversation begin somewhere else. What you notice and what it recalls relate to your own experience. Someone who can only say, “Everything feels muddled,” may come to say, “I want to leave this job, but I am afraid of losing other people’s approval.” Once both sides of that tension have words, the question is clearer than “stay or go.”
This is the sense in which I have found OH Cards helpful: some people can express feelings more readily, see more than one layer of a problem, and bring that understanding back to their lives. A card has no fixed answer, and an image cannot prove that someone has a psychological condition. OH Card guidance also emphasises that the person telling the story gives the image its meaning and chooses how much to share. Read material from the OH Cards Institute.
How are they different from tarot or a psychological test?
Some people use tarot to explore symbols or seek guidance about the future. In the OH Card sessions I offer, I will not predict the outcome of a relationship or tell you which job will be best.
A formal psychological test has a defined measurement purpose and an appropriate basis for administration, scoring and interpretation, as the APA Dictionary of Psychology explains. OH Cards do not produce such scores. They cannot reveal your “true personality” or diagnose you.
I am more interested in how what the card brings up might help you understand what you are living through now.
Why do I keep using OH Cards?
I have spent years learning and practising this approach, and it is work I deeply enjoy. In one-to-one conversations, I have seen it help many people voice feelings they struggled to express, reconsider problems that kept returning, and see more clearly what mattered to them.
I also have experience combining OH Card exploration with imagery dialogue. This can allow us to stay with feelings an image evokes, then return to a person’s real relationships and choices. Those experiences are why I believe OH Cards can be a useful consultation tool. By “helpful,” I mean particular changes I have seen in practice; each person’s question and outcome will differ.
If you have been turning a problem over for a long time and feel you are going in circles, you can bring it to a conversation with me. You need no prior knowledge of the cards or a neatly prepared story. “This has been bothering me lately” is enough to start considering together whether OH Card exploration suits you.