Welcome to Ghost of a Podcast. I'm your host, Jessica Lanyadoo. I'm an astrologer, psychic medium, and animal communicator, and I'm going to give you your weekly horoscope and no-bullshit mystical advice for living your very best life.

Jessica:            P, welcome to the podcast. What would you like a reading about?

P:                     Hi, Jessica. Thank you so much for taking my question. I'm a very longtime listener since way, way back, 2018 or so. And I'd like to ask a question about the stickiness of moving through spaces where there's a need to get everything right. I am trying to analyze things I am doing on my side so I can understand how I can better show up in various spaces in person and online. I'm a white, Nonbinary person, if that matters. It's hard to talk about politics without fucking up and saying the wrong thing, even if it is out of simply not knowing all the details about the subject or whatnot. It would be cool to talk about this. My job is to hold space for people, so I'm very interested in this and how it can help us in our general collective on the left.

Jessica:            Okay. So we're going to come to your birth chart in a second, and we're not sharing your birth details because people like privacy, and we respect that at Ghost of Podcast Industries. But I want to just check and ask, is this coming up in all aspects of your life, like in your personal life, in your professional life? Or is it only in political spaces?

P:                     All aspects.

Jessica:            All aspects. Okay. And is this a new issue, or is this a kind of chronic issue?

P:                     It's quite chronic.

Jessica:            Okay. It's quite chronic.

P:                     And I have a twin, and this person also experiences this.

Jessica:            Interesting. Okay. Okay. Hold on. Let me just share your birth chart. There is a lot to talk about in this context. But you are how old now?

P:                     I am 44.

Jessica:            44. Okay. Great. And so you have experienced this throughout your life, yeah?

P:                     Yes.

Jessica:            So it's not exclusive to political spaces, but then it kind of, I imagine, is just much more—the stakes are higher in those spaces.

P:                     Yeah.

Jessica:            When other people get it wrong, when other people misunderstand, have a politic that you think is wrong, or have a take that you think is wrong, do you tend to be reactive?

P:                     I think it depends on the subject, but I'm a teacher, so I do spend a lot of time holding space for people in that. And I'm easy to accept apologies. I'm easy to give apologies, and I mean it. And I love that interaction.

Jessica:            Yeah. What about not at work? I'm talking more in friendship, in community, in political space.

P:                     Yeah. I mean, I think so. I definitely have seen myself in action recently. But if you talked to me five years ago, probably not.

Jessica:            Okay.

P:                     I hadn't addressed some things I've been doing in therapy and stuff. Yeah.

Jessica:            Okay. Okay. So there's a lot of things that I want to just name looking at your birth chart straight out the gate. Again, we're not sharing your birth details. You have a beautiful Grand Trine in your birth chart. It is between your Moon in Gemini, Pluto in Libra, and the Sun in Aquarius. So you've got this beautiful Grand Trine in air with the Sun and Moon, which is like your sense of self in really a core way, and Pluto, which is empowering. So, in many ways, the realm of communication and ideas is like your strong place, your happy place.

P:                     Yeah.

Jessica:            I'm going to say the opposite thing in just a second, though, so get ready because—

P:                     Yeah. I'm ready. I'm ready to get in the mud, girl.

Jessica:            Okay. Okay. So, at the same time, you have a Mercury/Mars conjunction in the sixth house in Pisces. And your Mercury is Retrograde. Mercury in Pisces can be like there are so many nuanced ideas, and there are so many nuanced perceptions, and there's sense impressions, so they're not that kind of Grand Trine in air sharpness. They're more like feeling layers and nuances and layers and nuances. It gives you a hypersensitivity to smell and sound, even materials on your body. It gives you all these real sensitive things, right?

P:                     Oh my God. Yes.

Jessica:            But it's so many sense impressions that it's not linear. And so it can be hard to have a linear, consistent analysis or communication style when we have Mercury in Pisces Retrograde. Now, let's add a little complexity to say that you've got Mars sitting on top of your Mercury, and your Mercury is sandwiched between the Sun—which it is very widely conjunct to—and Mars, the will and the ego on either side of the mind, of friendship, of communication, and comrades. Mercury is friends and comrades and allies and coworkers and neighbors and all that.

                        So there is this way that mainly Mars, but Mars and the Sun, egg on your Mercury to be like, "I have to respond immediately. I have to do something about my thoughts. I have to communicate immediately, like there's a sense of urgency." Yeah?

P:                     Yeah, and I think tons of therapy and also listening to your podcast so long—it's like the 72-hour rule. I call myself a late-in-life boundary learner of your podcast, literally. Yeah.

Jessica:            Thank you. And also, boundaries are the hardest thing in your chart. I mean, you have—so, first of all, Mars conjunction to Mercury is just—your thoughts, because they're so sense impression oriented and they're in the sixth house and they're conjunct Mars—they're also physical. So it really kind of—your ideas or relationship dynamics with other people can kind of eat at you physically so that you're just like—it's hard to put it down because it's hot in the body.

P:                     Yeah.

Jessica:            Yeah.

P:                     Definitely.

Jessica:            But then you've got Neptune conjunct your IC at the bottom of the chart forming an opposition to your Moon and your Midheaven and squaring your Ascendant. This aspect inclines you—so, again, it deepens your sensitivities, like deepens your sensitivities. Are you feeling everything all the time on all the levels? Yes, you are. It's kind of like you live in front of the ocean, and there's a lot of ocean spray and sometimes big waves. There's a lot of energy and information that kind of crashes in on you a lot of the time.

P:                     Oh yeah.

Jessica:            Having any one of these aspects, let alone Neptune opposite the two and then square the third, it speaks to how, because you pull in so much information all the time, if you don't have energetic boundaries, you are predisposed towards anxiety and overwhelm and feelings of helplessness or hopelessness—you can feel victimized or like people are against you or people are trying to harm you or people aren't giving you the right chance or whatever the case may be, depending on the situation.

                        And so some of this thing you describe in your question of essentially feeling like other people need you to be perfect, and if you're not perfect, if you don't understand something, if you're just not educated about it, if you got at it wrong in some way, some of that is very real and it is fucking 2025, and we all know that. And then some of that is perfectionism that comes from your personal difficulty tolerating the feeling that someone else doesn't get you, tolerating that somebody else doesn't like what you're saying or like what you feel or like you.

It's hard for you to distinguish, to pull apart, "Okay. This person and I are interacting, and they disagree with this idea I have, and they think it's a bad idea. That means they think I'm bad"—

P:         Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Jessica:            It's hard for you to be like, "This is this thread. This is this thread." All you see is the tapestry. It's really hard for you to be like, "Yeah, but these are separate threads within that tapestry." Right?

P:                     Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            And so, for you, having an energy practice of boundaries, like shielding and boundaries, is so important. But then also having psychological boundaries, practices around how you engage with certain narratives and feelings and thoughts—that's really important. And for somebody with a chart like yours, having only one, especially if it's only the psychological, isn't going to cut it because of how sensitive you are. Does that track?

P:                     I'm having a hard time fully processing everything you're saying. I have an auditory processing issue, just as part of my learning style. When someone just speaks to me over a period of time, I may or may not process everything you're saying. So I might get some of it wrong, but I'm pretty much understanding what you're saying, and it feels—I'll listen to the same podcast of yours multiple times to really, really get it, and then I'll read it.

Jessica:            I see.

P:                     [crosstalk]—

Jessica:            So wait. You listen a few times, and then you read it?

P:                     I'll do both. Yeah.

Jessica:            Interesting. And do you do this with all things you're trying to understand?

P:                     Oh yeah. Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            So that would be really burdensome in a friendship.

P:                     Yeah. In a friendship? What do you mean?

Jessica:            Yeah. Yeah, like how do you, if you're having a process with a friend—you know, you've been friends for seven years, and now you're having a conflict, and they're talking to you about their feelings and [crosstalk]—

P:                     Oh, yes.

Jessica:            —perspective—you can't go back and read the transcript, right?

P:                     I know.

Jessica:            That must be really hard.

P:                     And I just kind of stop relationships a little bit. You know what I mean? I mean—yeah. I don't know. I just shut it down if someone says, like, "Okay. I'm personalizing everything. I get that. Okay. I'm going to work on that. Okay. And also, I'm causing a big flurry of problems all the time," and then the whole victimization got me. And then it was like, okay, that's enough for a little bit, and then I'll just step back from some relationships. And I'm sure that this has to do with it.

Jessica:            I mean, I think we're getting at something that's kind of core to this issue, right—

P:                     Yeah.

Jessica:            —because, for instance, with understanding—you know, you're getting a reading, and you'll have the replay. So you can go back to it.

P:                     Yes.

Jessica:            Or listening to a podcast, you can adapt your behavior to support your auditory processing needs or your emotional processing needs—

P:                     That's right.

Jessica:            —because I'm not a psychologist, right? My framework isn't around neurodivergence or any kind of psychological terms, basically. That's not my world.

P:                     Right. I understand.

Jessica:            But my world is astrology. So, when I look at your chart, the way that I interpret what you're sharing about your processing style is that, again, you get—I just shared a lot of information, and it was like a moment where the ocean wave crashed into your face, and you were like, "I can't hear and see everything because there's"—

P:                     That's right.

Jessica:            —"all this saltwater in my mouth."

P:                     Yes. Yeah.

Jessica:            Yeah. Yeah.

P:                     I think one person, a therapist, was like, "It's almost like you just have so many alarms going off at the same time, and you can't see which one is most important."

Jessica:            Yeah. It's overwhelming because when I get smashed in the face with water—not with water. With ocean waters, because it's very—Neptune is ocean, right? When you get slapped in the face with ocean water, it burns your eyes, and it gets in your nose, and it's gross in your mouth, and then it's maybe in your ears. And also, maybe it's kind of refreshing, but it's also awful, and it's too many sensations at once.

P:                     Yeah.

Jessica:            And so, in those moments, like what just happened between me and you—but again, we're focused on more friendship and allies and comrades and stuff like that.

P:                     Right.

Jessica:            In those moments, what I see you have a habit of doing is remaining pleasant to me so that we have a nice social exchange, but the step to do that requires you decenter your felt experience and instead center how it appears in this moment.

P:                     What? How do I do that?

Jessica:            Okay, okay, okay. So—

P:                     I love it. That's great.

Jessica:            Okay. We're going to use the interaction we just had as an example.

P:                     Okay.

Jessica:            So I said a lot of words about boundaries and your sensitivity, and you—I mean, you've got a filter on. Whatevs. And it's also a reading. It's like a setup situation. But you nodded your head. You smiled. You didn't say, "That doesn't make sense, Jessica." And then I said, "Does that make sense, P?" And you were like, "It's too much for me to process." That's what materially happened. That's what we can hear in the replay.

But what energetically happened was something I said or somehow the way I said it—or it could have been nothing to do with what I said. It could have been my energy and how it was hitting you on an energy level, on an emotional level. Could have been like a weird memory hit your body, and you had an anxiety spike. It could have been anything in that moment. It's not important to this conversation, actually. But what happened was something happened, and you got decentered. When you get decentered, it's hard for you to listen anymore.

P:         Yeah.

Jessica:            You're not hearing anything anymore, right?

P:         Right, right, right.

Jessica:            And so the practice I would recommend—because I'm not a psychologist, right? But the practice I would recommend around that is noticing the moment when you get decentered because the way you typically notice it is you're like, "Oh shit. A second has passed. I have not heard something key. Ahh. It's too much." Right? And so, in that moment, you go into fix-it mode. And your fix-it mode is because of the Venus conjunction to your South Node. You go into fix-it mode of being pleasant. You go into fix-it mode by trying to just get through the interaction in a nice way. And that's not a wrong instinct. I want to be clear. That's appropriate for a lot of relationships and a lot of moments.

P:                     Right.

Jessica:            But I'm focused on your insides. I'm looking at you psychically. So, in that moment—we're going to stick with water metaphors, okay?

P:                     Okay.

Jessica:            In this moment, it's like your boat got unhooked to its anchor, and you started to float away. And what I would encourage as a practice energetically, like spiritual practice, of being like, "Oh, I lost track. I started to float away from my anchor"—and your anchor is in your own connection to your guidance, your own connection to grounding, because I gotta tell you what. Nothing in your chart is grounding, okay? Like, nothing. Like, zero percent. Zero percent. I mean, you have Chiron in Taurus, and that's your only earth planet? That's fucked up, dude. And it's in the eighth house? That's fucked up, right?

P:                     Yeah.

Jessica:            Grounding is not your forte. So we're grounding through water for you, okay—

P:                     Okay. Okay.

Jessica:            —because an anchor is in the bottom of a water body, right? We're going to drop that anchor down into the center of the earth for you, through seawater. And the anchor cord is always moving for you. That's going to make you feel safer than just being thrust into the earth. That is not your natural state. Air and water.

P:                     Oh, wow. Okay.

Jessica:            Does that make sense?

P:                     Yeah. That's cool. I like it.

Jessica:            Yeah. So visualizing your anchor being some sort of spiritual, literal anchor that clicks into the ground, but the cord itself waves like seaweed—that's going to resonate.

P:                     That's really nice. I love that—

Jessica:            Great.

P:                     —because every other grounding technique is like, "Throw your energy into the center of the earth," and I'm just like—it's hard for me to connect with. That's cool.

Jessica:            Because it's not how your system works, right?

P:                     Yeah.

Jessica:            Your system doesn't move in a straight line. Even though you have this beautiful Grand Air Trine, it's like ping-ping-ping-ping-ping, right? It's like that brilliance of an Aquarius Sun, and it's just moving all around. And so much of how people like me describe grounding works for people like me. I have a lot of earth in my chart. So my go-to descriptions are things that I can vibe with.

                        But when I look at you energetically, it is clear as fucking day you want it to be like seaweed, but strong like Teflon, but wavy like seaweed—and to understand that the movement doesn't pull you away from your grounding. Now, remember I'm bringing this up because when you realize, okay, your boat's floated away and you've lost space and time somehow, that's when you want to be like, "Oh shit. Energetic anchor. Let me drop this shit down," and get grounded. And in that moment, you may be able to say, "Hey, can I ask you to repeat that?"

P:                     Yes.

Jessica:            And it might not always be appropriate because—okay. In this situation where it was just you and me talking about you, of course it was appropriate. But if we're thinking about you and a bestie having a very serious conversation and they're sharing how they feel and what's not working or a challenging situation, you want to make sure that they know that you're listening, but you don't want to perform listening; you want to actually listen.

P:                     Right.

Jessica:            And as somebody who struggles with auditory processing, that might mean that you need to ask them to just take a pause and to give you a second to catch up.

P:                     Yeah. That's nice. I like that.

Jessica:            Yeah. That said, if we were bros, if we were friends and we are having a conflict, and you interrupted me with my context and said, "Hey, I need you to stop talking so I can catch up," I might feel controlled, or I might feel—

P:                     Yeah.

Jessica:            —like you're not really listening, even though you would be doing it to listen, right? And so this is where the Neptunian victimization gets into the group chat, if you will, because if the thing you need to do to take care of you doesn't work for me, then it would be easy for you to feel like, "Well, I have to be perfect or I can't show up? There's nothing I can do if I don't have the audio-processing capacity to have this conversation with you but you're saying I need to have it in order to have a conversation with you." And then you kind of loop out.

P:                     I think I try not to allow—I think I might be doing it without me knowing it. Let's just say that. I think I'm showing up, even though I'm so freaking sensitive I feel so much going on. I go to protests. I go to a meeting with other people to get some work done in mutual aid or something, and it's just so much for me. And I want to be helpful, and instead, I get caught up in a lot of stuff, in my head, at least. I don't pick fights or anything like that. I think, way back when, I definitely would process with just about anyone and at any moment. I would just be like, "Let's talk about this." And they'd be like, "What the fuck, bitch, are you talking about?" And I'd be like, "Bitch, I'm just trying to show you that I care." And they're like, "I don't even know you."

Jessica:            Right.

P:                     It was kind of that level. So, obviously, I'm older now. I know not to do that. But at the same time, I think I've gotten used to just disconnecting because it's so hard for me to feel connection, maybe.

Jessica:            Okay. There's layers here. So I don't want to lose track of what you just said, because it's so important. And also, I was talking more about friendship in that moment. And so you kind of changed the topic.

P:                     That's because I'm just not even in friendships right now. It's kind of weird. I have my husband and a very few colleagues, you know, really close colleagues.

Jessica:            Okay.

P:                     But we're like friends and colleagues.

Jessica:            Right.

P:                     It's like all work for me, and I've just kind of gone in that direction, kind of, in a way.

Jessica:            Okay. And is that because conflicts occurred with you and old friends, and then—

P:                     Yeah.

Jessica:            —you just didn't make new friends?

P:                     Oh yeah, dude.

Jessica:            Okay. There's a reason why I'm pulled to talk to you about friendship. Your North Node is in the eleventh house—

P:                     Okay.

Jessica:            —which is the house of friends and community. And so part of what I'm being drawn to here is that this issue—see, this is the thing about being 44 as opposed to 34, right? The issue that you're experiencing—because I'm guessing, at 34, you did have one-on-one friendships that were not just about work.

P:                     Yes.

Jessica:            Yeah.

P:                     Oh yeah.

Jessica:            At 44, you are going to have so much of the consequences of what you've done to either cope with or avoid or work around your issues, right?

P:                     Yep. Yep.

Jessica:            Your North Node says to me that involvement in groups is an important thing for you, but friendships are an important thing for you. And if what you're telling me is, "Okay. So I don't really have friendships that aren't oriented around sixth-house things"—right?—work, activities—then what you're also telling me is that there is a way that you couldn't figure out how to get your needs met and meet other people's needs in tandem. And the thing about having a love relationship, like a marriage—the thing about those kinds of relationships is there are so many more rules, right?

P:                     Right.

Jessica:            When somebody becomes your husband, he also becomes your family, and there's kind of a train track for that. You know what's expected, and it's more forgiving, in a way, right?

P:                     Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            I mean, it's not really, but it is. It's both. They're both true. So I just want to acknowledge that in personal relationships, how we process and what comes up and how we show up is supposed to be really different than in our work relationships or with our comrades, which are more activity-oriented people.

P:                     Can you say the first part of what you just said again?

Jessica:            Sure, sure, sure. Mm-hmm.

P:                     Thanks.

Jessica:            Yeah. I'm just going to try to say it more succinctly because this is my fucking thing, because I'm making it more [crosstalk].

P:                     Yeah, you are.

Jessica:            Yeah. Yeah. I'm making it complicated. Okay.

P:                     No, no. I didn't mean that.

Jessica:            No, it's fine.

P:                     You're good at being succinct. You're a Capricorn. [indiscernible 00:22:53].

Jessica:            Thank you. Okay. So friends are different than work friends.

P:                     Yes.

Jessica:            That's why we call them work friends, right?

P:                     Okay. Yes.

Jessica:            And so what I'm saying is what is appropriate for you to ask from your work friends is different than what's appropriate for you to ask from your friend friends.

P:                     Yes.

Jessica:            In your birth chart, because you have Mercury and Mars in your sixth house, work friends are easier for you—

P:                     Yeah.

Jessica:            —because there's a purpose.

P:                     Yep.

Jessica:            Friend friends are harder for you because the amorphousness of your nature gets involved more because you're not just there to talk about a pen. You're there for everything. And your expectations of yourself and of them are very Neptunian. They're so expansive that it gets stickier.

P:                     Yeah.

Jessica:            Okay. Okay. So it made sense when I said it more simply. Good.

P:                     Thank you.

Jessica:            My pleasure. And I just want to hold space for, in this moment, I'm giving you a reading. And this is a perfectly appropriate time for you to be like, "Can you say that in a different way so I can understand it?"

P:                     Right.

Jessica:            And there are times and relationships where that's not appropriate, right?

P:                     Right.

Jessica:            And part of what I think—like whenever we have sensitivity—so you shared your audio processing. I am psychic. I have my own sensitivities.

P:                     Right.

Jessica:            And navigating those sensitivities—it really demands a lot of us as individuals so that we are self-aware enough to be accountable to ourselves. And I say this because whenever we have a sensitivity, we have to navigate like, "Do I ask the other person to help me out here, or do I have a boundary around how I'm going to engage?"

P:                     Yeah. I've got my work relationships. I've got my teaching relationships. I've got my neighbors. I love the boundaries of it. You know what I mean? And any time there's like, "Okay. I want to become friends with someone"—like I know a couple of people I've been thinking about being friends with, but I'm so sensitive. And everyone else is sensitive, too. I can sense that, as well, that it just feels hard to vibe fully. You know what I mean? And I don't drink. I don't do drugs or anything, really. And I used to go hang out with friends and do that. But when I became sober four years ago or so—

Jessica:            Yeah. Good or you.

P:                     —it was so fucking great for me, and my husband is still—it's been isolating. That's all.

Jessica:            Yeah. Making friends in your 40s is hard. Making friends as a person who doesn't party is hard. But also, do you really want to make friends partying in your mid-40s? No. That's not what you want, right? So there's the part where it's universal. Regardless of your identities or your sensitivities, making friends is hard. That's why Bumble has an app for making friends, because so many people struggle to make friends, right?

P:                     Oh.

Jessica:            That's why that exists, even. So it's not just [crosstalk].

P:                     Well, I have so many opportunities, I think. I really do. It's just that I don't call people or show up. You know what I mean? I always just want to cancel, basically, because [crosstalk]—

Jessica:            Okay. Now we're talking Neptune.

P:                     —and then freak out. I'm like, "Okay. Wait. You want to hang out with me, but then you're going to find out about me, like, the problems." And then it's like it's over. You know what I mean? I don't know.

Jessica:            Okay. Yes. So what you just described, that feeling that you have at the precipice of making a friend, is the same thing you described in your question. It's just from a different perspective. It's feeling perfectionistic and not knowing how to deal with problems with other people.

P:                     Right.

Jessica:            And so I'm going to give you friend date advice, okay?

P:                     Okay.

Jessica:            Do you live in a place that has nature?

P:                     Yeah.

Jessica:            Okay. Great. Friend date advice number one: you are so fucking Neptunian; go into nature. In a friend date scenario, if it's a first-time friend hangout, you take a short, brief, non-challenging hike, walk, or roll, depending on the person's mobility and all that kind of stuff. But you take a short walk in a nature place. And the reason why is because nature does soothe you, and having built-in distractions is good for your brain, actually, because you can be like, "Oh my God. Did you see that squirrel?" And the person can be like, "Oh my God. There's a squirrel." And then you talk about squirrels. And they can be like, "Oh, where I used to live, squirrels looked different," or whatever. You know?

P:                     Right.

Jessica:            It's just like it feeds you with topics, things you can react to.

P:                     Okay.

Jessica:            You can be like, "The fuck? Why is that man yelling at that woman?" You can channel righteous indignation together—whatever. Do you know what I'm saying? I'm saying public is actually for shorter first-time friend dates. And when I say first time, I'd say the first three times. Keep it closer to Neptune-safe activities. So another Neptune-safe activity is anything with music.

So it's funny you mentioned audio processing. And from my astrological perspective, that's that Mercury/Mars conjunction in Pisces. But because of how Piscean and Neptunian you are, audioscapes are a great space for you. I mean, sometimes they can be torture, actually. But it's like a place of engagement.

P:         Yeah.

Jessica:            So having friends who you're like, "Oh, I like to go and experience x, y, z music"—

P:         Yeah.

Jessica:            Having friends that are into that, and then you could go off and have a drink afterwards—and by a drink, I mean tea—have a drink afterwards and just talk about what you experienced—that's like a really safe place for you to start building intimacy with someone.

P:                     Okay.

Jessica:            I'm going to give you a third, and it's water. It's water. It could be, depending on your nature—I don't know—getting pedicures. It could be taking a swim. It could be hanging out by the beach or a river. Neptune hearts water. So what I'm basically encouraging you to do is figure out things that are actually good for you to do, and then seek friends who also are happy when they do those things.

P:                     Right. There's really a cool person that I was planning to hang out with, and we were going to go on a mushroom hunt class together.

Jessica:            Perfect.

P:                     But both of us bailed because we're so sensey.

Jessica:            Okay. Okay. So let me say this. I would say that was too ambitious—

P:                     Yeah.

Jessica:            —because it's a class, and it's a commitment.

P:                     Right.

Jessica:            So, instead, you would do your first hangout as an hour-long event.

P:                     Okay.

Jessica:            And it could be like, "Okay. So we know that on this walk, sometimes we see mushrooms. And then we just take a walk and look at the fucking ground because that's where the mushrooms are." Start small—

P:                     Okay.

Jessica:            —because, again, Neptune is the whole, entire sea. And that's not where friendships begin. They can only get there after years of intimacy build. So you start standing at the edge of the sea and looking at the sea and feeling the sea and then walking away from the fucking sea because it's overwhelming.

P:                     Right. Okay. Yeah.

Jessica:            Yeah.

P:                     That's so interesting.

Jessica:            What I'm recommending is that you put yourself in positions where it's easier for you to be yourself, basically.

P:                     That's beautiful. I love it.

Jessica:            Yeah. Yeah.

P:                     That's great.

Jessica:            And recognizing that you might invite somebody to do something like that, and they might be like, "Oh, that doesn't really work for me"—and that doesn't necessarily mean they're not well suited to be your friend, but it does mean that at that point, you might say to them, "Okay. What do you think sounds fun?" And then, if they recommend something you're like [thumbs-down], then you're like, "Okay. Maybe we're not compatible." You know? [crosstalk].

P:                     That's exactly what scares me, you know, even having that dialogue. It's kind of funny that I would be so freaked out about it. But I need to try.

Jessica:            So let me just hang out with that. The reason why you're freaked out is there is this part of you that feels—even if you technically know it's not true, you feel—if you say, "I like mushrooms on pizza," and somebody says, "Mushrooms on pizza is trash," there is this part of you that feels like they just said you were trash.

P:                     Yeah. What the fuck?

Jessica:            Right. Right. You take personally a difference of opinion—

P:                     Yeah.

Jessica:            —or a difference of context.

P:                     Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            What this is about is not about good communication/bad communication, good person/bad person.

P:                     Right.

Jessica:            It's different people's contexts. Your context, generally speaking, with friends is you want somebody who's going to soften the edges and hold space for that seaweed flow because, otherwise, you feel like you're being entrapped, and you feel like you are being told you're wrong. And that shuts you down. But being able to hold space for context—some people really don't like mushrooms on pizza. I'm not one. I want mushrooms on pizza, just for the record.

P:                     Oh yeah.

Jessica:            Yeah. Mushrooms are my favorite, but that's not the point. There are people who just—they do not like it, and that doesn't mean anything about how they feel about you or your safety with that person.

P:                     Well, and that's something that I think does come up in the politics stuff. You know what I mean? I just have this passion for wanting to be understood, which is so funny because it's like making politics about myself or something. I mean, I've been sitting with all this stuff for a really long time, and I'm aware of the idea of personalization. But putting it into practice fully—I think that's interesting. And it's also interesting to hear you talk about my hypersensitivities. I'm definitely hypervigilant on so many levels. And I wonder if that's really my upbringing, or is it straight-up my twin and my birth chart, you know? [crosstalk].

Jessica:            I mean, I don't think we can really separate all of those things or that we should. We wouldn't want to say it's astrology or your upbringing or white supremacy, which—because it's all of them.

P:                     Yeah.

Jessica:            It's not one of them. They all exist together. The conversation—so we're just like—I want to label it because that helps my brain. We're shifting from talking more about friendship and now more about political space, right? When there is a group project of we are coming together to talk about the environment, and you feel that it is important for your personal experience or your personal perspective to be heard and understood—and I'm understanding that's the setup, right?

P:                     Well, it's more like, "Here's what I meant to say," you know what I mean? Because if I said something wrong, then I meant I need to clear it up. And I have a hard time prefacing, "Okay. I want to say this with acknowledging da-da-da-da-da and da-da-da-da because I don't want to offend anyone," and I absolutely don't. But at the same time, I do want to be succinct. But how do you do that and acknowledge so many things?

And then someone says, "Well, what about this?" And I'm like, "I know. I'm with you, man. I mean, I hear you." But it's also like, "I didn't want to go down that rabbit hole explaining every single thing that"—you know what I mean? Every context. And everyone's like, "So gotcha," kind of, I feel. I don't know. And it's so against my—my nature is so, "I hear what you're saying. Yeah. Totally. And also, let's talk about this, too," but not like, "You forgot to say this." You know what I mean? I don't know.

Jessica:            Yeah. Okay. So there's a couple of things you're describing at once. One is something that everybody who engages in political stuff feels, which is like, yes, it is really hard to speak to everything at once. It is really hard to talk about recycling plastic things and the environmental impact, the racial impact, the cultural impact, the historical impact—you know, all the things, all at once, right? It's hard to talk about all the layers at once. And it's not possible. It's not really possible because sometimes you are saying one thing or you're trying to say three things, but you're not trying to say ten things. Okay. Fine. That is a complex thing that exists, I think, more online than in person. Is that your experience, as well, that this is more of an online thing than an in-person thing—

P:                     Yeah.

Jessica:            —or does this happen in person?

P:                     I mean, I assume some stuff that happens in person, for sure, but it's more online. Yes.

Jessica:            Yeah. I feel like it's a more online thing because when we are creating text blocks or videos of ourselves declaring something, it's a standalone piece. It's not a conversation, right?

P:                     Right. Exactly.

Jessica:            And so, inevitably, somebody else can come in with their different context, their different education, their different politic, and be like, "Are you kidding me? I'm only thinking about the landfill that is created by the plastic, and you didn't even think about that." And you're like, "Ahh, it's because it wasn't what I was talking about." So that is very real.

P:                     Right.

Jessica:            But what is happening for you is that that happens, and it makes you very Neptunian—you have a very Neptunian response because you have a Neptunian chart. There's a disintegration. It's like a collapse. It's like, "I cannot. I want to fall apart.  I don't know how to handle it." And the only way that you know how to handle it is to defend yourself.

P:                     Yeah.

Jessica:            You assert that, "It's not me. I'm not the bad guy."

P:                     Right. "But that's not what I was saying, and that's"—I mean, I'm open to letting it go if that's a good practice. But I kind of still feel like if I do that, then I'm letting people just ping me as a person who doesn't get it at all. Do you know what I mean? I don't know.

Jessica:            I do. I do. So here's the thing. If what you're doing is trying to advance a cause or advocate for something, then it's really important to not center yourself.

P:                     Yes.

Jessica:            And the urge to defend yourself is about you, and it's about your ego.

P:                     Right.

Jessica:            And also, at the same time, you are like, "I didn't say that turtles should die. Why are you saying I said turtles should die?" Right?

P:                     Right.

Jessica:            That's real, too.

P:                     Yeah.

Jessica:            The issue that I see, the struggle that you're truly having—right? Because, again, I'm not a shrink. I'm a psychic. So I'm looking in between the layers.

P:                     Yeah. Please.

Jessica:            Yeah—is that you put yourself out there. You're already fucking nervous. You're already fucking nervous. You're already like, "Ahh," because it matters to you because you care. Right?

P:                     Yeah.

Jessica:            Also because you're perfectionistic. They're both true.

P:                     For sure. For sure.

Jessica:            They're both true. Okay.

P:                     Absolutely.

Jessica:            So then one fucking internet weirdo, probably, or maybe someone you vaguely know online comes in and is like, "The sky is blue, but it's actually green if only you were paying attention." And you're like, "Fuck. I have to—ahh." So you go straight into a reaction, and that's where you lose your center. Your anchor is pulled. And at that point, the conviction of, "I have to defend myself. I have to explain myself. Why should I have to defend myself? Why should I have to explain myself?"—all of that is reactiveness to being unmoored by some random internet person or somebody that you maybe kind of know. Either one.

                        Wanting to clarify your position, responding to criticism or different perspectives are both valid and can be valiant, depending, right?

P:                     Right.

Jessica:            But because you lose your anchor and you go into reactiveness, that reactiveness becomes perfectionistic.

P:                     Right.

Jessica:            And you floopity-doopity between hating yourself and hating them.

P:                     Ooh.

Jessica:            Do you know what I'm saying?

P:                     Yeah. Okay. Yeah.

Jessica:            Yeah.

P:                     It's like kind of ragey, huh?

Jessica:            Yeah. You have Mars conjunct Mercury. You get mad, right? And the rest of your chart is like, "Mad? I've never been mad. A day in my life I'm never mad." And then, on top of it, you have Uranus square your Sun and your Mercury and, more widely, your Mars. You are reactive. I mean, if you think you're not reactive,  I don't know what novella you're reading here—

P:                     Oh no.

Jessica:            —because you are reactive.

P:                     Okay.

Jessica:            Uranus is a reactive state. Now, listen. Being reactive is not a bad thing or a good thing. It is a thing. So having Uranus square to your Sun, your Mercury, Mars—in the 2020s, people get diagnosed with neurodivergence when they have strong Uranus in this particular way that you do. That's not my lens, and it's not my perspective. But it is a common thing I see. This is because Uranus governs the central nervous system.

P:                     Right.

Jessica:            And so it fires off—ping-ping-ping-ping-ping—as opposed to in a straight line. And so this is another level and layer upon which you have so many perceptions, so many activations happening in your brain all at once.

P:                     Oh my God. Yes.

Jessica:            And so, again, I don't know if you've ever seen this, but an electrical wire, like one that the city has, when it breaks off and it floops around on the sidewalk—

P:                     Yeah.

Jessica:            Have you ever seen this?

P:                     Uh-huh.

Jessica:            Okay. That's what happens to you. That's what happens to you when you get ungrounded by something. It's like you have this huge just fire hose of electric energy, and it's floopity-doopiting around, and it's dangerous.

P:                     Oh my God.

Jessica:            Does that make sense?

P:                     That's so scary.

Jessica:            Okay. Okay. So you say it's scary based on my visualization. But I'm going to bring you back to how it feels. When you're activated that way, you are scared.

P:                     Yeah, for sure. Yeah.

Jessica:            And here's the good news. You can ground electricity literally in the ground. And so homework I'm going to give you and anyone who has a Uranus square to the Sun or Mercury or Mars—watch videos of electrical wires being grounded.

P:                     Okay.

Jessica:            Yeah. There might be news reports or—I don't know. I mean, I'm sure there's videos of it. I don't think I've ever given anyone this specific homework, but watch it so you have the visual unlock, right?

P:                     Okay.

Jessica:            And then, when you start to feel reactive to someone not agreeing with you, not understanding you, taking you out of context—

P:                     Right.

Jessica:            —basically, when you have nervous system activation, you can take a moment—and here's the thing about doing energy work. First, you gotta bring your energy back into your body. So my practice for that is I say my full name out loud in my head, or sometimes out loud verbally if I'm alone, three times. Visualize all your energy coming back to your core. And then visualize your own energy, the parts of it that are electric and ungrounded—visualize it being brought to the ground. Now, that might mean, literally, they might connect the cords like in city lines, because I feel like I've seen this from city apparatus—I'm not using the language right, but you know what I'm talking about, right?

P:                     Right.

Jessica:            So that might mean connecting it in the sky. The grounding doesn't have to be in the ground. It's connecting it to the other cords and electricities so that the electricity flows the way it is [crosstalk].

P:                     Oh, that's cool. I like that, because this whole time, I've been thinking about that cord hooking into the sea floor and just kind of—I'm in a boat, kind of, is what I've been thinking about [crosstalk].

Jessica:            Yes. Yes. Well, these are two different parts.

P:                     But I love this—oh. Okay.

Jessica:            So here's the thing about astrology that I really love, is that there are parts of you that are very Neptunian where you get overwhelmed, and victimization feelings come up. That's the seaweed/anchor/boat vibes. Your Uranian nature is reactive, defensive, very neurologically activated. That's the electrical cord that gets connected, maybe even high on a pole, not necessarily even in the ground.

P:                     Right.

Jessica:            So these are different parts of yourself, and they have different levels of activation. And they function in different ways. Neptune tends to feel victimized, and Uranus tends to feel misunderstood and like it has to x, y, and z.

P:                     Yeah.

Jessica:            Different parts. They're obviously—they're all you, so it feels like one thing. But astrologically, we can see these are different parts. Now, when—as we're using this example, if you write something on social media or in an online space and somebody is like, "What about x? What about y?" I am not saying you should react, and I am not saying you should not react. Neither of those things are correct. What's important is that you resource yourself before you feed the stimulation.

P:                     Yeah.

Jessica:            Okay. That made sense to you. Great. The only reason why that made sense to you is because you've been in therapy. Okay. Good on you.

P:                     I pick up my fucking phone, and I'm like, "Okay. Let's go." You know what I mean?

Jessica:            Yeah.

P:                     It's like it scratches an itch or something, I think.

Jessica:            Yes.

P:                     If there's something—I would love to scratch that itch another way, maybe.

Jessica:            So, when you have that itch, first of all, that's when you want to do your electricity grounding—

P:                     Right.

Jessica:            —because here's the thing. Here's the thing. It is so easy to tear shit down.

P:                     Yeah.

Jessica:            It's so easy to tear shit down. It's easy to tear other people's ideas down. It's easy to be like, "Fuck you? Well, fuck you." Right?

P:                     Right.

Jessica:            That's easy. What's hard is to be generative.

P:                     Yeah.

Jessica:            And it's life-affirming, and it's your soul's calling—you, you personally, North Node in Leo in the eleventh, finding ways of being generative when your instinct is, "I must defend myself. I must fucking get in there and be a part of it. My experience is that, most of the time, when people feel that others are telling them what to think or that they have to be perfect, is that those same people are putting that on others as well.

P:                     Wow.

Jessica:            That's been my experience. And one way of thinking about this in online spaces is, do you comment when something is wrong, when you hear someone say something or you read something that you think is off in some way, more frequently than when you hear something or read something that is right and you find it affirming or you find it to be supportive?

P:                     I think I think about doing it, but then I don't usually—I mean, I think. I don't know. Maybe, like, now in therapy, P would be in there, like—actually, yes, I know that for a fact.

Jessica:            You know what—wait. So are you saying that you equally comment positive and negative things or more frequently one or the other?

P:                     I just am saying past me, before therapy, was in the comments big time.

Jessica:            And what do you do now?

P:                     I mean, you know that I'm definitely going to be defending myself, I mean, if somebody says, "But what about"—you know.

Jessica:            Why? Why?

P:                     Because it's my nature. I don't know. Because I'm like, "Hey, but I want to be understood." You know, "That's not what I [crosstalk]."

Jessica:            So you want to be understood by a stranger?

P:                     Yeah. Oh yeah.

Jessica:            So here's my question. Are you trying to prove yourself—

P:                     Yeah.

Jessica:            —or are you trying to be understood? Right. You're trying to prove yourself.

P:                     Probably. I mean, well, I don't know. I never thought of that like that.

Jessica:            So you're conflating the two. You're conflating—

P:                     Interesting.

Jessica:            —if I agree with you, then you have proven yourself, and if I don't agree with you, then you must defend yourself to prove that you are in fact virtuous or correct.

P:                     Well, I don't think it's about—to be honest, what bothers me is when it's like, "What about this? You didn't think of that because you're not clinically with it." And then I'll be like, "Oh, no," like—

Jessica:            So what I want to say is that the action and behavior you're describing is not good or bad. It's like fucking life, right? But the energy that motivates your behavior is making you unhappy, and it doesn't come from a centered and aligned place.

P:                     Yeah, and I'm not listening. I mean, that's the other thing. I'm definitely—and I notice—I'm like, "Wait. Did I even really read what they wrote?"

Jessica:            Right. Right.

P:                     And I'm like, "No."

Jessica:            That's reactive, right? So that's your Mercury/Mars conjunction square to Uranus. It's all very reactive. And so this is where when you get into that reactive state of mind is when you want to ground your boat; ground your electrical cords. Right?

P:                     Okay.

Jessica:            That's when you want to do some breathing exercises, and ask yourself, "Is me defending myself helping anything politically?"

P:                     For sure. Yeah.

Jessica:            "Is me defending myself fostering real understanding because I'm listening to them and they're listening to me, and we actually want to understand where the other person is coming from?"

P:                     Yeah.

Jessica:            If the answer is no to either of those questions, then it's all about the self, and it's not about the topic, right? And listen. Sometimes you're going to fucking defend yourself. That's real. And then sometimes it's actually best to let a thing lie.

P:                     Yep.

Jessica:            Hey. You said recycling plastic is good. Somebody else said it kills turtles. And you can just let that be.

P:                     Yeah.

Jessica:            You don't have to engage with that.

P:                     Okay.

Jessica:            I want to just acknowledge I am not giving you advice about your behavior. I am giving you advice about how you engage with alignment—

P:                     Okay.

Jessica:            —which is the internal, the subterranean, foundation to behavior.

P:                     Yeah.

Jessica:            You don't have to defend every idea at all times and say every thought at all times to—if you have a body of work, essentially, if you have, in the context of—whether it's an online presence are a personal relationship—be really clear. Right? You don't always have to say it because it's not always appropriate. It would take you out of alignment, and it feeds a cycle of reactiveness that makes you feel like shit at the end, right?

P:                     Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Jessica:            Yeah. So, with messaging online, if it's not advancing the cause, who fucking cares?

P:                     Yeah.

Jessica:            Let it lie. If you're having a conversation with somebody and you don't fucking know them—they could be a troll; they could be who knows what, just somebody having a terrible day taking it out on a stranger online—you just don't know. Letting it rob you of your peace, if it's not serving the greater good—that's self-sabotage. Very Neptunian. Very Neptunian.

P:                     Oh my gosh. I feel like I do that a lot.

Jessica:            Yes. Of course you do. Neptune is opposite your Moon and Midheaven and square your Ascendant. Of course you do.

P:                     Fuck, dude.

Jessica:            Yeah. Yeah. But that's okay because—

P:                     No, it isn't.

Jessica:            No, no. It actually is okay.

P:                     Okay.

Jessica:            It's not okay, like, "Okay, and then, therefore, grow."

P:                     Okay.

Jessica:            It's okay to have your nature. Listen. I'm a Triple Capricorn—Sun, Moon, Rising, Capricorn. Saturn is opposite my Sun and Moon. I couldn't be more fucking Capricorn if I tried. If I tried.

P:                     I know. I know.

Jessica:            Okay. I'm a hard ass. I'm a hard ass.

P:                     I love it.

Jessica:            And it's okay that I'm a hard ass. Well, you only love it because I've accepted that I can be rigid and a hard ass and all these things, and I work with my nature to overcome the limitations of my nature and the problems of my nature. So, when I say to you it's okay that you are Neptunian, I don't mean it's okay; therefore, never grow. I mean it's okay that you have a nature and that your nature isn't perfect, because guess what: everybody's fucked up. Everybody's imperfect. There's no birth chart I'm ever going to look at where I'm like, "Oh yeah. You got no problems. Sorry. Got nothing to do to help you here." Never.

It's okay that you struggle with various things, and it's good that you continue to be curious and to try to grow, partially so that you can be happy and have peace within your own skin and partially so that you can have different kinds of relationships in your personal life and kind of more broadly in your communities, and it's also so that you can find ways of participating in the social and political moment as each moment evolves without centering yourself or using it as a space where your ego gets fed and destroyed and fed and destroyed, that cycle of likes and clicks and likes and clicks that we all live in. It's not just you, right?

P:         Sure. Sure.

Jessica:            Because every person that you're engaging with is doing the same thing.

P:         Yeah.

Jessica:            As a hot aside, I just struggle. I deeply struggle with, is there a healthy way to engage on social media anymore? I don't know. I don't know. It's like, with what we know about who owns the algorithms and how—

P:                     Oh, I know.

Jessica:            —they organize the algorithms—our outrage and our terror and our insecurities have been so efficiently weaponized against us.

P:                     Right.

Jessica:            I just don't know. And again, it's like the struggles that you have with it—don't for a minute believe that you're alone having this struggle.

P:                     No. I don't feel that way.

Jessica:            Yeah. Yeah. It's all of us.

P:                     But it's just so—it does wreck me so much sometimes.

Jessica:            Yeah.

P:                     And it's nice to feel like, okay, this is not necessarily something that has to wreck me, and I have some direction in that.

Jessica:            Good. Good. Okay. So I'm going to acknowledge that I can see that the thing that we talked about at the beginning, the audio-processing thing—it actually hasn't come up as much in this conversation as it seemed like it was going to.

P:                     Yeah. I think I started kind of just repeating your words in my head as we were going, and also, I kept on visualizing myself in that boat, anchored. And I really feel like that helped me just stay present—

Jessica:            Great.

P:                     —because, like what you said, you just go floop-a-doop—and of course, I do. And I tried really hard not to do that, so—

Jessica:            That's great. That's great.

P:                     —I assume that that helped.

Jessica:            I would imagine so because—so, again, this is not about in any way criticizing your nature or your struggles. It's about finding useful ways of engaging with it, right?

P:                     Yeah. Yeah.

Jessica:            And I also want to acknowledge that I can see that we have filled—it's almost like the visual I'm getting is you have this huge, beautiful glass, and we've filled it up in this conversation. If I keep on pouring things into this glass, things are just going to start—you're going to start overloading the glass. Every single one of us has a capacity of how much we can get read in a moment. And everybody who comes to me and wants a reading from me is like, "Jessica, read me [indiscernible 00:54:33]." But the truth is the reason why the readings work is because I work with your emotional capacity. That's where it actually helps because if I push you past it—or if you push you past it, more specifically—then there's no integration. And that sucks for you.

                        Your capacity—it's not too much. It's not not enough. It's your capacity. And when you embrace and work with your capacity, your life gets so much better. And capacity shrinks and expands depending on a million different factors. But recognizing that you don't have to be miserable at the party before you leave the party—you can recognize, "Oh, I'm still having fun. I should go now."

P:                     Yeah. I love—

Jessica:            That is a good life skill.

P:                     I love that. Yeah.

Jessica:            Yeah. Yeah. I'm a big fan of leaving the party while I'm still having fun. For the last couple decades, I've been like, "Okay. If I'm still having fun"—at a certain point, I can feel my energy start to turn. Before it shifts, I'm out. And that is basically what I recommend with readings as well.

                        So, all of that said, I want to take a pause to just see, have I answered your core question? Is there anything that's kind of lingering on that?

P:                     I think the one thing that does come to mind is, how can I show up in my relationship with my husband with all my sensitivities and everything? Because I find I get really upset about little things, and—yeah. I don't know.

Jessica:            Okay. So there's a couple things I'm going to say about that. The first is I invited you to take a moment, and you did not even breathe. And that is like the fifth time in our time together that that's happened, where I've been like, "Take a moment," and you're like, "No, bitch. I don't take moments." And so I want to just—

P:                     Sorry.

Jessica:            No, you don't need to apologize. I want to just reflect it back to you. That's Uranus.

P:                     Okay.

Jessica:            That's nervous system activation. That electrical cord is not fully grounded, okay?

P:                     Okay.

Jessica:            I have lots of Uranus squares, too. I get it. I get it. It's like your mind is always going five steps ahead of everything, and so—

P:                     Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.

Jessica:            —[crosstalk] question, and you're like, "I got a fucking list of things." Okay.

P:                     I know.

Jessica:            So I just want to ground into reflecting that you didn't take any moments, and that's definitely part of the issue with your husband, okay? There's no way it isn't. There's no way.

P:                     That's amazing. Oh my God.

Jessica:            Okay. Okay. Great. Excellent. So then the other part of the question that you asked—it's like, "How do I show up with my husband?" is such a broad question. So I'm going to ask you to narrow it down. Is there something—is it your irritability with him? Is that what you're asking about?

P:                     Yeah. I would say that.

Jessica:            Okay. So is he annoying?

P:                     No. He's really cool.

Jessica:            Interesting.

P:                     But he can also be reactive, so—

Jessica:            Reactive how?

P:                     Like we're both pretty reactive, you know? But when he—

Jessica:            Do you fight?

P:                     Yeah, we fight.

Jessica:            Mm-hmm. Is he the only person in your life that you fight with but stay in relationship to?

P:                     No. I mean, but it's, like, my family and whatever. But I've just built super strong boundaries around my family, you know.

Jessica:            So your family of origin and your husband are the only people that you fight with and stay in relationship with.

P:                     I mean, no, no, no. Actually, I've fought with, like, everybody I know. That probably is why I don't have friends, you know?

Jessica:            Uh-huh. Okay. But I'm actually saying, and stay in relationship to. So I'm not saying fight with. I'm saying don't end the relationship just because you've had a single fight. You shared that you don't really have friends, and I'm assuming that's because there was a fight and you ended it.

P:                     Or the other person ended it, you know?

Jessica:            Right.

P:                     It was just—we got the ache or whatever.

Jessica:            Okay. The Neptune component of your chart—Neptune at your IC, Neptune opposite your Moon, Neptune square the Ascendant—all of that says, "If I love them, they're not annoying. If I love them, there's nothing wrong with them; they're lovely." It's idealizing, and it's devotional. Right?

P:                     Right. Yeah.

Jessica:            It's devotional like religious people feel towards their god.

P:                     Yeah.

Jessica:            It's devotional. But relationships are not with deities; they're with actual fucked-up humans. You just want someone who's fucked up in a way that is complementary and not harmful to you. Okay. You are irritated by your husband because he's irritating to you.

P:                     Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            You have Uranus square your Sun, Mercury, and Mars. You find him irritating because you find everybody irritating when they're around you enough.

P:                     Wow.

Jessica:            That's not a bad thing.

P:                     That's so real.

Jessica:            Your Neptune stuff makes you feel like that's a bad thing. It's not a bad thing.

P:                     It's so real.

Jessica:            Yes. Yes. When we have Uranus squares, we find people irritating.

P:                     Yeah.

Jessica:            You also get irritated by yourself, I imagine, at times.

P:                     Of course.

Jessica:            That's fucking Uranus. That's Uranus. So the stuff that comes up on social media with stranger dangers is identical to what comes up with you and your husband. He looks at you sideways, and you're like, "Bitch, let's go."

P:                     Oh no.

Jessica:            And it's not always because the sideways look actually bothered you. It's because you are not grounded. Your nervous system is not grounded. And what this means—when I say not grounded, I mean out of alignment.

P:                     Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            Okay? So you've lost alignment because—fucking life, right? And then the person closest to you, who you know you're safe with, looks at you sideways, does something weird, and you're like—you take it out on them because you're off-gassing, basically. This is about you not having the ability to regulate how you metabolize irritability. And taking responsibility for how you engage with your feelings is what this is about. So being able to be like, "Oh. I'm in an irritable, reactive mood. That means I can't just hang out in a chill way with my partner right now."

P:                     Yeah.

Jessica:            "It means that I have to say to him, 'Oh, I'm in one of my moods, and I don't want to get mad at you for no reason. I need to go for a walk. I need to go listen to music in my bedroom really too loud.'" In those moments, again, you would reconnect the electrical cord. You would ground the electrical cord, right?

P:                     Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            And you would engage with the feelings first and then ask yourself, "Is this thing that is irritating substantive, or is it fucking aggravating?" because they take different remediation. If something is substantive, like he has been disrespectful in this moment, then you come at him and you're like, "Okay. You did this fucking thing. You put the dishes away wrong. And you did this thing, and it's really aggravating to me. But at a core level, it makes me feel like you just know I'm going to fix it. So I feel manipulated or disrespected." Right?

P:                     Right. Right. That's a big one, Jessica.

Jessica:            Is it dishes, or is it just like [crosstalk]—

P:                     Oh, the dishes. Putting the dishes in the wrong place. Yeah. It's like, "But you live here. How can you not know this?"

Jessica:            Right. It's a Virgo Rising thing. Virgo Rising people are very particular about the way dishes are put away. Some people—

P:         Oh, really?

Jessica:            Yeah. It's a thing. It's actually a thing. So some people are really particular in that they pay no attention, and then there's the bulk of Virgo Risings, who are like, "No. You don't put the glass face down, because then it gets dirty," or, "You don't put it face up, because"—it's like a thing. So, in this situation, as an example, when you're not activated, when you're not irritated, it is valuable to have an honest conversation, a good-faith conversation where you find out from him, is where the dishes go important to him? Does he ever care? Because when I look at it energetically, I see he is just—he has his head up his ass, just like you do. You're both people who get way off in your heads. He has his head in the clouds, and he's putting away the dishes. He's not thinking about it. And when he goes to find things, he's not thinking about it. He never is thinking about it unless you bring it up. Does that feel correct?

P:                     I guess. I mean, yeah, it must be.

Jessica:            But again, ask him. Ask him.

P:                     Okay. Okay. I've never done that.

Jessica:            I can tell. Yes. And this is the thing. This Uranus square to Mercury that you have—if you weren't a fire hose of electrical energy—

P:                     Oh my God.

Jessica:            —then you would be curious. Then you would be curious. And curiosity is where understanding happens, right?

P:                     Yeah.

Jessica:            So, if you were curious, and he was like, "Yeah, I don't care that I don't know where the glasses are. It doesn't bother me. I don't even think about it. It's just"—

P:                     Yeah.

Jessica:            His attitude is, "I'm struggling through life. This is just how I struggle through life."

P:                     Right. Yeah.

Jessica:            And your attitude is, "I'm struggling through life; therefore, why can't I do this one thing to make it less hard?"

P:                     Yeah.

Jessica:            So, if you—

P:                     I take it personally.

Jessica:            Yes, you do.

P:                     I think, "But I care, so why don't you care about this thing?" Whatever.

Jessica:            So he doesn't. Doesn't care. And if you were to come to a mutual sense of understanding, like you really believed that he just—his head is in the clouds with dishes; he's never going to pay attention—then you could accept it. And if you accept it, then you say, "Okay. Fine. I put away the dishes."

P:                     I correct it.

Jessica:            "I hate taking out trash. I never take out trash. You take out trash. I do dishes." You reallocate shared responsibility, or you understand that while it feels like an attack, that's your interpretation of having different priorities.

P:                     Yeah. Okay. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I like that.

Jessica:            Yeah. Yeah.

P:                     That will change things so much for us because—

Jessica:            Great.

P:                     —the rage of the stuff that I'm like—I'm not going to actually say anything ragey, but I feel it.

Jessica:            But you feel it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Recognizing your capacity is part of being accountable to yourself for your own wellness, and also, that is the foundation for being in healthy relationship to others.

P:                     That's cool.

Jessica:            So his capacity—he is thoughtful and respectful and centers your preferences in some places—not dishes. Not dishes. It looks like not around bathroom stuff. Yeah. I can see it. I can see it. It's clear as day. It drives you fucking nuts. But he does it in other places.

P:                     Yeah.

Jessica:            And so my homework for you is to have good-faith conversations with him, not where you're trying to convince him and not where you're going to share your perspective. Resist the urge to share your perspective. Only do a curiosity mission—

P:                     Okay.

Jessica:            —where you really strive to understand—walking to the bathroom, you know, tell him, "I'm trying something new here. Explain to me what you see and what's important to you." If you do that, he'll be like, "I don't know. There's a toilet. There's a sink." He's not going to see any of the things that you see, because you walk into the bathroom and you're like, "I see this around there, and why is that sitting there?" You prioritize different things based on your needs and your context. And acceptance of who you're dealing with eases the way for compatibility.

                        And you might accept, "Okay. The way he puts away the dishes makes me want to murder him, and I want to murder him all the time because he always does it," so you either change your expectations, change your whole, entire psychological and emotional makeup—which I don't recommend—or just take on the fucking task of the dishes. And again, you can't just take on the task of the dishes; otherwise, it becomes some terrible boy/girl fucked-up dynamic. Instead, you say, "I am made crazy by this dynamic. Therefore, I'm going to take on this thing. But what will you take on that I don't like? Or what do I do that annoys you around house maintenance? Will you take it on?"

P:                     Okay.

Jessica:            And this strategy can be applied to any relationship that's happening in meatspace, outside of online space Curiosity—I know it sounds so simple, but when you're trying to make sure that other people feel okay or other people get you, then you're not being curious about them and their context.

P:                     Sure. Okay. Yeah. I like that, because honestly, when you said earlier about—when you're feeling some kind of way, you can name that and do something about it"—and I think I'm in him, like I'm thinking about him and his sensitivities and his feelings. And I'm like—it's such a weird feeling, I'm sure, for him, because I'm, like, in him, almost.

Jessica:            Yeah. Yeah.

P:                     And I'm like, "Just—you need to get in your body, girl." You know what I mean?

Jessica:            Yes. Yeah. The thing about having adult relationships is that your responsibility is to manage your wellness, and his responsibility is to manage his wellness. If you manage your wellness by managing his behavior or his feelings, you're not managing your wellness; you're controlling your context. You can go home today, and your partner might be there, and maybe he decided to cook something, but there's fucking dishes everywhere, and it's a mess everywhere because that is 100 percent of the time how he cooks, right?

P:                     Yeah.

Jessica:            So your context is you chose to partner with and marry a man who has a chaotic relationship to creativity.

P:                     Yes.

Jessica:            The man makes a dish with every dish in the house. Okay. So you can try to convince him that this is terrible, which it is for you. You can try to convince him that, yes, he's done this nice thing in this way that is not nice for you and creates labor for you and all this kind of stuff. You can do all of those things, or you can take responsibility for yourself. Don't control him. Control you.

                        So you can say to yourself, "He cooked. I clean. That's fair," or you can say to yourself, "He cooked, and I don't have the capacity to clean today. So I'm going to say to him, 'I don't have the capacity to clean today. Do you have the capacity?'" And then ask him to fucking do it. And if he says, "I don't have the capacity," then make a decision about how to navigate the mess for tomorrow.

P:                     Okay. Yeah. And the rage is the thing that I'm going to really sit with because that's coming from me. It's not the situation.

Jessica:            Yeah. The rage is partially just like—listen. You have Uranus square Mars. You have Mercury conjunct Mars. You get mad. You just get mad. The problem is, because you have a negative association with the rage, you're like, "Tamp it down. Tamp that down. Tamp it down," or, "Express it." You don't have a healthy outlet. This is why I'm like, "Go in your bedroom and dance to music." Mars governs dance.

P:                     Oh.

Jessica:            Mars is the body. Mars is exercise. Mars is running. Mars is dancing. Mars is rubbing one out or fucking. Mars is physical. So finding a way of being like, "Oh, I want to murder someone"—right? And then being like, "Okay. Those feelings are valid, and I'm not centering them right now," or, "Okay. Those feelings are valid, and I need to find a neutral or a positive outlet for those feelings because they're actually not proportionate to the situation"—

P:                     Yeah. Exactly. That's [crosstalk].

Jessica:            And that's what it is with your husband. It's like, nine out of ten times, it's not proportionate because, nine out of ten times, he's not a terrible guy, right?

P:                     Right.

Jessica:            And so finding a way of being like, "Oh. I need to go and fucking stim or dance or something with my body, shake the energy off instead of demonize the energy or justify it"—

P:                     Okay.

Jessica:            —that is gold for you. And it won't magically make you stop feeling feelings you don't know how to sit with. It'll just give you tools for moving that energy through your energy body—through your physical body, but also your energy body because it's getting stuck in both. You've got Uranus. You've got Neptune. Right?

P:                     Okay.

Jessica:            Yeah.

P:                     And this Saturn in the first house—is that in play with all this?

Jessica:            So we are actually way over time.

P:                     Oh. I'm so sorry.

Jessica:            That's okay. But you are now going into all the—so we can't do that. But we did answer the husband question, right? We did—

P:                     Thank you. Yes.

Jessica:            Yeah. Yeah. No problem. No problem at all. Okay. Okay. So I want to just pause to say you asked me something, and I said no. And I reacted quickly, and now it's activating you. Does that feel right?

P:                     Yes.

Jessica:            Yeah. Okay. Okay. So the reason why I reacted quickly is because I hate having boundaries in this situation. I hate saying no to you. I want to give you everything. And so, sometimes, when people react quickly or sharply, it's because they are having their own problem navigating a boundary. And that was the situation with me in that exact moment. Does that make sense?

P:                     Yeah. Totally.

Jessica:            Yeah. But I can feel that it made you feel harmed or attacked.

P:                     I know. It's so crazy.

Jessica:            Oh, I'm so sorry.

P:                     No, no. I don't even—it's so weird. But it's so interesting to me right now, like, what the—

Jessica:            It's a—

P:                     And I'm okay with boundaries, too. That's the other thing, like—I don't know.

Jessica:            Your Air Grand Trine is good with boundaries. Your Uranus is good with boundaries. Your Neptune is not good with boundaries. And that's why it was like you got hit by that wave of ocean again, right? I said no in this way that was not particularly careful or mindful or present, and you felt like you were just slammed by that ocean wave in the face.

P:                     Yeah. Okay.

Jessica:            And it made you feel sad and bad, and then those sad and bad feelings wrapped into every other moment in your life where you ever felt sad and bad, and it goes into a victimized story, right?

P:                     Whoa. Holy shit.

Jessica:            Yeah.

P:                     That's so fast.

Jessica:            That's how it is for everybody. And it is so fast. And even when you asked me, "What about Saturn?" the swiftness with which I reacted was about my difficulty with boundaries. There's my own ocean behind my reaction. This is a special moment where you are talking to a psychic and in an appropriate situation for me to be able to name, "Oh, wow. I can feel how I activated you." Because I can name it, you can see—hopefully, you can tell I'm not mad at you; I'm not rejecting you.

P:                     Oh, no.

Jessica:            I'm not upset with you at all. But those feelings from the quickness and the sharpness of my boundary made you feel that way for the seven millionth time in your life, not with me, but in life. And this is where your habits and your patterns, your well-worn grooves, and my habits and my patterns and my well-worn grooves are just a part of our humanity.

P:                     Right.

Jessica:            That's just a part of our humanity. And so there is this way that the feeling that you have—it's like anxiety. It's panicky. It's like, "I just want to, again, disintegrate." It's classic Neptune, right? And so I want to invite you to hang out on that boat again. Pop your anchor down. Okay. Do you notice that it's harder to pop your anchor down now—

P:                     Yeah.

Jessica:            —than it's been the whole time?

P:                     Yes.

Jessica:            Yeah. Yeah.

P:                     I can't reach the bottom.

Jessica:            Yeah. That's right, because you're feeling a deeper bottom. The boat went to a part of the sea where the bottom is so much further away.

P:                     Oh my God.

Jessica:            Yeah. Yeah. You got ungrounded in a way where the sharpness of you perceiving a rejection in some way—it shoved your boat really far away. And so, even as we're having this part of the conversation where I'm validating you and I'm seeing you and I'm holding space with you, try it again. Try to pop that anchor down. You're in your head.

P:                     I was able to do it, I think.

Jessica:            Yeah.

P:                     At least, I visualized it.

Jessica:            You're a lot more in your head, but you could feel the bottom, right?

P:                     I mean, I went straight to the bottom this time.

Jessica:            Yeah. Great. So, in normal life, when you're not having a psychic reading with somebody who cares for your welfare, you're not going to have somebody who can recognize it, validate it, and help you feel safe enough to find the bottom. But you get to do that for you.

P:                     Yeah.

Jessica:            When you recognize, "Oh shit"—all those feelings you were having after I sharply said no, it's important that it happened. It's good that it happened because I was able to bear witness to—okay. The sharpness of my boundary shoved your boat really far away. There are lots of things that shove your boat to a place where you don't know how to find the anchor.

P:                     Right.

Jessica:            And you, in this moment, don't have skills for pulling yourself back. I was able to give you the thing that works. I see you. I validate you. But that's rarely going to happen, right?

P:                     Right.

Jessica:            That's not—

P:                     But I can say that to myself?

Jessica:            That's it. You're going to do that for you.

P:                     Okay.

Jessica:            So developing a new habit of you doing that for you instead of looking outside of yourself for it is what will help your boat come closer to the part of the sea where your beautiful cord can come down and anchor into the soggy earth. Okay?

P:                     Great. Okay.

Jessica:            Yeah. Okay. Good. So I'm actually really glad you asked that question and that I reacted poorly because it brought us to a place that will give you tools that are going to be invaluable in your life.

P:                     Thank you so much.

Jessica:            My pleasure. I'm so glad we got there. I'm so glad we got there.

P:                     Yeah. Me, too.