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

Aloe:               Thank you, Jessica. I have my question here. It reads, "I am a Queer and Trans therapist from a distinct immigrant community, and my Queerness feels separate and distinct from my ethnic identity as a means of self-protection. I've recently begun creating a group therapy space for Queer people from my immigrant community, and my nervous system is a wreck. I know this work will require integration that my Capricorn stellium struggles against. How do I navigate the vulnerability I feel and balance caring for myself and the group members?"

Jessica:            And you're down to share birth information?

Aloe:               Yes. It is December 25th, 1992, in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, at 10:10 p.m.

Jessica:            Okay. I got some follow-up questions here.

Aloe:               Yes, please.

Jessica:            Are you out to your family?

Aloe:               I'm out to my immediate family, like my mom and my brothers, but I am not really out in the wider community, like my extended family members. But honestly, my whole life outside of that resolves around being Queer.

Jessica:            Okay.

Aloe:               My art, my work, my friends, my community is very centered on Queerness and Transness.

Jessica:            And is it a public life? Is it like a digital life that is Queer, or are you a little more careful online?

Aloe:               I'm a little bit more careful online. It varies. There was a time that I was publicly Queer online. It got too big, too much for me, and I had to kind of shut it down. But my in-real-life friends and chosen family members are really integrated in that community and in my Queerness and everything.

Jessica:            And are you also part of community with people from—and you kind of referred to it in multiple different ways in your question, but kind of from home vibes that are straight that you have to be closeted around or that you choose to be closeted around?

Aloe:               Yeah. You know, it's hard because I've felt in the past few years that I am—because I've been so integrated within my Queerness and my Transness that I've almost drifted away from my Ethiopian family members and community members. As a kid, that was an integral part of my life, and my best friends were my cousins. But as an adult, it's rare that I actually find myself in a closeted space with my family members, especially now that I am out to my mom.

Jessica:            And your dad—is he in the mix?

Aloe:               He's not. He lives in Ethiopia. I don't really talk to him. I may once a year, something like that.

Jessica:            Okay. So him knowing or not knowing is not especially relevant in this moment.

Aloe:               No. I don't really—

Jessica:            Okay.

Aloe:               Yeah. His opinion doesn't really mean a lot to me.

Jessica:            I respect that. I really do. So, as I ground into this question, I'm going to first have you say your full name out loud.

Aloe:               [redacted]

Jessica:            Okay. So the question you're asking me—it's not at all about living out and living proud. It's about integrating it in your work and being in community. Is that it?

Aloe:               Yeah. Yeah, I think so. I'll add that this is why I think it's important. There was a Pride celebration that involved people of my community, so it was an Ethiopian [indiscernible 00:04:06] Pride celebration. And I, at this point in my life, rarely feel how vulnerable I felt in that space. At that Pride celebration, I wanted to run. I was like, "I'm here to be with my community members in such an intimate way, people who know exactly how I feel and have similar experiences with their family members or their Queerness." And I wanted to get out of there. I was like, "I have to leave," even though I was also there to kind of promote this group and invite people to this group. And there was this part of me that was just like, "I can't stay here much longer." Yeah. That genuine fear response was showing up.

Jessica:            And did you bolt?

Aloe:               Eventually, yeah. I stayed for a little while, and I talked to some people. And I did feel this sense of connection with folks, like what they were saying about their experiences. And then I was like, "Okay. I think that's all I can take," and I ran out of there.

Jessica:            Okay. So, when I first read your question, I read it, and—you know, this happens every once in a while when I read a question, where I just get a quick, little download. And what I got right away was, "Oh. Okay. You're needing to navigate through this fear that lives inside of you, that is yours, but the reason why you're navigating it now is in part because it's giving you the—this is not therapist talk; this is like woo-woo talk. But it's giving you the energy field of the issue of navigating choosing to be in Queer space, which you super-duper-duper-super are. You're as Gay and Queer as it comes, it sounds like. Your life is super Gay.

Aloe:               Totally. Yeah. For sure.

Jessica:            So Gay.

Aloe:               Every minute of the day, I feel so Gay.

Jessica:            Every minute. And yet, as a therapist holding space for people navigating their fears around coming out and living out, this is putting you in direct contact with feelings that they're probably going through.

Aloe:               Yes. Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            When we're on the path of being a healer on whatever level, you often get confronted with—you're like, "Okay, Universe. I want to start helping people do this thing." And the Universe is like, "Cool, cool, cool. Then you'll do it. You do it first."

Aloe:               Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            And I just really have this very strong feeling that that's a huge part of what you're doing because you're going through this leveling up of your work, like a deepening of your work—

Aloe:               Yes.

Jessica:            —not just with this specific support group. There's something going on.

Aloe:               Yes.

Jessica:            Yeah.

Aloe:               Yeah. Absolutely.

Jessica:            And what kind of therapist are you?

Aloe:               I'm a trauma therapist, so—yeah. So a lot of my work with folks is deep and painful, I think for both of us in the room, generally. And it's—yeah. Yeah. It's that kind of work.

Jessica:            And it makes sense—I mean, first of all, good on you. I mean, you've got a chart where it's like, if it's not hard work, you're not that engaged. Working with trauma is like your jam. I imagine it wasn't hard for you to pick that specialty.

Aloe:               Mm-mm.

Jessica:            And also, this isn't the first or the last time, as you're leveling up your work, the Universe is like, "Okay. Now go through it."

Aloe:               Yeah.

Jessica:            "Now actually go through it"—right—

Aloe:               Yes.

Jessica:            —because, in part, I was half-expecting, when I asked the questions about your Queerness, that you would be like, "Oh, I'm not totally out yet." But no. You're like the queerest Queer that ever queered.

Aloe:               Mm-hmm. It feels like it.

Jessica:            It sounds like it. I mean, its vibes are vibing. Yes.

Aloe:               Yeah.

Jessica:            And so I want to just take a moment and have you sit with and maybe articulate to me, how can I be most helpful? Because it sounds like these feelings of fear are coming up inside of you, and also, again, you're super out and integrated.

Aloe:               Yeah. That's a great question. I think where I'm finding myself struggling is navigating being vulnerable and working with folks who are vulnerable, and in a very similar way.

Jessica:            You mean being vulnerable in the room with your clients—

Aloe:               Yes.

Jessica:            —as they themselves are vulnerable?

Aloe:               Yeah.

Jessica:            So not at home thinking about your clients, but in the actual space.

Aloe:               Yes. Yeah. Yeah, the space itself feels like—that feels like what is going to be challenging for me. Just being a Queer Ethiopian in a Queer Ethiopian space was terrifying. Now I'm wanting to—and being asked to by community members—to create this group. And I'm going to be in that space again, except this time, I have to hold it down, you know?

Jessica:            Yeah. Yeah. Okay. So there's lots of different ways of being a therapist. In your practice, do you share your feelings with clients, or do you have—because I feel like there's a new-school way of being a therapist where it's like more of a relationship between two people—

Aloe:               Yeah.

Jessica:            —and the old school where it's like, "I'm here for you, and I'm not going to share my feelings." Do you fall in one camp or the other?

Aloe:               Yeah. I think when I'm doing my most effective work, I am sharing some of my feelings, and I am aware of which ones I want to share and which ones I'm keeping to myself.

Jessica:            Mm-hmm. Okay. Hold on for just a second. Let me hang out in there with you. You have a little bit of wobble. This is the first moment I saw wobble in you. Do you know what I mean? I wonder if that's a place where you're not positive what you actually think is the best approach.

Aloe:               Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Jessica:            And I want to just hang out here for a second because this—I'm calling it wobble, this kind of teetering on alignment, not misaligned but not exactly aligned either.

Aloe:               Yeah.

Jessica:            It's really interesting because you've said lots of things, and I wasn't thinking about alignment/not alignment. But when you said that, I was like, "Okay. There's a teeter." And what happened there was I could see that it's almost like—you know Humpty Dumpty had a great fall, splat?

Aloe:               Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            That's kind of what happened to you right away. There's this great clarity inside of you, and then splat. A panicked, falling-apart feeling was just hanging—I could see it waiting for you.

Aloe:               Yeah.

Jessica:            Does that make sense?

Aloe:               Yeah, that does make sense. Yeah. Sometimes I feel unclear about my perspective as a therapist. And maybe this is because I am early in my career, just a few years out of graduating, but I struggle sometimes with understanding exactly what works, what feels right for me. I mean, with clients, they will often vocalize what is working, what isn't. But for me, how I feel stable or grounded in my work is still a work in progress for sure.

Jessica:            I mean, I think for any good practitioner, it's a chronic work in progress, right?

Aloe:               Yes. Yeah.

Jessica:            I mean, hopefully you get to more stability, but also a chronic work in progress. And you, I can see, are of many minds.

Aloe:               Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            There is a part of you that is a natural storyteller. You like verbalizing. And you do have an ethos where sharing stories is a part of healing, and building trust is a two-way street.

Aloe:               Yes.

Jessica:            And then you have another part of you that's just as clear that says, "No. I'm here to hold a container, and I use both hands for that. And this is not my time to do a lot of personal sharing. It's my time to be instructive and to be a resource." And in case you're curious, your Mercury in Sadge conjunction North Node—that was the first part. Your Capricorn stellium—that was the second part—

Aloe:               Got it.

Jessica:            —just in case you were keeping score. Yeah.

Aloe:               Thank you.

Jessica:            Also, you have a Saturn/Venus conjunction in your sixth house. That one was the second part, too. The second part is a stronger part, for the record. It's a louder part. It's got more justification inside of you. But it's not necessarily the correct answer, right?

Aloe:               Yeah. Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            I think that you want to not be wrong. It's not that you want to be right. There are people in the world who just want to be right. That's not you. You just don't want to be wrong.

Aloe:               Wow. Yeah, 100 percent.

Jessica:            Yeah. Yeah. It's very serious for you.

Aloe:               Yeah.

Jessica:            And so the reason why Humpty Dumpty splat—forgive me for using that, but it's like the visual I just got is the splat, the egg splat. The reason why that happens is because the wobble exists—"Is this right? Is this wrong?" And even the suggestion in your own mind, "This could be wrong," goes to this really, just, dissolving in the self. Right?

Aloe:               Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            I want to just hold space for and name this. I think in the first seven to ten years of private practice is when you figure this stuff out, not in the first two years, not in the first five years. In the first seven to ten. Give it a Saturn cycle, seven years. You know what I mean?

Aloe:               Yeah.

Jessica:            That's my attitude. Ten years, and you got Saturn square plus a Saturn sextile—bada-bing. It's integrated. You know what I mean?

Aloe:               Yes. Yes.

Jessica:            That's my attitude. So let's hold space for you trying out different ways of being with different situations because there are going to be clients who doing more personal sharing is going to feel invasive to them and other clients who it's going to feel like the most supportive, trust-building thing you can do. Right?

Aloe:               Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            If you have a client whose trauma is their narcissistic parent who talked about themselves all the time, yeah, share less. You know what I mean?

Aloe:               Right. Right.

Jessica:            It's adaptive to your situation. And even as I say that, there's a different wobble. This wobble is deeper inside of you, and it's because you know you do that. Technically speaking, you already know that you assess and you adapt. But inside of you, you're like, "Except for that one time I didn't do it. I don't know if I actually did it. I shared too much that time. Oh, I didn't make myself available this time." There is this clinging to missteps that you do, and it puts you into a state of activation that makes it harder to be present for the work for other people, right?

Aloe:               Yeah. Yeah.

Jessica:            And that's what's activated in this fucking group that you love and you feel so called to show up for, is that this part of you I'm seeing is 12. This part of you is a 12-year-old you.

Aloe:               Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            How old were you when you knew you were Queer?

Aloe:               Oh, I knew it and forgot it so many times. You know?

Jessica:            Yes, I do. Yes, of course, I do. Yes. Yeah. There's something I'm seeing happened at 12, and I don't know if it was about gender and puberty stuff, if it was more about sexuality, or if it was actually happening on a different level—no, it was definitely somehow to do with gender—but where you developed this level of insecurity around showing up and the consequences.

Aloe:               Yeah.

Jessica:            And so I'm seeing that this part of you that's getting activated around the group—it's like a 12-year-old part of you, which means it's not as well resourced. It's not super smart. It hasn't experienced Queerness yet.

Aloe:               Yeah.

Jessica:            It's like, "What's wrong with me? Oh God. What do I do?" That's kind of its primary [crosstalk].

Aloe:               Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Jessica:            And so, when you step into that room, my advice to you is—and obviously, hang out with this. If you have your own therapist, talk to your therapist about this. See if this feels right. Maybe I'm seeing it's 12, but really, it's 14 or it's 9 or—I don't know.

Aloe:               Yeah.

Jessica:            But my advice to you is, before you go into this group or before you think about building curriculum or whatever—doing anything for the group—hang out for a minute with the feelings because they're really easy to access. They're kind of terrified, anxious, overwhelmed, right?

Aloe:               Yeah. Yes. Yeah.

Jessica:            And acknowledge that 12-year-old part of you that doesn't have the benefit of all of your Queer and empowering and fun and weird experiences, that hasn't taken the risks, that hasn't felt the embrace of community. That part of you hasn't been accepted for the fullness of who you are yet. And if you can kind of acknowledge it and hang out with the feeling— so it's like here are the steps. You acknowledge it. Acknowledge that part of you. And then breathe into the feelings because the feelings are pulled back and holding your breath, right?

Aloe:               Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            And so hang out with and acknowledge the feelings, breathing into the feelings, and just let that part of you know, "Hey, kid. I got this shit on lock. I'm not perfect, but I've had all of these really cool experiences. You're coming with me. You're a part of this. But I'm here, and I actually know shit and I have skills, and I can handle this. You don't have to handle this. I can handle this."

Aloe:               Yeah. Yeah. That makes a lot of sense. I mean, I'm—even in this moment, as you're saying that, I felt something shift. I don't know. I just felt something.

Jessica:            I could see it in you. I could see it in your field. I mean, this is the thing about you. This is part of why you're such a good shrink, is once you emotionally and mentally get it at the same time—clicks and shifts. It's just like you're like—Lego pieces work, right—

Aloe:               Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            —which is part of why it so fucks you up when there's a lack of alignment and that teetering, because it's such a contrast.

Aloe:               Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            Holding space for the parts of not just you but all of the people that are going to be showing up to this group who had to navigate so many complex identities that overlap and fought each other and all about being like, "Well, where do I belong, then, if I don't belong here? How do I fit if I don't fit there?" because not fitting anywhere is so fucking disorienting.

Aloe:               Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            And you actually really need this for you. This is good for you.

Aloe:               Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            And what I'm about to say is not advice; it's a perspective I want to encourage you to play with, to sit with, and to kind of evaluate, okay—

Aloe:               Okay.

Jessica:            —because I'm not sure if this is meant to trigger something for you or if it's the advice.

Aloe:               Okay.

Jessica:            But you may benefit—because of how raw this is for you, you may benefit from setting some intentions around, "Okay. If I'm going to do personal sharing, I will do it at the very end of the group or at the very start of the group"—creating a little bit of that Saturnian/Capricornian structure for yourself so that you can feel like you can hold the container for others because you yourself actually are holding it for your—that 12-year-old. You're holding it for yourself, too.

Aloe:               Yeah.

Jessica:            And so, if you do personal sharing, you might unintentionally dip into a fucking pocket where you're like, "Oh my God. It's so deep. I'm falling." You know what I mean?

Aloe:               Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Yes.

Jessica:            And then there's that splat. And I think it's fair for you to be cautious about that because you're feeling it out, and you want to be safe as well as creating a safe environment for other people.

Aloe:               Yeah.

Jessica:            I see. And you're really good when you feel bad at talking through it, eh? Like you had a thought or a feeling, and you're like, "Ahh," but you're hanging out with your partner or your bestie, and then you change the subject and talk about something else. You talk about them. You kind of change the channel but stay actively engaged; is that correct?

Aloe:               Yeah. Yeah, definitely.

Jessica:            Okay. So you could do that in this therapeutic environment. As a therapist, as a person, you could just kind of push yourself through and hold space and say smart things and make them feel better. But oh my God, you're going to get so much more out of it if you don't.

Aloe:               Yeah.

Jessica:            And you're allowed to say as a practitioner, "Oh, that touched me. I'm just going to breathe into that," and just model for them. You don't have to share all the fucking details. You don't have to make yourself vulnerable in a way that takes you out of your professional container.

Aloe:               Yeah.

Jessica:            But you can say, "Shit. Is this happening inside of me, too?" And what it does is it not only brings that 12-year-old along, brings you along, but it creates a little space for people to have emotions and not just tell their stories.

Aloe:               Yeah. Oh. Okay. Yeah. I think that's the growth that I am both terrified of and running towards, the, "Oh, I'm going to verbalize this experience, and that's going to be okay."

Jessica:            Mm-hmm. The running from and running towards thing is kind of your move. I would imagine everyone you've ever dated would concur on that. I feel like I could get people to back me up. It's kind of a thing you do. You push yourself, and then you're like, "No. Yes. No. Yes." This is kind of like a thing you do.

Aloe:               100 percent.

Jessica:            You have a Mars opposition to your Moon, to your Neptune, to your Uranus. And actually, it's not the easiest way, but it tends to work for you, right?

Aloe:               Yeah.

Jessica:            You do tend to—you do big healing in big ways. And there's something very important about all these things we're talking about, but there's another layer to it. Do you take care of your mother in some way?

Aloe:               Not physically, but I think my whole life, I've been emotionally caring for her.

Jessica:            You're kind of one of her primary go-to people?

Aloe:               Yeah.

Jessica:            Yeah. And is she shaky right now?

Aloe:               Yeah. Yeah. She is. She's been starting a business, and it hasn't come to fruition just yet. And we're kind of waiting, and the deadline is passed, and we're kind of trying to figure out how to go forward financially. I may be working for her in this business, also, so that's a whole other dynamic that's—

Jessica:            Okay. Okay. Okay. That's why it's coming up. So you're working for her, but you're obviously not getting paid because she doesn't have money coming in.

Aloe:               Right. Yeah.

Jessica:            Okay. This is fun—sarcastic fun. Sarcastic fun. Okay. Okay. That's part of why you're panicking.

Aloe:               Yeah.

Jessica:            So what's happening is you experience authentic stress, authentic worry about something that's really important to you. And it is about the thing that we've been talking about. But when you tap into those feelings, there's this fucking—oof. It's like you do this thing for your mom where you take on her anxiety, and it's anxiety, but it's grim. It's kind of like, "I can handle it. Don't lift the lid on this box. We don't have to look at what's inside. Trust me. I can handle it." It's like a very—your mom has her way.

Aloe:               Yeah.

Jessica:            And it's her way, and that's what it is, right? But you, out of a sense of allegiance to her welfare, have been, since you were very little—much younger than 12—taking in and on her emotions.

Aloe:               That tracks.

Jessica:            Okay.

Aloe:               Yeah.

Jessica:            And it's like your show of solidarity. It's your way of saying, "I choose you. You're my person. I love you. I'm taking care of you. This is how I'm doing it."

Aloe:               Yeah.

Jessica:            And it's a good thing you became a shrink because that's kind of like—it's a job. You're showing up, and you're holding space for other people, and you're holding the container for other people. And now you know what your hourly fee should be for that.

Aloe:               Yes.

Jessica:            That's a job. That's now how we love people in our personal lives, quite, right?

Aloe:               Yeah.

Jessica:            So it's good that you were able to turn it into a service that also serves you. That's good. That's beautiful. And what you're doing with your mom comes at great cost to you because when I was looking at this energetically at the get, I couldn't right away see that it wasn't all yours. Now, I could see that you're holding a lot of fear for the collective. You're really, really, really feeling it. And if we were talking at a different time in history, I would have different things to say about it, but fuck. I mean, get in line, right? We're all—a lot of us are feeling it right now.

Aloe:               We are.

Jessica:            But your mom—there is something in what you're doing with your community and this group that is, on a level, a betrayal of your mom. Huh. What does that mean? Does that make sense?

Aloe:               Yeah, it does make sense. I mean, a major reason why I'm not more out than I am, like to my family members, my extended family members, is because I am deeply afraid my mom will be ostracized—

Jessica:            I see. You're protecting your mom still.

Aloe:               —for my Queerness.

Jessica:            Yeah. You're protecting her. Yeah. So you are doing something—I'm guessing, somewhere around 12, you did a different version of this, where you were struggling to choose yourself or choose her. And you chose her.

Aloe:               Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            It's really important that you continue to choose you in this way because this allegiance that you are paying to her—she's not actually benefiting from it. It doesn't actually help her in any way. I mean, she appreciates you navigating her needs, you know?

Aloe:               Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            But it doesn't actually help her on her journey to acceptance. She has a hard time with accepting realities as they present.

Aloe:               Yes.

Jessica:            Yeah. This kind of—the convention is to call it a crossroads, but you're not at a crossroads. You're just at a level of development, right? You're at this deepening of the pool that you're at. It's inviting you to consciously acknowledge that there is a part of you—and it's young—that wants to center your mom and your projection onto her needs and your projection onto her feelings because they're never articulated clearly. It's not that, right? It's your assessment of the situation.

Aloe:               Yeah.

Jessica:            And it doesn't matter if you're right or not. It's still a projection. It's still your assessment, right?

Aloe:               Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            And you're prioritizing that over your own welfare. And so being conscientious about being like, "Okay. I'm going to make different choices here for myself, for my community, for my young parts, for my old-ass future parts—for all the parts." And it's not a cruelty to your mother. It's growing up. It's giving yourself permission to be the adult you choose to be. So okay. What's the push? You have a pushback on that. Do you know what that is?

Aloe:               Yeah. I feel, like, this sense of—yeah, it's that protectiveness again. It's saying she's done so much. She's been through so much. She's experienced so much that I have to—somebody has to be there for her. Somebody has to protect her.

Jessica:            And you're the one.

Aloe:               Yeah.

Jessica:            Mm-hmm. Your brothers aren't the one?

Aloe:               They could be. They just aren't.

Jessica:            They aren't. Yeah.

Aloe:               They are in their own ways, I think. That's not fair—

Jessica:            They all feel that way about your mother.

Aloe:               Yes. I think we share this.

Jessica:            Mm-hmm. And you share this—some of it's cultural, right?

Aloe:               Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Jessica:            And that was some of the pushback, I think, too, is there's a—I said that outside of the culture, and there's some of it that is cultural, and I just want to acknowledge that's part of what I'm seeing.

Aloe:               Yes. Yeah.

Jessica:            And you have a right to protect that, and you have a right to interrogate that. You have a right to protect it in my presence and interrogate it on your own or in the group that you're holding, or whatever feels right. I want to just hold space for all of that. And I want to just acknowledge that I see with your brothers that they wouldn't articulate it the way you did, but they feel the same way.

Aloe:               Yeah.

Jessica:            And it's partially because of the way that your mom has poured herself into the role of Mom and poured herself into her life and what she has told you about who she is and what she is and what she's done and who you are and what you should do.

Aloe:               Yeah.

Jessica:            And some of that's her personality, and some of that is cultural.

Aloe:               Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            And you have choices inside of that, because some of what you're doing is so much energy work, really—so much of what you're doing is taking in her emotions. She doesn't know you're doing that. If you told her, she wouldn't believe that was true.

Aloe:               No.

Jessica:            Like, no, not at all.

Aloe:               She doesn't believe that's real.

Jessica:            Zero percent. Zero percent. And so you doing it harms you, doesn't help her. She doesn't appreciate it. How does that serve? What it does is it taps you so that you have less to give to your communities, to yourself, to the world. And again, she doesn't get a real service out of it because the rule is you have to feel it to heal it. If you work in trauma, you know that, right?

Aloe:               Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            We can't shove it in a hole and heal it from that great distance.

Aloe:               Right.

Jessica:            You gotta feel it to heal it. And so, whenever you hold your mother's emotions and her stress, she's not feeling it. She doesn't ever heal it in that way. Now, listen. She doesn't heal because she doesn't heal because she doesn't heal. That's a different reading. That's a different story. But your story is you exploring the boundaries of what's yours to hold on to. And when I look at this stress and anxiety around this topic that you've written to me about, some of it's just your mom.

Aloe:               Wow. Yeah. Something that's coming to me in this exact moment is there's also, maybe, a part of me that is afraid of having people hold what I have in the way that I hold what my mom has.

Jessica:            Say more about that.

Aloe:               I think I understand how that's affected me and how that has changed or shaped the way that I live my life, how I am with people, how I do my work, even, and that it doesn't serve me—that it doesn't always serve me. And I think that there's a part of me that holds back from giving people—even in my personal life, even my friends, even my partner sometimes—letting them hold some of what I'm holding, because I'm afraid I'm doing what I've experienced. You know?

Jessica:            So fun fact: you are not your mom. You are your mom's opposite. She trained you to be her opposite. She is a sieve; you are a bucket. She's a hand; you are a glove. She has trained all of her children to be this way.

Aloe:               Yeah.

Jessica:            And you're all very different, but you're all that way. Your mom is a lovely person in many ways. She's not a bad guy. She's a hurt person.

Aloe:               Yeah.

Jessica:            And you and your siblings want to take care of her because you recognize her humanity and her suffering and her love and her goodness.

Aloe:               Yeah.

Jessica:            I want to be clear I can see that, because we are critiquing her, but also, I get why you're like, "I'll carry all of this for you, Mom. Don't worry"—because you want to take care of her, right?

Aloe:               Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            You have the tendency to keep people out, to report on the news once it's a couple days old.

Aloe:               Yeah, much to my partner's chagrin.

Jessica:            Oh, I bet. Oh, I bet. It's—yes—very, very difficult because what ends up happening is the people who love you can trust that if they text you at any hour of any day, "Help," you're there, no doubt. You're just there. You're your mom's kid, right? You're there.

Aloe:               Yeah.

Jessica:            And that you won't necessarily ask them for help, that you will chase your own tail trying to fix something that someone else could just pluck from your behind for you. The people who really know you, who want to be there for you, know that sometimes you make it really hard for them to hear what you're saying, to connect to what you're going through, unless and until you have solved the problem. Then you're very, very verbal and you're great at sharing.

Aloe:               That's exactly right.

Jessica:            Yeah. Yeah. And so your problem—your risk, rather—is not that you're your mom.

Aloe:               Yeah.

Jessica:            Your risk—[indiscernible 00:33:03] your dad. So he's a guy who just doesn't communicate, isolates, yada, yada.

Aloe:               Yeah.

Jessica:            That's more your risk. Now, luckily, you're so Queer, and there's not a whole lot of room in Queer space for completely isolating in this particular way that your dad does, right?

Aloe:               Yeah.

Jessica:            It just would be very hard to date in that way.

Aloe:               Yeah. Yeah.

Jessica:            And you date. You have a stellium in the fifth house. You date. But the risk that you have is that you become so attached to correct actions that you don't recognize that you are not meant to be a door that looks beautiful on the outside and has really lovely hinges, and whenever it closes, you don't hear it, and whenever it opens, you don't hear it. You're not meant to be a thing that works.

Aloe:               Whoa.

Jessica:            Yeah. Hang out in there. There's this idea that you have about, again, not being wrong and of being in service and being simple. The visual of a door came to me because you don't want to be like a computer. That's not your drive. It's a lot more simple. It's a lot more like you want to be of service in an everyday way. You want to be consistent, and you want to be fucking upright.

Aloe:               Yeah.

Jessica:            Those are your father's best qualities. They're not healthy, well-integrated qualities, but they are qualities that he has. Do you know him well enough to know that?

Aloe:               Yeah. He's kind of a pillar in the community.

Jessica:            Yeah. That makes sense.

Aloe:               He is—yeah. He—not to—

Jessica:            Stand-up guy.

Aloe:               Yeah. He is loved by many outside of his family. That I'll say.

Jessica:            Yeah. Yeah.

Aloe:               Yeah.

Jessica:            I mean, listen. These qualities that I described, contextually to his many identities and his lived experience, look really different than they do on and in you.

Aloe:               Yeah.

Jessica:            And that's a great thing in many ways, right?

Aloe:               Yeah.

Jessica:            I mean, my guess is you are a pillar of your own community and that you are well respected by many and that that will grow as you age and that that's something that will develop for you. And you're also striving to have personal relationships that are based on sharing things that are true.

Aloe:               Yeah.

Jessica:            That's really important to you. That said, you're post-Saturn Return pretty recently, right? You're early 30s.

Aloe:               Yes. And thank God.

Jessica:            Yes. It's a wonderful thing. We knock on all the wood.

Aloe:               Yeah.

Jessica:            But you are at the age where you're just old enough to start to really understand, to know through experience, that you don't have to keep trying to not be your mom. You have to be on the lookout for not being your dad, if you're trying to avoid being one of them. And again, it's not like both of them have only irredeemable qualities. We're just—we're humans. We understand that we're always trying to be more like one than the other. We humans do this thing. For you, the chances that you are a sieve—walking around asking everyone to feel your feelings—feel incredibly small to me. Where have you done this as an adult?

Aloe:               None. Never.

Jessica:            Nowhere, even when, literally, people are begging you to.

Aloe:               Yeah.

Jessica:            Yeah. So this is one of the really difficult parts of adulting, and it's not just to you. It's like a post-first Saturn Return thing. We are meant to really—and again at the second Saturn Return in a different way. But we are meant to really take stock of who we are and who we're not. And you're not your mom. You've worked so hard at not being your mom, you're anti-mom in the particular way that you're worried about being like your mom.

Aloe:               Yeah.

Jessica:            So, if you keep on working hard at not being your mom, you will become like your dad, where it's all outward-facing, it's all public, and it's not personal.

Aloe:               Yeah. Wow.

Jessica:            Yeah.

Aloe:               I don't want that.

Jessica:            No. No, no. That's why we're bringing a 12-year-old in the house. That's why you're called to build community with your community, even though everything inside of you is like, "Burn the house down. Delete the internet. Don't do it."

Aloe:               Yeah.

Jessica:            It's because you want to push yourself. You want connection. And you want personal connection.

Aloe:               Yeah.

Jessica:            You're doing it in this way through your work at this time. And also, we have to spend a minute talking about your personal life. I'm sorry. It's not what you asked about. So Capricorn.

Aloe:               Yeah.

Jessica:            So you mentioned partner. You're with a partner. Do you live together?

Aloe:               Yes, we live together.

Jessica:            And how long have you been together?

Aloe:               We've been together for—it's going on four years.

Jessica:            Congratulations.

Aloe:               Thank you.

Jessica:            And are you a person who thinks about marriage or babies?

Aloe:               Yes. We've been talking about marriage a lot lately.

Jessica:            Okay. So Pluto is trining your Midheaven—fucking gorgeous. That means it's also sextiling your IC—gorgeous. Great time for your career. Great time for your family life. A great time. Great time.

Aloe:               Yeah.

Jessica:            Uranus is opposing your Ascendant. It's a time of change—

Aloe:               Yes.

Jessica:            —instability, right?

Aloe:               Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            That's the time it is. So, for you, a big change would be how you show up. You have a Moon and Sun in Capricorn, and then you got a Virgo Rising.

Aloe:               Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            I mean, are you the most adaptable person? No. Do you know how to relax easily and all the time? No. And so this is a good time for you to be exploring different ways of being in your relationship because my guess is—am I allowed to look at your partner? Did they give you permission?

Aloe:               They did give me permission.

Jessica:            Okay. I had a feeling.

Aloe:               They were like, "If Jessica asks, say yes."

Jessica:            Okay. Yes, it is. Okay. Will you say their name?

Aloe:               [redacted]

Jessica:            Great, great, great, great, great. Got it. So they support you. They want to hear what's up. They know how to kind of—I was going to say handle you, but what I mean is make you feel safe and help you kind of go through your layers so that you actually emotionally share. Am I seeing that right?

Aloe:               Yes. Yeah, they're very good.

Jessica:            Okay. Yeah. They're very good. They're very good. It's your friends that this comes up with more than with your partner because, with your partner, you feel that it's appropriate to have deep conversations and go through process, whereas with friends, you're like, "Oh, I should keep it moving. I should keep it light. I should keep it more easy." And that's where the struggle comes up more.

Aloe:               Yeah. I think you're right.

Jessica:            Sorry, partner. We're not talking about you. Everything's good. Everything's fine. Everything's good. Don't worry about it. Okay. So you have friends—you have friends?

Aloe:               I have friends.

Jessica:            You—okay. You have community.

Aloe:               Yes. I definitely have community.

Jessica:            And then you have one or two people that you actually talk to—

Aloe:               Yeah.

Jessica:            —like, tell them what it is. And have you known them for a very long time?

Aloe:               Yes.

Jessica:            Mm-hmm.

Aloe:               I have a friend from middle school, other friend from college. We're very close. Yeah.

Jessica:            Are they straight?

Aloe:               Both of them are straight.

Jessica:            Yeah. And they're not just straight; they live in straight community?

Aloe:               Yes. Yes.

Jessica:            Are they Ethiopian?

Aloe:               No.

Jessica:            Okay. Huh. Okay. Very interesting. So here's the thing, man. Yeah, I called you "man." I don't know why I did it. I just did it.

Aloe:               I'll take it. I love it.

Jessica:            Okay. Great. Okay. Good. I did it. I did it. Venus conjunct Saturn—you love a long-term friendship. I don't have to tell you my story? Sold. I'll do whatever it takes.

Aloe:               Yes.

Jessica:            So what you're saying is your closest, realest friends live outside of Queerness, and they live outside of your community of where you come from.

Aloe:               Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            Fucking fascinating. And you cannot ever make friends through your job unless it's with colleagues, right?

Aloe:               Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            The people you consult with you can have meaningful interpersonal dynamic with, but never reciprocity because that is the boundary.

Aloe:               Yes.

Jessica:            Even for a therapist who believes in personal sharing, it's not an equal friendship situation.

Aloe:               Yeah.

Jessica:            So this is a dangerous—it's a perfect setup for you. It's an incredibly healthy setup for you, and it's a dangerous setup for you. It can be both things at once. So we want to rejoice and embrace that you've found a really healthy and appropriate career path where you can do real good. And we want to acknowledge that you, like your father, can hide in these good deeds and not challenge yourself as an adult with the complexities of who you are, where you are, when you are, to show up and actually build fucking friendships with annoying new people. And I said "annoying new people" because you have Mars in your eleventh house opposing your Moon, your Neptune, and your Uranus, so people annoy you. And then you're like, "I'm out"—

Aloe:               Yeah.

Jessica:            —because you don't want to be annoyed.

Aloe:               Yeah. That's why—I literally—I was with my partner and our roommate sitting outside, and I was like, "I have plenty of friends. I don't need any new friends." I was very adamant. I said it multiple times. And I just think—yeah, I think that evokes that moment.

Jessica:            It's very interesting. And yet you have a lot of pals.

Aloe:               Yeah.

Jessica:            You have a lot of pals. But the friends that you have are so outside of all of the community that is authentic to you, so they know you really well, but they actually—they know an old version of you, which is soothing and beautiful. And let's keep that. That's great. But it's interesting how your weirdo radical self doesn't have super tight people in that space.

Aloe:               Yeah.

Jessica:            And again, I feel the call to reiterate—even though I already said this—this is a very important 30-something lesson, when you're in your 30s to learn this lesson. Don't worry. You're not the parent you tried to not be. You're the other one. And so this is where, on one level, it's interesting, right? It might help you to have more empathy—and that doesn't mean we let your dad in; it doesn't mean we forgive your dad—but more empathy for the complexity of what it feels like to not know how to have certain kinds of personal relationships.

Aloe:               Yeah.

Jessica:            You know, don't have a wife. Don't have kids. Okay. Fine. But that's your dad. For you, it's more—for somebody who knows the importance of family, like chosen family and friendship, you haven't flexed that muscle in a hot minute.

Aloe:               Yeah.

Jessica:            And you have a Descendant—it's this line right here in Pisces. And that means that you have a devotional way—again, trained well by your mom—a devotional way of being in relationship to other people. So, again, you're of service. You take care of them. You don't see any harm in them. And that Mars in the eleventh house in Cancer opposite all your shit there is just like, "Yeah, but people are fucking annoying." The second someone says something annoying, you're like, "I'm out because I can't be devotional, and I don't want to be a jerk. So I'm going to keep it surface. I'm going to keep it fun. I'm going to keep it moving."

Aloe:               Yeah. Yeah.

Jessica:            And this is less to do with people being annoying, and it's more to do with you not having given yourself permission to be annoyed by people and also to have discernment with people. People are annoying. You're allowed to be annoyed by people. You're allowed to genuinely like me and also find certain of my characteristics genuinely fucking grating. You are allowed to feel both of those things about me in our time together. You're allowed to have a messy, complex, nuanced set of responses because you're discerning. You're assessing for yourself. You're not sitting here judging me—I mean, maybe that, too. But we're talking about the healthy bits, right?

Aloe:               Yeah.

Jessica:            So you're not judging. You're not like, "Jessica is fucked up this way. Jessica is a bad person." Instead, it's, "Huh. I genuinely don't like that she talks so loud or she cusses so much." I don't know. I'm just throwing things out. I'm not actually trying to find out what's wrong with me. But you know what I'm saying.

Aloe:               Yeah.

Jessica:            It's like, "I don't like this. I'm noticing my body react. It feels bad in my system when she does that. I like what she's saying. I want to get to know her. But I'm noticing my system react, and I'm going to validate that I have a right to have that reaction. I want to pay attention to that reaction so, as we get to know each other, I can assess, am I getting used to this person? Is it just aesthetic, like it fucking bugs me? Or is it like, "Oh, this person feels hard in a way that I don't like"?

Aloe:               Yeah.

Jessica:            Maybe this person feels hard in a way that is activating, but I'm interested in it. You can only answer these questions if you ask them.

Aloe:               Oh. Sorry. I am having a realization that when I am annoyed at someone, I'm upset with myself.

Jessica:            You talk yourself out of it.

Aloe:               Yeah. I'm like, "That's so mean. Don't do that."

Jessica:            Trained by your mom. You're not supposed to ever think of her critically. Whatever she needs—oh my gosh—blood, sweat, and tears to get there.

Aloe:               Yeah.

Jessica:            How could you think critically of her needs? And this is something that you just place onto others—less to the people you're dating—sorry, partner—but more to others, right?

Aloe:               Yeah.

Jessica:            And that's because you've decided that partnership is about struggle, so that's okay that you struggle with your partner. Friendship is different—and so exploring that part, that part of you that's like, "Oh. I've demonized these really natural, normal human emotions that I actually have to navigate in order to assess what I actually think, how I actually feel. There are people in the world that you genuinely like, that you think are smart or inspiring or do good in the world, and you just don't fucking click. They're just not a match.

Aloe:               Yeah.

Jessica:            There are people in the world who you do really click with, who are really a match. And you don't agree with a lot of what they think. You don't especially like a lot of what they do.

Aloe:               Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Jessica:            We're allowed to be messy, complex creatures with messy, complex relationships. I know you know this, but there's parts of you that don't. There's parts of you that are like, "I am meant to be a door that never has squeaky hinges. I am meant to be a self-cleaning oven. How can I assist you?"

Aloe:               Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            "And if you're mad at me, then you can't possibly assist me." And now your whole function is thrown into chaos.

Aloe:               Yeah. Absolutely, like, "If I can't help you, what do I do?"

Jessica:            "What do I do?" And that's really at the center of the question you wrote in, is, "If I am freaked out by helping other people, how can I help them? Then what is my purpose, and what am I doing?" Right? And of course, you wrote me a question—I didn't see it. I didn't see it, but I see it now. Of course, you wrote me a question about your fucking work, you damn Capricorn. And of course, I, another damn Capricorn, was like, "This sounds like a great question, a therapist. Of course I like this question." And your real question isn't about the work. Your real question is about you.

                        And I gotta say it's like perfect timing. It's perfect timing because the only transits you have going on are really affirming to you. And something's coming for you in April of 2026, and it will require that you develop boundaries in the ways and places that you don't have them.

Aloe:               Okay.

Jessica:            And so doing this work that you and I are talking about now will make that work, starting in the spring of 2026, so much easier for you—not easy, because it's a transit. It's a Neptune square to the Sun, just for your dear diary.

Aloe:               Thank you.

Jessica:            You're welcome. But it will make it a lot easier because right now you probably have great boundaries in situations where you're perfectly clear about what your role is, a.k.a. work.

Aloe:               Yes.

Jessica:            But in friendships where you don't know what the rules are, you haven't given yourself permission to be complex and nuanced and to have whatever feelings and thoughts you have. In that space, you probably don't have boundaries because one cannot have boundaries when one is not centering their own lived experience, when one is actively decentering their own lived experience. It's just not possible to have boundaries from that state, right?

Aloe:               Yeah. Right.

Jessica:            So say your full name out loud again with the two last names and the first name.

Aloe:               [redacted]

Jessica:            So this is what I need to tell you. Make small progress. Make slow progress. Don't make big progress. Don't fix it. If you can give yourself the goal to make small, slow progress on this, you will be taking good care of yourself, and then you'll be able to recognize yourself pushing people away or decentering yourself in connection with others. All of it will be so much more organic and easier for you if you don't try to fix this, because it's not a problem. This is you encountering parts of yourself that you weren't really present with and you figuring out how to nurture them into your center. How is your sleep?

Aloe:               It's okay. I—

Jessica:            You sleep a lot?

Aloe:               I need a lot of sleep, I've noticed.

Jessica:            You need a lot of sleep. But do you sleep a lot?

Aloe:               Not always. Most of the time, I don't. I feel like I need nine hours of sleep. I think I get seven, if that.

Jessica:            Yeah. Yeah. And is that because you don't go to sleep on time, because you don't have quality of sleep? What is that?

Aloe:               My body wakes me up early before my alarm, regardless of what I do. And I tend to stay up a little later than I'd like.

Jessica:            Mm-hmm. So here's a trick to fuck with. It may or may not work for you. On a piece of paper, before you go to bed, write in multiples of three—nine times is fine—the time you want to wake up in the morning. Tell your body that its only job is to sleep deeply until this minute exactly, that if you wake up before this minute exactly, you failed the assignment. This is the time because what I'm seeing your system does—you're so hypervigilant, right?

Aloe:               Yeah.

Jessica:            You're, like, hypervigilant, hypervigilant, hypervigilant. So you tell your body, "Wake up at 7:00," and your body is like, "What if I don't wake up at 7:00? What if I don't wake up at 7:00? What if I don't wake up at 7:00?" So you're up at 5:00.

Aloe:               Yes. Yeah.

Jessica:            Okay. So it's a hand-to-paper process for you, and it's just writing down the number. "I'm waking up at 7:00. I'm not waking up at 6:30. This is not a 6:59 assignment. This is a 7:00 a.m. assignment."

Aloe:               Yeah.

Jessica:            Tell your body that the assignment is to sleep in till 7:00 instead of to make sure you're waking up by 7:00. Your system is like, "Well, if I don't fix it, it's not going to get fixed. If I don't wake up, it's never going to happen. You know what could happen to an alarm." Literally nothing could happen to an alarm, but your body doesn't know that.

Aloe:               Yeah.

Jessica:            Yeah.

Aloe:               Yeah.

Jessica:            Not literally nothing, but for the most part, nothing. Okay. So I feel like this advice about your sleep just popped up, and I think, hopefully, it will help. We'll see. But it's not just about the sleep. It's about you recognizing the ways in which hypervigilance takes you away from yourself, how in efforts to care for yourself—and you do make so many efforts to care for yourself—there is a part of you that tends to overshoot it, and then it costs you more than it gives you—

Aloe:               Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            —which one could maybe apply to your father as well.

Aloe:               Yeah.  I don't know what's up with him, but that might be true.

Jessica:            He's a complicated person.

Aloe:               Yeah.

Jessica:            And I do think he's not super relevant to you except for that he's literally in your body. He's your parent, right?

Aloe:               Yeah.

Jessica:            He's your genes.

Aloe:               Yeah.

Jessica:            And you have more in common with him than you're aware of because he's not there, so you can't see.

Aloe:               Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            Well-intended actions don't always end up hitting the mark, right?

Aloe:               Yeah.

Jessica:            And your desire to be self-reliant and not to be a burden on anyone is a good intention. Capricorn to Capricorn, ten stars. You know what I mean? No notes.

Aloe:               Yeah. Yeah.

Jessica:            And also, if you cannot recognize when you have reached the goal, then all you're doing is building a wall.

Aloe:               Yeah.

Jessica:            And it's a fine line. It's one brick difference between a support and a wall.

Aloe:               Yeah.

Jessica:            And your sleep is great articulation of that, in a way, right? It's like your hypervigilance is your consciousness saying, "I need to be up by this time, and you're never late." But you're also not well rested.

Aloe:               Yeah.

Jessica:            Okay. Now I'm going to pause.

Aloe:               Okay.

Jessica:            I feel like I've dropped a lot on you, and I see your system is like, "Okay. We're hitting the max here." I want to just check and see if you have any other questions, if we hit what needed to be hit.

Aloe:               Yeah, I'm just sitting with, right now—I didn't expect my father to show up, and yeah, his presence is not something I'm used to. So that's—

Jessica:            Did you leave him when you were five?

Aloe:               No. We came to join him in the U.S., and he ended up leaving, I think around the time that I was 12. You know?

Jessica:            Girl, girl, 12? Would you say 12—

Aloe:               Yeah. [crosstalk]

Jessica:            —when you became your mom's husband? Yeah?

Aloe:               Yeah. Yeah.

Jessica:            Okay. We found something.

Aloe:               [redacted]

Jessica:            Yeah. We found something. So he was in your life for the better part of your childhood?

Aloe:               Yeah. He was. He was. They separated before I was 12, but yeah, he was very much part of my life, and then he wasn't.

Jessica:            And then he was gone.

Aloe:               Then he was gone.

Jessica:            Mm-hmm. And he made no effort to stay in touch?

Aloe:               Very little effort.

Jessica:            Yeah.

Aloe:               Yeah.

Jessica:            He felt it was your responsibility. Your dad's got some fucking problems, right? Let's be direct about it.

Aloe:               Yeah.

Jessica:            There's some problems with your dad. And he also has some really good qualities. And it's easy because he left, because your mom stayed so wholly. She did not for a minute stop trying to be a really good parent to you.

Aloe:               Yeah.

Jessica:            She really stayed. And he, by contrast, became like the abandoner and the bad guy. And we're not here to dive too deep into that, but I will say that there are people who have zero redeeming qualities. Your father is not one. He has good qualities, and they're in you. The drive to be a meaningful person who lives a life with meaning to be there for other people—your dad has it. You have it. Imagine, if you were a cis guy—he's a boomer, I'm guessing, older guy?

Aloe:               Yes. Yeah.

Jessica:            Yeah. Yeah—of his generation, how might you be a little more like him or a lot more like him in terms of emotional availability?

Aloe:               Yeah, I'd probably be a lot like him.

Jessica:            Yeah, a lot. And there's something really powerful about, from your adult perspective, being able to see your dad as this guy who has these qualities, who makes choices, many of which are bad, but many of which you can actually identify with and make sense of, not as his child but as therapist adult you. Right?

Aloe:               Yeah. Yeah.

Jessica:            And that doesn't in any way minimize your lived experience. It doesn't take away from the harm he's caused—none of that. We're not justifying him. But it's more about creating more space inside of you to have all of your parts—see, some of what you're experiencing in this moment, this demoralization, this exhaustion—am I seeing that correctly?

Aloe:               Yeah.

Jessica:            Yeah—that's your mom. Your mom gets like that, eh?

Aloe:               Yes, she does.

Jessica:            Yeah. And I'm not saying that this isn't your feelings. These are your feelings. It's also her feelings. You decided before he moved away that you were going to be her biggest champion. You were going to be like head cheerleader, and you were going to protect her from the pain—

Aloe:               Yeah.

Jessica:            —she went through with your dad. And so it's like this—when I say top layer, I mean it's like layer of the earth, like it is a very thick fucking layer of everything you feel when you actually feel into your dad. But there are other feelings that are underneath that really thick layer that are more yours, and you do not need to do the work to figure out what they are right now. It is not necessary. And also, if you feel safe to, if you feel curious, you can. Sometimes I see something, and I'm like, "No, no, no. Please work on this." You actually don't have to work on this.

                        But as a psychic and not a therapist talking to you, I can see giving yourself permission to be your whole self, navigating this "I can't be like my mom. I can't be needy. I can't be like my mom. I can't be needy"—both of these things are connected to your dad because there's not only two options, like needy and sad or abandoning and gone. Right?

Aloe:               Yeah.

Jessica:            Those aren't the only two options. And you're living proof of that, because you don't abandon people. You're not just gone. But you do that to yourself, right?

Aloe:               Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            You don't bring in new, true intimacies. And so, again, the more awareness that you bring to this—and related to the more awareness that you bring to this, if you could just literally visualize for a moment—be with your feelings, but visualize a sun, like a bright, warm sun. Okay. You're doing good, and pull it into your guts and down through your hips. Okay. You just got in your head about it. You don't have to do it while I'm watching, but play with it later—

Aloe:               Okay.

Jessica:            —if it feels interesting to you.

Aloe:               Yeah.

Jessica:            But what I'm seeing—can you feel a little bit of a difference already right now?

Aloe:               Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            You pulled it in, and then you were like, "I don't know about this." And then you kind of pulled it out.

Aloe:               Yeah. Yeah.

Jessica:            It's okay. It's okay. It's good. It's good. But that was you just bringing in—just energy to your system. And so you still feel the sadness, and you still feel the messy and the complex, but it's more of your own energy. It's less of that soupy stuff from your mom.

Aloe:               Yeah. Yeah.

Jessica:            When you start to feel that feeling that you were just feeling—and  I don't know what to call it. I'm calling it soupy, but you might want to come up with a better nickname for it. I want to encourage you to, first of all, find a nickname for it and call it that.

Aloe:               Yeah.

Jessica:            And then, second of all, play with the thing of the sun because you did it really quickly, and you did it really well, and you stopped. But that's fine. If you practice it, even if you just get that much relief—I mean, that's like—you already feel a little bit better, right?

Aloe:               Yeah. Yeah.

Jessica:            So, if that is all you have to do to shift that energy, then you know it's not your trauma. It's energy—

Aloe:               Yeah.

Jessica:            —which is different.

Aloe:               Yeah.

Jessica:            I mean, they're connected, but it's not the same because trauma doesn't move that quick, right?

Aloe:               No.

Jessica:            You know. It is your damn job. You know. And so that's really great information that that feeling isn't yours—

Aloe:               Yeah.

Jessica:            —which doesn't mean you're not going to feel it a lot, every damn day—I don't know. But that's another approach. The more that you give yourself permission to have boundaries with your friends and in your life, the easier it'll be for you to notice that feeling. The more that you're like, "Oh, it's soupy. I add sun," then, also, you're like the grooves that exist inside of you that—your mental and emotional reactions, your physical reactions to that feeling—they'll get weaker. They won't be so deep. And that is fucking liberating. You know what I mean? That is liberating.

Aloe:               Yeah.

Jessica:            So, again, slow progress is the best mindset for you—

Aloe:               Okay.

Jessica:            —because you have all that Capricorn in your chart. So, if you're like, "I want to fix this this month," you're just setting yourself up for misery, right—

Aloe:               Yeah.

Jessica:            —because you'll just force yourself to work really hard. You'll go into hypervigilance, and then you're screwed.

Aloe:               Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            So, instead, you just want to be like, "I'm not looking for big progress. I'm just looking for progress, progress—just a teeny bit of progress."

Aloe:               Yeah.

Jessica:            That's it. That's the move for you. Bringing it all back to your original question, this is great. It's right on time. You know what I mean? It's good. There's nothing you need to worry about. The challenges that you're facing are the exact right challenges for you. The timing is perfect. Is this your first group or just your first group that is specifically this group?

Aloe:               It's my first process group, first one where we're free-form talking about whatever. I've done more structured groups before, and those were great. Those were fun.

Jessica:            Yeah. This'll be good, too. I think you'll like it. Running groups is good for—I mean, it's like you've got—the way your hypervigilance works, you're able to hold space for lots of people at once and track shit. Again, it's nice to have this skill set. You know what I mean?

Aloe:               Yeah. It works.

Jessica:            It really works. It's like you're doing the right job. So I think you'll enjoy it, and again, it's hard because you chose something hard on purpose.

Aloe:               Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Jessica:            So it's a good hard in that way. Now, hold on. Let me just check in with you for a second here. Okay. I have a question. Are you allowed to be sad? Okay, not what you think. What did you hear when I asked that?

Aloe:               Yeah, I—sorry. That question threw me. No, I don't think—

Jessica:            Yeah. That's what you heard.

Aloe:               I don't think I let myself be sad.

Jessica:            Yeah. You heard no, because this reading has made you sad. I want to acknowledge that. And you are having—you have this deep groove of a response of, like, "Oh God. I feel sad. What's wrong? Why am I sad? Oh no." It's like this reaction to your own vulnerability and your own tenderness, which is kind of what sad is. It's vulnerability and tenderness.

Aloe:               Yeah.

Jessica:            Your reaction is, "Fuck. What am I supposed to do with this?" And it's such a Capricorn attitude, like, "I have to do something with these feelings."

Aloe:               Mm-hmm. Not useful.

Jessica:            Yeah. "It's not useful. What am I supposed to do? Now I'm sad? Fuck." Right?

Aloe:               Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            So I want to just acknowledge that. I want to acknowledge that part of why you're sad is just because we hung out in some tender spots. Part of why you're sad you don't know. Part of why you're sad is Dad. Part of why you're sad is Mom. You have a lot of little parts. And guess what: you don't have to fix anything. Nothing's broken. You are allowed to have sad. And do you know what you would do for your partner if they came home sad?

Aloe:               Yeah. I would hold them.

Jessica:            Okay.

Aloe:   I would probably feed them.

Jessica:            Yep. A bath? Are you also a bath runner?

Aloe:   We haven't been, but that's a great—

Jessica:            Okay.

Aloe:   I think it's time to get back into those [crosstalk].

Jessica:            Yeah. Baths. Baths.

Aloe:   Baths.

Jessica:            So I'm seeing—okay. So you need, when your partner gets home, to ask them to hold you. Order food or ask them to cook for you. Or, if it feels nurturing for you to cook for yourself, okay, fine. Run yourself a bath. Okay. Do you feel the difference in your system?

Aloe:               Yeah. I don't know. I feel more open to that.

Jessica:            Mm-hmm. What was happening was you were caving in on the sad. And when we came up with a little bit of a, like, "Okay. These are things you can do"—right?

Aloe:               Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            That kind of pleased your hypervigilance. But there's another part of it.

Aloe:               [crosstalk]

Jessica:            Yeah. You love doing—I respect you. Capricorn on Capricorn violence. We're just creating lists. But the other part of it is I had tendonitis in my knee once, and my trainer—I went to a Pilates trainer or whatever, and at the end of every session, she would whisper to my healthy knee, "Teach your friend," because my healthy knee knew what to do, and my injured knee didn't. And so, when I asked you, "What would you do for your partner?" I am the Pilates instructor whispering to your knee, "Teach your friend." You know how to nurture a bitch. You know how to be kind and supportive. You know how to handle sadness with patience and tenderness and appropriateness.

Aloe:               Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            So you have the skill. You just need to reorient how you use it by using it on yourself.

Aloe:               Wow. Yeah.

Jessica:            So the next time you're having a feeling you feel "Blegh" about, be like, "Well, okay. If my partner came into the house right now feeling this way, what would I offer them?"

Aloe:               Yeah.

Jessica:            "If a client shared this feeling with me, what would my feedback be?"

Aloe:               Yeah.

Jessica:            Teach your friend.

Aloe:               Mm-hmm. Meeting myself with tenderness is going to be something.

Jessica:            That's terrible. That's like—that's the worst thing to say to a double Capricorn. My God. "Meet yourself with tenderness." But if it's your job to meet yourself with tenderness, you can work with that. You know what I mean?

Aloe:               Yeah. That's an action item. I can do that.

Jessica:            It is. It's an action item. And it doesn't just help you.

Aloe:               Yeah.

Jessica:            It gives you the energy field when you're supporting your clients of being able to embody the energetics of doing it.

Aloe:               Yeah.

Jessica:            And you can feel the difference as a therapist, right, when you're giving people advice that you've never taken, that you're like, "Nope. You should do this. I can't do it, but you try," versus when you're like, "Oh, I actually hold energy in this. I've done this. I've practiced this"?

Aloe:               Yeah.

Jessica:            It's just different, right?

Aloe:               Yeah.

Jessica:            And it's not like we should only give advice of things we do. That's ridiculous. But this is something, working with trauma, that will deepen your work as well, right, being able to have that field of knowing how to nurture yourself, even when it's your instinct to be managerial?

Aloe:               Mm-hmm. Yeah. Absolutely.

Jessica:            Yeah. Yeah. So bath, food, snuggles, set.

Aloe:               Thank you so much.

Jessica:            I really appreciate you staying with this because I know we went into crevices you were not planning.

Aloe:               Yeah. Yeah. That was more than I expected, and I'm very grateful. Thank you, Jessica.

Jessica:            It's so my pleasure.