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

Elena:              Thank you so much, Jessica. Okay. I'm going to read what I sent in. I said, "Hi, Jessica. I think I keep triggering my therapists, such that they don't want to work with me. I've had one say she can't help me, another who stopped returning my emails, and now a third who said she can only help me if I'm being open to the process, which she thinks I'm not doing." And actually, since I wrote the question, she emailed me saying she doesn't want to work with me, and she referred me out. So I said, "Help. I'm obviously the common factor in these scenarios, but I'm confused about why this keeps happening, and I am in need of therapeutic support. I'd be so grateful for your insight on where I'm going wrong."

Jessica:            This is such a bananas situation. It's a bananas situation, right? Has anything like this happened to you before?

Elena:              No, I guess just the several times with the therapists, but yeah.

Jessica:            Okay. So this has happened to you with therapists in the past before this moment?

Elena:              Well, I think over the last maybe seven months or something, because I had—I've worked with a lot of therapists over my life, mainly talk therapy, CBT. I always felt like it wasn't really going that deep, and so I wanted to do a modality that just felt deeper. So I got an EMDR therapist who was on my insurance. We did a few sessions, and then essentially what I understood is she was telling me I was being resistant to the process and she couldn't help me. And then I went to another—

Jessica:            Wait. Let me slow you down. Let me slow you down.

Elena:              Yeah. Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            She said that in the context of a session or in an email?

Elena:              During a session.

Jessica:            And when she said that, did you ask any questions?

Elena:              No, because I had brought up with her—I had verbalized—she had done, I think, a visualization activity with me or something like that, and I was playing along with all of the things. But then I would verbalize to her, "Hey, I'm feeling resistant about this," you know, kind of like, "I don't want you so deep in my mind. I notice in my body just a lot of resistance," which to me is something—okay, good therapeutic material, you know?

Jessica:            Yeah. Yeah.

Elena:              But she, I think, got a little bit upset or offended or—I felt that she was almost offended, like I was really telling her that she couldn't hold good space or something, and then—so she just basically said, "I can't help you." Yeah. And then I moved on to another therapist, which—that one—nothing happened, I think just—I told her what happened with the EMDR one. She seemed a little bit shocked. But there was no breakdown with her, but then I tried to get on her books again, and then she didn't respond. But I kind of didn't pursue it because I was like, "Oh my God. Maybe she doesn't like me, just like the other therapist."

Jessica:            Right.

Elena:              And then this latest one was a somatic therapist that I had a first session with that just went really badly.

Jessica:            And so, in the session that went poorly—and let me just get ahead of this because I can tell I'm going to forget—we're not sharing your birth information. We're keeping privacy, and that's all that people need to know. Okay. So, in this third session, the third therapist—you only had one session. And when you say it went badly, did it go badly for you? Did you not like her or like her process? Did she say something critical to you about your—what happened?

Elena:              This was my first time doing somatic therapy. I didn't really know what it entailed. But—sorry. Let me just think for a second.

Jessica:            Yeah. Take your time. Yeah, it's a lot.

Elena:              I'm a little nervous. Yeah. Sorry.

Jessica:            Yeah, that's fair. And we're diving into something really vulnerable. So hang out. No rush.

Elena:              Yeah.

Jessica:            Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Elena:              Thank you.

Jessica:            Absolutely.

Elena:              Yeah, and I almost feel bad saying it because I'm like, "Oh, I'm putting my version on blast, and it's not fair." But yeah. I told her a bit about my life, some heavy stuff. And then we went into some somatic exercises. I cried a little bit, got kind of vulnerable. But sort of throughout the session, she was asking, "How are you feeling? How does that make you feel?" I don't want to exaggerate, but it must have been like 40 or 50 times—

Jessica:            Wow.

Elena:              —that she asked this question. And I just started to feel like it was way too much because she also was asking it over quite mundane things, like, "Oh, here, I'm drawing this chart on a paper. How does it make you feel that I've drawn this?" I'm like, "I feel nothing." You know?

Jessica:            Right.

Elena:              So then I just started to feel that same kind of resistance or that worry of, "All right. Maybe this person is not a person who can hold me." And also, this was me sort of after many years of doing therapy that I felt wasn't really moving the needle. I'm like, "All right. I'm going to shell out $250 a session. I'm going to do the big thing." So maybe I had too high of expectations. But yeah, so I told her, "Okay. How I'm feeling is, actually, I'm starting to feel a lot of resistance to that question. And could you just ask me that question a lot less, please?" And then I could see her get, again, upset in a way that I feel like it's not just a therapist thinking, "Oh, this person is difficult. Maybe I don't want to work with them."

It's almost like I feel like I'm personally emotionally triggering them. That's why I used that word, "trigger." And she just seemed to get quite upset, and she said, "I have to ask you these questions. I'm not a psychic." I actually thought about you in that moment [indiscernible 00:06:06] psychics. But she said, "I'm not a psychic. I have to ask you that." And I said, "I appreciate that you have to check in with me sometimes. It's just it's too much. I need a lot less." Yeah, and then it just sort of devolved. It sort of devolved, and then—but you know, she said, "It's fine. We'll have another session." But then she emailed me after, saying that she was referring me out. Yeah.

Jessica:            Did you take the referral?

Elena:  No. I really—after that, I kind of took it as a sign of, "All right. Maybe I'm"—

Jessica:            Pull back a bit.

Elena:              Yeah. Pull back from the whole search for therapy. And I kind of decided maybe I just need to do more embodied things to help me feel pleasure in my body.

Jessica:            Let's dig, okay? Let's dig because this is really interesting. And I want to just reflect back to you that—and there could be a lot of different reasons why you're doing this, but you are describing your experience, and also, you're kind of decentering your experience. You're trying to be so fair. I just noticed that even when you're like, "Oh, I feel bad putting this person on blast"—you're not putting this person on blast. No one knows their name. No one knows what state you're in. Putting someone on blast requires naming of names, right?

                        But because everything is so confidential and you're having a hard time just acknowledging your experience, the truth of the matter is therapists are people. You know what I mean? Therapists are people, and they have personalities, and that's a thing. And also, you're paying somebody for a service. And if you say, "Hey, this is moving too fast," or, "Hey, you're checking in too much," you have a right to. In fact, as a counselor—I'm not a therapist, obvi. But as a counselor, I love it when people tell me their boundaries and their needs because then I can work more efficiently with that person. But not all people, not all therapists, have that preference and that capacity. So I want to name that.

                        I also want to name I think that most people expect therapists to be psychics. I think that most people expect therapists to just know them and get them and say the right thing in the right way at the right time, and psychics aren't therapists, and therapists aren't psychics, and that's a thing. Okay. So I'm just throwing all that into the mix.

                        I'm going to go psychic on you, okay? So I'm going to have you say your full name out loud.

Elena:              [redacted]

Jessica:            Okay. Okay. Okay. Hold on. Hold on, now, girl. Okay. Hold on. So you have been in many therapeutic relationships that, maybe looking back, you're like, "Oh, I didn't go as deep as I wanted," or, "It wasn't as successful as I wanted," but they were healthy, consensual relationships, correct?

Elena:              Yeah, yeah, yeah. Yeah.

Jessica:            Yeah. There's this larger theme going on around advocating for yourself that is a through line in your life at this time? Is that true or false?

Elena:              Yes, if I can give a little bit of a nuanced answer.

Jessica:            Yeah.

Elena:              It's sort of like I feel that I'm not terrible at advocating for myself; I just feel like there's a lot of consequences, and this is kind of what I wanted to seek therapy about, is the ways that I struggle in relationships, including community groups that I've been a part of where it's just so—God, it's so hard for me to even find the words. And I journaled about this so much before this session—but almost feeling like I'm read as, like, a toxic, problematic person.

Jessica:            In what context?

Elena:              I think community group experiences that I've had. In the past, I've done a lot of group-based activism. That used to be my whole life until I stepped away from that in 2021 because the dynamics were so, so, so intense. To me, I'm sort of feeling like I'm advocating for my basic needs or the basic needs of the team or whatever. But then I get sort of coated as this really problematic or toxic person. And then—so, in the therapeutic space, even I felt like that was almost replicated. I have words to advocate for myself. I can identify, kind of, the dynamics in a room and how I'm feeling, and I can say the words. But then I feel like there's this gap of misunderstanding. I don't know if I'm articulating it accurately.

Jessica:            Yeah. You are. You are. You are. Okay. I'm going to make you share a specific situation in a minute, okay? But first I want to say some things about your birth chart, okay?

Elena:              Okay.

Jessica:            You are an Aquarius Rising, and your Moon is conjunct your Rising in Aquarius in the first house. So the Moon could be conjunct your Rising from the twelfth or the first. For you, it's the first. And what that means is your heart is on your sleeve. People can see your emotions. You think you're hiding your emotions. You're not hiding your emotions. Sorry. It is like a Moon in the first house thing. People can see how you feel. And that Moon in Aquarius—Aquarius Rising—can make you sometimes come across as calculated, right? Does that make sense?

Elena:              Yeah. Sometimes I just feel like I'm sharing feedback, and then people think I'm orchestrating a coup d'etat or something.

Jessica:            Right. Right, right, right. And it is, in part, because that is how your emotions function, right? You have this kind of organized chaos nature. That's the thing I love about Aquarius and people who don't like Aquarius hate about Aquarius, is that it is organized chaos. It's, "I can perceive many things on many levels at once. Here it is. I'm going to articulate it to you." Right?

Elena:              Yeah.

Jessica:            Yeah. Okay. So we're just going to hang out there. Now, Pluto is at the top of your chart. It's not quite conjunct your Midheaven. It's in Scorpio because you are a millennial. And it is also opposite to your Venus and your Sun.

[dog barking]

And so, when people have Pluto opposite Venus and/or the Sun—and we know there's a dog, and we're cool with it. We're moving on. Don't even worry about it—that Pluto opposition to Venus—

[dog barking]

—the Sun often brings about power struggles. Do you need to get her, or—

Elena:              Yeah. Let me just—

Jessica:            No problem. No problem at all.

Elena:              Really quick. Okay.

Jessica:            Yeah. No worries. It's hot for the dog. We're holding space for dogs. Don't even worry about it. But this thing with the dog is actually a little bit of a trigger for you because part of that Pluto at the top of the chart opposite Venus, opposite the Sun, and Pluto, Venus, the Sun all square the Moon—so you have a T-square pointing towards the Moon conjunct the Rising—is you like to be controlled in how you express what you're feeling, your vulnerability, everything. You have the drive to control self-expression. True or false?

Elena:              Maybe. I mean, the thing I crave the most in my life is not being in control of how I express. You know?

Jessica:            Interesting. So you crave it, and do you also feel that you prioritize it and that's how you engage? Or you crave it because that's not what you experience?

Elena:              Yeah, maybe it's the second one. Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            Yeah. That makes sense. I mean, it's a fixed-sign T-square. You know? Fixed signs are the zodiac signs that happen in the middle of a season. It's when it's like summer is summer. You know what I mean? Winter is winter. It is a fixed seasonal moment. And so, for you, adaptability—which is like a keyword to Aquarius, and you're a double Aquarius, right? Adaptability is a big thing for you. You are incredibly adaptable on your terms, in your way, at your moment.

Elena:              Yeah.

Jessica:            Yeah, as opposed to necessarily at the beginning of a relationship. So let's talk about, for you, therapy. Talk therapy—I'm glad that you're super into talk therapy. I'm actually a huge fan of talk therapy and many other kinds of therapies. But for somebody like you, you could talk circles around a therapist. You're really good at organizing your narrative, having insights, being deep, having capacity. You're willing to be challenged. And so there's a phase of development where talk therapy is the best possible thing for you because you're learning how to unpack complexity, right?

Elena:              Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            But you're right. At a certain point, you're just talking. You're just narrating, right? And the thing that has been missing for you is the emotional part because your T-square points to your Moon. So, for you, the big fucking work in life is the emotional stuff.

Elena:              Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            When you've got such a strong Pluto, power struggles are kind of just like a part of life a little bit.

Elena:              Yeah.

Jessica:            And so how you emotionally metabolize power, powerlessness—all of that kind of stuff—is very important for you. And that's just as a rule. Now, in the context of a therapeutic relationship—because, of course, my brain started to go to all of your relationships because you did mention community stuff.

Elena:              Yeah.

Jessica:            But I want to stay with this therapy theme because, in the context of how you show up—tell me if I'm seeing this correctly or not, okay? You desperately, like deeply fucking very much, want to be seen.

Elena:              Absolutely.

Jessica:            Okay. True. Okay. Great. And you go into therapy with that full-in-your-chest ready.

Elena:              Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            When people get close to vulnerable, tender spots, agitation emerges in your system really strong.

Elena:              Yeah, when I feel like the container is not solid—

Jessica:            Right.

Elena:              —because I have experienced that moment when I feel the container is rock solid, and it's no problem for me.

Jessica:            Right. So once you get to a point where there's trust established over time is what you're talking about?

Elena:              Yeah. I mean, some people, even with time, they're not going to get there with me, you know?

Jessica:            Absolutely. Yes.

Elena:              But other people, yeah, there's—I have mentors. I have teachers that, you know, [crosstalk]—

Jessica:            You go deep.

Elena:              —trust and—yeah.

Jessica:            Have you ever experienced somebody trying to get in there, get real deep with you, when you've only known them for a month and you're comfortable with it? And we're not talking about sexual relationships. We're talking about other kinds.

Elena:              Oh, like not just therapists, just anyone?

Jessica:            Therapists—yeah, therapists or community members. I'm not talking about, like, intimate intimate.

Elena:              I don't know. It's hard because I almost want to say, yeah, I'm ready for that from minute 1 of—

Jessica:            Ready for that from minute 1. Okay. But you were born in '89, so it means you're how old now, 30-something?

Elena:              36.

Jessica:            Okay. So you're old enough to have had experiences.

Elena:              Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            So what I'm trying to get at is, when somebody steps into intimacy with you, like in the first month, it looks to me like it would kind of trigger you unless it's done in the perfect way, which is a very, very rare thing. So my sense, looking at your birth chart, is that this would be something that is not—even though you go to therapists and at the beginning being like, "Let's fucking go," you're actually not ready for all-in at week 1, session 3, whatever it may be.

Elena:              Okay.

Jessica:            That's kind of what I'm seeing. Does that feel right, or does that not feel right? And it can not feel right.

Elena:              It feels important to lean into and, I think, maybe extends—yeah—to other relationships in my life where I know I want to connect with the people I have the lightning strike with, and then other people, somehow,  I don't know how to navigate fully. And so I sort of—I don't know. I isolate. I have trouble. I have trouble. I have trouble, with all these things, keeping people in my life in general, and from not just community but also friends and, yeah, all of it. So yeah. Yeah. But I'm really hearing, yeah, maybe the importance of the slowness. It makes sense in a therapeutic context, I suppose. It's hard for me to even imagine how that plays out, like what behaviors are different than what I'm already doing in the context of community or friends. Yeah.

Jessica:            Yeah.

Elena:              I hope I'm not being too squirrelly about it, but—

Jessica:            You're being yourself and—no, you're being yourself, and that's what I want you to be. You're good.

Elena:              Okay.

Jessica:            You're good, girl. You're good. What I'm witnessing you doing in this conversation—I'm sorry. I just looked away, and now I'm seeing emotion coming up. Do you want me to pause? Tell me what's going on.

Elena:              No, no, no. No, it's great. It's great. Yeah, I'm just really happy to be here.

Jessica:            Oh, good. Okay. Good. Okay. That makes me happy.

Elena:              Yeah. Yeah.

Jessica:            But I'm witnessing something happening, right? You came to this reading 100 percent like, "Fucking help me with this, please," wanting to be seen, wanting this. And when I ask you questions, all this self-awareness that you have—it's not rising to the surface and easily accessible to you. Does that feel right?

Elena:              Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Jessica:            Yeah. I mean, it's like I'm watching you struggle to find the words, to find the right words, to find the precise words.

Elena:              Yeah.

Jessica:            And I see, when I look at you psychically—because I can't help but look at you psychically, which—again, the therapist, it's not their job. It's not their skill set, right? But as I look at you psychically, I see, first of all, a very beautiful wall. Oh my God. It's so beautiful, it doesn't look like a wall. It doesn't look like a wall at all. But it is a wall, okay? I see a very beautiful wall, and honestly, I can't see on the other side of it. I'm not trying, because I respect walls. I'm a fan. I mean, I'm not—fuck the wall, but you know what I mean. I mean, on this level, I like a boundary. I see the boundary.

                        And that wall is so vulnerable and so tender that your mind navigates the boundary. Your mind is navigating the boundary. So it's kind of limiting your access to your own emotions, which isn't to say you're not in emotionality. You very much are. But you're not embodied in emotionality, so it feels chaotic. So you used the word "swirling," I think. That makes sense with what I'm seeing. It feels chaotic and disorienting, and it has the effect of making you shut down more so the wall gets thicker and taller. And it's confusing to you because you're not doing it. It's not your plan. And it's not even necessarily in reaction to me. It is in reaction to me, and also, this is a pattern that I'm seeing for you.

Elena:              Yeah. And it is confusing because I'm like, "No, Jessica, hop on in. Here's the gate right here." I invited you.

Jessica:            Yeah. You invited me in, and you invited those therapists in. And you know, I mean, with the third therapist, as you were describing it, I was like—you were like halfway through; you were like, "Oh shit. This isn't going to work for me." And so then she was the one who was kind of a dick about it and, honestly, unprofessional kind of a dick about it, how it sounds to me. But also, you knew it wasn't a match for you, and you were just trying to be a good sport through the first session. And I think that's part of searching for the right counselor of any kind, right?

                        That said, this is a pattern for you. And it's so unconscious and reactive—it's a reaction. It's not intentional. It's not what you think you're doing—that you don't notice it until somebody's like, "I can't trust you. I don't know where you're at.  I don't know what you really mean."

Elena:              Yeah.

Jessica:            And is that what happens, essentially?

Elena:              Yes. I think so.

Jessica:            So what's happening is—okay. Here we fucking go. Okay. Are you in contact with both your parents?

Elena:              Yes.

Jessica:            Mm-hmm. And are they together?

Elena:              No. No, no, no.

Jessica:            Okay.

Elena:              They divorced when I was ten.

Jessica:            Great. Good for your mom. That is good.

Elena:              Yes. Yeah.

Jessica:            Yeah. But you are in contact with both of them. Are you close to either or both of them?

Elena:              I'm super close to my mom. I've actually lived with her since the beginning of the pandemic, and I just moved out a couple of weeks ago—temporary. I'm doing a pet sit for a few months for the summer. And my dad—you know, we talk maybe every few months or something, but he's not really in my life.

Jessica:            Okay. He's not tight for you. And in regards to your mom, are you kind of a caretaker emotionally for her?

Elena:              Absolutely.

Jessica:            Yeah. And does she have kind of a mean streak?

Elena:              I wouldn't say mean, no, not at all. But she has these intense feelings around abandonment that I feel that I trigger if I'm not showing up for her in a way that she's needing in that moment.

Jessica:            So I'll just give my words to it. Your mother weaponizes her emotionality.

Elena:              100 percent. Yeah.

Jessica:            Yeah. Okay. And so, in your efforts to not be a perpetrator and not harm other people, you're like, "Okay. I have to show up. I have to show up. I have to show up. I have to show up. I have to show up in service, in service, in service, in service, in service. Right?

Elena:              Yes, yes, yes.

Jessica:            And when your emotions come up, you're like, "Oh fuck. I can't weaponize them. I can't weaponize them. I can't weaponize them." And so you're constantly shoving, shoving, shoving because you can't weaponize them. And what happens is you're so good at shoving those emotions that you're striving to not weaponize and you're striving to not use to be a perpetrator to other people on the other side of that fucking wall, into the bricks of that wall, that what ends up happening is you are dislocated from yourself.

Elena:              Yeah. Yeah.

Jessica:            Okay. So your mom and you are tight and close, as long as you show up for her in the exact and specific ways that she likes and needs, regardless of what's happening with and for you.

Elena:              Yeah. Yeah. She's on her healing journey, but that doesn't take away from what you said.

Jessica:            Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. So, before you were able to validate your lived experience, you had to first uplift her lived experience. She trained you to do that. Good job. You have learned the lesson. Always center her feelings, her needs, and her pain over your lived experience, your feelings, and your needs. And here is the fucking rub: you do that with everyone, until the moment—and it's an unpredictable moment—when you're like, "Fuck this. I deserve to have emotions." And it all comes up and out.

Elena:              Yeah.

Jessica:            Yeah. So, sometimes, the "fuck this" comes up in defense of others.

Elena:              Yes. Yes.

Jessica:            And sometimes it comes up in defense of the self, right?

Elena:              Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            But whatever the context is, you go from diplomatic, very careful with your words, very intentional, to full—your mother in a meltdown.

Elena:              Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I think so.

Jessica:            Yeah? I don't want to make it if it's not true.

Elena:              No, I think it is true because I'm just really not someone who identifies with burning bridges or that kind of thing, and yet, when I look at the path behind me, there's just, you know—

Jessica:            Charred bridges.

Elena:              That's exactly what I was thinking of, and I couldn't find the words. Yes. It is. Charred bridges.

Jessica:            Yep. I could see it. You showed it to me very clearly. Charred bridges. You could technically traverse some of them, but it would cost you. You'd be full of soot.

Elena:              And I just don't know how it happened.

Jessica:            Okay. So the "I don't know how it happened" I can speak to, because I do know how it happened, okay?

Elena:              Please. Yeah.

Jessica:            But the problem is to unpack this requires speaking critically of your mother.

Elena:              Okay. Go for it.

Jessica:            And I'm going to be totally honest. You are down for it cognitively; you are not down for it energetically.

Elena:              Okay.

Jessica:            Your job is to protect and defend your mother, and it is one of your survival mechanisms in this moment. And so the parts of you that are her protector and also the parts of you that are just like her—like, "You need to support me in the exact way I need in the moment I need it, or you've abandoned me"—right?

Elena:              Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            That shit is like the touchiest shit that you shit. It is the touchiest of all the things.

Elena:              Yeah.

Jessica:            And I am of the mind—I'm not 100 percent convicted, but I am of the mind that these therapeutic relationships—and "relationship" is a real big word for what happened, but these therapeutic dynamics, I'll say, came up because you actually decided on some emotional level that you wanted to challenge these patterns inside of you.

Elena:              Yep. Absolutely.

Jessica:            And so the Universe was like, "Okay. This is what you believe." You say what you need, and you're abandoned. You say what you need, and you're punished.

Elena:              Yes.

Jessica:            And so, whenever a pattern comes up and starts really just being shoved in your face, that's when you know you're engaged in healing it. And what most of us do most of the time is we start—you may have heard me say this. We go through our tunnel of shit, and then the shit gets stinky and shitty. And what happens is we're like, "Oh no. This is shitty. I'm going to turn around and go back where I came from." And we never get through it, but we feel like we've done all the work. But we haven't. We just started to engage with the pattern, and it's shitty.

                        For whatever it's worth, everyone has shitty patterns. I mean, everyone has Pluto in their chart. And I used the word "shitty" on purpose because it governs fucking defecations and other things. Okay?

Elena:              Yeah.

Jessica:            So I want to just acknowledge, first of all, that this trauma pattern emerging—and it is a trauma pattern because this is a trauma that is not—we couldn't call it PTSD, because you're still in it. There's no NTSD, now-traumatic disorder. But you're still living with your mom; you're still very much in the pattern.

Elena:              Well, I'm not in—I'm not living with her [crosstalk]—

Jessica:            Not technically in this week, but you are—

Elena:              For a few months, but yeah.

Jessica:            Okay. Okay. For a few months. And so it is within the realm of possibility that you might, from this animal sitting, move somewhere else, or no, it's not?

Elena:              That's my wish. I don't really have the dollars to make that happen right now.

Jessica:            Okay.

Elena:              But it's my wish to no longer live at my mom's house, but it's very easy to imagine how I have to be back there at some point. Yeah.

Jessica:            Okay, because living with your mom is really hard—

Elena:              Yeah.

Jessica:            —because it's very easy—

Elena:              Yeah.

Jessica:            —because everyone knows their roles. Everyone slips back into them. It's the devil you know. And you love the devil you know. You are a fan, as a fixed-sign girlie, of the devil you know. So hang out here. Let's hang out here. I'm just hanging out here with you because we got to something. We got to something real, and you're down. You're down. You're still here, but can you feel your body's activation?

Elena:              Yeah.

Jessica:            Yeah. There's a way that you're almost kind of holding your breath. Your body is in this bracing-for-impact state.

Elena:              Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            Okay. Breathe into that. Good on you. Good. So, as you breathe into it, what you can notice is you're sad. So, a second ago, you weren't feeling sad. You were feeling like, "Brace for impact. Okay, I'm ready. Let's do the work." But actually, there's sadness. And sadness is your least favorite emotion. And your mom has done this really good modeling of—she is a person who can experience all her emotions, but she also goes into victimhood really quickly with her emotions.

Elena:              Absolutely.

Jessica:            Yeah. And so you do that, too. And also, you don't do that. They're both true.

Elena:              Yes. I think so.

Jessica:            Mm-hmm. Oh, I pushed it. I pushed it past where you were comfortable already. Damnit, Jessica.

Elena:              Oh no.

Jessica:            No, no. No, it's good. It's good. Okay. You said, "Oh no," and that is you. That is so you to say. You're like, "I want to keep going. No. Don't tell me we pushed past." But what I want you to know is I, as a psychic—and a therapist can't do this, right? But I, as a psychic, can feel—because your body language is not changing. Your face—you're smiling. Your body language is open. I can feel your drive and your ambition towards healing—10 out of 10. And true healing requires the heart, right? It requires being emotionally present. Your ability to stay emotionally present is not a 10, and that's not a bad thing. It's the reason why you want therapy, right?

Elena:              Yeah.

Jessica:            Have you ever done Pilates?

Elena:              Oh yeah. Huge [crosstalk]—

Jessica:            Okay. Great. Okay. So, then, this is going to be a really good metaphor for you. You know how, in Pilates, there's a million exercises they have you do, but the second you lose your core, you're supposed to reduce the intensity of the exercise? You're supposed to keep it in your core, right? And it's not about doing the biggest exercise; it's about what you can do from your core. Yeah?

Elena:              Yes. Yeah.

Jessica:            Okay.

Elena:              It's funny that you mention that, because I have done so much Pilates, but I still have such a week psoas on one side, so I feel like I get to that burnout point so quickly in Pilates.

Jessica:            Yep. Yep.

Elena:              Even after years, I can't do all the exercises.

Jessica:            I am zero percent surprised because your core and your emotions are connected. So what you do is you're gaming the system. You do it in therapy. Sometimes you do it in community. And you do it alone with yourself in your journal, and you do it in Pilates. You're like, "I'm going to just push myself further than I can. I can just do it. I can just do it. I'll just do it. I'll deal with the core later. I'm going to push through this exercise." And so you don't build the foundation; you build around the foundation.

Elena:              Yeah.

Jessica:            And you know what? Capitalism fucking loves it. Colonialism loves it. But it sucks for you as a person. So then you're like, "Oh, I've stayed with this Pilates practice, but I still struggle with the basics." It's because, at the beginning, you pushed yourself to be advanced and you didn't give yourself a lot of space to be beginning.

Elena:              Yeah.

Jessica:            Now, the same thing is true in terms of emotions, is that, yeah, of course, I can keep on pushing you, and we can have a deeper conversation. And I can go into your mom and this and that, and you will cognitively stay with me every step. But all of your survival mechanisms will start coming up, and you will have a difficulty staying emotionally present because we're pushing past where you know how to stay present and kind to yourself. And you are not to apologize. You are not to feel bad about that shit. I have that place. You have that place. That place moves, and the truth is most people never deal with that. And that's why people like strongmen leaders. It's because they match the mean voice in their heads.

                        The reason why empathy is hard to sustain is because, at a certain age, if you don't have empathy for yourself, true empathy for others is hard to achieve. Now we bring it back to the personal to say you do need a shrink who's really comfortable with going slow. I also want to reflect to you that I asked you a number of times, like, "Does this make sense to you? Does this vibe?" And were you triggered at all when I've asked so far? You're allowed to be triggered by me. I'm not going to be offended.

Elena:              No, no. Not triggered—I think just—I don't know what is the—I go into this space of being like, "Huh. I'm not sure. I'll have to think about that for a few weeks." And there's no way for us—

Jessica:            Okay. Okay. Good. Good. I'm glad. I'm glad. I'm glad. So here's what I'm going to say about that. Now, I'm psychic, right? I'm psychic. And I'm asking you these questions, and all I need, really, is for you to find the answer inside of you and not to articulate the answer, because I'm psychic, right?

Elena:              Sure.

Jessica:            Now, I still asked a million times, "Does this make sense for you? Does this make sense for you?"

Elena:              Yeah.

Jessica:            Anyone who's going to be a good match for you is going to have to ask that question a million times because you leave yourself. You abandon yourself. So you don't know if it makes sense. And if you don't know if it makes sense, then we're moving too fast.

Elena:              I see.

Jessica:            So here's the fucking rub. You are incredibly intelligent. You want things to move fast. You're incredibly ambitious. You want to fucking heal yesteryear. Not yesterday, yesteryear. You're ready.

Elena:              Yes.

Jessica:            And your emotions, like every other human's emotions, don't work like that.

Elena:              Okay.

Jessica:            And so the agitation that you feel when somebody says, "Does this make sense for you?" is because it's that person saying, "Notice how you feel." And you're like, "Fuck.  I don't know what I think." But nobody's asking you what you think. We're asking you how you feel. And so it's reflecting back to you you've left the body. You don't know how you feel. And that's fucking annoying. I also find it very annoying when practitioners do that with me. For whatever it's worth, you are not alone. It's not a failure. It's about being curious about the irritation that it provokes because that irritation is a survival mechanism.

Elena:              Yeah.

Jessica:            It's defense. And what is it defending you from? It's defending you from vulnerability. It's defending you from feeling what you're actually feeling. And it turns out that a fair amount of what you're feeling is sad because there's not room for you. And that actually comes from Mom, and it doesn't come from community or from the therapist. You might experience the pattern activated with therapists and community, but you kind of came to your adulthood with that because your mom obsessively loves you.

Elena:              Yes.

Jessica:            She's obsessed with you. She thinks you're the best, the smartest, the coolest. She's so into the fact that you are so different and you are so smart. Your mom fucking loves you.

Elena:              She really does.

Jessica:            Yeah. You were a wanted child. She was in love with you before you came out of her body. That woman fucking loves you. And also, she wants a therapist and a husband and a [crosstalk].

Elena:              Yep. Yep.

Jessica:            Yeah. Yeah. And you have always been that for her. And that is unkind. It's manipulative. It's cruel. Now, is she doing these things on purpose and she knows better, but she's doing them anyways? No. Motivation is an important thing to consider, right—

Elena:              Yeah.

Jessica:            —because I can come at you and hit you with a hammer on purpose because, fuck you, I'm hitting you with a hammer, or I can be holding a hammer and hit you by accident. Very different things. Either way, you got hit with a hammer.

Elena:              Yeah.

Jessica:            Your mom looks at you and feels love. And if you don't reflect the feeling she's having in that moment back to her, she's like, "Oh my God. Oh no. Oh God, no. Oh no. What does this mean? Have you left me? Do you not love me? Wait. I didn't do anything wrong. Wait. What?" She goes into fucking chaos.

Elena:              Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            And so you have, in your relationship with your mom—which is your safest, most beloved relationship in your life—

Elena:              Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            —you have this pattern of constantly needing to micromanage how you're presenting how you feel.

Elena:              Right. Yes.

Jessica:            Yes. And so, when me or a therapist says to you, "Okay. Well, how do you feel?" you go straight into that coping mechanism. You're micromanaging how you feel, what it means, how to show it to the therapist. What is it going to mean to the therapist? Right? You go there.

Elena:              Yeah. Very overwhelming.

Jessica:            So overwhelming. And this is where it's so hard to have an Aquarius Moon because the Moon is emotions. It's digestion. And Aquarius is a zodiac assign associated with the nervous system. So, Aquarius Moon people, you have your nervous system and your emotions kind of very connected. So there's—when I could feel we were starting to push up against the place where you have resistance and it's not as safe for you, it's like nervous system activation but in your tummy, not in your head.

Elena:              Yeah. Yeah. Totally.

Jessica:            So your nervous system comes online, and then you have a series of learned behaviors for coping with that. You go into your head. You start thinking. You start trying to figure out what the right thing to say is, and what is the truth of the situation—all that kind of shit. What I want to give you the advice to do is to practice noticing when you start to reach that point where you're kind of holding your breath, and you're like, "Okay. Push me. Let's go." You have it in community work. You have it in friendship at times. And you have it with therapists, like, "I want to do the work. Let's go. Let's go." But you're always holding your breath. There's a little bit of nervous system activation. If you can practice noticing that feeling, then you can do the second step.

Elena:              Okay.

Jessica:            And I know you, Pilates who doesn't do staying in the core—you don't want to start with the first step. But if you don't do the first step, the second step doesn't work—just hot tip, okay?

Elena:              Yeah.

Jessica:            The second step is taking a breath into your belly or wherever it is that you're holding tight and being like, "Oh, okay. I can mentally keep going, but emotionally, I actually think this is—it's pushing me. It's pushing the place where I am still present. I'm having a hard time staying in my core." We'll use Pilates language, okay?

Elena:              Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            "I'm feeling my core tremble here. This is a place where, if I push the exercise further, I'm going to lose my core." The pushback that I do think is authentic that—you do have pushback, and that's not going to be a match for all therapists. Okay. Fine. But the pushback that they're seeing—it's just this pattern of you staying in your head. You abandon yourself. You go into your head. You're looking for the perfect answer. And so what that means is that you're not in the emotions anymore, and then you are unconsciously trying to control the situation to mitigate damage.

Elena:              Sure.

Jessica:            Right? And again, this is all learned from your mom. And it's really—you know, if somebody is a shitty parent or really isn't very kind to you, it's easy to be like, "Fuck you, Dad," or, "I don't fuck with this. This is not"—but when somebody loves you and you are the center of their world, it's much harder to hold space for, "My mother loves me. I love my mother. I value our relationship. She lives and breathes for our relationship. And also, at the same time, she is a person who has problems, and I've organized myself around her needs and problems. And that doesn't actually work for me if I want to be different than my mom." And you do want to be different than your mom.

Elena:              So badly, Jessica. Please light the way for me.

Jessica:            I know. I know.

Elena:              That's really what motivates my healing journey, is [crosstalk]—

Jessica:            That's good.

Elena:              —I can't be 60 and have this frame of mind, you know?

Jessica:            Good. Okay. Good. Okay. Good. Oh, you're going to fucking hate this, okay? Let me just see if I'm seeing this right. Yeah. Nine years old. Oh, you said your parents divorced as ten, so shit must have been real bad at nine because I'm seeing, when you hit that wall, that wall inside of you that says, "I can't keep my core anymore. I'm losing it. I'm losing my ability to stay present"—that part of you is nine years old. The coping mechanism is a nine-year-old's coping mechanism—not as evolved as the rest of you, let's say. And therefore, it's that tweeny, defensive, panicky emotion set that happens at that age, right—

Elena:              Yeah.

Jessica:            —where your world was being shattered, and it was out of your control. And yet, somehow, you were still like the mature adult in the situation.

Elena:              Sure.

Jessica:            Yeah. And do you have siblings?

Elena:              Yes—

Jessica:            Must be brother.

Elena:              —one older sister. Older by a year.

Jessica:            Oh, sister.

Elena:              Yeah, but she's Genderqueer, also.

Jessica:            Okay.

Elena:              Yeah.

Jessica:            Okay. Somehow, I just don't see her in this. So she was not the center of this at all?

Elena:              Of what happened when we were kids?

Jessica:            No, that's not what I'm getting at. That's a good question, though. What I'm seeing is the role that your mother has you playing—I don't see that she has that on your sister. Is that correct? This is like all eyes on you.

Elena:              No. Yeah, they have a completely different relationship. Yeah.

Jessica:            Night and day. So you're the savior child. You're the one who's supposed to be her perfect kid.

Elena:              Yeah.

Jessica:            And so we're back to nine years old. So there's this part of you that emerges, and it came up in our session, not as intensely as it came up in the therapy sessions. But it did come up in our session, and it's like, "I know that I want to say no here, but I don't actually believe I have a right to say no here."

Elena:              Yeah.

Jessica:            And this also comes up in community when you're working with comrades and peers and such.

Elena:              Yeah.

Jessica:            So what happens is your behavior is mystifying to other people because they don't expect it, because you're so controlled and articulate and all the things. You're so very adult, you are giving daddy—that is your move. You give daddy because your mom requires that of you, right? So it's your training.

Elena:              Yes.

Jessica:            But there is this part of you that's like nine-year-old little kid.

Elena:              Yeah.

Jessica:            And that's the part that gets activated and feels abandoned or not chosen or not loved. And that's when it looks like self-sabotaging behaviors with other people. That's what it looks like.

Elena:              Okay.

Jessica:            But I'm seeing what it is inside of you is just—you genuinely don't know what to do. You're fucking grasping at straws out of strong emotionality.

Elena:              The strong emotions make a lot of sense. Yes.

Jessica:            Yeah. And what I'm seeing you do is you go into your mind. You go into being reasonable. You try to figure it out. You try to analyze it and figure out the exact thing to say, what is just, what is not just, what is correct, what is not correct. The problem with that is not that you don't want to let go of these behaviors. You don't want to let go of these skills, right? These are good things. Here's the "but." The "but" is you're doing the complicated exercise, but you're not in your core.

Elena:              Okay.

Jessica:            So you're actually not getting the benefit of the exercise. That's my metaphor for you, okay?

Elena:              Okay.

Jessica:            Now, coming back to more staying in the language of the actual moment, you're building this rational case, this intellectual explanation, based on emotional assessments that are really nine-year-old you, defensive, powerless, "I don't have any agency in this situation" you.

Elena:              Yeah. Yeah.

Jessica:            "My emotions aren't relevant. I have to take care of everyone around me" you.

Elena:              Which is my mom.

Jessica:            Yep. Yep. Yep.

Elena:              Yeah.

Jessica:            And so, when you're in that state, what you're saying and doing is technically fine. It's technically reasonable. But it's all predicated on a foundation that is not wholly present to the situation. So we're going to move away from therapy for a minute.

Elena:              Sure.

Jessica:            And we're going to hang out with the last community relationship where this came up in.

Elena:              Okay.

Jessica:            Tell me a little bit about it.

Elena:              Yeah. I worked at this organization. It was called [redacted]. It was a small community collective fighting for migrant rights. At the time, one of my best friends was the founder of that organization. And I got invited to work there, and it just turned out to be so, so, so, so emotionally difficult that I ended up leaving. And now I'm doing something completely different. But I think the patterns of trauma that that left on me are still so loud that I still find myself really shying away—even at this critical political moment where I feel so much of my calling is to just be involved in building this vision of the future, I just really find myself holding back, not getting as involved as I want to be, because I'm like, "Oh,  I don't know how to navigate these things [crosstalk]."

Jessica:            So what happened? What was so emotionally difficult?

Elena:              I felt like sometimes I was struggling through things as a not-perfect person, and then I got really blamed as these really severe things, as someone who's inconsiderate, as someone who's careless, as someone who is not taking care of their privilege, someone who doesn't care about community. And it was so affronting to me because I'm like, "These are the things that I care about the most, that I'm so deeply intentional all of the time." And yeah, and then eventually, I guess I started trying to give feedback of the ways that I felt the organization wasn't being kind or being fair or being democratic, as they said that they were. And then, yeah, it sort of felt like people thought I was trying to instigate a coup d'etat or something.

Jessica:            Okay. So these accusations of, "You're not being considerate. You're not navigating your privilege," etc.—was that coming from a specific person or from a group of people?

Elena:              Sorry. No one ever said, "You're not navigating your privilege." No one ever said that. It was just sort of my takeaway, but no one ever called me out on that.

Jessica:            Okay. Wait, wait, wait, wait. Let me slow you down.

Elena:              Oh, I'm so sorry.

Jessica:            No. Don't be sorry. This is what we're here for.

Elena:              Yeah.

Jessica:            So, all those things you named—did anyone ever say those things to you?

Elena:              Some things. Not the privilege thing.

Jessica:            Okay. What was actually said to you and by—

Elena:              Yeah, "You're careless. You value yourself and your own ambitions over community."

Jessica:            So let me slow you down. Who said that to you? Was it the bestie?

Elena:              Yes. Yeah.

Jessica:            Okay. So it wasn't anyone but that one person?

Elena:              Yeah, it was pretty much—it was like quite a power struggle between me and him.

Jessica:            Sure, sure, sure. So he said that to you, and was he referring to how you were handling administrative tasks at the organization? Was he referring to how you showed up at protests? What was the context?

Elena:              Yeah, now I'm getting that feeling again of being worried about putting someone on blast or being unfair.

Jessica:            We're not saying names. We don't know what state you're in.

Elena:              Right. Yeah. Totally.

Jessica:            We know nothing.

Elena:              Totally.

Jessica:            So you are allowed to—and this is, again—the feeling is your training from your mother. You are never supposed to see her as a perpetrator. Your father is the perpetrator; she is the victim, period. Right?

Elena:              Yeah.

Jessica:            The same thing is true with this ex-bestie. They were exactly the same way, right? That's why you felt so comfortable with them.

Elena:              Yeah.

Jessica:            And also, your role to play is you're like, "Yes. The queen is never wrong. The queen is never wrong. The queen is never wrong. It doesn't matter what I say or do or experience. The queen is never wrong."

Elena:              Right.

Jessica:            And so, when that comes up, you know that you're navigating a trauma pattern, and you have coping mechanisms. So, whenever you endeavor to step outside of those coping mechanisms, it's fucking chaos inside of you. That's what healing is. People talk about healing as, like, "Oh"—no. This is fucking what healing is. It's messy and horrifying.

Elena:              Yeah.

Jessica:            So we're just going to acknowledge, right?

Elena:              Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            And now let's go back and acknowledge this ex-bestie does good work in the world, is a really wonderful, valid human person who's also fucked up in as many ways as you and me and everyone else. And so we can speak critically to parts of them while acknowledging we're not going to speak at all to the parts of them that are good because that's not what our conversation is about.

Elena:              Yeah.

Jessica:            But they exist.

Elena:              Right. Right.

Jessica:            Okay?

Elena:              Yeah.

Jessica:            Okay.

Elena:              Okay. So you were asking for some concrete examples of what was behind these—

Jessica:            The context. The context of—

Elena:              Okay. Totally.

Jessica:            —him saying these things to you. Was it like how you showed up—were you not working for free, and he was mad? What was it?

Elena:              It felt quite insidious to me in the sense of—say I'm not getting a task done on time because I'm kind of a mess with my time management, even though [crosstalk]—

Jessica:            So it was administrative.

Elena:              Sometimes. Sometimes. He was just a Capricorn that got everything done on time, and I was floating around sometimes, doing my best, but then my energy goes in a million places. But then I guess that would sort of lead to him thinking I was irresponsible. But then there was other things like, if I make a proposal for a workshop, but then he thinks that that workshop is not on theme or something, then it's not just, "Okay, that's not approved." It was more like, "You're interested in your own individual artistic pursuits, and you're not rooted in the values of this community-focused organization," and stuff like that.

Jessica:            So what I'm hearing is that when this person experienced contrast or criticism of you, they went into character assassination.

Elena:              That's exactly what it is. And then I even told him once—I was like, "Hey, it's okay if you have these assessments, but I really cannot handle the value judgments and the character judgments." I was like, "I literally shut down. I cannot handle that. It's okay if you have critique and feedback. I want to get better." But yeah, I just couldn't—

Jessica:            What did he say to that?

Elena:              That specific conversation, I remember, he was not willing to have. He was—he just kind of shut it down. Yeah.

Jessica:            Sure. So there's a number of things I want to point out. The first one is you presented this to me as people being upset. It's a person being upset, right? So you didn't get all this feedback from all these people; you got this feedback from this one guy. Is that correct?

Elena:              Yeah. I mean, his cofounder and also ex-partner, I think, also had negative thoughts about me, but he didn't really express them.

Jessica:            Okay. So a general rule I like to live by is you can validate that you have a feeling about someone's thoughts, but we're not counting that as data, okay?

Elena:              Okay.

Jessica:            Your feelings about my thoughts—not data. And I know that's hard for you because, with your mom, you do track her thoughts—

Elena:              Yes.

Jessica:            —as a way to provide for your own safety.

Elena:              Yeah.

Jessica:            But in the world that is—I speak to you as a fucking psychic, okay? I don't do that, because that is a long walk on a short path to an abyss, okay? It's just not how we do life. So I do not mean to suggest that you are perfect, because you're imperfect. I do not mean to suggest that you do not make mistakes, some of which were avoidable, because I'm positive that's true, okay? I want you to know I am not idolizing you or putting you on a pedestal. And also, the relationship that you had with this guy is not the first or only relationship that is basically a replica of your relationship with your mother.

Elena:              Yeah.

Jessica:            You have this drive to be around somebody who is powerful and deep and loves big, and then, when you don't behave exactly as they need you to or they want you to, they say, "You have abandoned me and all that I hold dear."

Elena:              Yes.

Jessica:            This is your pattern, right?

Elena:              Yeah. Yeah.

Jessica:            This is your pattern, and it comes from your relationship with your mom, which, if I'm being honest, you have not excavated yet, right?

Elena:              Yeah.

Jessica:            You're at a great age for doing so. You're still in your 30s. This is a great time for doing it. And you're trying, right? You're going into therapy. And what you're finding is you're choosing therapists who are basically like your mom. So great. Okay. Good. Great information. This is good. This is good. So I am actually going to encourage you to continue to look for a somatic therapist—

Elena:              Okay.

Jessica:            —somebody who helps you to process emotions, and to be aware that as this pattern is up, you might pick another therapist who's just like your mom or your ex-bestie or another ex-bestie that was just the same as the last ex-bestie because this is your pattern, right?

Elena:              Yeah.

Jessica:            Again, the fact that you have a pattern does not absolve you of your participation in the pattern. But it does, my friend, explain the pattern. And it empowers you to start to understand when the pattern is occurring and how you participate. In your mom's worldview, I'm right or you're right. We can't both be wrong at the same time or right at the same time. There's a good guy and a bad guy. There's a victim and a perpetrator.

Elena:              Yeah. [crosstalk]

Jessica:            Same thing with the ex. Yeah. Same thing with the ex-bestie, right?

Elena:              Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            When we look back at all of your relationships upon which bridges were burned, they all have this in common with your mom, right?

Elena:              Okay. Yeah. Yeah.

Jessica:            And also, they have this in common with you. So now we have to talk about the way in which you are like that.

Elena:              Please.

Jessica:            You are, and you aren't, and you are, and you aren't, and you are, and you aren't, but you are. Okay. And I meant that. I know it was chaotic, and I know it was confusing. But it's also true. And it's okay to acknowledge that the truth is messy and that you have been functioning with other people through survival mechanisms instead of through presence, just like you've been practicing Pilates for a million years and you've been pushing past your core to do the exercises, right? Or half your core to do the exercises.

Elena:              Yeah.

Jessica:            So it can be done. You are living proof it can be done. And so the "and also" is really important. So, if we go back a little bit earlier in our reading, you really wanted me to keep on going and pushing. And also, you were kind of at a capacity in that moment. They can both be true. And so, whenever you go to your next shrink, you can say, "I get really activated when you check in to see how I'm feeling. And also, I'm not 100 percent sure what my activation is about," because then the therapist has the sense, "Okay. Maybe we explore that activation. That might be helpful."

Elena:              Yeah. That thing you said of I've been living my relationships from a place of survival mechanisms instead of emotional presence—I know that, and it is so intolerable to me and makes my life feel so small. And even when I think about, "Oh, I want to travel and I want to meet this and I have so many things I want to do," I kind of shut it down sometimes because I sort of know I'm still acting out of that place, and all of the work won't necessarily bear the fruit of the kind of relating I want to be engaged in. Yeah. I'm just so, so curious how to stand that down, you know?

Jessica:            So here's the good news/bad news about this. Your house doesn't need to be clean before you go to the beach for the day, actually. You can leave your house messy. And maybe there will be a part of you that's like, "Oh shit. I have to go home and clean my house." But you can still enjoy the beach for the day.

Elena:              Yeah.

Jessica:            You have been functioning out of your survival mechanisms. Guess who else has: every-fucking-body, okay? The amount of labor that it takes to work through trauma responses takes a lot of time. There's not a lot of people who've achieved perfect healing from trauma in their mid-30s, just for whatever that's worth. Okay? You are not alone. In fact, you are so not alone that you didn't burn most of those bridges on your own. Someone had a blow torch. Someone had a fucking light. You know what I mean?

Elena:              Yeah.

Jessica:            You all were doing it together. When we look at your ex-bestie, come on. You want to tell me that person is not functioning out of fucking trauma? Come on. You know what I mean? We're all functioning out of trauma—not all of us, of course, but everyone you and I are connecting with, probably, right? Because this is the fun thing about birth charts: when we ourselves have complex birth charts and trauma is written into it, then we are going to resonate with people who have similar but different birth charts because you're going for what you resonate with.

If, when you're growing up, your mother says to you, "You are my support animal. You have to sit at my heels and support me," then even if you reject it, even if you say, "That's wrong," whenever somebody doesn't do that to you, when you're an adult, it feels like it's not really love. "If they really love me, they would want me to hang out by their heels. If they really loved me, they would expect me to do everything for them because, of course, I can. Tap me in, coach. Let me help you, fix you, heal." Right? Because that's what your mom taught you was love. And everybody has their version of this.

Elena:              Yeah.

Jessica:            Some of us have stronger versions. Some of us have more destructive versions. But we do all have it. And so the smallness that you feel is you're having some awareness of how you've been living out of a small part of yourself, but the rest of you is right there. Here's the bad news. The hallway you need to walk through to get to the rest of you is sad. It's sad. And that's why you haven't done it yet, because you start to hang out in those sadness feelings, and you're like, "Nope. No. No. No." And then, when you're with a therapist, you're like, "That doesn't make sense," or you get really in your head and you start kind of, "This narrative maybe, that narrative maybe," which is part of why you left therapy, because you caught yourself doing it.

Elena:              Yeah.

Jessica:            But let's not be surprised that you don't have the skills yet to do anything but. You're asking for help. And again, I will repeat you are probably going to choose a therapist who's like your mom the next time you choose a therapist. And your assignment is to say, "Oh, I'm still doing it. That's interesting. This person is not a match. Moving on. I'm going to find someone else."

Elena:              Okay.

Jessica:            Yeah, because there's a lot of astrologers. You picked me. I am not replicating the pattern with your mom, right?

Elena:              Yeah.

Jessica:            That's progress for you.

Elena:              Yeah.

Jessica:            You picked somebody who's not going to replicate the pattern and also not going to be wowed by your words, which—your words are wowy. You're good with the words. You know what I mean? But that's part of why I've kind of interrupted you a few times, because I'm like, "I don't want to let you talk too much. You're going to fucking confuse me. You're going to throw me off the trail," because you're smart and you're good at stories.

                        A somatic process is a really good process for you. Okay. I gotta tell you something—not the best news. Neptune is squaring your Mars right now, and that means you are going through a once-in-a-lifetime transit that is fucking demoralizing. I'm not a fan of this transit, girl. I'm not going to lie to you. I'm not a fan, okay? It'll be over in January of 2027. However, it's really November '26 through January of '27 it's active. But before that, it's not active after April 1st, 2026. So, basically, April of 2026 through November, you're not going to feel it. But then it comes back for a final smackdown.

                        Neptune square Mars teaches you that you are not what you do. It's a great lesson, right? Makes sense. You're already going through the transit. You're learning it now. You are not what you do. But the problem is that is fucking demoralizing.

Elena:              Yeah.

Jessica:            And it teaches you how to have embodied boundaries, and it teaches you about embodied boundaries by making you feel like an anxious, soupy puddle in all the ways you don't have them. This is why I hate this transit. These are like the hardest things to learn, as far as I'm concerned. And so you're dealing with that right now. You're dealing with it with the therapists. You're dealing with it with your mom, with the ex-friend, and in your relationship to activism. You're telling yourself, "I can't possibly put myself in that position again because I don't have the boundaries to handle these difficult situations."

Elena:              Yeah.

Jessica:            And you're right. You don't have them. But you only get them by practicing them. And that doesn't mean you do one thing or another. But boundaries are not bestowed upon people. Boundaries are things you cultivate through making mistakes. So you know I obsessively talk about boundaries. I'm really fucking obsessed with boundaries. And in my path of cultivating boundaries myself over the course of my life, I was absolutely—didn't have them and then was way too rigid because on—as the pendulum swings, it swings to the extremes before it finds its center.

Elena:              Yeah.

Jessica:            And so you don't want to hang out in the extreme for-fucking-ever, but you also don't want to beat yourself up for trying to have boundary and not executing it well. That's where you either make an amends if you're still in a consensual relationship with someone, or you make a living amends. And a living amends is where you don't say, "Sorry," to the person you're in a relationship with, because you're not in a relationship with them anymore, and that's not appropriate. But you make a commitment to do better.

Elena:              Yeah.

Jessica:            Right? That's how you live. That's the amends.

Elena:              Yeah.

Jessica:            And so I am going to encourage you to get your ass back into therapy.

Elena:              Okay.

Jessica:            Yeah, yeah, yeah. I think it's a good plan, and it is part of why I think living with your mom is not your best plan in the world. But if it's the only plan you've got, and if it's realistic—hello, capitalism; hello, all the things—notice the dynamic as it's happening, and practice tolerating your mom thinking and feeling sad and bad.

Elena:              Yeah. Definitely. That's—yeah. Yeah.

Jessica:            Yeah. Let her. She's allowed to feel sad and bad. She's a grown-ass adult. People feel sad and bad. It's not your job to tidy that up for her.

Elena:              Yeah.

Jessica:            You've got a few months with this dog-sit. Maybe you just fucking double-triple down on figuring out housing somewhere else.

Elena:              Yeah.

Jessica:            Yeah. That's what I would say. You ideally would live alone, right? Or do you like living with people?

Elena:              I think alone is best for me.

Jessica:            Yeah. I think alone is best for you, too. So, if you're living in a city, be willing to explore living outside of the city. You know what I mean? In a cheaper fucking place, like on the boundaries of the city. It's worth it.

Elena:              Okay.

Jessica:            It's not your preference, but your preference is wrapped up in a little bit of trauma. So that's where I'm pulling you back and saying look for the next best thing instead of the best thing—

Elena:              Okay.

Jessica:            —because the best thing isn't accessible to you in this moment, but the next best thing may actually work for you.

Elena:              Okay, like staying in the city but not quite in the heart of it.

Jessica:            In the heart of city. Yeah. Look at apartments. Just look at apartments. And you have a decision about what it's like there and what it feels like and how you would feel. And you know what? You might be right. But if you look at an apartment, you might actually walk into the space, and the space might say, "Oh, happiness, joy." Oh, this space might actually be like, "This is a yes in the space, even if I don't like the block or I don't like the area," because you know what happens in space in neighborhoods and blocks? It's people. So you actually don't know what exists in all the blocks.

Elena:              Yeah.

Jessica:            This is a pattern for you. "I already know. I know, and I don't go there, and I don't go here, and this is what I do, and that's what I don't do."

Elena:              Interesting.

Jessica:            And that's a strength until it helps you to become in a rut.

Elena:              Yeah.

Jessica:            So I'm going to push you, and I'm going to say just fucking look at apartments. How is it going to hurt your feelings? It's a pain your ass. It's a waste of your time. And also, when you're trying to heal, if all you do is open the door—I'm pointing to a door right now. If all you do is open the door and you don't open the windows, you're missing out. When you're trying to heal, open the doors and the windows. Sometimes you have to crawl in or out of a window. Getting an apartment that you can afford in a weird fucking neighborhood that you know you don't necessarily like is opening a window.

Elena:              Okay.

Jessica:            And maybe you will find that if you crawl through that window, you're in something magical that you never would have known about. And maybe you're like, "Oh, I just wasted a bunch of time," but you moved the energy through the window.

Elena:              Right. Right.

Jessica:            And that's what we're talking about.

Elena:              Right.

Jessica:            Trying new things means trying new things.

Elena:              Right. Yeah. I think I'm so motivated, often, by avoiding potential depression that I do—I tell myself I need certain things because I'm just like, "I will not fall into that abyss." You know?

Jessica:            Yeah.

Elena:              But I hear what you're saying. Yeah.

Jessica:            So that's a pattern from your mom. "If I don't get exactly what I need in the way that I need it, in the packaging that I expect it, then I'm going to fall apart and I can't be responsible." And the truth is that's actually not you. That is actually not you.

Elena:              Okay.

Jessica:            You're very resourceful.  I don't know what happened when you were very young, but as an adult, have you lost yourself in an abyss?

Elena:              Yes. I think so.

Jessica:            Okay.

Elena:              Yeah. I go very up and down, but abyss place is definitely a place I frequent. Yeah.

Jessica:            So abyss place is a place you frequent. I see that. Losing yourself is a very specific thing. Losing yourself in hours and in moments—I see that. Losing yourself as a sentence—I don't see that. Am I just missing it?

Elena:              I mean, yeah, I bring myself back. I bring myself back. Yeah.

Jessica:            Yeah. You're not your mother. I cannot say this to you firmly enough. Listen. You might become—we all run the risk of becoming our parents, but you are not at this time. Your mom, at this time, has an abyss, and she is on the verge of losing herself in it frequently. You are not your mom.

Elena:              Yeah.

Jessica:            Don't convince yourself. Don't create a narrative and commit to the narrative. Listen. Is living in a neighborhood that you don't want to be in going to push you into a depressive state? If all things come together, yes. But if you just don't like the neighborhood but you love your home, and you create this world and you do all this healing work, and you make a compromise on neighborhood in exchange for having a safe, beautiful place that is your own, it's not going to fucking hurt you.

Elena:              Yeah.

Jessica:            You know what I mean? So, again, open the windows, not just the doors, here. Okay?

Elena:              Yeah. I hear that.

Jessica:            Okay. Good. I can tell you do. And also, as we wrap up, I want to acknowledge you will probably feel sad after this. And if you've listened to a lot of the readings I've done, you may have heard me say that to other people. It's actually okay to feel sad. And I want to encourage you to feel free to criticize me and things I said or the ways I said them, how what you think—you are free to agree with three things I said and disagree with three things I said. I want you to have your own experience, but I also want to encourage you to first hang out in the emotions.

Hang out in the discomfort of the feelings for five minutes longer than you're comfortable, two minutes longer than you're comfortable—nothing crazy—because that's where the shift occurs. It's staying in your core. And we're using core and emotions as metaphor for each other. It's staying with the emotions. It's not doing a big exercise. So create some space to hang out in the sadness is what I'm trying to say.

Elena:  Yeah. May I ask just one question?

Jessica:            Yeah. Yeah.

Elena:  Because you're really emphasizing, sort of, the need to go slow—

Jessica:            Yes.

Elena:              —with therapists but also community groups, with friends and stuff. I feel like I'm already so slow, I'm a turtle sometimes. And—

Jessica:            Yeah. I can explain what I mean with that.

Elena:              Well, yeah.

Jessica:            So the slowness you experience is you drag your feet in responding and engaging because instead of processing your emotions, you're trying to find the perfect analysis and the perfect way to say it and the perfect presentation and all of that. Right? Does that make sense?

Elena:              Yeah.

Jessica:            So you're dragging your feet. Your behavior is slow. On the inside, it's fucking tornado and firenado and a waternado— I don't know what that is—a flood. That was what I was looking for, not a waternado. A flood. There's fucking chaos. Things are not moving slow internally, right?

Elena:  Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            What I am encouraging you is not behavioral. It's emotional. So okay. Whether or not you're in a Pilates class—okay. If you're in a Pilates class for 50 minutes doing exercises, it's 50 minutes of exercise whether you do the full exercise or you do an adjustment so that you can stay in your core. I'm saying do the adjustment. Stay in your core. Don't force yourself to stay in the analysis. Instead, when you start to notice your activation emotionally—and I gave you tools to identify with the holding of the breath, right?

Elena:              Yep.

Jessica:            One you catch that, you can be like, "Oh. Now my survival mechanism is going to kick in, and I'm going to start analyzing and dragging my feet," and that whole thing that we've been talking about.

Elena:              Yeah.

Jessica:            "So I'm going to slow down and notice how I feel. I'm not going to chase the thoughts or the analysis or the perfect thing to say or the perfect way to respond. Instead, I'm going to acknowledge, "Oh, I'm emotionally overwhelmed. I'm in my feelings in a way that I don't know how to navigate." That's the slow I'm talking about. That's the slow I'm talking about because you're looking for a fix before you understand the problem.

Elena:              Yeah.

Jessica:            And whenever anyone does that, we always find the wrong fix. We're fixing the wrong thing. We're not fixing the problem. We're fixing the symptom of the problem. That's what's wrong with medicine in America, right? It's like we're not trying to fix your reaction to the problem because you already have—you're 36. You've had enough experiences with that.

Elena:              Yeah.

Jessica:            It just breeds more of the problem.

Elena:              Yeah.

Jessica:            Instead, it's when a certain kind of emotion comes up, I have a complex series of pulleys and ladders and survival mechanisms born from my relationship with my mom primarily, but not exclusively. And in that, I abandon myself and try to show up. But when you abandon yourself, you cannot show up. One cannot show up—

Elena:              Yeah.

Jessica:            —because showing up requires your presence. So, if the foundational behavior is abandon the self, then you're no longer present. And then the showing up is a behavior. It's not a full thing, just like you do Pilates. You can do Pilates. I love those fucking machines with the legs and the shit, right?

Elena:              Yeah. Yeah.

Jessica:            Love Pilates. But if you're not in your core, you're just doing weird aerobics.

Elena:              Yeah.

Jessica:            And weird aerobics is good, and there's benefits to it. It's not like it's bad. It's not Pilates, though.

Elena:              Sure.

Jessica:            It doesn't give you the benefit that is exclusive to Pilates.

Elena:              Yeah.

Jessica:            And it's because it forces you to be in your core. But listen. You can game any system you want, including Pilates.

Elena:              Yeah.

Jessica:            So the work is not—you know, you're still in the 50-minute class. I'm not saying move physically slower. I'm saying stop using your survival mechanism, which ultimately has you dragging your feet any-fucking-ways, and instead sit in the slow-moving emotions. You got it?

Elena:              Yeah. I'm going to have to sit with that for a long—

Jessica:            Absolutely.

Elena:              —time because I kind of almost did think that I was an emotionally present person. And so this is uncovering some layers, and I'm still unclear of, like, okay, when I notice I'm not doing well emotionally, then what's the move then? You know, sometimes removing myself or—I don't know. I just have to sit with that a lot.

Jessica:            So I'll say two things to that. The first is this feeling you're having right now came up with the other therapists, right?

Elena:              Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            It's defensiveness. You don't need to defend yourself. I might be wrong. I might be right. Doesn't matter. It genuinely doesn't matter. What matters is you have some information, and you get to move through it and assess for yourself. You're looking for an empirical truth. That's your coping mechanism: "I'm wrong; you're right."

Elena:              Yeah.

Jessica:            There is not an empirical truth. You are an emotionally present person, and you are not an emotionally present person. They're both true.

Elena:              Yeah.

Jessica:            So what's interesting is your experience of emotionality and passion and intensity is emotional presence. And also, you have coping mechanisms to go into daddy mode and protect everyone but you. And that requires self-abandonment.

Elena:              Yeah.

Jessica:            They're all true at once. And if—part of why I'm constantly saying to people, "I'm not a therapist," is because I'm not a fucking therapist. I didn't go to no schools for therapy, all the things. But also, therapy is a singular practice in that it's weekly. So you return to the conversation over time. This conversation cannot magically heal anything, right? This requires consistent work from you and with you and for you.

Elena:              Yeah.

Jessica:            You are not nine-year-old-you. You are adult you. And so you get to assess, "This is useful, and I'm not going to do anything with it," or, "It's not useful." You get to make choices. You're not forced into anything. Do you understand what I mean?

Elena:              Yeah.

Jessica:            Just one last thing. Something that comes up a lot, actually, when I give readings around heavy shit like we're talking about—which is pretty much all my readings, is about heavy shit—is this kind of frustration at the very end that you're not getting something that you can do. We have this big unpacking for an hour and a half, and then it's like this frustration of, "Okay, but what do I do with all this?" And to that, I—and you're feeling some of that, eh?

Elena:              Yeah. I want to do a good job. I want to have steps. And you've given me a lot. Yeah. Yeah.

Jessica:            The work of it is to sit with that feeling. It's the thing I don't enjoy about healing work, is that the doing—I mean, I'm a triple Capricorn. You know I'm really fixated on what to do. And unfortunately, the work is to sit with the feelings of, "What do I do?" and give yourself grace, like right now, "I had an experience, and I'm going to metabolize it." And digestion is not something that you navigate. You don't make a plan to digest. You eat. You digest. You digest it well or not. Time will tell. And it's the same thing with this kind of a thing, with therapy or a psychic reading or whatever the fuck it is.

                        And so I want to just hold space for there's going to be a part of you—and that part of you is never going to go away—that is like, "What do I do?" And we don't want that part of you to go away. That is a wise, motivated, capable part. But in this moment, you have to sit with the feelings. And it feels like you're not doing anything, but you are. But you are.

Elena:              Yeah.

Jessica:            Okay? Okay.

Elena:              Yeah. Thank you.

Jessica:            My pleasure. And if the question with a therapist is, "Am I the problem or are they the problem?" I don't think you're the problem.

Elena:              Thank you.

Jessica:            You're welcome. Yeah. Yeah.

Elena:              Thank you so much.

Jessica:            Yeah. You're welcome. I mean, I read your question. I was like, "Well, this is fucking fascinating. What could it possibly be?" But I genuinely just think it was your pattern activated and that that's like—I'm so glad that that's what it was because you could have been the problem. You know what I mean? I'm cool with—it would have been fine with me. But I just don't think that's what it is. I really don't.

Elena:              Thank you so much. Thank you.

Jessica:            My pleasure. My pleasure.

Elena:              I really appreciate this, Jessica.