July 01, 2026
641: Video Game Addiction
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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: All right, Luna. Welcome to the podcast. What would you like a reading about?
Luna: Hi, Jessica. I'm so excited to be here. It's such an honor. So I'm just going to read my question. The subject line I had is Pokémon Addiction Patterns After a Breakup. So I said, "Hi, Jessica. I'm a Trans woman who just recently broke up with my Trans man partner of two years. I also have a Pluto opposite my natal Sun transit on the horizon. How can I make sure I don't fall into old addiction patterns with Pokémon video games, which I've historically used as escapism?"
Jessica: Okay. We're going to pull up your chart in a minute. I'm sorry about the breakup. Two years is a really big deal.
Luna: Thank you.
Jessica: Yeah.
Luna: Yeah. Yeah. Honestly, it was my best relationship, hands down, actually.
Jessica: And are you still kind of on okay terms?
Luna: Oh yeah. We're besties.
Jessica: Okay. That's wonderful—
Luna: Yeah.
Jessica: —and also sad. It's sometimes easier to break up with somebody when you're like, "Fuck you." You know what I mean?
Luna: I know.
Jessica: Yeah.
Luna: Right? Right?
Jessica: It is.
Luna: That's like all my previous relationships. That's why those ones were so much easier. But this parter was like, wow, you're actually such an amazing person, and it makes this breakup so much harder.
Jessica: And also, in good Queer tradition, that's who becomes your best friend for life—
Luna: Yeah.
Jessica: —or that becomes your family, which is a beautiful thing. But where you are is sticky. When I read your question, I was like, okay, Pokémon is specific, but gaming is a huge umbrella, and it's like, yeah, I feel like fucking scrolling through social media is a form of gaming.
Luna: Yeah. Yeah.
Jessica: Gaming is like—it is massive. And part of why it's so massive is because it immerses you in a different world where the rules are consistent, and the worst thing that can happen is you have to restart the game.
Luna: Yeah. Right? Yeah.
Jessica: It's very affirming.
Luna: Yeah, especially for me as a—I'm a Neptunian gal, as you probably know.
Jessica: I mean, yes. Based on your question, I knew. I needed no astrology to know. Yes. Yes.
Luna: So yeah. The immersion really gets to me.
Jessica: It really does. So okay. I'm going to pull up your chart. You were born July 30th of '95 in Mississauga, Ontario, 7:45 p.m. And there are so many things we're going to talk about within your chart, right?
Luna: Mm-hmm.
Jessica: But Pokémon—it's Pokémon exclusively or Pokémon especially?
Luna: Pokémon exclusively.
Jessica: Exclusively. Okay.
Luna: I'm so embarrassed to say, yes, exclusively.
Jessica: That's fine. Don't be embarrassed. Is this something that you play when happy or only when sad?
Luna: I think both. It'll be either when I'm super dissociative or dissociative in general, or when I'm really depressed or when I have shit to do and I'm just very avoidant.
Jessica: Okay.
Luna: Sometimes it's when things are going good. Sometimes I'll go to it when I'm feeling good, but then—because I have bipolar, so sometimes the stimulation gets me into almost a semi-manic episode. So it's not great. It's not great all around.
Jessica: Yeah. Yeah.
Luna: Yeah.
Jessica: Layers and layers. So, when you say semi-manic episode—I'm not a therapist, right? There are so many different ways—so, when you say that, do you mean it can send you into a state where you need medical assistance to get out of it, or is it something different than that?
Luna: It's something different. I would characterize it as hypomanic. It's kind of just heightened impulsivity, feelings of grandeur, feeling on top of the world kind of thing.
Jessica: Okay. On top of the world. And you act on it, or it's more like thoughts and feelings, thoughts and feelings?
Luna: Thoughts and feelings, thoughts and feelings.
Jessica: Yeah. That tracks. Okay.
Luna: Yeah.
Jessica: Just—that tracks. Again, I'm not a therapist. That is not my lane. I'm not a psychologist, all that kind of stuff. And also, that Pluto/Jupiter conjunction that you have, that out-of-sign Pluto/Jupiter conjunction that you have—when you go big, you go big. And your Pluto and your Jupiter both trine your Venus. Your Jupiter also trines your Sun. Jupiter also trines Mercury. So swinging into, yes, she belongs on the table and the center of everyone's attention—that tracks. That tracks separate from any kind of diagnosis or pathology.
Luna: Yeah.
Jessica: And the problem with that is nothing. Literally, that is a lovely, big personality, kind of resilient, big-hearted, "I want to have experiences. I want to throw my energy out in a big way," right?
Luna: Yeah.
Jessica: Like creating an umbrella of energy.
Luna: Yeah. Yeah.
Jessica: The problem is fucking Capricorn Rising with a Neptune conjunction and then Uranus on top of that. And so you go big, and your Neptune conjunction to the Ascendant in Capricorn is just like, "Oh, but what would the neighbors say? Is that okay?" It's just like, "I don't know. Can you maintain that energy? Is that actually something you can sustain?"
Luna: Yeah. Yeah.
Jessica: And then there's guilt.
Luna: It just spirals. Spirals.
Jessica: Yeah. Quick, quick, quick spirals, right?
Luna: Yeah.
Jessica: And it's like nervous system styles, right? There's a lot of nervous system stuff.
Luna: Yeah.
Jessica: When I look at your chart, it's from an astrological and not at all a diagnostic perspective, right?
Luna: Right. Right.
Jessica: But anxiety looks like it is a really big player for you, and all kinds of anxiety. You have so much excitement coursing through you.
Luna: Oh God. Yeah.
Jessica: Like, so much excitement.
Luna: Yeah.
Jessica: And then, also, you're future-tripping. And then, also, you're doom-scrolling through your own thoughts.
Luna: Oh God. Yeah.
Jessica: Yeah. So it's like all the anxieties. Some of it's really positive. Some of it's really exciting.
Luna: Yeah.
Jessica: Some of it's really terrified. And this is really what makes you vulnerable to Pokémon and other scrolling-style issues.
Luna: Yeah. Yeah.
Jessica: And so you don't want to lose yourself to this addiction.
Luna: Yeah.
Jessica: Yeah? Okay.
Luna: Mm-hmm.
Jessica: But do you want to stop playing?
Luna: No.
Jessica: That's right. That's right. That's right. It's a good, honest answer. And I love a good, honest answer. Okay. So do you have any friends who are addicts, who are like sober addicts?
Luna: Yes, actually. Yes, I have one person who I met recently in my life who is sober, and other people who I knew who were addicts are either not in my life anymore—either because they ghosted me or because they were just a shitty person and I chose to not have them in my life anymore.
Jessica: Good for you. Yeah.
Luna: Yeah.
Jessica: So let me tell you why I'm asking, because usually—and I'm not talking about anything other than addiction in general, right?
Luna: Mm-hmm.
Jessica: Usually, when somebody has an addiction, the benchmark of that addiction is not being able to be moderate.
Luna: Yeah.
Jessica: So you can drink and drink and drink and drink and drink but be able to be like, "You know what? I'm going to take six months off. I'm going to go travel. I'm going to just decide to focus on my studies or something. I'm going to just take six months off. And it's kind of a pain in the ass, and it's inconvenient, but I do it. It's not because I don't have addiction." And then there's addicts. And the thing about addicts is there's something in the compulsion that triggers what AA would call powerlessness, this feeling of, "I don't know how to be in this compulsion and not be compulsive with it."
Luna: Yeah. Mm-hmm.
Jessica: So I have really annoying news. And listen. There are many ways of holding this and engaging with this. But the annoying news I have for you is I don't know that you have the capacity to be moderate with addiction because addiction is inherently not moderate.
Luna: Right. Okay. That's what I was afraid you were going to say. Yeah.
Jessica: That's fair. You should be terrified. Be terrified. I'm so sorry.
Luna: Yeah. No, I mean, I will be honest with you, Jessica. The ways in which I play this game—there's different flavors of it, but most of the time, it's starting to play it in beginning of evening—
Jessica: Totally.
Luna: —and then going until like 5:00 a.m.
Jessica: Oh my. That's so late.
Luna: That's the most recent manifestation of it.
Jessica: Yeah. That's a lot of hours, and it's late.
Luna: Yeah. Yeah.
Jessica: Yeah.
Luna: Yeah, and it just ruins my life.
Jessica: Sure.
Luna: And it's like, even when I don't play it—I've done so much work with limiting it and doing harm-reduction type stuff strategies. Whenever I am not playing it, it's just on my mind all the time.
Jessica: Yeah. That makes sense. That makes sense.
Luna: Yeah. Mm-hmm.
Jessica: You have this really beautiful Moon in Virgo. And I know the fucking internet's weird about Virgo. I don't know why. Genuinely, it confuses me. But you have a beautiful Moon in Virgo.
Luna: She is beautiful, right? Thank you.
Jessica: She is beautiful. A Moon in Virgo knows how—in her healthiest form, knows how to be alone with herself because she knows what ritualistic actions to return to that nurture the heart. And when that Moon in Virgo is out of whack, the rituals you return to squash the mental health, harm the physical health, and become a compulsion to justify the instinct, if you know what I'm saying.
Luna: Oof.
Jessica: Yeah. Okay. You know. You know. Yeah. You know.
Luna: Yeah, yeah, yeah. She is a messy girl right now.
Jessica: She is a messy—and you know what? I want to just hold space for messy. Messy is not a problem. Messy is good, actually, because it's human. Self-harm is not messy, though. And I think you might be smooshing the two a little.
Luna: I think she's messy and engages in self-harm.
Jessica: Yeah.
Luna: I think it's both.
Jessica: It's both. Right. And I think there's a way that whenever somebody talks to me about an addiction issue, one of the first things I want to know is, do you want to stop? Because if you don't want to stop, then there's more that you're getting—now, I'm not talking proportionately more that you're getting from the behavior than it's costing you because, generally, addictions cost you more than they give.
Luna: Right.
Jessica: But the one or two things that keeping this line open gives you are so important to you at this time that you're like, "Yeah, it's fucking up my life. Yeah, I'm terrified of losing myself to it. Yeah, I go from the evening till 5:00 a.m.," which sounds like 12 hours. "And yet I just want to do it for"—what? What's the thought? Two hours?
Luna: Yeah, two hours.
Jessica: Two hours? Okay.
Luna: Yeah.
Jessica: So the problem with that strategy is that playing it for two hours doesn't do what you're looking for. What you're looking for is an escape from the bullshit of being in a body, the limitations of being a person, and then responsibilities of a life. Right?
Luna: Yeah. Yeah.
Jessica: You can't get that in two hours. That's why you stay.
Luna: Yeah.
Jessica: Yeah.
Luna: Yeah, yeah.
Jessica: And it's the same thing with gambling. It's the same thing with love and sex addiction. It's the same thing with substance use and all—you know, all addictions are not equal; they're not all the same.
Luna: Yeah.
Jessica: But this is a really core Neptune issue.
Luna: Yeah, it is.
Jessica: It really is. And the core Neptune issue here is, do you even want to be here?
Luna: Yeah, that's the thing. Last year, I mean, I did get hospitalized for suicidal ideation.
Jessica: I'm sorry.
Luna: Lots of really hard things happened last year, and the suicidal ideation was kind of after the string of things happened, and then I was alone with the feelings that kind of compiled from all the things. I was just like, "Oh, I don't want to be here."
Jessica: Yeah.
Luna: Yeah. And I mean, it's also been like a—I mean, I've struggled with self-harm for most of my life.
Jessica: Yeah. I'm sorry.
Luna: Yeah.
Jessica: Neptune is not exclusive in any way or specific in any way to suicidal ideation, but it is spiritual. It's energetic. And so strong Neptune placements often make you feel like, "This meat suit is a burden."
Luna: Yeah.
Jessica: "This life is too constraining. I don't know how to choose this all the time."
Luna: Mm-hmm.
Jessica: And so you, in the last year, were going through Pluto opposition to Venus. I bet it was fucked up. I bet it was hard.
Luna: Yeah.
Jessica: I bet you felt incredibly challenged because it was the first Pluto opposition to your little Leo stellium that's intercepted in your seventh house. And so what started in the last year and a half has been confronting you with things that you've done a really good job of keeping away and that I'm guessing your mom has her own history of keeping away.
Luna: Oh my God.
Jessica: This is like a matrilineal thing.
Luna: Oh my God. Sorry. I did not expect you to get it that fast. I was like, "I know Jessica is going to bring up the matrilineal thing." I did not expect you to get it that fast.
Jessica: Well, I don't want to brag. You know, not my first time. But yeah.
Luna: Yeah. Mm-hmm.
Jessica: And so you are not even halfway through. You're not even halfway through. And so Pluto governs addiction in the hardest sense. Deep in your nature is this Neptunian addiction. "I want to immerse myself in a song. I obsessively fixate on an actor that I think is amazing." You vibe on a color or a texture, and you go in, right?
Luna: Yeah.
Jessica: That's Neptune's form of addiction. It's really about immersion. It's this kind of merging, not in a deep, hard, driving way, but in a "the fog is everywhere" kind of way.
Luna: The fog. Yeah. I just want to be in the fog.
Jessica: Yes.
Luna: I want to be in the sparkles.
Jessica: Totally.
Luna: I want to be in the magic.
Jessica: Yes.
Luna: Yeah.
Jessica: But you're going through Pluto transits. And Pluto is hard and driving and pushes you to extremes.
Luna: Yeah.
Jessica: And so the coping mechanism that you have—and I'm going to be very direct—of—
(meowing)
Jessica: Was that a cat I heard?
Luna: Oh, that was a cat, yeah.
Jessica: Okay. She's cute. She's cute.
Luna: Sorry.
Jessica: No, no. I love a cat. I love a cat.
Luna: Okay.
Jessica: She's actually trying to take care of you right now.
Luna: Aww.
Jessica: The coping mechanisms that you have for dealing with emotions that you don't want to have, even good ones—even excitement sometimes, right?
Luna: Yeah. Yeah.
Jessica: It's just the problem with this Neptunianness, even with the specific kind of addiction that you have, is it's not just that it can't get too hot. It can't get too cold.
(meowing)
Jessica: She's just taking care of you. Don't even worry about it. She just wants you to know that she's with you. So what happens is it's really interesting because when you get activated emotionally, you just move away from yourself. You don't even notice it. She notices it. So I was about to say something, and you kind of got nervous. And I was like, "That's okay. You can be nervous." But she didn't agree with that. So she's really looking out for you, which is really tender.
Luna: Oh, yeah. She's so cute. Sorry. Oh. Okay. Okay. She's in her little bed now. I think she's going to be—
Jessica: She doesn't have to be quiet, though. It's okay. I'm down for her to let me know what's up, and verbally.
Luna: Okay. Okay.
Jessica: So it's great. Don't worry about it. But I will say that Pluto transits bring up the kinds of emotions that aren't going to be tamped down enough by this coping mechanism, which you experienced last year, right? It wasn't enough.
Luna: Yeah.
Jessica: It wasn't enough.
Luna: Yeah. Yeah.
Jessica: And so what this means is, from my perspective, you've got choice. You have choice, right?
Luna: Yeah.
Jessica: You can choose to go through it, or you can choose to try to keep on living around it.
Luna: Oh.
Jessica: I know. It's terrible choices. I didn't say you have good choices.
Luna: They're fine.
Jessica: You have bad choices. Bad choices.
Luna: They're fine.
Jessica: But the truth of the matter is, when you turn to Pokémon, it's just like you tether this really long string, and you're in this balloon. And you're just tethering it, and you just float off.
Luna: Yeah. Yeah.
Jessica: And everything is waiting for you when you turn the game off.
Luna: Yeah.
Jessica: But you've exhausted yourself. You've depleted yourself so much—
Luna: Yeah.
Jessica: —that it feels like a little bit of peace.
Luna: Yeah. Yeah. I so resonate with that, Jessica, because it's like the way that I conceptualize it or the way that I kind of experience it is exactly like the balloon metaphor you said. And it's as if everything just kind of dissolves and melts away.
Jessica: Yeah.
Luna: I can't see any of it.
Jessica: Yeah.
Luna: And it's just like—and I'm in it, and when I turn off the game, it all just comes crashing back down on me.
Jessica: Yeah. That's the problem with addictions to cope with emotions, is that it doesn't change anything. You keep on landing in the same place—
Luna: Yeah.
Jessica: —but more depleted.
Luna: Yeah.
Jessica: You're landing in the same place, but you've put off dealing with it more. And so this is a really hard coping mechanism to sustain without having a lot of negative consequences long term, right?
Luna: Yeah.
Jessica: And this is something you're already experiencing because you're now post-Saturn Return. You're barely post-Saturn Return, but you're post-Saturn Return. So what you could do two years ago feels completely different now because you're in a post-Saturn Return body.
Luna: Yeah. Yeah.
Jessica: Fucking bodies. And so this puts you in a position where if you're not yet ready to want to let go of the addiction—of Pokémon, of the game—
Luna: Yeah.
Jessica: —then I'm going to give you homework. Do you write or do you speak? What's easier for you, writing or speaking?
Luna: Writing is much easier.
Jessica: Great. Great.
Luna: Yeah.
Jessica: So what I'm going to have you do is a writing exercise—not now, just today, later, next week, whatever is right for you. And if you want, you can do this all in one sitting, or you can do lots of little writing exercises about it—whatever feels right emotionally.
Luna: Mm-hmm.
Jessica: And what I want to encourage you to do is write out what you're getting out of playing Pokémon the way you play it. Acknowledge the consequences, but also acknowledge the benefits. This is not in defense of the behavior, for clarity. This is for you to have greater ownership and clarity about what's true for you in this moment because you're scared—if I may put words in your mouth, you're scared that if you don't have this coping mechanism, that you'll buckle under the weight of emotions you don't know how to process.
Luna: Yes.
Jessica: Yeah. I mean, that's generally the fear of Neptune, right—
Luna: Yeah.
Jessica: —is that "I can't possibly handle this on my own."
Luna: Yeah. I've done visualizations of tapping into my Neptune, and I'll get flashes of images or visions sometimes when I'm tapping into my emotions. And my Neptune feels like giant, floating islands, and they all have giant lakes on them. They each have waterfalls that fall into the other island. And it's like this whole string of islands full of water.
Jessica: Yeah.
Luna: And that's like all of my tears that I have inside that are so hard to come out. And sometimes I just cry—like, the tears will just hit me with no trigger, and they just come.
Jessica: Yeah.
Luna: Yeah.
Jessica: You don't need a trigger, because you have such a strong backlog of emotion that you've kind of hid under the waterfall and around the corner and on the edge of the island, hoping that the land breaks off.
Luna: Yeah. Yep. Yep.
Jessica: And this is part of what happens as we age, is that all the shit you don't deal with is just waiting, and it kind of gets heavier to carry. And I don't say this to frighten you or anything. It's more to say you can make the same choice when you're 20, when you're 25, when you're 30, when you're 35. But it's not the same choice. At each age, it becomes different, right?
Luna: Yeah.
Jessica: The world is different. You are different. You've also made that choice once versus ten times, right?
Luna: Yeah.
Jessica: And this feeling of being an island, the sense of isolation, is not bad, and it's not good. It's a feeling. And having so much emotion, so much water, is not bad, and it's not good. It's an acknowledgment of how deeply emotional you are. And there is an element of you robbing yourself here of the full breadth of your feelings.
Luna: Oof.
Jessica: Yeah.
Luna: When you said robbing myself, that really hit because I feel like sometimes I'm so punitive with myself about building a dam so that the waterfall doesn't—so that the water doesn't come down. Yeah. Yeah.
Jessica: So here's another piece of homework: to work on constructing a visualization where you are on land, and there's water around, but it's not crashing like a waterfall. It's more like—have you ever been on an innertube in a river?
Luna: Right. I mean, I haven't done that, but I have been to an amusement park where there's a water ride.
Jessica: Where that's like a ride. Okay.
Luna: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Jessica: Okay. So don't use the visualization of the amusement park, because you can't get off the ride, whereas on an innertube, there's a current, but it's awkward. You'll splash. You kinda gotta struggle to get to the side of the shore, but it's not that hard. You can get to the side. It's not like ocean waves. A river—and you might want to watch some YouTube videos of what rivers look like and the tide of a river. We're not talking about a raging river.
I want to encourage you to create a visual that is primarily about you being on land and you having access to the flow of your emotion, so a river pulling you, but not in such a way where it is a waterfall where—I mean, standing under a waterfall, it's physically painful. It hurts your body, right?
Luna: Yeah. Yeah.
Jessica: And so I'm not saying that the visuals that you have are bad or should go away. No, I'm not. I'm just encouraging you to add. Add in a new visualization where you are sitting or walking and maybe whatever feels life-affirming. Are you smelling flowers? Are you plucking your favorite salads from the ground as they grow? Are rabbits talking to you? Just keep it earth-based.
Luna: Oh, I want a rabbit to talk to me.
Jessica: Yeah. Okay. Great. There we go. Rabbits can talk to you. So it's your visualization—and to play this out as a way to experiment with creating a visual landscape where your grounding is yours because there's something about what you described which is, now, you're on this isolated piece of land, and the water is overwhelming; the water is everywhere.
Luna: Yeah. The water is the island.
Jessica: Exactly.
Luna: Like, the entire surface of the island.
Jessica: Is water.
Luna: Mm-hmm.
Jessica: So I'm really interested in not having you landlocked but having you on stable ground. You've got a Capricorn Rising. You've got a Moon in Virgo. What does stable ground feel like? You actually know. That's the thing that's kind of messy and complicated here—
Luna: Yeah.
Jessica: —is that you're really consistent and there for the people in your life. You know how to be ritualistic and healthy and life-affirming for others, for people and things you care about.
Luna: Yes.
Jessica: You're good on grounding. You're good on grounding.
Luna: Yeah. I'm very grounding for others.
Jessica: For others. You're great at it. You're really natural. And you don't even think of it that way because you're like, "Oh, I'm going to be present for this person because of course I would be present for this person."
Luna: Yeah.
Jessica: When it comes to doing that for yourself, it's of course messier, and it's not just because of you or your chart but because it's true for fucking everybody, right?
Luna: Mm-hmm.
Jessica: But also—
(meowing)
Luna: He's never been this meowy, actually.
Jessica: They're letting me know what's up with you. They're letting me know. Yeah. Yeah, yeah. They're letting me know. And this is the thing. You actually have a fair amount of magic in your life. You are somebody who has things kind of come together, like, happen. You know what I mean? And you don't get the full benefit of it because you're comparing it to a world that doesn't exist.
Luna: Oh. Wait. Could you maybe elaborate?
Jessica: Yes. Of course. Of course.
Luna: Because that sounds like I really want to know more.
Jessica: Yeah, of course you do. Of course you do. So you live with these magical cats, as a small example, who are talking actively to a psychic that you're on the phone with about—and they're letting me know when your feelings are getting to a certain level because you have such an intimate relationship with these cats that they're aware of when you shift emotionally.
Luna: Oh my God.
Jessica: They're really aware of it. They care about you, and they're aware. So that—first of all, just saying. But when you are, for 12 hours, in Pokémon land, it's a world that doesn't exist. And it is a land without any sharp edges. Your cat meows, and you're like, "Oh no. What do you need?" instead of, "Let me just get really present and notice what I'm feeling in response to you meowing"—
Luna: Yeah. Yeah.
Jessica: —because you're not habituated for just listening to yourself. You're habituated to be like, "I don't want to lose control of my emotions, so I have to get away from them immediately."
Luna: Yeah. That really hits hard, Jessica, because yeah—I don't know if you're familiar with CPT, cognitive processing therapy.
Jessica: Yeah. Yeah.
Luna: Yeah. So I'm in a CPT trauma group right now. One of the—they're called stuck points, negative beliefs about myself or the world. One of the stuck points that I worked on today was exactly what you said. If I experience my true emotions, then I'm going to fall apart.
Jessica: Yep. And you do really believe that, partially because there have been times when you have, and partially because you've seen adults fall apart.
Luna: Yeah.
Jessica: So you don't have any illusion—classic Capricorn Rising. You're not like, "Oh, everything will be fine." I mean, parts of your chart do, but they do it in this Jupiter in Sagittarius trine my Leo stellium way. But then there's all this Capricorn shit being like, "But you know life is hard and people suffer for no reason, right? So why should you be different?" And so there's this messiness in it. And I'm sticking with the word "messiness" because messiness is not inherently bad, my Moon in Virgo friend.
Luna: I know.
Jessica: We want to just be mindful of ritual because—
Luna: I know.
Jessica: —ritual is prayer, essentially. And when we have rituals that are essentially prayer to what we don't want, prayer to self-abandonment, prayer to self-harm, then we get what we pray for, unfortunately, right?
Luna: Yeah.
Jessica: And so you're in this fucking place, and it's this place where it's like you have all of this really good adult experience behind you where you're like, "Okay. I'm not just my childhood. I'm not just who I was as a teen."
Luna: Yeah.
Jessica: "I clearly can deal with things because I've been through things." And also, you're still young enough where you're like, "But maybe that's not true. Maybe it was just that one time. Maybe I don't fucking know." You know what I mean? So you're in that early 30s fucked-up place.
Luna: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Jessica: And you are like, "I don't want to pursue this addiction, but I also don't want to stop getting the benefit of pursuing this addiction."
Luna: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Jessica: That's fair.
Luna: I always want to—yeah, it's always like, "Maybe I can just make it my side thing, maybe just an hour a day." You know?
Jessica: If you did it for an hour a day, it wouldn't do for you what it does.
Luna: Yeah.
Jessica: The only reason why you love Pokémon is not because of fucking Pokémon. It's not.
Luna: No, it's not.
Jessica: It's because of the immersion. What you love is the soft edges, the bright colors, and the immersion, the safety of it, the predictability of it. That's what you love. And what that tells me is that you crave safety. You crave beauty. You crave predictability. And when you grab the game, you immerse yourself in the illusion of those things. And it feels good when you're in it, but the problem with illusions is that when you're no longer in it, you're like, "Fuck. What did I do? What did I do?"
Luna: Yeah.
Jessica: And that sucks. And so, of course, my old Capricorn ass is going to encourage you to conscientiously, intentionally think about, "Okay. So, if I crave security in a world that is on fire literally, in a world that is terrifying literally, if I crave security when I cannot achieve security in some ways, that's not possible for whatever fucking reasons." Security can be achieved, stability can be achieved, in the most unstable conditions. It can.
Luna: Yeah.
Jessica: It's just you can't have perfect security and perfect stability. And this is where you struggle because, if it's not perfect, you want to go back to Pokémon.
Luna: Yeah. It's not illusiory.
Jessica: Right. Yeah. Illusiory. That's a beautiful word for it. And it's, again, you're looking for immersion. This is why being moderate with Pokémon is not what you actually want. It's making a deal with the devil, saying, "Yeah, yeah, yeah. I don't have a drinking problem. I'm just going to have one more drink."
Luna: Yeah.
Jessica: The thing that you get out of immersion could theoretically be achieved through meditation.
Luna: Yeah. Right. Oh my God. Yeah.
Jessica: But—here's the big "but"—if you are meditating to evade and avoid yourself, then you're not really meditating, and it'll ultimately do the same fucking problem for you.
Luna: Oh.
Jessica: I'm sorry.
Luna: No. That's so real, Jessica, because I grew up being raised on spiritual bypassing.
Jessica: Yeah. Was it a cult?
Luna: Are you getting that from my chart?
Jessica: Yeah. It looks kind of like a cult.
Luna: Oh my God. That's so crazy. Sorry. I was thinking about this on my walk. And I was just like, "How should I describe being raised by my mother to Jessica?" And then a cult came into my head, and it was like, that's not totally accurate, but for all intents and purposes, yes, a cult.
Jessica: Yeah. It looks culty is the best way I can put it.
Luna: Yeah. Yeah. It's like—do you know the self-help book The Secret?
Jessica: Of course.
Luna: So my mom—she's a Christian woman. She read The Secret, and it became her Bible.
Jessica: Yep.
Luna: She tried to indoctrinate the rest of the family. Ooh, sorry. I'm going through the feelings as I'm talking to you about it.
Jessica: It's a lot.
Luna: She forced me to read the book. She said that I would have a terrible life if I experienced a negative emotion.
Jessica: Oh my God.
Luna: Yeah.
Jessica: Oh, that's awful. I'm so sorry.
Luna: Thank you.
Jessica: That's awful.
Luna: Yeah.
Jessica: Oh shit. So wait. Do you never get angry? I mean, out loud, behaviorally?
Luna: Yes. I'm a certified—well, you see my Mars in Libra. You know.
Jessica: I sure do. I sure do. But your Mars in Libra is sextile Venus, the Sun, and Mercury and Jupiter. So your Mars in Libra—you're so good at getting along with people. You're so good at gravitating to people who are going to vibe with you and connect with you. And it actually can give you a healthy relationship to sex and anger. I mean, you have other problems with anger in the chart, though, just for the record. Like, yes. So your mom—was she like deep prosperity gospel styles?
Luna: I don't know if it's the same as what you're saying, but prosperity theology—that's very much like—
Jessica: Yeah, I think that's what I'm talking about.
Luna: —what she was in.
Jessica: It's like a very Christian mindset. Good people get good things. So, if you have money, God says you're good. People suffer; it's their fault kind of thing.
Luna: Yeah. Yeah.
Jessica: Yeah. I'm sorry.
Luna: Like, if you write "I will have a million dollars tomorrow" 1,000 times on paper, then you will get it tomorrow.
Jessica: Oh my God. I'm sorry. That's really—The Secret had so much potential to be such a good thing—
Luna: Yeah.
Jessica: —and was so—had such a fucked-up impact.
Luna: Yeah.
Jessica: Spiritual bypassing is the perfect term for it. That's the problem.
Luna: Yeah.
Jessica: Yeah. And so—okay. That's really important. And are you still in a relationship with her?
Luna: Vaguely. Last year, my dad died. That was one of the things.
Jessica: I'm so sorry.
Luna: That was one of the things that happened that I was speaking about earlier.
Jessica: Yeah.
Luna: So my dad had cancer, and that's when my mom really started to up the ante with the prosperity theology.
Jessica: Yeah.
Luna: And it's like my dad wouldn't be able to complain about the pain that he would be going through chemotherapy—
Jessica: Oh, that's awful.
Luna: —because my mom would reprimand him, being like, "Well, you're not doing enough to help yourself. You're in this pain because you're not doing enough to help yourself." And then they divorced. My dad divorced my mom.
Jessica: Wow.
Luna: My mom and I went—have had a very rocky relationship my whole life, but after my dad's death, that really solidified I have to distance myself from this woman.
Jessica: Yeah.
Luna: Yeah.
Jessica: I am really sorry about the loss of your dad, and also, that is a lot. And yes, we can say cult. I think that's safe to say cult.
Luna: Okay. Okay.
Jessica: I know a lot of people back in the day who were super into the fucking Secret, and they didn't treat it in the way that you're describing your mom treating it, right?
Luna: Yeah.
Jessica: So it's not like anyone who read the book was in a cult or anything, but that's clearly where she took it.
Luna: Yeah.
Jessica: Okay. There's a lot of layers here. The first one is I am so glad that you have boundaries with your mom now. I'm so happy for you.
Luna: Me too.
Jessica: Yeah.
Luna: I'm so glad.
Jessica: It is the greatest.
Luna: It's literally the best decision I've made in recent years.
Jessica: I agree. It's such a good choice. So you mentioned that Pluto is going to soon oppose your Sun, but you didn't mention that Neptune is opposing your Mars.
Luna: Oh my God. Yeah. I saw that transit, and I think I was just so scared of it that I was just like—
Jessica: Blocked it out.
Luna: —[crosstalk].
Jessica: Yeah. Block it out. Black it out. I'm down for that. Your Mars is at 5 degrees Libra and 44 minutes, and we have got, in July, Neptune hits 4 degrees. The transit properly begins—like fully, fully begins—spring of 2027. Okay? And so Neptune opposite Mars teaches boundaries. And it is a transit where, if you have a predisposition towards disassociation or dissociation, it really intensifies that.
Luna: Oof. Okay. Okay.
Jessica: Yeah. And so that's spring of 2027. We're in June of 2026. And the timing for you to ask this question and be working on this topic couldn't be better because, if you work on it now, that transit will be easier.
Luna: Okay.
Jessica: It'll just be easier because that transit has everything to do with boundaries. And what you and I are talking about is how you don't have boundaries with yourself because you don't treat yourself like you matter as much as you treat other people like they matter. And you do have good boundaries with other people—not perfect. Whatevs. You're in your early 30s. But even with your mom, you have a tendency to treat her with more care and respect and presence than you do yourself. Sorry. Your cats know it. I know it. You know it.
Luna: She just rustled around in her sleep. She was sleeping, but she just kind of shuffled around.
Jessica: She shuffled around. She's paying attention. She's paying attention. And there's a lot of layers of what I'm trying to say at once, but I'm going to downshift into astrology.
Luna: Okay.
Jessica: In your birth chart, you have a Saturn opposition to Chiron. It's almost exact to the minute, 24 degrees. Pisces and Virgo.
Luna: I do not like her.
Jessica: There's nothing to like. That's fair. It's fair, except for there is something to like. And I'm going to tell you what it is. This natal aspect speaks to this deeply karmic feeling of being inherently wounded and broken in life. I'm sorry. Yeah. It speaks to—I mean, you just described it, right? Your mom was like, "You're not allowed to feel bad. You're not allowed to think bad. You're not allowed to have anything bad happen to you, or it's your fault. You made it happen." I mean, that's going to make you bananas, right?
Luna: Oh my God, yeah. Just like being possessed.
Jessica: The hypervigilance that it creates because you have to police every thought, every feeling, every thought, every feeling. And if you're a person, you have a lot of thoughts and feelings. And if you're a kid, you have fucking chaotic thoughts and feelings even more than adults.
Luna: Yeah.
Jessica: But here's the positive of this natal aspect: your capacity to stay with something until it's done. Now, you commit to Pokémon 12 hours. Right? You commit. You do not lose focus.
Luna: Yeah.
Jessica: You don't lose focus. Now, we've talked about part of why that is, because it's immersive and it helps take you away from your emotions.
Luna: Yeah.
Jessica: But that same behavior, that same impulse, is the impulse that lives inside of you that is capable of deciding, "I'm going to change this thing," and then fucking doing it—not easily. You do not choose the easy way. Not necessarily swiftly. You do not choose the swift way with this kind of healing. But people look at Saturn conjunctions, Saturn squares, Saturn oppositions, and very rightly are like, "Ahh. Terrible. I don't want that." But the truth of the matter is it gives you capacity. It gives you—you know that Sisyphus ball thing? You know that thing with the Sisyphus ball?
Luna: Oh yeah.
Jessica: It's like the fucking—yeah.
Luna: Yeah.
Jessica: It's like it gives you a fucking huge ball that you have to roll up the top of a hill, and it crushes you now and again, but it also gives you the capacity and the staying power to get that fucking ball to the top of the hill so you can stop going up and down this hill with the ball.
Luna: Yeah. Yeah.
Jessica: It gives you the capacity. And so what you don't have is that capacity without emotional vulnerability. You do have emotional vulnerability. Is emotional vulnerability inherently bad? No.
Luna: No. No.
Jessica: No, of course not.
Luna: We love emotional vulnerability.
Jessica: We do. And inside of emotional vulnerability is anxiety.
Luna: Oh no.
Jessica: Okay. So—sorry. I had you. I had you until I lost you, right? So, again, I'm not talking about clinical anxiety, because that's outside of my scope authentically.
Luna: Okay.
Jessica: So I don't know if you have clinical anxiety. I don't know what your experience of it is. But I can say this. As an astrologer, when you get overwhelmed, yeah, you're fucking anxious. That's the first place you go. You're falling in love with someone; you feel anxious. You're in the happiest, healthiest relationship of your life; you feel anxious.
Luna: Oh no.
Jessica: And some of it—am I wrong, though? Do you? Do you not?
Luna: No, you're not wrong.
Jessica: Okay. Sorry. Sorry, sorry.
Luna: Every—every—no, literally.
Jessica: Every emotion. Every emotion. And so let's talk about why. There's a couple reasons why. One reason is because that's your fucking nature; why are we overthinking it? So you experience anxiety. The problem isn't the anxiety. The problem is your response to the anxiety—
Luna: Yeah.
Jessica: —because then you're like, "Oh my God. That's bad," and you squash it or go away from it.
Luna: Yeah.
Jessica: That's the problem. The anxiety itself—what is that expression? Anxiety is just excitement without breath.
Luna: Wow.
Jessica: You just stopped breathing. I didn't make that up. It's a quote. It's a quote from some woo-woo somebody. But that's what you do. Neptune conjunction to Ascendant—you stop breathing. And so another piece of homework is, the next time you feel any amount of anxiety, ask yourself, "Am I breathing?"
Luna: Wow. That's crazy.
Jessica: You will find the answer is no. And then you just breathe, and you oxygenate your brain. You oxygenate your blood cells. It's not going to fix anything, but it'll take your anxiety down .5, .005, maybe even a notch or two.
Luna: That's huge.
Jessica: It is huge.
Luna: It's huge. Yeah, because my body is just so tense with nervous system—it feels very much like my Uranus first house. It's very zingy and zappy, and it's like my body just doesn't move a lot of times.
Jessica: Yeah. Yeah. That's right. Okay. Breathe. Literally just try breathing.
Luna: Okay.
Jessica: It doesn't have to—your Virgo Moon says it has to be complicated in order to work, right? But it doesn't. For you, it's actually usually the opposite. The most simple thing works, which is why little balls of light moving across the screen actually moves shit for you, right?
Luna: Yeah.
Jessica: It's why Pokémon feels better—I mean, it doesn't actually help you get better, but it feel better for the moment. It's why breathing works. The simple thing is actually the most soothing medicine for you—not 100 percent of the time, but, like, fucking 80 percent, right? And so, when you find yourself having big emotions, you're going to breathe. And then you're going to ask yourself, "Is it okay for me to have this emotion right now?"
And if the answer is no—like you're at work or you're out to dinner with a friend who's going through something major and you have to be there for them, and you can't have your emotions, necessarily—then you say to yourself, "Okay. I am going to set an alarm on my phone right now for when I'm going to come back to this emotion"—
Luna: Okay.
Jessica: —so that if you then go home after work—whatever—and you're in Pokémon land and an alarm goes off in your phone, you get up and you go to the bathroom, and you breathe. You have to physically remove yourself, right? It's like move that body. It doesn't have to be fucking going for a walk because that's not always possible. But go to the bathroom. Breathe. And ask, "Do I still have that emotion? Where is that emotion? Does that emotion need anything?"
Luna: Yeah.
Jessica: And you might not have answers. That's great. You don't have to have answers every time you ask the question. You can feel anxiety spike the second you ask the question. You probably will. And that's okay. You just breathe into the anxiety and be like, "Is it okay for me to have anxiety right now?"
Luna: Yeah. It's always like immediate spiral, like [crosstalk].
Jessica: Immediate, because you go to reaction, right?
Luna: Yeah.
Jessica: You're like, feel it, and then you're like, "I have to do something about it."
Luna: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Jessica: So what this advice I'm giving you is—it's not just to create space with breath and with asking yourself, "What am I feeling? What do I need?" It's also to recognize that there is the part of you that's anxious, and there is the part of you that can choose to breathe. The part of you that can choose to breathe is in her 30s, a grown-ass adult who's gone through really fucking hard things and come out strong, who's made really great choices, really every—you know, mediocre choices, bad choices, all the choices—and is just a fucking person but an adult ass person.
Luna: Yeah.
Jessica: And then the part of you that is anxious is not just adult you. It's also all the emotions you've never let yourself feel, this little kid that is just not allowed to have emotions.
Luna: Yeah.
Jessica: It's all these parts. But the you that can say, "What am I feeling? What do I need?"—you can choose to practice trusting her. You trust her when you're hanging out with friends to just be like, "Girl, how can I show up for you right now?" You know how to stop and listen. So the practice here is of doing that with yourself. And this practice is not only going to help because it's helpful, but it's also you being intentional about the space between—there is this part of you that's anxious, but it's not all of you. It's a part of you. It's a loud part. It's a central part. It's a part that you've organized your life around. But it's not the only part of you.
Luna: Yeah.
Jessica: So maybe you do this, and you still play Pokémon 12 hours and whatever. But this is a great step. This is a really great step.
Luna: Yeah.
Jessica: Also, I'm going to give you weird advice.
Luna: Okay.
Jessica: I'm going to give you the advice to check out an AA meeting.
Luna: Wow. Okay. Okay. Yeah.
Jessica: Yeah, because you do not have a substance abuse issue at all, obviously, but the thing they say in AA is that their life has become unmanageable based on the use of this substance. And I think there's an element that you could identify with that.
Luna: Yeah.
Jessica: I'm also going to give you the advice—and listen. If you don't want to in your city go to an AA meeting, you can find them online. So you can go to one in New Zealand. Do you know what I mean?
Luna: Yeah.
Jessica: You can navigate this however you want. But I'm also going to give you the advice to check out an Al-Anon meeting—Al-Anon is actually the children or the partners of addicts—
Luna: Oh.
Jessica: —because of your mom.
Luna: Oh. Yeah.
Jessica: Because of your mom, because the way that she organized her life is—there are so many ways and so many filters that we could use to think about it, but I—and I'm not saying become members of these groups, unless you want to. But I feel like going into each of these meetings once to see what resonated, what didn't, might be really interesting for you because—
Luna: Yeah.
Jessica: —wanting to not have addictive behavior and being willing to quit the behavior are two different wants. It's like, "I love growing old. I just don't want my skin to sag, my bones to brittle, or my hair to gray." Okay. Well, that's not actually how growing old works. We don't get one without the other.
Luna: Right.
Jessica: And so I want to encourage you to explore, what is addiction? What function does addiction have for people?
Luna: Yeah. Yeah.
Jessica: Because I think that you're very curious, and your brain is like—chomp, chomp, chomp—very hungry. And so, even if you get information today that you don't put to use today, you don't throw away information. Your brain just keeps on gnawing on it. But yeah. I think it might be really helpful and interesting. And there are also AA podcasts. So you can listen to —
Luna: Oh, [crosstalk].
Jessica: Yeah. So, if you go on whatever podcasting platform you listen to and look up Alcoholics Anonymous podcast, you might be able to listen to—that might be useful. There may be existing groups for people who struggle with gaming. If those groups exist, I want to give you the advice to find one and join one. And I bet they exist online because it's gaming.
Luna: Yeah. Yeah. I did see those, and I'm like—there was a lot about the gaming addiction that is very gender dysphoric for me.
Jessica: Yeah.
Luna: And I think, in the past, I've been kind of scared to go to a gaming addictions group because I have this really deeply entrenched patriarchal, transphobic, internalized transphobia thought of, like—that I'm just a man just disguising himself as a woman.
Jessica: Oh.
Luna: Yeah.
Jessica: And it comes up around gaming, or around the people that you associate with gaming?
Luna: The people that I associate with gaming.
Jessica: Yeah.
Luna: Yeah.
Jessica: So that's interesting because I feel like a lot of Trans and Queer people have gaming addictions—
Luna: Well, yeah, that's a thing. That's a thing.
Jessica: —because you drape yourself in a different identity, and there's freedom in it, and there's a lack of resistance to it.
Luna: Yeah. No, no, no, for sure.
Jessica: And I'm going to give you the homework to seek out, if you can, a Queer-specific gaming group. I kind of think it exists, probably. Do you know what I mean? It's got to exist somewhere.
Luna: Yeah. Yeah. Right?
Jessica: Yeah.
Luna: Yeah, because—mm-hmm.
Jessica: And again, if it's online, it doesn't matter what country it's in, as long as there's English being spoken.
Luna: Right.
Jessica: If there is an English-speaking support group in Zurich, fucking just be up at the hour. You know what I mean?
Luna: Yeah. Yeah.
Jessica: It's worth exploring. And this is all bumping up against different emotions and different feelings. And if you bump up against some where you're like, "Yeah, it's great advice, but it feels too activating around gender stuff," don't do it. But maybe have it in your thoughts that you'll do it at a different time if an opportunity emerges that you're like, "Oh, that wouldn't push up against gender stuff, and it feels safe."
Luna: Yeah.
Jessica: What I want to be really clear about here is that even as I'm giving you this advice, these are ideas. They're not rules. They're not decrees. They're ideas. And what your assignment is here is to have healthy boundaries around these ideas. So maybe you explore these ideas, and you don't find that it's a yes for you at this time. Don't do it. Maybe you find that it's a yes, and you're like, "Yeah, and it was a bad experience. I'm not going twice." Excellent. Good. Boundaries.
Luna: Yeah.
Jessica: I want to come back to this idea of messiness, that messiness is not a problem. Anxiety is not a problem. It's how we respond to it that really creates the problem—
Luna: Yeah.
Jessica: —because the truth of the matter is I know some people who aren't anxious all the time, but most of us are anxious all the time, especially if you're paying attention to the world.
Luna: Oh my God. Right?
Jessica: It's a pretty fucking scary world. Yeah.
Luna: Yeah.
Jessica: Things are especially frightening now, but I've been saying that for like eight years because it's been really rough. And I want to just acknowledge that we are experiencing collective conditions that create collective anxiety, but that collective anxiety is experienced by us as individuals.
And the way that that shakes down for the specifics of your personality and your resources and your identities and all the other things is it gets so personalized that we can easily, in the moment of anxiety peaking, forget, "Oh, my anxiety is peaking. I just saw someone on the street that made me feel unsafe and activated how fucking unsafe the world is. And now I'm feeling really anxious tonight." And it's not like, "Oh, it's not such a big deal. Why should I have that?" It's like, "Oh, yeah, the world is fucked up. I don't know how to metabolize these feelings, and so I'm having an anxiety spike.
Luna: Yeah. Yeah.
Jessica: And so screaming, which—you might not actually scream. I don't know if you like to be loud. It looks like, yes, you do; no, you don't. Yes, you do; no, you don't. But I'm loud. So, for me, saying really loud anxiety spike—it kind of shakes me out of it a little bit. It doesn't take me from a nine to an eight, but it takes me down from where I started.
Luna: Mm-hmm. Yeah.
Jessica: And you know how it is when you're anxious. If you can get it down even a little bit, sometimes that helps you to get it down a lot a bit, and sometimes it doesn't do shit. But it's nice to have some wiggle room, right—
Luna: Yeah.
Jessica: —as best as you can. So, before I blah, blah, blah any more, I just want to hold space and see, do you have any—did I answer your main question? Do you have anything that you want to make sure to ask me before we're done?
Luna: Yeah. Yeah. Thank you. One of the things that really comes up with the addiction piece is I really talk punishing to myself a lot. And I guess I want to have that sense of immersion outside of the game so that I don't have to punish myself in that way. And I think astrology and Tarot has really fit the bill for that. And I fell off of that practice. And yeah, I guess I'm looking for ways to rekindle it.
Jessica: Yeah. So, in terms of rekindling a practice with Tarot, there's two things I would recommend for you. One is good, old-fashioned card of the day, not as a predictive tool but as a reflection. So you have to be really careful that you're not thinking of this as a way to predict what will happen in your day but to be like, "Okay, the cards are saying reflect on this."
The other thing is, when you are in a state of activation around anxiety or anything like that, don't fuck with astrology or Tarot that period.
Luna: Yeah. Yeah. I learned that the hard way.
Jessica: Sure. Everybody learns that the hard way. There's no other way to learn that fucking lesson than the hard way, okay? Because we all turn to it. We're like, "I want to know what's up," when you feel terrible, and that's the worst time to do it. The truth of the matter is not all tools are right for all things at all times. Sometimes psychology is the better tool.
Luna: Yep.
Jessica: Sometimes astrology is the better tool. You get a reading with me, and I spend a lot of time telling you what your experience is, what your feelings are, and what your thoughts are. That's not what therapy is. Therapy—you have to self-disclose. You have to pull it out for yourself. You return every week. That's so different than a reading, right?
Luna: Yeah.
Jessica: That all said, I like your question so much because what you're really getting at is life-affirming rituals, right?
Luna: Yes. Yes.
Jessica: You're talking about life-affirming—
Luna: Life-affirming.
Jessica: —rituals. And I actually want to encourage you to develop somatic practice where you essentially do very gentle self-touch as a way to not lose yourself in narrative but ground into the body and be in emotion. It's like your nightmare, basically, because it's like reverse Pokémon, okay? It's like reverse Pokémon.
Luna: No reverse Pokémon.
Jessica: It's like staying in the moment.
Luna: Yeah.
Jessica: It's like being in your meat suit here and now and doing it in a non-punishing, very kind way.
Luna: Oh, the meat suit.
Jessica: It's basically like being a friend to yourself in the way you are a friend to other people.
Luna: Wow. That's nice.
Jessica: Yeah. It is nice.
Luna: I love that.
Jessica: You're a great friend—
Luna: I am a great friend.
Jessica: —not to you, but to everyone else. And the truth of the matter is I don't know the complexities of your situation and your history and mental health stuff and all that, and I want to be spacious and respectful around that. And I also want to say you have all of the skills to do the things; you just haven't any practice in using them for yourself and for your benefit. You have all of the skills for staying grounded, staying present, being gentle, being kind, showing up ritualistically.
Luna: Yeah.
Jessica: You don't need to learn those skills, actually. You need to choose to use those skills for yourself. And that's a deep learning, but it's different than not having the skills at all because a lot of people do not have those skills. You do. You actually—and I'm not talking about you being a martyr. I see you can be sometimes, but I'm talking about you actually being a grounded, consistent friend.
Luna: Yeah.
Jessica: You know how to be there. And so recognizing, "Oh. When I am engaging with Pokémon the way I do, I'm not being a good friend to myself."
Luna: No. No.
Jessica: "I'm not being a present friend to myself."
Luna: Yeah.
Jessica: And maybe that's what you're going to do today, and you're going to have to say to yourself, "Yeah, that's not ideal, and that's okay today." Right?
Luna: Mm-hmm.
Jessica: And tomorrow, recognize, "Okay, can I be a good friend to myself today? And maybe the answer will be for 20 minutes. That's okay. Reframe this habit as being a shitty friend. See how that helps you because you know what the rules are for being a good friend, and a Capricorn Rising will have fucking rules. Am I right? So you know what the rules are.
Luna: Yeah. Yeah.
Jessica: You know that you would not hang out with a friend and not talk to them for 12 hours.
Luna: Oh my God. Yeah.
Jessica: You wouldn't keep somebody up for 12 hours and not talk to them.
Luna: Oh my God. No.
Jessica: But you do it to yourself routinely.
Luna: Yeah, I do.
Jessica: Shitty friend.
Luna: Yeah.
Jessica: So—
Luna: Shitty friend.
Jessica: Shitty friend.
Luna: Shitty parent to my inner child.
Jessica: Yes. Yes. All those things.
Luna: Mm-hmm.
Jessica: And so the thing to trust is that if you are perfectionistic and cruel to yourself, you will continue the behavior because the reason why the behavior exists is because you are shitty and perfectionistic to yourself and because other people were that way to you—
Luna: Mm-hmm.
Jessica: —whereas, if you say to yourself, "Okay, okay. I'm going to practice being a better friend to me today"—so what does that look like? That could look like harm-reduction behaviors. That could look like taking yourself for a walk before you play, playing—setting an alarm to play your favorite song right now and dance, and then go back to the game.
Luna: Yeah. Oh, [crosstalk].
Jessica: You can do a myriad of things, right?
Luna: Uh-huh.
Jessica: But it's about interrupting your habits of being a bad friend to yourself and asking yourself, "Well, what would I do for a friend in this situation?"
Luna: Yeah. Yeah.
Jessica: Because if you hang out with yourself for 12 hours and you don't talk to yourself and you don't listen to yourself and you don't take care of yourself, it's just a bad friendship. It's not a healthy friendship. And so, as you shift, if you are perfectionistic about the shift, then it's not a shift.
Luna: Yeah. Historically, they've only been perfectionistic shifts.
Jessica: Of course. That's why I'm naming it. And so I said that, and I heard myself, and I was like, oh, you could actually internalize what I just said in kind of a secrety way where I'm like, "Don't think bad thoughts." But it's not that. It's recognizing, "Oh, I'm being a jerk to myself right now."
Luna: Yeah. Yeah.
Jessica: And maybe instead of anxiety spike in this moment, you say, "Bad friend alert." And you don't overthink it, but you're just like—
Luna: I love that. I love that.
Jessica: —"Okay, I'm just being a bad friend right now." Yeah.
Luna: Yeah. I like that.
Jessica: Because you can work with that, right?
Luna: Mm-hmm.
Jessica: You can work with that. And so being able to recognize these things and hold it with your kindest parts instead of the way that your mom trained you to, basically—
Luna: Yeah. Yeah.
Jessica: That's the move. And for whatever it's worth, you're not yet 33. You haven't hit your Christ year. You're right on time for this work. You're not—
Luna: Wait. 33 is the crisis year?
Jessica: Christ year. Christ year.
Luna: Oh, Christ year.
Jessica: But I think it's great that you heard it as crisis year, because it is a crisis year. But a crisis is not inherently bad. Crisis is like peak, right? So it's when things reach crisis point. So what can come at the age of 33 is your relationship to yourself gets tested, and it turns out that you're a pretty good friend to yourself—not a perfect friend, not a friend who never argues with you, not a friend who's constantly like, "I want to hang out with me all the time," but a friend to yourself, right?
Luna: Mm-hmm.
Jessica: So the post-Saturn Return, pre-Christ year years—in other words, 30, 31, 32—are really important years for doing the work. And you're doing the work. They're not important years for mastering the work. They're not important years for being perfect. They're not important years for all of a sudden being healed from your childhood because you're barely in your 30s. They're simply the years for identifying the work and starting to struggle to do the work.
Luna: Okay.
Jessica: Yeah.
Luna: Yeah.
Jessica: Your early 30s are like baby adult years.
Luna: Okay.
Jessica: Yeah.
Luna: Yeah. That makes me feel a lot better because—I don't know. These Pluto transits have me being like, "You must transform your entire being," every single day.
Jessica: Nope. Nope. Not at all. Not at all. What they are is faces of development, and each Pluto transit lasts approximately two years. So there are phases of development, two whole years of your life, where you are going through a transformation process. But you know about transformation, right? It takes time. Transformation is not like one and done. Transformation is you set it in motion, and then you let it grow. You set it in motion, and then you let it die. You don't kill it. Make it live, right? That's not how transformation works. That's called aggression, right?
Luna: Yeah.
Jessica: So, actually, it's about recognizing that these transits speak to the energetics through our lives, the energetics of Pluto and Venus—it confronted you with your values. It confronted you with relationship issues.
Luna: Yeah.
Jessica: Next comes Pluto Sun. It confronts you with who the fuck you are, your identity, your sense of self. And that's exactly what we've been talking about, right?
Luna: Yeah.
Jessica: Pluto transits are very feared, and they can be fucking awful and terrible. I'm not trying to be a Pollyanna, trust. But they can also be the most powerful and expansive time of your life because Pluto governs power, and you don't get empowerment without power.
Luna: Right. Yeah. Yeah.
Jessica: And so empowering yourself to choose to feel feelings that you've been scared of before—you want a Pluto transit for that.
Luna: Yeah. Yeah. I have felt very like—yeah, this Pluto opposite Venus—there's definitely been a lot of pain and struggle. But there are very clear moments of liberation and recognizing my authority.
Jessica: That's the best of what we can hope for from Pluto. It's not bad or good/it's hard or easy. That's real, but a lot of times, the things that seem really bad during a Pluto transit—or in life in general—end up being really helpful and good.
Luna: Yeah.
Jessica: And things that seem really lovely actually hurt you—like playing Pokémon for 12 hours, like—
Luna: Yeah.
Jessica: You know what I mean? So it's like this is such a big lesson for all humans, but fucking Capricorn Rising, Moon in Virgo, especially for you. If you're too quick to transform your thoughts into actions, your awareness into changed behavior, then you're not leaving room for the emotions to catch up. Right?
Luna: Yeah.
Jessica: And the emotions are always the hardest part. It's not the mind. The mind is adaptable. It's the emotions. And so, yeah, you know it would be better to not do this thing, and you know that you want your life to feel different in this particular way. But the emotions are just like, "Yeah, but when I feel anxious, I know that I'm on the precipice of something terrible, so I have to get away from it."
Luna: Yeah.
Jessica: "When I feel sad, I could lose myself in it," or whatever else. And so, when those emotions come up, just checking in the ways we talked about, and when you forget to do it, being like, "Oh, wow. I forgot to do it. Can I notice a difference in how I handled it?" And you know what puppy talk rules are, right?
Luna: Yes. I love puppy talk rules. You've talked about it.
Jessica: But do you use them? Do you use them?
Luna: No, not for myself. No.
Jessica: No, you don't. Okay, girl. Puppy talk rules. The cards have been like, "You have to talk about puppy talk rules." Puppy talk rules. You have to use them now. That's your job.
Luna: Okay. Okay. [crosstalk].
Jessica: Puppy talk rules. You're not allowed to be a jerk to yourself. And if you're a jerk to yourself, you restate it in a way you would say to your cats, in a way you would say to your friend.
Luna: Yeah.
Jessica: You would not talk to your cats the way you talk to you.
Luna: No.
Jessica: So change the way you talk to you, not the cats.
Luna: Yeah. Aww.
Jessica: That's the move. Yeah. Your cats are perfect. They're absolutely perfect. I'm sorry, but they're so good. Okay. Now, I think we did what we came to do.
Luna: Yeah. Yeah.
Jessica: Do you feel that way? I feel that we did it.
Luna: I feel like we did it.
Jessica: We did it.
Luna: Thank you.
Jessica: Thank you. I know this is a complicated, hard topic.
Luna: Mm-hmm.
Jessica: But you done good. You showed up.
Luna: Thank you so much, Jessica.
Jessica: All right. My pleasure. My pleasure.
Luna: Thank you. Thank you for all your Capricorn wisdom.
Jessica: Thank you very much.