July 08, 2026
643: Perfectionism and Evolution of Spirit
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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: A., welcome to the podcast. What would you like a reading about?
A.: Hi, Jessica. As a perfectionist—derogatory—who is trying to not be, I am often trying to convince myself that I do not need to be perfect to be loved, liked, worthy, etc. But any time rejection, failure, or mistakes happen, I am really fucking hard and down on myself. What advice do you have to be kinder to myself and break these perfectionistic chains?
Jessica: Okay. Does it come up primarily interpersonally, with work? Does it come up primarily in regards to your emotional and your mental—is there a place where it comes up primarily, or is this across boards?
A.: I would say it's across all boards. Yeah, I think it's everywhere.
Jessica: It's everywhere. Okay. I'm going to pull up your chart right away. Here we go.
A.: Yeah.
Jessica: There's so many things that I want to say to you all at once. Look. You have a Virgo Rising. And how hard do you fuck with astrology? You know about your chart?
A.: I would say I'm pre-K level, just learning a few letters here and there.
Jessica: Great. Perfect. That's great. I love that. I'm going to rattle a bunch of stuff off. We're not sharing your location of birth, but we are sharing that you were born March 15th of '88 at 6:12 p.m. in a place on the planet. That's all the people need to know. So you were born with Saturn and Neptune and Uranus all in Capricorn, and you've got your Pluto in Scorpio, so millennial. And you've got that Virgo Rising, right?
A.: Yeah.
Jessica: And so people think perfectionism—Virgo. And that is not a wrong way of thinking, but I wouldn't say your Ascendant in Virgo is the primary culprit here. So, in your birth chart, you have this Sun conjunction to Pisces. And your North Node speaks to where your soul is journeying towards in this lifetime. So it's not a personality trait. People talk about the Nodes like they're about personality traits.
A.: Okay.
Jessica: That's not the case. Your North Node speaks to where your soul is evolving towards in this lifetime. And in your chart, it's in the sixth house but hugging the Descendant, and it's also conjunct your Sun, which is in the seventh house. So it's got hard seventh-house energy. And what you have come here in this lifetime to do in a meaningful way is to choose to be yourself routinely, ritualistically, internally, and around other people.
A.: Ooh. Okay.
Jessica: Yeah. Okay. That was the exact reaction I would expect you to have, like, "Yikes. Not that," because Pisces is not known as a perfectionistic zodiac sign at all. And you are a Pisces. However, your South Node is in Virgo. And so the way it works with the Nodes is that we all come into this lifetime with a really strong past-life memory of our South Node. And what that breaks down to in functional, practical terms is you have a feeling in your guts—and you always have—"If I just get it right and I show up correct, everything will be fine."
A.: Yeah.
Jessica: And then, when you do that—you strive to get it right and show up correct—it always kind of backfires on you. It doesn't work. And that's because we are not meant to do our South Node. We are meant to do our North Node. And whenever you try to do your South Node, it kind of backfires on you. Think of it as a fail-safe, like a—what do they call that when the fuse box turns off—so that you don't go too far in the wrong direction. You—and this is terrible news I'm about to tell you.
A.: Oh no.
Jessica: Okay? Terrible news. You have come here to figure out how to be authentically kind and generous and spacious with yourself. And that is the strategy you have not taken, I imagine.
A.: No, [crosstalk].
Jessica: No. You've done everything else. You've done everything else.
A.: Yeah.
Jessica: You've taken notes. You've studied hard. You've rolled the Sisyphus ball up the hill. You've done everything but just be nice to yourself, like authentically nice to yourself. So, when I looked at your chart and I was looking for perfectionism, that was the first place I went because I'm going to talk to you about other things in your chart; I'm going to talk to you about other material things that you struggle with or that you can adapt and all that kind of good stuff, but in the most distilled terms, what I can tell you is that if you are not practicing being authentic with yourself, being present, and being spacious and generous and kind with yourself in that classic Piscean way, you can do everything perfectly, and it won't land as having moved past this perfectionistic torture room you're living in.
A.: Yeah. Torture room is good.
Jessica: Torture room. Yeah. I mean, it is torture room because when I think about perfectionism, I understand it as an inherently carceral way of thinking. Does that make sense, what I'm saying?
A.: Yes.
Jessica: It's a form of policing.
A.: Yeah.
Jessica: You're policing yourself, and you're policing others. And we know the function of police is looking for someone who's doing something wrong so we can punish that someone.
A.: Mm-hmm.
Jessica: So it's an inherently flawed setup, looking for perfection, trying to get it perfect, trying to be perfect, trying to be beyond reproach, not make a mistake. That setup is inherently flawed. It is inherently flawed because it is impossible to be perfect, and worse than that, not only is it impossible to be perfect, but if you have a perfectionistic mindset, then you are also looking to harm yourself as a result of being imperfect.
So maybe you have a negative obsession, and you're just like, "Oh my God. I can't believe I said that. I can't believe I did that"—that kind of a thing. Maybe you self-sabotage through procrastination. There's a bazillion ways we fuck shit up, for lack of a better way of saying it, because of perfectionism.
A.: Yeah.
Jessica: But I want to just really affirm—like deeply, deeply, deeply affirm—part of me doesn't want to say anything else, but I promise you I will. I want to deeply affirm for you it's a ritualistic practice of staying present and being kind. Everything else that I'm going to say is relevant, but nothing is more important than that. And I'm sorry, because a perfectionistic mind wants instructions—
A.: Yeah. Where's the formula?
Jessica: —and how to know good, bad, or best. Right?
A.: Yeah.
Jessica: Yeah. And the truth of the matter is formulas really work well for you in many ways but not for overcoming this issue.
A.: Yeah. Okay.
Jessica: So I'm not going to rob you of your formulas. You have a stellium in Capricorn. You need your fucking formulas.
A.: Love them.
Jessica: Love them. Love them. As Capricorn on Capricorn—get it. Right? But you can't have a formula for perfectionism—
A.: Yeah.
Jessica: —because perfectionism kind of posits the perfect formula will create perfection. And that's—are you at all offended by cussing?
A.: No. I cuss all the time.
Jessica: Okay. Great, because I feel like I'm really wanting to cuss a lot with you—extra for me.
A.: Do it.
Jessica: But that's bullshit. It is utter bullshit. The only thing that truly helps to heal the wound of perfectionism—and this one is really going to bum you out—is acceptance. Sorry. I know. I know. It's tragedy. It's a tragedy because acceptance—if you are practicing good, Piscean generosity, spaciousness, and kindness, you would be accepting where you are in this moment. Where you are in this moment is you don't want to not be perfect. You don't want the answers to be there is no answer.
A.: Yeah.
Jessica: And if you can accept, "Oh, okay. This is how I feel, and this is what I think in this moment. And also, there's a part of me that feels differently than this and thinks differently than this, but the strongest feeling right now is I would rather be the cop in my own mind policing for perfection"—even though that's bullshit and you don't want that. Objectively, you don't want that. But you do want that. But you don't want that, but you do want that.
A.: Yeah.
Jessica: Give yourself permission to be messy about this.
A.: Oh.
Jessica: Yeah.
A.: I don't like mess.
Jessica: I know you don't like mess. I know you don't like mess. If you liked mess, we wouldn't be having this reading. We'd be—
A.: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.
Jessica: —[crosstalk] something else altogether, right?
A.: True.
Jessica: If you could tolerate the present moment as it is and accept the messiness of what you feel or where you're at, then you wouldn't be perfectionistic.
A.: Yeah.
Jessica: Period. Right?
A.: Yeah.
Jessica: And listen. You have a Venus/Pluto opposition in your birth chart. And that says to you that even if you're not judging you, everyone else is judging you. So you better fucking get it right because, if you don't get it right, then there will be some sort of consequence—maybe not now. Maybe it's not obvious. But it's coming.
So the Capricorn stuff comes online. You have Uranus conjunct Saturn and Neptune conjunct Mars, all in Capricorn in the fourth house. So that shit comes online, and it's like, "Well, if we do it perfect, if we figure out the rules, everything will be fine. I can get ahead of the person who's going to punish me for not getting it perfectly before. I can get ahead of whatever"—insert thought that you have—"is going to be my consequence. I can just do it perfectly."
And then you have a Mercury/Moon conjunction in the sixth, and that part of you says a million words to justify and explain away your feelings.
A.: Yeah.
Jessica: And it gets in your body.
A.: Yeah.
Jessica: It gets in your body. So then exhaustion, collapse, tummy aches, and other—am I right? Tummy aches?
A.: Oh yeah. Yeah, yeah.
Jessica: Yeah. Of course, you hate having all of that. But also, you rely on it because that's the one way you let yourself off the hook, because it's not you; it's your health.
A.: Oh. Shit. I have a tummy ache now.
Jessica: I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry. I'm sorry.
A.: Yeah, I think it's just I ate a lot of fiber. But yeah, I mean, I usually am like, "I can't figure out what's going on with my health." I am really fortunate. I am a pretty healthy person, but recently, I've had a lot of aches and pains that just feel completely unfounded. And I'm like, "Oh, if I stretch more or if I drink more water or if I da-da-da-da-da, then I can"—you know.
Jessica: Yep.
A.: "That's what's going on," because I love a formula.
Jessica: You love a formula.
A.: You put pennies in the thing, and the thing comes out. You know?
Jessica: Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. So there's a number of things I'm going to say. The first one is you have been going through a Neptune transit—a couple of Neptune transits. And what it can do is it can activate immune issues, like immune system issues, and it can activate—because of the planets it's hitting and the way it's hitting it, it can activate inflammation.
A.: Yeah.
Jessica: And so what you've been experiencing is what a lot of people experience in their late 30s and their early 40s. It may be related to perimenopause. It may not be related to perimenopause. But it is your body being like, "Okay. I've lived with this much cortisol, this much stress hormones, for all this time, and I was great." And what do we do in our 30s? We fucking power through.
A.: Yeah.
Jessica: And then you come near 40.
A.: Yeah.
Jessica: There's something that happens at around 40 where your health is just like, "Yeah, but not this anymore. But yeah, you need a new way." And so I think what's happening—maybe you ate too much fiber, or maybe you're being emotionally confronted in ways that you invited but also you don't want, because we're hanging out with not just your imperfections but your fears around your imperfections.
A.: Yeah.
Jessica: So that would give you a stomachache.
A.: Yeah.
Jessica: You could have eaten anything. That will give you a stomachache. And I want to just say there's a number of things happening here. And I should pull back for a moment to say firmly and with no wobble whatsoever, anything I say about health stuff you should not take as gospel. Talk to a fucking doctor, obvi. If you have stomachaches, talk to a doctor. If you're concerned about perimenopause or inflammation issues or cortisol issues, talk to any number of doctors, but I am not one. Okay.
A.: Yes.
Jessica: Just being really clear about that. And that's a rule you can be perfectionistic about. Okay. So I want to stay with your stomach for a minute, okay?
A.: Oh, okay.
Jessica: Because your tummy is a little bit of a chronic—it's not like a health issue that would drive you to a doctor. It's a health issue that's kind of like a chronic—what comes up in your body kind of thing. Is that correct?
A.: Yeah, for sure.
Jessica: Okay. So this Mercury/Moon conjunction in your birth chart in Aquarius in the sixth house—what it does—it has Mercury and the Moon, so your mind and your heart, smooshed together. And what this basically does is it means you both intellectualize your emotions, but also, your emotions immediately become somaticized.
A.: Yeah.
Jessica: And so, when you hit a layer in your life of overwhelm around work, around love, around just trying to sort through, "Oh my God. We're living through fucking"—whatever the hell this is in 2026. Once you start to reach a level of overwhelm where intellectualizing isn't quite cutting it for you, the body comes online and is just like, "Okay. You have to sit down now."
A.: Oh.
Jessica: And it makes you sit down through all kinds of tummy issues.
A.: Yeah.
Jessica: Sometimes it's lung stuff, but for you, it looks like it's more tummy.
A.: Yeah, for sure.
Jessica: And this is the Moon. This is what the Moon is, right? And so what I want to give you as advice around stomach activation—and I'm not talking about medical crises; I'm talking about stomach activation. You know what I'm talking about, right?
A.: I do. I follow.
Jessica: Okay. Okay. Okay. What I want to encourage you to do the next time you feel a stomach thing is, if you're at work, you go to the bathroom. If you can, just sit and notice how it feels in your stomach. Notice what you feel and how you know you're feeling it in your stomach. And instead of doing the thing you do, which is being like, "I know why it is. It's because I had too much fiber," "I know why it is, because da-da-da-da-da"—explaining away your feelings. So good.
A.: Yeah.
Jessica: So good. Therapists love it when you do that.
A.: Yeah.
Jessica: But instead, the work is notice how you feel. Notice how you know you're feeling it because that'll help to ground you into the feeling. And then ask your stomach if it feels like upper intestine or lower intestine, it feels crampy or it feels just like heaviness—whatever it is that you're feeling. Ask it if there's anything it needs from you. Does your stomach need anything from you? And just try to stay present, and notice if you have a visual pop up or if you have a feeling or if a thought pops up or a word pops up—or nothing. It doesn't matter if nothing pops up. You can't do this wrong. Sorry.
A.: Are you sure?
Jessica: Yeah. No, actually, if you wanted to, you could do it wrong. The only way to do it wrong is to be super in your head about it.
A.: Okay. So, when you say notice how I feel or notice how my stomach feels, are you talking about the physical aspects of it, like—
Jessica: Yeah.
A.: —does it feel gurgly, or how I feel as in my emotions around it?
Jessica: Let's play a game right now. Your stomach is bugging you, right?
A.: Yeah.
Jessica: Okay. How is it bugging you? How do you know it's bugging you?
A.: I know it's bugging me because it feels like there are gas bubbles—
Jessica: Okay.
A.: —in my intestines. I have a little bit of what I call nervous stomach, of just being nervous about this.
Jessica: Wait. I'm going to slow you down.
A.: Yeah.
Jessica: Nervous stomach?
A.: Yeah.
Jessica: What does nervous stomach feel like? Use some adjectives.
A.: Oh. It feels like a water balloon on the edge of a surface, like it could fall. It feels like it's not held well.
Jessica: Okay. So I'm going to slow you down again. So the first description you used was really physiological. Now you're actually more in metaphor and emotion.
A.: Yeah.
Jessica: And that's not bad. That's not bad at all. I just want you to notice that you kind of floopty-flooped with that. And again, this is not a negative. This is not like you're doing something imperfectly. It's more it's hard for you to pull apart the difference between the metaphor emotion and the physiology—
A.: Yeah.
Jessica: —which is part of why this is a practice I'm encouraging you towards, because it's good to notice, "Okay. There's this falling feeling." So it's like you're talking about an emotion or an anxiety that's kind of hanging out in your tummy, but it's not a physiological feeling, per se.
A.: Yeah. There is that physical feeling of gas, but there's also, yeah, the emotional feeling.
Jessica: They're hanging out with each other. One's on top of the other. The other one's on top of the—it's kind of—they're both there.
A.: Yeah. Yeah.
Jessica: Okay. And is there anything else that you're noticing in your stomach?
A.: It feels a little uncomfortable. I pulled my pants up. So it feels like it could be confined a little bit.
Jessica: Like a little bloating?
A.: Yeah, I think a little bloating.
Jessica: Okay.
A.: I think, typically, bloating is—it happens pretty easily with me.
Jessica: Okay. So I'm going to invite you—and there's nothing you need to say or do or to perform, you know what I mean?—just to take a minute. Tap into those three things that you named that you know you're feeling. And just kind of breathe into your stomach and ask it—not out loud, just in your own—you're really checking in with your system. And ask your system, is there anything that it needs?
A.: Okay. I think I'm going to unbutton my pants.
Jessica: Yeah.
A.: See if that helps. And it does. I feel, actually, really great.
Jessica: Okay. Great. So you just kind of got the feedback just unbutton your belt. "I'm wearing a damn dog filter right now. I'm alone in a room. Just be comfortable."
A.: Yeah. Yeah.
Jessica: Okay. So this practice, in this moment, gave you a really practical piece of advice. And okay, unbutton your pants, but it's also relax.
A.: Yeah.
Jessica: Just relax. Be comfortable in your body, right? Sometimes, if you do this practice, you might get more of a, "I need to cry," or, "I'm really frustrated," or it might be any number of things. Whatever it is you hear, including hearing nothing and getting no information, is equally valid because this is a practice of listening to yourself with kindness. That's all.
The practice of being like, "I'm actually going to treat myself the same way I would treat someone that I think is tender and that I love"—it's so radical and so hard to stay with. It requires a measure of acceptance.
A.: Yeah.
Jessica: You must accept that, whether or not you feel worthy or whatever, whether or not it's easy, you're still going to choose to be kind to yourself in this moment. And it's really hard because we're not in a state of acceptance, which means we're not present, which means we're in our heads. We're shooting off. We're reacting, trying to get in front of things, obsessing on a past that cannot be changed. And then of course you're mean to yourself.
A.: Yeah.
Jessica: I mean, what other way would a person be if you're doing these gymnastics?
A.: Yeah.
Jessica: And listen. I want to say I know there's a world of nonviolent communication, and it's a beautiful world. And that's not how you communicate. Much like me, you cuss. I'm not saying you have to soften all your edges and not have a sarcastic sense of humor and all these things. You know the difference between treating people with kindness and not treating people with kindness.
A.: Yeah.
Jessica: And you don't practice that for yourself.
A.: No.
Jessica: And the only way forward, unfortunately, if you really want to change your relationship to perfectionism, is to start with generosity towards the self.
A.: Mm-hmm.
Jessica: It's so annoying. I'm sorry. So annoying.
A.: Yeah, it's really annoying.
Jessica: It's pretty annoying. And let me add more to this, which is the Neptune Mars conjunction that you have—people often find with this conjunction that they have a lot of energy for taking care of other people and pursuing hobbies and things that they find personally interesting, but then, when things are like, "I have to do this," or it's like work or something like that, when you feel like you're performing something for other people—I'm not talking about acting if you enjoy acting. I'm talking about performing perfectionism, basically—this is when Neptune comes through and just turns your bucket into a sieve. It really pokes holes in your energy.
And so this is a reiteration of how your body really ends up being a stopgap for you a lot and slows you down when you're doing something that you're like, "This isn't really what I want to be doing. This doesn't feel really authentic to me."
A.: I definitely pride myself—I see it a lot in work, but I see it with my friends—in just making shit happen for my people.
Jessica: Yep.
A.: I tend to override what I need and what I want and what my body is telling me. I mean, I even say, "I need to sort through these feelings. I'm going to schedule a time to do that because I have work in the morning."
Jessica: Yep.
A.: I don't know. I have a job. I have a job and a half and two girlfriends. I don't have time for this shit.
Jessica: Yep. So here's the thing that's just a fun fact. What I have seen throughout my career over and over and over again, what I have experienced as a person in her 50s and also who—I have friends of all ages—is this: it's so cute to be able to be like, "I put myself last. All my friends come first. I take care of everyone. I get shit done." That's great. And then you hit 40. And then you hit 40. And then you hit 40. And listen. It's not for everyone. Sometimes it's 38. Sometimes it's 43. But we cannot do the same thing over and over and over again and not be changed by it, right?
A.: Mm-hmm.
Jessica: So the perfectionism that you experienced at one time was sated a little bit by doing things well for other people. So, "It's okay that I'm imperfect, because I took care of you."
A.: Yeah.
Jessica: And being invaluable, being beyond reproach—these things—listen—high-functioning maladjusted coping mechanisms. That's what I'll call them, you know?
A.: Yep.
Jessica: And it's hard to let go of a high-functioning coping mechanism because it's high-functioning because people give you praise for it—
A.: Yeah.
Jessica: —because you get raises for it, right?
A.: Mm-hmm.
Jessica: But the real issue is, whenever there's an imbalance, eventually you develop a problem. And so, if you're just so good to your friends and so good to all your girlfriends and you treat yourself like the bottom of the rung kind of thing, eventually your relationship to yourself suffers in such a way that it impacts your mental health and it impacts your relationships.
A.: Yeah.
Jessica: And what a lot of people experience in perimenopause, in early 40s, is an adrenal collapse or a cortisol collapse, this stress-related, "I can't keep it up."
A.: Yeah.
Jessica: And if you wait until you collapse, which you totally can—and you may never collapse, right? But if you wait until there's a crisis, then you're not just like, "Oh shit. I learned a lesson. Okay. Now I'll change." Now you have to recover.
A.: Yeah.
Jessica: And it's really hard on the self-esteem. And so I am wanting to name—I am hearing you wanting to not be perfectionistic, and at the same time, it's like I'm seeing you have a pretty good life, eh?
A.: Maybe. What does that mean?
Jessica: Excellent question. Excellent question. I'm asking a perfectionist if they have a good life.
A.: Yeah.
Jessica: You have friends. You have love. You have work. You have health. You have a pretty good life.
A.: Yeah, I have all those things. Yeah.
Jessica: Yeah. Yeah. You have all those things and you're not quick to say, "I have a really good life or a pretty good life."
A.: Yeah. Very, very true.
Jessica: Okay. I'm going to have you say your full name out loud.
A.: Sure. My name is [redacted].
Jessica: Are you worried about failing at things?
A.: Yeah. Always.
Jessica: Okay. Okay. Okay. Let's hang out there. Is there any particular thing going on in your life right now that this is really active in? There doesn't have to be, but just in case there is.
A.: I recently got three rounds into interviews for a job that I was really excited about. I really was like, "Yeah, I fucking got that job. I fucking [indiscernible 00:26:54] that shit," and then did not get the job. And that really—I was just so disappointed, and I felt so frustrated. And I'm not a gamer, but there used to be cheat codes for games where you could boop-boop, beep-beep, and then—I don't know—be on the next level or some shit. I feel like everyone else has that, and I feel like I'm just trying to play the game that I'm told. But yeah. I think I'm always scared of failing.
Jessica: Mm-hmm. There are so many ways to fail.
A.: There are so many ways to fail. Yeah.
Jessica: Yeah. And you could be really successful and still fail at the same time, right?
A.: Yes.
Jessica: Yeah.
A.: For sure.
Jessica: That's the nature of policing, isn't it?
A.: Yeah.
Jessica: Yeah. We have to police everybody. We police people when they're not doing anything wrong.
A.: Yeah.
Jessica: So there's a number of things I want to say.
A.: Okay.
Jessica: The first one is do you think that there were only a couple of applicants for this job?
A.: I feel like I know where this is going, but—
Jessica: Yeah, you do. Yeah, you do.
A.: —no. I feel like there were several because I know that they cut off the applications because they had so many.
Jessica: Because they had so many applications. Okay.
A.: Yeah.
Jessica: So okay. And do you think that, in general, everybody who needs a job has a job; everybody who's qualified for a job has access to that job? Capitalism's doing A-OK these days?
A.: Not even a little bit, no.
Jessica: Oh, okay. So it's not just you—
A.: No.
Jessica: —is what you're saying. Oh. Okay. Okay. I was just curious. I was just curious. It wasn't setting you up at all. Okay. So, cool, okay. That's interesting. Do you think that it was a failure that you didn't get that job? This time, I'm not setting you up. I'm genuinely asking if it feels that way.
A.: Yeah, I do.
Jessica: Okay. Okay.
A.: Yeah.
Jessica: Do you have anyone else in your life who's looking for job right now or who recently has?
A.: I'm literally in the process of trying to hire someone at my current job.
Jessica: Okay.
A.: So, no, I'm aware. Yeah.
Jessica: Okay. So do you think everyone who doesn't get the job that you're hiring for is a failure?
A.: No.
Jessica: Do you think everyone has failed even if they themselves are not failures?
A.: Yes.
Jessica: Okay. That's cool. Okay.
A.: But that doesn't apply to me, so—
Jessica: Okay. But they have failed?
A.: Yes.
Jessica: Okay. Okay. This is really interesting. They have failed. And they have failed because they weren't good enough to get the job?
A.: Oh. Oh, no, I think just in general, everyone has failed at something. But yeah—
Jessica: So you're trying to hire for a job, and everyone who you're not hiring—they have failed or they haven't failed?
A.: I guess in pertaining to the job—
Jessica: Yes.
A.: —they haven't failed. Yeah, yeah. For the job, no. No, no, no. Sorry.
Jessica: No, they haven't failed. There's only one person who can get the job.
A.: Yeah. Yeah.
Jessica: Okay. So your brain gets all of these things.
A.: Yes, unfortunately. Yes.
Jessica: Okay. Cool. No, no, no. It's good. It's good. This is the thing that's really frustrating, is if you hold one set of standards for everybody else and another for you, then eventually it caves in on itself. It's not an approach to life that ages well, even if you're doing the more martyr version where you're in the shit and everybody else gets treated with generosity. If you're close enough to your girlfriends, if you're close enough to your friends, over time, eventually, you'll talk to them the way you talk to you.
A.: Oh.
Jessica: That's the right answer.
A.: [crosstalk].
Jessica: Yeah. But that's how intimacy works. Eventually, you'll treat people close enough to you the way you treat you.
A.: Oh.
Jessica: That is a risk because the foundation of kindness that you hold for others exists inside of you. Does that seem wrong?
A.: No. I just got really sad thinking about treating my girlfriends and my loved ones the way that I treat myself. I don't do that. But no, I believe that I have such kindness and love and grace inside of me. It's like I don't know how to apply that to me. It feels like I don't know what it looks like to treat myself kindly, and I only know what it looks like to treat others kindly. Yeah.
Jessica: So I want to just hang out for a minute with how powerful and visceral a response you had to treating anyone you like the way you treat yourself.
A.: Yeah.
Jessica: That is such powerful information. And this is the thing about all of your friends and all of the people you date: they all like you.
A.: Yeah.
Jessica: So you're mean to your girlfriend's girlfriend. So rude. You're mean to your best friend's best friend. The irony is if somebody was mean to your best friend, you would fight them on behalf of your best friend.
A.: Yeah.
Jessica: I see that Venus/Pluto opposition.
A.: Yeah, I really would.
Jessica: You would not take that shit.
A.: I would pull up on them.
Jessica: Yes. Yes. And yet you are the perpetrator. There's no way to police ethically. Now, listen. There's a whole conversation we can have about that in the context of ACAB and the world, and I'm not approaching that right now.
A.: Yeah.
Jessica: What I am talking to you about is the way that you police yourself as a way to keep yourself in line, to protect yourself from failure, is inherently cruel, is inherently looking for problems instead of looking for successes or understanding things as they are. For instance, yeah, you didn't get a job, just like everybody else who applied for that job and everyone else who didn't get a chance to apply because there was too many applicants.
A.: Yeah.
Jessica: And that doesn't mean you don't feel sad and bad that you didn't get the job.
A.: Right.
Jessica: It doesn't mean that you don't feel frustrated that you put all that energy and care and hope into something and it didn't work out.
A.: Yeah.
Jessica: But it does mean that you're not policing for failure and then, at the whiff of a lack of perfect success, call yourself a failure and then compound that pain with cruelty. I know. It's really annoying. So I'm not going to make you say out loud the way you talk to yourself because I know that that would be really triggering and upsetting for you, and if anyone heard this that knows you, they would be very hurt to hear it because I see the depth of your meanness. Mercury in Aquarius can be so mean.
A.: [crosstalk].
Jessica: So mean. Everything in your chart says you could be so kind and equally cruel.
A.: Yeah.
Jessica: So I'm not going to make you do that. But I am going to ask you to pick something, maybe about how you feel about not having gotten that job—
A.: Okay.
Jessica: —and I'm going to ask you to do the puppy talk rules application, so to find a kind way—okay. Sorry. I'm being told this is not going to work for you. Okay. I'm going to do it for you. I'm going to do it for you, and then you can practice in privacy, okay?
A.: Okay.
Jessica: What you can say to yourself is, "Hey, self. I feel like a failure, and that's a really bad way to feel. And I'm really sad that I feel this way. I know it's not about whether or not it's true. It's just a bad way to feel." Could you say that to yourself?
A.: Yeah. Yes.
Jessica: Okay. Okay. The next time you feel like a failure, which may be in 30 seconds—it may be in 30 minutes; it doesn't matter—this comes up all the fucking time for you—
A.: Yeah.
Jessica: —is just say to yourself, "Oh. That's a sad way to feel." I'm not encouraging you to try to change how you feel. It's the story you tell yourself. Something that I practice is, when I have anxiety spikes, usually if I'm in a place where I can, I say out loud—loud. I say this loud. You might get fun from that as well. I say, "Anxiety spike," really loud. And I'm sharing this with you because you could practice saying out loud in your head or out loud out loud, "Perfectionism spike"—
A.: Oof. [crosstalk].
Jessica: —so you don't—yeah. Write that down. Write that down. So you're not feeding the narrative. You're not chasing the narrative. You're not looking to justify or defend or explain away the feeling, because feelings are feelings. You're allowed to have feelings.
A.: Okay. Yeah.
Jessica: What perfectionism is is a coping mechanism for emotions, like sadness, fear, feeling all kind—there's so many things that you might feel that the perfectionism is trying to protect you from those feelings.
A.: Yeah.
Jessica: So, if we call it perfectionism spike, then what can happen is you can actually just feel your feelings, and every time your brain tries to be like, "Oh, I feel this way because"—okay. Maybe. Also, maybe not. Right now, you're just going to allow yourself to have a feeling. And if you practice this for a few months and you get good at remembering to do it—because you'll forget to do it, for sure, because you're a person—something else you can do—so you say, "Perfectionism spike." You don't chase the theory and the thoughts and the justification and the cruelty.
If you find yourself saying mean shit to yourself, you say, "Self, wait. Puppy talk rules." And then you have to restate it. So if you said to yourself, "You're such a failure. I can't believe you fucking did this," it's, "You didn't get what you wanted. That feels really bad. When I feel better, I'm going to return to figuring out what needs attention." Does that seem like something you could do?
A.: Yeah, it does.
Jessica: Okay, because here's a fun fact. When you're feeling perfectionistic, when you're feeling angry at yourself, hatred towards yourself, when you're feeling punitive towards yourself, when you're tracking for mistakes, that is essentially a form of anxiety, right?
A.: Mm-hmm.
Jessica: Now, I'm not a therapist. I'm not saying it from a psychological perspective. But the energy of it is anxious, inherently, right?
A.: Absolutely. Yeah.
Jessica: And an anxious mind produces more anxiety because that is all it can do, right?
A.: For sure.
Jessica: Yeah. So, when you're in a state of anxiety or perfectionistic activation, you will never find a solution or the next best step. All you'll find is cruelty. You're patrolling the perimeter.
A.: Yeah.
Jessica: And that's bullshit. It's looking for problems.
A.: Yeah.
Jessica: You're protecting property. You're not protecting yourself. Fuck that. And so, instead, the work is to tend to the emotions underneath the perfectionism while you're feeling activated. And then, if you're like, "Okay. I didn't get the job. I fucking need a job. Fuck. What can I do differently?"—I don't know. The job market is abysmal. Late-stage capitalism is upsetting.
A.: Yeah.
Jessica: So, when I'm looking at the situation energetically for you, the main thing you can do is protect your heart but stay as invested and trying as hard as you do, because you do try hard. And if you're going to get a job that you care about, yeah, you can't help but want it. There's nothing wrong with wanting it. But there is an element of you run into the future—
A.: Yeah.
Jessica: —a lot. And so, when you're living in the future, even for a few days, and then somebody pulls you back and is like, "You don't get that future," it's so demoralizing.
A.: Yeah.
Jessica: And instead of feeling sad, you get mad at yourself because that's easier for you.
A.: Yeah.
Jessica: Were you raised with weird religion?
A.: Yeah.
Jessica: Why is it weird? I can't put my finger on why I want to call it weird religion.
A.: Well, I was raised very Christian, Pentecostal and evangelical. Are you familiar—
Jessica: Yes. Yes.
A.: Yeah. It's weird.
Jessica: It's the most mild and calm of all the Christians.
A.: Super chill.
Jessica: So chill.
A.: No cartwheels. Nothing like that.
Jessica: No. Nothing.
A.: Yeah.
Jessica: They don't ever think about hell at all.
A.: No, no. Not even like—they're like, "I mean, that's not even real."
Jessica: Yeah. No, they don't really care about it. For anyone listening, this is peak sarcasm, just in case. Just in case.
A.: So sarcastic. Yeah.
Jessica: Yeah. And are you from the Bible Belt?
A.: Oh, I'm all up in it. Yeah.
Jessica: Yeah, you're up—okay. So you're from intense religion. And did you believe it growing up?
A.: Yes.
Jessica: Okay.
A.: Yeah. Into my early 20s, I was very, very Christian, very devout.
Jessica: Okay. Okay. And are you still Christian?
A.: No.
Jessica: Okay. Okay. This is connected. Do you know it's connected?
A.: Oh, for sure, yeah. Yeah.
Jessica: Okay. Okay, okay, okay, because it's like this whole time, I was just like, okay, there's something about this that when I look at it energetically, it's like you left the church and you did this weird thing where you created a dip.
A.: Okay.
Jessica: You just created a dip. It's like you ran, you took a leap, and then you were somewhere else. And then there's this weird valley inside of you of grief over the structure that religion offered you. There was such clear consequences and rewards. I mean, it is a very—
A.: Formulaic.
Jessica: Yeah. Very formulaic and very hell-heavy, right?
A.: Mm-hmm.
Jessica: Very much like, "Punish for that." Don't be perfect—if your thoughts are wrong, you get punished, right?
A.: Yeah.
Jessica: It's not just your actions; it's your thoughts.
A.: Yeah.
Jessica: So it does breed a form of perfectionism that you're not allowed to have emotions about it because there's rules.
A.: Right.
Jessica: So either you're hell-bound or you're not, essentially, right? You're evil or you're not.
A.: For sure.
Jessica: And what I'm starting to kind of feel into—and I want to name it gently because this is like a really intense pain point for you, and it looks like you've talked about it a lot. You've thought about it a lot. But it's still a very private space for you. You just kind of re-created the structure and the constant threats. It's constant threats.
A.: Yeah. It's fear-based.
Jessica: And it's fear-based. So you re-created it in your own way, and you did it like a Christian. You're very kind to everyone around you.
A.: Oh no. But yes. Yes.
Jessica: Yes, I know. So sorry. So sorry.
A.: That's exactly it.
Jessica: It's like—not to shit on Christianity. I'm not for or against. But it's like this turning of the cheek and acting nice, but then telling people who don't think exactly what they're supposed to think that they're going to be punished forever. Yeah. I mean you've just rewritten this script a little bit here.
A.: Yeah.
Jessica: Also, congratulations. You rewrote the script. You've made a kinder, more habitable space inside of yourself. You've related to the Universe, God—however you want to call it—in a way that is less judgmental, less punishing, more spacious, more kind than what you were raised with. And there's still more room to grow here. There's still more room to really investigate how much the preachings infiltrated your head.
A.: Wow.
Jessica: It's become—so have you heard me use the term "interjected perpetrator" before?
A.: Ooh. No.
Jessica: Okay. So, if the church broadly—the teachings of the extreme parts of the religion—were the perpetrator in your childhood—
A.: Okay.
Jessica: —when you left the church, you just created the interjected perpetrator.
A.: Oh.
Jessica: You interjected the cruelty, the punishment, the necessity to be perfect; otherwise, you would be punished. You just created it in your more progressive, queerdo way, right?
A.: Yeah.
Jessica: And that is progress. It's not perfection. And there's room for more progress here, right? There's room for pulling out the carceral, punishing, perfectionistic things that you were actually taught—
A.: Yeah.
Jessica: —and replacing those things with empathy and kindness and generosity. True generosity, true grace, is not, "Yeah, you can be whoever you want to be, but you know you're going to go to hell about it." True generosity and grace is holding space for the process and for the person, including yourself—you; holding space for you—for wherever you're at. Do you believe in a deity or in Universe or do you believe or something?
A.: Yeah. Yeah. I think I usually just say Universe.
Jessica: Mm-hmm. Yeah, because it's interesting. When I look at you energetically, your convictions theoretically about the Universe are spacious and kind, and the arc of progress is wide, and you have a lot of capacity to hold, "Okay. This is your fuck-it-up era. This is your really thriving era." You have space for that, eh?
A.: I think so.
Jessica: Except for with you.
A.: Yeah. Yeah, for sure not.
Jessica: Except for with you, because with you, you're still held fast to that evangelical or Pentecostal motivation through scarcity and fear—
A.: Yeah.
Jessica: —motivation through ostracization. Part of being less perfectionistic may make you have less energy and time to take care of people around you. Now, I'm not saying turn you into someone who doesn't take care of people. I'm saying all of what you're doing, you're doing because you love doing it.
A.: Yeah.
Jessica: And some of what you're doing, you're doing as a way to evade and avoid dealing with yourself.
A.: Okay. I guess I—like, what am I trying to avoid? But I guess feeling—being mean to myself.
Jessica: No. Mean to yourself is the symptom.
A.: Oh.
Jessica: The feeling that you're trying to avoid is fear and sadness.
A.: Oh, yeah, for sure.
Jessica: Fear and sadness because what it is is, if you're sad, then what did you do wrong? And then, if you're scared, your interjected perpetrator comes online, and it knows. Listen. I'm not saying you still believe in the teachings that you were raised on, but it's quite a fucking gamble, isn't it, to not believe it at all?
A.: Yeah.
Jessica: I mean, if you've gotten it wrong, fuck. Like, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck, fuck. And so you do your best to not get it wrong.
A.: Yeah.
Jessica: And it is okay to not have completely shed your upbringing. And also, I don't want to blow your mind, but the evangelicals are having their day in the sun, right? And the thought of this brand of Christianity is shaping the United States and the government and all of this stuff—this has got to be really activating for you.
A.: Yeah. It's like none of it is surprising because it's like that's just what I did on Sunday—
Jessica: Right.
A.: —and on Wednesdays and sometimes on Saturday.
Jessica: Damn. That's a lot of days.
A.: It's so many days.
Jessica: It's so many days.
A.: Yeah.
Jessica: So you know it well. And it's got to be ratcheting up your own compulsions and patterns because you're not doing this consciously.
A.: No.
Jessica: It's how you were raised. It's like the doctor hits your knee, and then your leg pops up, right?
A.: Yeah.
Jessica: It's, like, in there. And so being present with uncertainty—nobody likes it. Nobody's good at it. But when you're in the church, and in particular in that church, you never have to be in uncertainty—
A.: Right.
Jessica: —because there is no uncertainty when it comes to the Lord, right? There is no uncertainty when it comes to the Good Book because these things are promises.
A.: Yeah.
Jessica: And it's okay that there is a part of you that really yearns for that. It's okay that there's a part of you that believes that that is the right way. And the only way you can evolve those feelings, those impulses, and those needs is by accepting that they exist and being kind to yourself in the presence of them because some of this—I mean, when I look at your childhood, you were a very well-loved child, eh?
A.: Oh. I don't know.
Jessica: Interesting. You don't know?
A.: Yeah. I don't. I think my parents didn't know what to do with me. Yeah. I think that they didn't know what to do with me, and so I think they loved me, but I think a lot of times, they were like, "What the fuck is wrong with this kid?" which is—you know, I think those two things can exist together.
Jessica: Yes, they can. Did they tell you they loved you?
A.: Oh, yeah, yeah. For sure. For sure.
Jessica: Mm-hmm. Okay. Okay. That's cool. So they told you they loved you.
A.: Yeah.
Jessica: They looked at you with love in their eyes?
A.: I don't know.
Jessica: Okay. I'm going to keep asking you questions. Did they treat you with love—what they believe to be love?
A.: I think sometimes, yeah. I think they—yeah, I think so.
Jessica: Mm-hmm. It's interesting because, when I look at your childhood energetically, it looks like your mom loved you intensely, ravenously. She loved you, loved you, loved you. Is that wrong?
A.: I don't know.
Jessica: Would she say she loved you, loved you, loved you?
A.: I mean, she would say that she loved me. I think I often felt like I didn't meet their expectations. I'm the eldest, and I was definitely like a surrogate parent to my siblings. And my parents would—especially my mom would always say, "You must regard others as higher than yourselves. You must put others"—
Jessica: Oh.
A.: Yeah, which is horrible. And I know that's horrible, but I mean—you know—
Jessica: But you've made it a life practice. You do.
A.: It's my life practice. Absolutely.
Jessica: You do regard others as higher than yourself.
A.: Yeah. And I know that, and—yeah. I think—yeah.
Jessica: Okay. There's layers here. The first thing—the next time you catch yourself regarding others as higher than yourself, I want to encourage you, if you can catch it, be like, "Oh. I'm doing what my mother taught me. Does my adult self feel that this is right?"
A.: Oof. Yeah.
Jessica: That's all. That's all.
A.: Yeah.
Jessica: Awareness is what evolves things, not force. Okay? Force tamps things down. Awareness helps to create spaciousness. And that spaciousness gives you options. And those options—you're actually great with options, once you've decided to be great with them. And so being able to recognize, "Oh, I'm doing that thing that I fucking hated as a kid, that I hated being told, that I don't theoretically think is right, that I would not put on anyone else. If my girlfriend told me that she regards others as higher than her, I would run an intervention. But I live this way." Okay. This is good information. The more awareness you bring to it when it's happening, the more you can start to ask yourself, "Does adult me vibe with this?"
A.: Yeah. Okay.
Jessica: Okay? So you don't have to get this right. So this is one thing I want to say. The other thing I want to say is this is really interesting because when I look at your mother, she loves you—oh my God, intensely loves you. And also, I don't think there's anyone she's not disappointed with.
A.: That's fucking hilarious.
Jessica: Sorry. When you're so steeped in such a carceral mindset, you have to look for what's wrong because the only way to raise someone up is to tear them down. The only way to protect someone from doing something wrong is to tell them everything that is going to be their downfall. Right? She's disappointed with everyone all the time. So what's interesting is—and I'm sure—I mean, listen. You're Gay, yeah?
A.: Super. Yeah.
Jessica: Yeah. And I mean, I've heard that evangelicals love gayness, but I'm guessing your parents aren't super stoked.
A.: Both of my parents have passed.
Jessica: Oh. I'm sorry.
A.: Yeah.
Jessica: That makes things a lot more complicated, doesn't it?
A.: Yeah. It does.
Jessica: They've both passed.
A.: Yeah.
Jessica: I'm sorry. You're so young.
A.: I'm way too young to have two dead parents.
Jessica: Yes, you are.
A.: It's kind of bonkers. But yeah, my mom passed when I was 15, and my dad passed when I was—like a few years ago—33.
Jessica: Okay. Okay. So this is why I'm seeing your mom. Okay.
A.: Yeah. [crosstalk]—
Jessica: Well, shit.
A.: —right here.
Jessica: She's right here.
A.: Yeah.
Jessica: I just thought I was seeing her because I thought she was, like, in your—
A.: No, no.
Jessica: Okay.
A.: No, she's probably on my shoulder or something. Yeah.
Jessica: Do you mind that I do this?
A.: I don't mind.
Jessica: Okay.
A.: I don't mind.
Jessica: So she's not in heaven, and she's not in hell, first. You know? Because there is no heaven or hell.
A.: Yeah.
Jessica: Not that I've ever caught wind of.
A.: That's probably why she's disappointed, because she really thought that shit was real.
Jessica: Actually, here's the thing. Your mom is not disappointed.
A.: Oh. [indiscernible 00:53:53].
Jessica: Yeah. Yeah. She's not disappointed. Your mom is free. Your mom was not free.
A.: No, she wasn't.
Jessica: Your mother loves you feverishly. This is how she keeps showing it to me. She loves you. She is aware that she never told you that she loved you more than she loved the church, but she did. Your mom loves you. Your mom loves you, like loves you. I know a lot of people whose parents don't like them half as much as your mom likes you. She's really, really, really, really into you. And she's not exactly on your shoulder. She's not exactly in your business. She's all around you. She's like—your mother is not going to like this metaphor, but it's what I got. You ever use spray paint?
A.: No.
Jessica: Well, that's a shame. It's so much fun. I spray-painted a wall recently.
A.: Uh-huh.
Jessica: And a beam of light was in the room, and the paint particles, the colored paint particles, were caught up in the light.
A.: Yeah. Yeah.
Jessica: And that is similar to what your mother's energy looks like around you.
A.: Wow.
Jessica: There's vibrant color, but it's really interspersed. It's wide. But I do see that some of how you experience that is like it's just her, and she's associated with the weight of condemnation and consequences for you.
A.: Yeah. Yeah, for sure. I didn't know about my queerness when she was alive. I for sure was a very Gay, nonbinary kid, and I think my parents saw that pretty early on and tried to nip that shit in the bud.
Jessica: Right.
A.: And so I think I always just thought that she knew before I knew and [crosstalk]—
Jessica: She did not know you were Gay.
A.: Oh, hell [crosstalk].
Jessica: And the word "nonbinary" was not in her mind, okay?
A.: For sure.
Jessica: It's because she would never think like that, exactly. She had complex and problematic views about this.
A.: Yes.
Jessica: And that is me being generous. She is showing me that, but that is not what she is; that's what she was.
A.: Oh. Wow.
Jessica: She does not have any problems with your gender or your sexuality. She thinks you keep too busy. She knows you know what she's saying. That's enough said. She thinks you keep too busy.
A.: Yeah.
Jessica: But other than that, she doesn't have judgment. Sorry.
A.: She's not wrong.
Jessica: Gosh. She just is showing me that she sees you. She just—she sees you. And she had the childhood she needed to have to bring her to the kind of religion she found—
A.: Yeah.
Jessica: —because she found this church, eh? She wasn't raised in this church?
A.: She was raised in a different denomination but a still pretty Pentecostal and—
Jessica: She took pride in having found a church that was different from her family's church, that was—
A.: Yeah.
Jessica: —more intense. You mom—
A.: [crosstalk].
Jessica: Yeah. Yeah. Your mom really had her own trauma and her own perfectionism and all of these things. And she thought she was doing right. She thought she was doing right. She was never willing to take any of the chances you've been willing to take.
A.: Oh. Wow.
Jessica: She was never willing to do anything differently than she was supposed to do it. I know you were young when you lost her, but can't you just imagine her, how fucking wild she would have been, how powerful she would have been, if she was just born into a slightly different life or maybe even a little bit of a different time?
A.: Yeah.
Jessica: Your mom was so powerful, so passionate, so intense, so smart, and she was weird.
A.: Yeah.
Jessica: And those things she poured into the structure of perfectionism, of right and wrong, of good and evil, of house and home. And she committed to never looking over her shoulder. That was a Christian reference, by the way, about—
A.: I know. I got that, actually.
Jessica: Okay. Cool. I was so proud of myself for doing that.
A.: [crosstalk].
Jessica: Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. It must have come from your mom because I'm not good at Christian references like that one. But thank you. But you did. You did it. You did it, and she's so proud of you. And she's not apologizing for doing what she thought was right, but she's apologizing that you would ever not know how much she loves you.
Now, you're not—I'm saying this, not your mom. You're not allowed to hear that and then feel a perfectionistic meltdown that you didn't trust your mom or something like that. Nobody has an easy dynamic with their mom when they're 15. It's a really rough time to lose a parent. And she's not wanting me to talk to you about her death at all. If you want that, you can push with questions, but she has evolved past her personality in a really big way.
A.: That's amazing.
Jessica: Yeah. It is really cool because she's so full of love.
A.: Yeah.
Jessica: She doesn't have any judgment around her. She's not judging at all. Even when she's like, "You keep too busy"—direct quote, by the way—she's kind of laughing. She's playing. It's not heavy. You have some siblings still in the church, eh?
A.: No, I don't.
Jessica: Huh. She's showing me the young one.
A.: Oh. Okay. Well, this story is about to get sadder.
Jessica: Oh no.
A.: I had three brothers. My second-youngest brother died in the same car accident that my mom and my—
Jessica: Oh, honey.
A.: —[crosstalk] grandmother died in. So I lost three people in that car accident.
Jessica: Oh my God. I am so sorry. That is tragic. She's not talking about it. She's not talking about it. I think this is an unresolved pain point for her.
A.: Yeah. It was a pretty rough—
Jessica: I can only imagine. I am so sorry. So your mom is doing something that I watched you do earlier. She's dipping. Things get a little emotionally like, "I don't know if I want that," and there's a dip. It's fascinating. She was really down for me to read her and be present with her, but now she's like, "I can't be with this emotion." So she dipped.
And there's something about structure and perfectionism and Pentecostal, evangelical Christianity that—all these things, they're like—when you get overwhelmed with emotion, there's a thing to do. There's a person to turn to. There's a scripture to recite.
A.: Yeah.
Jessica: Or there's a cause to speak to. There's a friend to support. There's a girlfriend to call. You know? You can tweak it, as you have. But the thing that you have from your matrilineage, from your mom—and your mom is so proud of your matrilineage, by the way.
A.: Yeah.
Jessica: She's so proud of it.
A.: That tracks.
Jessica: Yeah. What you have is this coping mechanism of dipping—it's the way I keep on seeing it. It's like a dip, like a valley, kind of, but it's rounded instead of sharp—into yourself. It's this dip to kind of avoid or sidestep losing yourself in sadness.
A.: Yeah.
Jessica: And so, in order to break this pattern, your work is to choose sadness. Now, I'm not saying chase down sadness. I'm saying, when you feel a little sad, say to yourself, "That's sad. Okay. Is there something my sad needs? Can I breathe and stay present with the sad for 15 seconds longer than I typically would?" Start in seconds. Don't start in minutes. Start in seconds because this is a really deep matrilineal coping mechanism that helped the women in your family for generations through really terrible things.
A.: Yeah.
Jessica: Really, really a lot of trauma there. And you, by contrast, don't have that same kind of trauma, but you have the same exact coping mechanism. You are in a space where you can break this familial pattern, but it's by being kind to yourself and creating space for yourself with your sadness, with your fear, with your insecurity, with your anger, with your uncertainty—all the things that you're like, "Nope. Nope. Not that. Nope, not that." It's a practice, right?
A.: Yeah.
Jessica: Honestly, your mom is really cool. And I know that this is not how she was.
A.: Yeah.
Jessica: But she is aware that I've been trying to not do mediumship work, and she's pulling back, and she's telling me she's pulling back because she's not trying to cross any boundary for me.
A.: Oh, wow, [crosstalk].
Jessica: That's [crosstalk]. That is not like—I mean, first of all, that's a very rare quality in any person I've talked to who's in spirit, because usually they're like, "Please help me." Do you know what I mean?
A.: Yeah.
Jessica: But also, it's nothing like how she was.
A.: No, for sure [crosstalk]—
Jessica: Crossing boundaries—she didn't believe in boundaries.
A.: No.
Jessica: She thought that was a lie.
A.: Yeah. That's very rich, but—
Jessica: She's really different. She's really different.
A.: I'm obsessed.
Jessica: She's really, really evolved. And she wants you to have fun. She wants you to have pleasure. She did not want those things for you when she was alive.
A.: No.
Jessica: And it's not like she wanted you to be unhappy and never have fun, but it just never occurred to her that that was a thing to want.
A.: Yeah.
Jessica: But now she understands that it is, that it's an important thing to have for life to be rich. And she wants your life to be rich. She understands you work hard. She understands you try hard. She understands that you have morals and values. And she didn't think it was possible for a person to have morals and values and not be a Christian. She didn't think it was.
A.: Yeah.
Jessica: And we could judge that. We could psychoanalyze that, but whatever. She just didn't think it was possible. So, of course, she didn't want you to step outside of the morality of the church because she was trying to protect you.
A.: Yeah.
Jessica: And she was trying to protect herself—
A.: Yeah.
Jessica: —because she did question things, and she thought it was immoral to question things.
A.: Yeah.
Jessica: But now she questions everything, and it's really fun for her. Do you have any questions for me around stuff with your mom?
A.: How can I talk to her more? A little while ago, I felt like she was in my fucking ear a lot. And I was just like, "Can you just shut the hell up? Stop talking to me," and not because I didn't want her around. But it was just like, "This is not a good time, and you're in my ear about some shit that I just don't give a fuck about."
Jessica: I don't know if that was her or your grandma.
A.: Yeah, it might be my grandma.
Jessica: I think it was your grandma because your grandma hasn't changed as radically as your mom has.
A.: No. My grandma died—my grandma, as in her mom, died almost two years ago. And then my dad's mom died in that same car accident where my mom and—
Jessica: Oh my God. So complicated. So the woman that I'm seeing—she's showing me herself in this body language. I don't know if you can really see how my arms are, but like this. I don't know if she was tall or she was big personality. Does that immediately track which one it was?
A.: One of my grandmas was tall, and the other one had—no, they both kind of had big personalities.
Jessica: One of them was tall, and did she also wear bangles—bracelets?
A.: That probably was my taller grandma. I think she—
Jessica: Okay. Then I'm seeing—that's the person I'm seeing who's in your ear.
A.: Wow. That's fascinating.
Jessica: Is that your dad's mom?
A.: Yeah.
Jessica: She was not religious religious—
A.: No.
Jessica: —but she was more puritanical.
A.: Prob—yeah.
Jessica: She just hasn't had this spiritual evolution through her death in the way your mom has. So she—what I'm seeing is she was in your ear because you were busy, and she was like—you were busy with life. You were being creative, and you were having a lot of life. Is that correct?
A.: I felt like I was just getting fucking yapped at about being Gay and my lifestyle.
Jessica: That's what I'm talking about. I'm sorry. Your grandmother doesn't say the word "sex." You were being busy. You were being busy.
A.: Oh. Okay. Yeah.
Jessica: You were being busy. We don't have to say it. Sorry.
A.: Okay. Yes.
Jessica: I'm sorry. This is what happens when I channel.
A.: No, that tracks. That tracks. Yeah. Okay. Yeah. Yeah.
Jessica: Yeah. So she was just trying to—
A.: [crosstalk].
Jessica: —distract you from the present moment.
A.: Yeah.
Jessica: And she wasn't telling you you were doing something wrong. She was just telling—it's like you said; she was just yapping. She was just trying to distract you.
A.: Yeah. She's really annoying.
Jessica: So that was your grandmother. And all you need to do to her is say, "No. This isn't the time. This isn't the place. No." Your mother doesn't come around when she doesn't want to see it. She's not trying to watch you. Your mother—I feel, when she was alive, it would be hard to imagine her giggling. But her energy is like a giggle. She is so set free, and she wasn't immediately after her passing at all.
A.: Yeah.
Jessica: She doesn't understand all parts of your life, but she understands that when you're with people that she might not have been cool with, those people make you happy. And you treat these people—she understands there's reciprocity and respect and care in your life.
A.: Yeah, there is.
Jessica: Way more than she thought Gay people could have. Way more than she thought a lot of people could have, honestly.
A.: Yeah. Yeah.
Jessica: But she really didn't understand what Gay people were.
A.: Yeah.
Jessica: She knew of some, but it's not like she knew Gay people. Your mom had rules that kept her safe because she was scared all the fucking time.
A.: Yeah.
Jessica: Being Gay invalidated her whole life structure because it's an act of bravery to go against everything and everyone and risk eternal damnation. But she doesn't believe in any of that anymore. She doesn't care about any of that anymore. Genuinely, she doesn't. Your grandmother does—not the damnation stuff. She just still cares about certain things. And I don't want to give a voice to it, but she's yapping at me now, too.
A.: Yeah.
Jessica: And it's not necessary, and it's also not that deep for you. This is not a connection that—like, you can make her go away—
A.: Yeah.
Jessica: —whereas, with your mom, honestly, she's not yapping at you. She's trying to fill you up when you're on low. That's what she's trying to do. Your mom is really proud of you and the life you've created, and she really loves you, which is really cool because a lot of people pass and they don't have this level of evolution. But she really has. And she's, honestly, a delight. She's a lot more like you—
A.: Wow.
Jessica: —than you would think. And she doesn't need you to hold on to religion as a way to hold on to her. She would have demanded it if she was still here.
A.: For sure.
Jessica: But she doesn't. She doesn't at all. She knows that you love her and that you're scared.
A.: Yeah.
Jessica: She doesn't want you to be scared. She doesn't want you to be scared. She's—okay. Thank you. So she didn't think she was going to like the spray paint thing, but she actually really liked it because she could see what I was seeing.
A.: Yeah. Yeah.
Jessica: And that is how she's there for you, just like little bits of color and beams of lights. She's just there. And when you're feeling empty, when you're feeling low, it is safe to call her in because that's all she wants to do, is fill you up. It's like what she couldn't give you when you were little.
A.: Yeah.
Jessica: And this is—I know we've kind of taken a detour from perfectionism, but you know we haven't, right?
A.: No, I see it all.
Jessica: Yeah.
A.: It's all connected.
Jessica: Yeah. It's all connected.
A.: Yeah.
Jessica: It's all connected. And this process of pulling out the interjected perpetrator—it's so much more complicated because it's also pulling out the voice of your mom. And she is showing me that—she didn't like it that I said it that way, but that is how you feel about it. And—
A.: Yeah.
Jessica: Okay. Yeah. Okay. Thank you. So she's showing me that it's—she doesn't want you to associate her with restriction and obligation and sadness and living small. And she doesn't resonate with what she used to believe, but she stands by what she did because she believed it.
A.: Yeah. [indiscernible 01:11:48]—
Jessica: And yeah. [indiscernible 01:11:49]. Yeah. And so she knows now that it wasn't right, but it was right to her then. And so there was nothing she could do but honor that.
A.: Yeah.
Jessica: And now that you know that she knows that she wasn't right, maybe it will be easier for you to let it go more and more deeply. You go by this—is it a stream? Is it a river? You go by this place. Do you know where I'm talking about?
A.: No.
Jessica: There's a little bit of water, and you walk by it. It looks like it's in an urban setting.
A.: Hmm.
Jessica: She's showing me that you walk by this little bit of water. She's showing me your feet.
A.: (gasps)
Jessica: Okay. What is it?
A.: So, I mean, I have a very specific memory of when I was—I think I was like three, maybe four—where we lived in this apartment complex that had this teeny, tiny stream, little creek in the back of the neighborhood. And I would just kind of play in there. And one time, I slipped and thought there were sharks in the water. But my mom was there. My dad was there. And it was a cute little snapshot memory. I don't know if that's it, but—
Jessica: That's exactly what she—yes. That's exactly what she's showing me. That's exactly it. Okay. I mean, she didn't show me the sharks part, but—
A.: Yeah.
Jessica: But she definitely—that is what—she wants you to kind of call in the way that felt, not the sharks part, but the rest of it, that memory, that feeling. It was like love, and it was safety.
A.: Yeah.
Jessica: And it was connected to this piece of land that was really special at the time. That's how she wants you to remember her.
A.: Yeah.
Jessica: To the question you asked a little earlier of how are you supposed to call her in, communicate with her—remember that. You don't have to do anything. And also, if it makes it easier for you to ritualistically go somewhere, find a little stream that kind of gives it a little vibe of that place. Do you live in the same place as where you grew up?
A.: Yeah, I live in the same city.
Jessica: Okay. So you could try to find that place, even.
A.: I literally know exactly where it is. Yeah.
Jessica: Go there. Go there. You don't have to. She's not there; she's with you. But it might be helpful to you to be like, "Okay. When I deeply want to connect with her, I go to this place," because it will imbue you with this memory and this awareness of her—
A.: Whoa.
Jessica: —in an uncomplicated way—
A.: Yeah.
Jessica: —because that was an uncomplicated moment.
A.: It was.
Jessica: Yeah, just really nice. Okay. She said, "That's it. I'm done." She is wearing red. She is wearing red. The spray paint, if it's spray paint—the paint, it's red.
A.: Yeah.
Jessica: Was she into red?
A.: She likes bright colors.
Jessica: She likes bright colors. Okay. Okay, because I'm like, she's just vibrant. "Vibrant" is the best word.
A.: Yeah. Vibrant.
Jessica: She's just—she's vibrant. Yeah. Now, we have covered a lot of very deep and emotional terrain, I know.
A.: Yep.
Jessica: It's a serious workout. And you know how some people are like, "I'm going to do a diet," and then other people are like, "I'm going to evolve the way I eat so that it's better suited to my needs at this time"?
A.: Uh-huh.
Jessica: I'm going to encourage you to do the second thing, right—
A.: For sure.
Jessica: —which this perfectionism. It's a lifestyle change because It'll make you happier and healthier.
A.: Yeah.
Jessica: And you don't have to get it perfect in order to be doing it right.
A.: Oh. Can you say that again?
Jessica: Yes. You don't have to get it perfect in order to be getting it right. In fact, the only way you know that you are working effectively on your perfectionism is if you are making mistakes.
A.: Hmm.
Jessica: Yeah. Being perfect at perfectionism is not a thing. It's not a thing, okay? It's, instead, developing a relationship to your mistakes, your missteps, your problems, your upsets, where you're like, "Okay. This feels bad. Here are the feelings that feel bad. I'm going to support these feelings in whatever way I can. And also, can I learn anything from this? If not, can I let this go? How can I hold this in a kind way?"
A.: Huh.
Jessica: Mastery of anything requires a great deal of failure. You don't need to be perfect. I mean, you can't be, so good thing you don't need to be. All you need is to commit to the practice of kindness towards yourself so that you can actually learn from mistakes you make when there is something to learn, and you can let go of things that need to be let go of, that you don't carry this interjected perpetrator around with you, kind of doing the very things to yourself that were done to you. You know?
A.: Yeah.
Jessica: This is a practice. This is a process. And your mother will actually help you with it. She wants you to be happier. She wants you to be more at ease. And she also wants you to do whatever you want. So she wanted me to tell you that she's not actually telling you to do something. She's just there for you when you choose to do things.
A.: Wow.
Jessica: Mm-hmm. I know. It's very different.
A.: So different. I'm excited about becoming reacquainted with this new person that my mom was not when I was—
Jessica: She was not.
A.: —when she was alive.
Jessica: She was not. And you know how you sometimes dance alone in your room?
A.: Yeah.
Jessica: Okay. So you know when you do that, and sometimes you just—you catch extra fun feelings?
A.: Yes.
Jessica: And you laugh to yourself sometimes?
A.: Hmm. Yeah.
Jessica: Your mom is there. She's just showing me this. Your mom is there.
A.: (laughs)
Jessica: Yeah, because that's her energy now. It was her energy then, but she—you think you have problems—your mom just shoved all of her massive energy into a box, a teeny, tiny little box.
A.: Yeah.
Jessica: And then she pulled a Russian doll thing on herself, and she just put it in a smaller box in a smaller box in a smaller box.
A.: Yeah.
Jessica: But now she's just wide open. It's really beautiful. You've experienced your mother's energy not realizing it was her energy for many years—
A.: Yeah, it sounds like it
Jessica: —which is so cool. Yeah. And I mean, she would listen to the music you listen to and dance with you. I mean, that's just hard to imagine for who she was, but who she is is really excited about how you embrace life.
A.: Wow.
Jessica: Yeah. She wants more of that for you.
A.: Yeah.
Jessica: Yeah. She was young when she passed.
A.: Yeah. I think she was 40.
Jessica: I was going to say it looks like she was right around your age. And it is actually kind of beautiful that, as you approach the age she was, that you commit to doing things really differently than she did because these particular ways she did things didn't make her happy, didn't make anyone happy.
A.: Yeah.
Jessica: It just didn't make anyone happy. And yeah, she's happy to have been wrong about it, which is really cool.
A.: Yeah.
Jessica: She thought the afterlife was really bad.
A.: Well, I mean—
Jessica: She was really worried about it. She was really worried about hell, really deeply, deeply, deeply worried.
A.: Incredibly worried. Yes.
Jessica: Yeah. Yeah, all the time, for everyone.
A.: Yeah. Mm-hmm.
Jessica: And when she died, she was like, "What?" Instantly, she was relieved of this burden that she carried with her.
A.: Yeah.
Jessica: And then so many other things evolved from there. And I don't mean to suggest she wasn't also sad and it wasn't a process.
A.: Yeah.
Jessica: But we're talking about that part of you that you share with her that is so heavy-handed. While you're here, lay it down—
A.: Yeah.
Jessica: —is a practice. Again, it's a practice. There's your reading, my dear. It went places we weren't expecting—maybe you were. Were you?
A.: I was expecting for, at the very least, my mom to show up because my mom has opinions. Yeah. I figured that might happen. But I feel really grateful that it did.
Jessica: Yeah.
A.: It really means a lot. Thank you so much.
Jessica: My pleasure.