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.

Hey there, Ghosties. In this episode, I'll be doing a live reading with one of my beloved listeners. Every Wednesday, listen in on an intimate conversation and get inspired as we explore perspectives on life, love, and the human condition. Along the way, we'll uncover valuable insights and practical lessons that you can apply to your own life. And don't forget to hit Subscribe or, at the very least, mark your calendars because every Sunday I'll be back with your weekly horoscope. And that you don't want to miss. Let's get started.

Jessica:            All right. Zaya, are you ready?

Zaya:   I'm ready.

Jessica:            Okay. Let's do it. Okay.

Zaya:   Let's do it.

Jessica:            Tell me what you want a reading about today.

Zaya:               Okay. So I want a reading about my heart in my throat. So the original question was I feel blocked in the expression of my love with close ones in a myriad of different ways. My mom asks for a hug, and instead of being open, I freeze. My partner wants to get intimate, and instead of being excited, I start feeling anxious. It makes me feel guilty and anxious, and it's something that I've tried to work on, but I've never really got through it. And I would love to have your insight on these kind of blockages, as it runs in the family. And recently, I've started to feel⁠—I've been feeling it for a while, but I feel a knot in my back at this level.

                        And it's like I know that there's something that's stuck. And it's been something that I've struggled with with my own family members, and I'm noticing that it's something that's a part of me, too. And I was saying, like, I'm not trying to further generational trauma, and I want to do something about it.

Jessica:            Okay. And when you're saying you're feeling a thing in your back, do you mean behind your heart chakra, basically?

Zaya:               Yes. It's like a warm, warm bowl of something, you know?

Jessica:            Yes. I got you. Okay. And you were born April 16th, 1995, in [redacted].

Zaya:               Yes.

Jessica:            Okay. There's a lot of layers. Let me just check in with something. You mentioned your partner. With her, did you have that at the beginning, or did it kind of come up more in the middle or when things got really safe and intimate?

Zaya:               It was already there in the beginning, but when we really got closer emotionally is when things started to get complex. Yeah. And we've talked about it, and yeah.

Jessica:            And when you have in the past hooked up with people the first time or the first couple times, before it's intimate, when it's kind of just more sex⁠—when that has occurred, have you also had that same anxiety, or is that same anxiety not there?

Zaya:               From my recent experiences, I wouldn't say it's there. And I've verbalized it. I've said I do feel like people that I don't know emotionally, I can let go⁠— I can perform, basically. I can play a part because they don't know me in my traumas. You know what I mean?

Jessica:            Absolutely, 100 percent. Honestly, the reason why I asked that question first and foremost is because⁠—listen. A lot of things we're going to talk about here, but one thing, just a fun little detail⁠—you've got Aquarius on your eighth-house cusp. You can get in there, get some shit done, and get out.

Zaya:               Oh yeah (laughs). Yes, I can.

Jessica:            Yes, you can. So casual sex is easy for you compared to intimate sex. Intimate sex brings in exactly what you said. It brings in your parts. And that's where the issue really lies. And I wanted to just kind of get that out of the way straight out the gate because this is really about emotional intimacy and you tolerating your own emotional body, and it's not about hugs or sex, right?

Zaya:               Yeah. Yeah.

Jessica:            Because you can hug a stranger. That wouldn't be a problem. It's hugging your mom.

Zaya:               Yes. Absolutely.

Jessica:            Okay.

Zaya:               It's definitely about me.

Jessica:            Yes.

Zaya:               It's definitely me and my feeling vulnerable that I struggle with.

Jessica:            So I want to start with what I might characterize as the least complicated part of this. You have got this Uranus/Neptune conjunction in your seventh house, and that makes you somebody who gets a little bit restless and agitated and annoyed by clinginess. Mm-hmm. Yeah.

Zaya:               Yeah.

Jessica:            It's further iterated in your chart because you have a Sun/Mercury conjunction in Aries in the eleventh house. So, when people are needy with you at all, whether⁠—

Zaya:               Yeah.

Jessica:            Yeah. Even if they're not really needy but you're just in a mood and it feels needy⁠—

Zaya:               Yes.

Jessica:            ⁠—you're like, "No. That's super fucking annoying. I cannot."

Zaya:               Yes. Yeah, yeah. Absolutely. That's what happens with my mom, basically.

Jessica:            Oh, I'm sure, and I'm guessing in some moods and to a different extent with your partner.

Zaya:               You know what? It's funny because⁠—not really, like not with that person in particular, I would say, in that specific relationship. It would happen with many other people, but with her in particular, it's been more me that has been⁠—the way I see it, has been needy in some way.

Jessica:            So she's not as available?

Zaya:               She is, but in a different way.

Jessica:            That's great because that's rare for you. It's special for you. And we can look at that relationship if it feels valuable, but first I want to start with the parts that are just your nature that we don't want to pathologize. There's nothing wrong. You have a high-strung nervous system because of that damn Uranus, and you are in Aries with a Sun/Mercury conjunction. Things move really fast in your head. And sometimes, when people want to slow you down, it just feels like they're trying to stop your progress.

Zaya:               Yeah. Yeah.

Jessica:            And that's your personality. And that means some people in your life who you love but your adult self wouldn't necessarily choose⁠—so that might be family; that might be really old friends⁠—they're just going to annoy you sometimes. And you are allowed to be annoyed.

Zaya:               I guess so. Yeah.

Jessica:            So here's the rub. Fucking Neptune in your seventh house⁠—so Uranus in the seventh house makes you easily annoyed. It makes your nervous system high-strung. But then Neptune in that same house makes you feel like, "I should never think something critical about the people I love."

Zaya:               Exactly. That's what I'm saying. It's like the guilt is there simultaneously as I'm annoyed, but also⁠—yeah. Yeah.

Jessica:            Yeah. Neptune makes you feel like the only way to love someone is devotionally, that I have to devote my heart to this person.

Zaya:               Yeah. Yes. Of course.

Jessica:            So here's a fun fact. Fun fact is there are ways of loving people that don't come at the expense of you being honest with yourself about who you are and where you're at.

Zaya:               Okay.

Jessica:            So this is where we point ourselves to the top of your chart. You have Saturn conjunct the Midheaven conjunct Venus, all in Pisces. And so you are somebody who is very devotional, and you have kind of this tendency to be like, "Okay. Acts of service. Let me do shit for you."

Zaya:               Yeah. Definitely.

Jessica:            And that is not bad or good. It is your nature. However, where it gets you into trouble is when you feel that the only way to be of service to the people you care about is at your own expense.

Zaya:               Yeah. Yeah. I've learned that the hard way.

Jessica:            Oh, I bet.

Zaya:               Yeah, so…

Jessica:            Oh, I bet. And is your dad around?

Zaya:               I haven't been in contact with him, like, in seven years. And we've started⁠—I have reconnected with him, trying to move on and trying to let go of things and accept things as they are and him as he is. And also, it was becoming between my family. It was like, "You don't talk to your dad? That's bad." And I was like, "You know, but parents are not perfect. And I have a right to have boundaries."

Jessica:            Yes. So there's layers to this, right? One thing I want to say is, yeah, you get to have boundaries with your dad, absolutely. The other thing I want to say is there is a risk of you unconsciously making an overcorrection from not being like him. So his inability or unwillingness to take responsibility for who he is and how he shows up with people he cares about⁠—that is selfish. Sometimes it's narcissistic. Sometimes it's just kind of cruel. And you understand being at the receiving end of that.

Zaya:               Yeah.

Jessica:            And something that's very important to you is not being like that.

Zaya:               Yes.

Jessica:            And that is very healthy. That's a great goal. Don't be like your dad. Sure. Yes.

Zaya:               Yeah. Yeah.

Jessica:            However, there's an overcorrection, right? There's an overcorrection to being like, "Okay. So then I'll never say no. I will always be available, even when my body is screaming no." And here's the thing. And this is the thing because your Saturn is at almost 20 degrees of Pisces, so you're in the pre-Saturn Return phase. And this is the thing that makes or breaks a Saturn Return, is when we identify ourselves⁠—which everybody does in their teens and their 20s. When we identify ourself as trying to be the opposite of the people that we didn't like in our childhood, the people that failed us in our childhood, then we're basically like the tails of a coin. We're still the same coin. We're heads, not tails, or we're tails, not heads. Do you see what I'm saying?

Zaya:               Yep. Yep, absolutely. Absolutely.

Jessica:            It's not different enough. It's the opposite, which is the same spectrum. So it's still playing out the ancestral lineage. It's still playing out the trauma pattern, but it's just doing it in the opposite way.

Zaya:               Yep.

Jessica:            So he didn't give enough. You'll give too much. Then the next one will give not enough, and then too much, and then here we have it's uninterrupted. So the beauty of the Saturn Return⁠—and all Saturn transits, really, and many other transits⁠—is that we have the opportunity to recognize, "Okay. Can I trust that I am not him? And can I have boundaries and be a person who values showing up, but still have boundaries? Is there space for me to do that, or do I have to sacrifice myself in order to prove that I am not selfish or narcissistic?"

Zaya:               Which⁠—you know, it makes a lot of sense because I've realized that in the process of not talking to him, which was really needed, and the process of taking time out away from him, then the limits of that showed up in my relationship with my mom and in my relationship with my partner because I started to see that I was still impacted by it, even if he wasn't in my life.

And me reconnecting to him was my way of being like, "I can be myself even with you in my life, even if you're there," because the premise of me not talking to him was like, "I cannot breathe. I don't know who I am when you're not there." I don't know who I am because of the way I grew up. I never got the opportunity of that. And so I feel like my 20s were like figuring my needs. I had no boundaries whatsoever. It's been worse than that. I would just say yes to everything.

So I feel like I've gone to the other side of the spectrum at some point. And I started becoming like my dad in the process of that, not in all the ways⁠—

Jessica:            Of course.

Zaya:   ⁠—but in the way that's like, "No. I won't do this."

Jessica:            Well, that just pushes me to want to talk about something else in your chart here. Bear with me, okay? You have the Moon in Scorpio, and it's intercepted your fifth house and it's conjunct your North Node. So I want to ask, was your parents' relationship an affair? Do you know?

Zaya:               I don't know.

Jessica:            Do you know if it was a planned pregnancy?

Zaya:               I don't know.

Jessica:            Interesting. Okay. This Lunar placement that you have gives you really intense issues around your own emotional body, as we've kind of talked about, but also, it's a secretive placement. It's in Scorpio, and it's intercepted. And there is this thing⁠—and it's like part of me wants to talk about your dad a lot more, but you reached out with a really specific problem about the people you love and how something shuts down inside of you.

Zaya:               Yeah.

Jessica:            And I feel like that's so present in your life right now, so I don't want to let myself get too distracted. One of the things that you've come here in this life to come into embodiment around is your own emotions. Yeah. Yeah.

Zaya:               Yeah.

Jessica:            Super simple. Super simple. And for you, it is really challenging, and it is supposed to be challenging. Having that North Node in Scorpio indicates that you need to determine your own ethics and your own rules, and you don't have to do things the way other people tell you you should, because when you try to do that, it's like it shuts you down emotionally right away.

Zaya:               Yes, it does.

Jessica:            And it's really hard because you are a really emo person. You're also a really passionate person. You're also a really sensitive person. But what ends up happening is your passions and your sensitivities take up all the space, and it gets really hard for you to access your actual emotions, your feelings. So you need a lot of time alone.

Zaya:               Yes.

Jessica:            And then, when you're around somebody like your mom, who's just like, "I love you. Emotion, emotion, emotion," you're like, "Ahh." It feels like being yelled at. It feels like being attacked because⁠—

Zaya:               It does.

Jessica:            ⁠—you have all of these energetic protections around your heart as a way to protect yourself, literally.

Zaya:               Yeah. Absolutely.

Jessica:            And does this come up with people other than your partner and your mom?

Zaya:               Anyone who get close enough.

Jessica:            Yeah. Right. That's it.

Zaya:               Yeah.

Jessica:            So the way to be different than your dad⁠—not opposite, but different⁠—is by communicating. You have sharp edges inside of you.

Zaya:               Yes.

Jessica:            Those sharp edges are there as a reaction and protection, so a reaction to and a protection for, the depth and vulnerability of your emotions.

Zaya:               Absolutely. Absolutely.

Jessica:            Yes.

Zaya:               Yeah.

Jessica:            So, when your bestie or your mom or your partner comes at you with being like, "Oh my God. How was your day? Hug, hug. Love, love," now, all of a sudden, what happens is you feel your own sharp edges in contrast to their tenderness.

Zaya:               Yes.

Jessica:            Okay.

Zaya:               Yeah. Yeah.

Jessica:            And because you're feeling this contrast, it makes you feel like, "What the fuck is wrong with them?" or, "What the fuck is wrong with me?"

Zaya:               Is wrong with me. Absolutely.

Jessica:            Yeah. Yeah. It's either/or, right?

Zaya:               Yes. Yeah.

Jessica:            And so finding a way to communicate with the people that you love, that you⁠—sometimes just being physically intimate or just maybe too intimate in a particular way makes you feel your sharp edges, and you haven't figured out yet how to emotionally cope with that without shutting down⁠. Just saying that to them and coming up with a fucking safe word around it, being like, "Every time that happens for me, I'm going to say 'shark tank' or 'banana'," and then letting them know, "This is not about you. I'm just not in a space where I want that kind of tenderness," or, "I'm just going to be a little edgy, and it's not about you. It's about me, and I'm aware that it's about me." That would be authentically different than your dad.

Zaya:               I get what you're saying, and I definitely have said that to my partner and have had conversations recently with my mom where I said that. I guess it's just tough because feeling these sharp edges when it's redundant⁠—so in a romantic relationship, it's like sometimes it's the right time, but most of the time, when someone approaches me that I am close to, most of the time, it's like an irk.

Jessica:            Yeah. Yes.

Zaya:               It's as if all of my senses just fold back in. And so it's been a conversation with my partner because she's like, "You know, it's whenever you're in the mood," which I try to work on, which is, I guess, a fact sometimes. And I've also tried to explain to her, "Yes, it's that, and also, I feel like it's like when I get the sign that we could get intimate, I think I need a lot of time to process the information and to be like, 'All right. You're in the mood. Am I in the mood? It's going to take me three hours to figure it out.'"

Jessica:            Yeah.

Zaya:               And it's never going to be spontaneous. And it's just⁠—

Jessica:            Okay. So let me jump in on that because the way your chart is written, when it's your idea, it's a fucking brilliant idea and you want to go. And you don't need three hours. And to your partner's benefit, that could sometimes be like, "Wait a minute. So"⁠—

Zaya:               Of course.

Jessica:            Of course. But part of what that is is that it's your free will. There's a part of you that is attracted to free will. And there is a part of you that feels put upon to respond quickly. And as a matter of self-protection⁠—this is not like a well-adjusted response, but it's a response to trauma. As a matter of self-protection, you're like, "Okay. So this person who I love, who I trust, who I objectively know I want to be with, has just given me the very clear sign that it's like, 'Let's go'"⁠—so two things come up for you. One is there is a part of you that's like, "Okay. Well, I know what happens with my family. If my family calls and I just show up, then I get rejected or things go sideways."

Zaya:               Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm. Mm-hmm.

Jessica:            And there's a part of you that's just habituated on being like, "Okay. I shut down my expectations. If you've told me you want me, there's a part of me that shuts down my expectations." Right?

Zaya:               Yes. Yes.

Jessica:            And this only happens with people who reach family status, right? So your partner, your bestie, your actual family. But there's something else, too, which is that you have such a wired nervous system⁠—you've got Mercury on top of your Sun; you've got that Uranus that's really active in your seventh house⁠—that you're not in your body, I would say⁠—I don't know⁠—60, 80 percent of the time. So, if somebody's like, "Hey, let's go," you're like, "Where is my body? Where did I leave it? How do I get it on the"⁠—you know. So it's like you're like, "Oh shit. Okay. So this person's into it. Am I into it?" And then you have to locate your damn body.

Zaya:               That's a really funny image. Yeah. Yeah. I'll be like, "I'm just going to get us in the kitchen or something," and I've been, like, in the woods the whole day.

Jessica:            I mean, I feel like it's in a box that you put somewhere and you can't quite remember where.

Zaya:               Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Jessica:            You know? The way that you navigate the world is by trying to protect yourself from your own vulnerabilities and sensitivities. And that requires that you hide parts of yourself from the big, bad world, which⁠—the big, bad world is often actually at home in your family.

Zaya:               It used to be, yeah.

Jessica:            Yeah. Of course. We're talking early developmental⁠—

Zaya:               Yeah.

Jessica:            Yeah.

Zaya:               Yeah. Absolutely.

Jessica:            What you've done is you've developed this coping mechanism that worked for you as a kid, and because you're pre-Saturn Return, you are now being like, "Oh fuck. It doesn't work for me the same way." And it's not like we're saying get rid of this coping mechanism. It's about being able to use different ones in situations that trigger the old feelings but aren't actually unsafe.

Zaya:               Yes.

Jessica:            So, within that⁠—say your full name out loud en Francais.

Zaya:               [redacted]

Jessica:            Say her name, your girlfriend's name.

Zaya:               [redacted]

Jessica:            Is she older?

Zaya:               Yes. She's 32, four years older.

Jessica:            There's layers and layers and layers. The part that's about intimacy⁠—she feels that you are being controlling.

Zaya:               Yes.

Jessica:            Yeah. And your father was controlling.

Zaya:               Yes.

Jessica:            We can say "is," but we're talking about your childhood. And the truth of the matter is you are controlling. You're controlling your safety, even in situations where you objectively know you're not being threatened, but you feel unsafe.

Zaya:               Absolutely.

Jessica:            And she intellectually gets it, but she doesn't emotionally get it because she just can't relate.

Zaya:               Yes.

Jessica:            And she is very cool.

Zaya:               Yeah. She's the coolest.

Jessica:            Yeah. Yeah. I can see why you'd be into her. She is really smart, really interesting, really weird.

Zaya:               Yeah.

Jessica:            She's just kind of like a really good match for you. She's interesting. You get bored, and you need very particular kind of weirdo with a very particular kind of intelligence. And she is that weirdo, and she is that smarty. So that makes sense why intimacy would be especially hard with her, because you actually super fucking care.

Zaya:               Yeah. Absolutely.

Jessica:            So, as a hot aside, she does want to be with you.

Zaya:               Yes. She's made it very⁠—yeah.

Jessica:            She does want to be with you, and you are really in your head about it. And it makes it really hard for you to trust your own impulses, some of which say stay, some of which say go. There is a way which being alone is easier for you. You're good at the first 15 minutes of a relationship, great at it. You could get a gold star. But you actually do crave authentic intimacy, and I gotta tell you⁠—do you want human children?

Zaya:               Yes.

Jessica:            Yeah. Looks like you're going to have human children. It looks like that's what you're meant to do, have a partner and children. So I'm not saying you should be with this woman or that you will be with this woman. But I am saying that if your goal is to be partnered and to coparent with someone, then she is a good person to work on a relationship with because the things that are wrong with her for you don't stop you from becoming the person you want to be.

Zaya:               Everything that you just said makes a lot of sense. She would be a very good parent.

Jessica:            She'd be a good coparent. She tells you what she needs. She's not fucking around. She's not playing games. She's not manipulating you.

Zaya:               Absolutely. Absolutely.

Jessica:            You can trust that she says what she means and she means what she says.

Zaya:               Absolutely.

Jessica:            And you hate when people play mind games.

Zaya:               Oh my God, yeah.

Jessica:            Yeah. And she's okay with you traveling for your career or your personal development. She's okay with you having an individual life. She doesn't love it when you're gone for a long period of time, because she's a person, but she's not like, "Oh, you have to be with me all the time. That's the only way."

Zaya:               She's not like that.

Jessica:            She's not. She's not.

Zaya:               She's like, "Bye. See you later."

Jessica:            Yeah, because she's doing her own thing. She has her own passions in life. She has her own thing going.

Zaya:               Yes. Yes.

Jessica:            So here's the "but." When you don't get your way, sometimes you can be kind of a baby.

Zaya:               I mean…

Jessica:            Is that true? Is that true? Am I telling the truth?

Zaya:               Yes. I struggle with not getting things my way. I absolutely do. Yeah.

Jessica:            Yeah. It's like you act out in ways that you just⁠—it's like you get defensive.

Zaya:               Yeah.

Jessica:            And then, sometimes, you just fucking double down on the defensiveness or the story that you make up in reaction to the defensiveness instead of being like, "What am I defending? What am I defending here?"

Zaya:               Mm-hmm. Yep. Yep.

Jessica:            So I'm giving you this question on a silver platter. Ask it to yourself over and over again over the course of your life: "What am I defending?"

Zaya:               What⁠—I'm writing it down.

Jessica:            Yeah. Write that down. Write it down. That's right. Write it in every language you know, right there. "What am I defending?" And the reality is you have some resentments towards her, and they look to me like 70 percent your ego at this point. That doesn't mean you can just shake them off, because the problem is really, at core, around your own willingness and ability to tolerate hurt feelings, disappointment, overwhelm emotionally.

Zaya:               Mm-hmm. Yeah. That's a tough one.

Jessica:            It really is. And I would say that your best move is to prioritize. Separate from your partner or your mom or your whatever⁠—your goldfish⁠—just prioritize developing skills and tools for identifying when those emotions come up, noticing your reactions, and experimenting with different ways of engaging with those emotions because you are a little bit of a one-trick pony right now, and your trick is your dad's trick. It's shut down. That's the trick. It's a good trick.

Zaya:               It is. It is. And you know why? Because⁠—so the thing is the resentment part that I really stayed would be because⁠—so it was the whole being overwhelmed. Struggling with communicating my emotions was really strong at the start of the relationship. It's specifically because the way we were interacting was reminding me of my relationship with my dad, specifically for that. And so the resentment part is the resentment that I felt towards my dad for my whole life, to a lesser level.

                        So I know that it's from me, but somehow it's like I'm not blind to it, but the resentment is there because it's like I feel like there's something inside of me telling me, "Yeah, you'll never get close to her, just like you could never get close to your dad." It's kind of like a lost fight in my mind, and I'm like⁠—also because she's not at all like him⁠—

Jessica:            You know what? She has boundaries. She has boundaries, and that triggers feeling like you're dealing with your father on some level because it's not that he had boundaries; it's that he had fucking walls.

Zaya:               Yes. Yes.

Jessica:            The man has, like, Empire State Building walls. He has huge walls.

Zaya:               Oh yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Jessica:            And so, sometimes when she has boundaries with you where she's like, "Yeah, I'm not fucking doing that," you're like, "Ah. I know this. This is bullshit."

Zaya:               Yeah, which is⁠—it's never that deep, too, with her because it's never malicious.

Jessica:            Mm-hmm. It's not.

Zaya:               She doesn't have an ounce of malice in her.

Jessica:            Yeah. This is not her trauma. She has trauma, but this is not her trauma. She's not punishing with her boundaries or her walls. She's not.

Zaya:               And I do that.

Jessica:            Yeah.

Zaya:               You know what I mean?

Jessica:            Yeah.

Zaya:               Which is the whole, like, "I'm not ready" feeling⁠. You know, it's the punishing⁠—I'm not trying to actively punish, but it's looking like that. It's looking like I'm retrieving myself with my mom with her, and I'm not ready. And it's like they're ready to reconnect, and I'm just like⁠—yeah.

Jessica:            Here's the way out. It's an internal action and an external action. The external action is really hard, but it's the easier one. And it's verbalizing to your mom or your partner or whoever it is in the moment, "I am really just triggered, and I am feeling really tight or fun"⁠—I call it edgy, but you can call it whatever feels right. "I'm feeling really edgy. I want to acknowledge that I'm acting a little weird because I'm feeling weird, and I don't know how to fix it. I don't know how to handle it. But I want to acknowledge that I'm at least aware of it, and it's not on you," even if part of you in the moment is like, "Yeah, it's fucking on you. You're making me feel this way."

                        But just make a practice of stating it because this is the thing your father in a million years would never do.

Zaya:               Absolutely.

Jessica:            So this is how you become different from your father. It's taking responsibility.

Zaya:               Okay. Okay. Yeah.

Jessica:            Yep. It's just taking responsibility. And it's not saying, "I'm wrong; you're right," because it is not about that. Essentially, in therapist speak, it's basically saying, "I'm aware that I'm having a maladjusted response to what's happening in this moment, and I can't see my way out of it yet." That's basically what you're saying to them, but maybe saying it in an easier way. So that's the easier part, and that part's fucking hard.

                        Now, the next part, the part that is much harder, is identifying when your defensive emotions come up, understanding that your defensive emotions, unless you are being actively attacked, are a habit that is like the scab on the open wound of, "I don't know how to feel my feelings. I don't know if I'm loveable. I don't know if I want love. I don't know where to put this emotion. I don't know what to do with this emotion."

                        Sometimes people being loving towards you when you really know that they love you⁠—it feels like fucking rubbing alcohol in an open wound. It doesn't feel good, and your brain is like, "What the fuck is wrong? They must be coming at me with something," or, "There must be something wrong with me." But the truth is that you have come in here to this life, and you know what childhood was like. You know what was hard with your mother and your father. You know what they modeled for you about the lack of safety within intimacy.

                        This is also ancestral. You can see this back through generations, the difficulties with emotion. And you are not going to, and no one expected you to, heal all wounds in your 20s or your 30s or your 40s. You're allowed to have wounds, and you're allowed to be in process. The trauma pattern says, "No. Fucking show up like everything's fine, and make sure everything's fucking fine." It's like white-knuckling it. You know what I mean?

Zaya:               Yes.

Jessica:            And that kind of attitude, very Moon in Scorpio, very Saturn conjunct Venus⁠—that attitude, it's like it keeps you together. It makes you feel safe. And it keeps not just other people away, it inhibits your ability to be porous enough to receive the love that you have.

Zaya:               Yeah.

Jessica:            And that adds to defenses. So it's like if you're never really receiving the love, then when you feel lonely, when you feel hurt, you don't have gas in the tank because you've been rejecting all the gas everybody's been offering you for free for your tank.

Zaya:               Yeah.

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Jessica:            So the work of this is not psychological. It's not even spiritual. It's emotional, which is why it comes up around sex. From my perspective, there's the soul, and then there's the body. The body is inside the soul, and the emotions are in the body. To access the emotions, you're going to have to deal with the body and vice versa.

Zaya:               Yes.

Jessica:            So my guess is, if you are dancing or wrestling, play fighting, or something like that, you're all good. You're good to go. You're good to go.

Zaya:               Yes. Yeah. Absolutely.

Jessica:            For you, an access point to your emotions is your body. And so, if you're like, "Okay. I know I'm going to go hang out with my mom, and she's going to want to hug me and treat me with love. And that sounds very nice, but it feels really bad for some reason," before you go, go to your room. Turn on music. Dance your balls off. Really use your body as a way to at least kind of knock on the doors so that you remember you have them, that you can open them. You can open them.

                        And I imagine your father's body language is very shut off, closed off, self-protected. He's rigid. Am I seeing that correctly?

Zaya:               It's not like it's obviously rigid. Yeah, there's a certain softness to him that you can feel. Maybe it's me projecting, but I see him not only as rigid, but it's like his softness is seeping out of him without him wanting to.

Jessica:            Okay. You just nailed it. You just nailed it. That's it. And again, somebody could describe you that way, right? You have your damn Cancer Rising. You are tender. People do have the instinct to want to hug you or be tender with you. And it's not a wrong instinct. You desperately want people to be tender with you, even though it is like nails on a chalkboard sometimes when they do it.

                        And I think, again, this is where you are your father's child in a way that might be really upsetting when you're mad at him or when you're thinking about shitty things he's done. But the reality is you get to have boundaries, which is something that looks like your mom is not great at.

Zaya:               Listen. Boundaries⁠—I've learned about the words three years ago. I never was told about none of it either by my dad⁠—obviously, because he was the one enforcing the structure⁠—but neither by her because of her own personal story. She doesn't know what it is.

Jessica:            No, she doesn't. She doesn't. She doesn't know what boundaries are. And when you have boundaries with somebody who doesn't have boundaries, they feel rejected and they feel like you've been harsh with them. And when someone has boundaries with you and you don't have boundaries, you generally feel like they're being mean, right? That's how humans are. That's how humans are.

                        And as we've established, Neptune in the seventh house⁠—you've got Venus/Saturn/Midheaven conjunction. You have a devotional love language. You don't want people to feel hurt. You don't want people to feel like you don't care about them. And so having boundaries is really hard for you because you are not just thinking about your boundaries; you're thinking about, "How is this other person going to feel?" That's a truth.

                        Another truth is sometimes you're just like sharp edges, and there's just fucking walls around you. They're both true at different moments. And your tenderness⁠—when you're not actively fighting it, your tenderness always does seep through, different but similar to your dad.

Zaya:               Mm-hmm. Yep. I can⁠—yeah.

Jessica:            The truth of the matter is you have a lot of work to do of tolerating your emotions without analyzing them or intellectualizing them or distracting and defending. And there are many ways of doing this. I would say that if you end up doing therapy, I would recommend somatic therapy, like a therapy that includes your body, because you're very smart, which is great except for in therapy, you can talk circles around a problem and never get to it.

Zaya:               Listen. That's what I'm trying to⁠—you know? Yep. I can create stories as⁠—you know, I can. So yeah.

Jessica:            Therapists love you. You're like an ideal client because you're always introspecting, figuring things out, making connections. The problem is it doesn't touch the heart. It just dances all around this box that you've hidden somewhere in the kitchen. Probably/maybe it could be the bathroom because it's Scorpio, so it has to be a room with plumbing.

                        The thing to know here is that your Saturn Return is coming. And all the things we've been talking about are exactly on time for you to come into ownership of who you choose to be. So that doesn't mean being perfect at it. It doesn't mean not having a learning curve. But it's really about recognizing that whatever happens with your partner, whatever happens with your mom or your dad or whatever else, you want to be somebody who has access to their emotions, who can love and be loved. You want a family, which means you want a partnership, which means you want to be able to negotiate time and commitments and irritations and all that kind of stuff, not just the love stuff. It's also a pain in the ass, right?

Zaya:               Yes.

Jessica:            And you want to be able to experience and express your irritation in a way that doesn't make you feel terrible or doesn't make the other person feel terrible, right?

Zaya:               Yes.

Jessica:            Just owning that, just owning that and embodying⁠—you don't have to be perfect at it yet, but embodying that is really helpful as you move towards your Saturn Return. Now, at the same time, you are currently going through a Pluto square to your Sun and Mercury⁠—hot tip. The Pluto square to your Sun will be over on November 1st, so in a couple of days from recording. And it started January of 2021. The Pluto square to your Mercury started February of 2022, and it'll be over November 30th of 2024. So you have a year and a month of that one left.

                        These transits, what they do is they trigger your need for things to be deep, for things to be real, but they also trigger your ways of disassociating because the way that your chart works, your Sun/Mercury conjunction is so strong, it's so high-functioning, that you over-rely on it. So, in more human terms, you're so good at communicating and explaining things to people in a way that will help you to get what you want and make them feel better about what they want that you over-rely on that skill set⁠—yeah. I see the face. So you over-rely on that skill set, and it helps you to stay away from boundaries. It helps you to stay away from your emotions, all the things that actually need your attention.

                        This is a time where you are⁠—you're dealing with it, and it's not supposed to be chill. It's not supposed to be chill. Now, you shared with me before we started recording that you're currently studying something to do with writing.

Zaya:               Yes.

Jessica:            And this is fucking excellent for writing. It's one of the few things that this transit is really good for, is it helps you get deep with your ideas and it helps you to transform your writing style in a way that's more authentic and true to you. So that's very cool. But the rest of it is kind of like difficult conversations dealing with your identity, all that kind of shit. So you're already in it. You're already in it. I know. I'm sorry, but it is happening. You're already in it.

                        And the other thing that's happening is that Pluto is sitting right here on top of your Neptune, right between your Neptune and your Uranus. So all to say the next two years of your life, two years and a couple months, is going to continue to be all about boundaries and relationships.

Zaya:               Okay.

Jessica:            These sharp edges, they're going nowhere, honey. They're going nowhere. The need for boundaries is going nowhere. These are the issues you're meant to be engaging with, and it's not a sign that something's wrong that they're coming up in your relationships. It's a sign that something needs attention.

Zaya:               Yes. Absolutely.

Jessica:            And if you can take this idea of, "When I have strong emotions, it's not a sign that something's wrong. It's a sign that I need to sit with my emotions. I need to listen to my emotions"⁠—if you could practice that, it will dramatically transform your insides and your outsides.

Zaya:               Yeah. I'm a beginner to that. I hear you. I really hear you.

Jessica:            It's going to work. This is the thing. If you stay with the work, it will work. This is what I tell you because you have all of the tools. You've just been using them in ways that worked for you when you were ten, and they don't work for you as an adult. And it's not, again, that they would never work for you. I mean, this is the problem. We have these survival mechanisms from when we're kids, and then as adults, when we use them, eight out of ten times, they don't work. But fucking two out of ten times, they do.

                        And it reinforces the survival mechanism of, "Aha. I knew it. It still works." And it becomes hard to get rid of. And so it's really important to acknowledge you don't have to throw away any of your coping mechanisms. You just want to add in more. It's about adding in more coping mechanisms so that you have more options.

Zaya:               Yeah. I see what you mean.

Jessica:            Yeah. And that's really the key with your partner. That's really the key with people you're close to in general, is being able to be like, "My mother wants to hug me. It makes me want to barf. I don't know what to do," and being able to be like, "These are my emotions. I'm going to stay with my emotions." And that just melts them right away. It really does. When you fight your emotions⁠—Moon in Scorpio⁠—what happens is they fight fucking back. And now you're in a tug-of-war with something that you cannot separate from: your own emotions.

Zaya:               Mm-hmm. Yep. Yep.

Jessica:            And so, if you can instead be like, "Okay. Here are my emotions. I'm going to just breathe. I'm going to not attach, and I'm not going to connect. I'm just going to let them be what they are," that really helps. It's kind of like⁠—have you ever been caught in a riptide in the ocean?

Zaya:               I have. Yeah.

Jessica:            Okay. So you know you just have to not fight it, and then you're fine. It passes.

Zaya:               Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Jessica:            This is a very Scorpio Moon, Plutonian thing. It's allowing the dangerous feeling of your emotions to be present without attaching or⁠—which, by the way, rejecting is attaching because in order to reject it, you have to push it away. So you try to push away a riptide; you die. It's terrible. But if you just let go, it passes. And this is a skill that's really important for you to practice using. And you may practice it and be like, "I fucking hate this. I'm not doing this anymore." I respect that. But try. Try new things is the move.

Zaya:               Yes. It makes a lot of sense. I would say, when you said that, what came up to me is sometimes it feels like a riptide, and sometimes it feels like I'm about to drown. And there's the whole current that's taking me away. You know?

Jessica:            Yeah. Yeah.

Zaya:               It's like the whole ocean is just pulling me somewhere, which I guess is paramount to how much I resist my emotions.

Jessica:            It is. I mean, it is. And in those moments, again, the thing to do that would be radically different than what your mother would do or your father would do is say, "I'm overstimulated. I want to acknowledge that I just can't in this moment, because"⁠—you have to give a because, because your father would say, "I can't."

Zaya:               Yes. Because.

Jessica:            Yeah. But it's the because. It's "because I'm overwhelmed emotionally, and I don't know how to respond to this moment, because I'm feeling myself shutting down because of my shit." And that means that you could then come back and be like, "Listen. Last week, when we had this moment and I said, 'I can't right now because I'm overwhelmed,' I'm far enough away from that moment to be able to realize, 'You told me where we were going to eat dinner, and you told me what we were going to do and who we were going to do it with. And it really made me feel out of control. And I know that you weren't trying to fuck with me or harm me. But in that moment, I mentally did, but emotionally, I just couldn't separate it. And I want to acknowledge that I don't know how to fix that yet, but I'm aware that that's what happens inside of me."

Zaya:               Yes. Absolutely.

Jessica:            You don't need to have the answer. Saturn/Venus conjunction is like, "Yeah, I do." But the only answer you need is ownership. It's just ownership. Ownership means owning what you don't know. And you're allowed to not know.

Zaya:               Yes, I am.

Jessica:            You're allowed to come back to it later.

Zaya:               I never know in the moment. I just feel very activated, so yeah. Makes a lot of sense.

Jessica:            And I think that with practice, you will eventually have quicker access to that self-awareness with time, with practice, because currently, what happens is you feel whatever you feel, and then you feel bad because you're like, "I should feel this," or, "I should feel that." And then you're further from it.

Zaya:               Yes.

Jessica:            So the practice is just acknowledging that you feel what you feel and giving yourself permission to be out of your body, out of your head, out of your depth, whatever it is. You're allowed to be out of your depth. And what you've been doing historically to date is you're like⁠—

Zaya:               Pretend like I'm not.

Jessica:            Yeah. Exactly. "Everything's fine/I'm dying/it's fine/it's never going to be okay." Right. Right.

Zaya:               Yeah. It's literally⁠—yeah. Oh, wow. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I'm fine, but I'm dying inside.

Jessica:            Yes. And so the work is to be able to say to the people that you're closest with, "I'm in a state were I'm not all right, and it's going to take me a few days to figure out what that means. It's probably not about you. It's probably about me. But I'll let you know when I'm clear." That's the way to not be your dad in a situation and to not be your mom.

Zaya:               Okay. Oh yeah. Yes. Yes.

Jessica:            Boundaries. Boundaries, not rules. Boundaries, not walls.

Zaya:               It's the polar opposites that I'm trying to build something different from. Yeah.

Jessica:            Yes. That's the work, is don't be the opposite of your parents; be different.

Zaya:               Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Jessica:            Because you're always going to be like them because they're your fucking parents. Whether you were raised by them or not, that's just fucking⁠—that's just how it goes. So giving yourself permission to have similarities and to let them teach you what not to do as much as they've taught you what to do. So what they've taught you is don't do everything for people to make them feel better when you feel terrible. That's your mom's lesson. What your dad's lesson is is don't cut people out of the equation when they're in the relationship with you.

Zaya:               Yeah, because my partner is not the enemy.

Jessica:            She's not.

Zaya:               I have to remind myself that. But I've only understood at the start of the relationship. I was like, "You just need to chill because this is not the enemy. This is not the enemy." Yes.

Jessica:            Not the enemy.

Zaya:               Yeah. But it's like an emotionally just⁠—you know. It's something that I always have to remember.

Jessica:            The key is to just keep on working on it and keep on asking for help from the right people at the right moments for identifying and coping with your emotions. That's really the work because when you're activated, everyone feels like your enemy. Anyone who is trying to be close to you is feeling like your enemy, and that's just like⁠—it's where you go. And that's okay. It's okay because if you can identify, "Oh, this is this place I go when I feel injured," then you can be like, "Oh shit. That means I feel injured in some way." And then you can start to sort through, "Is this person injuring me, or is this person shining a gentle light on a spot that has really never healed?" which is part of the thing with your partner.

Zaya:               Yes.

Jessica:            You pulled back because you didn't want the responsibility of having to hold the relationship when you weren't sure if he could hold it.

Zaya:               Exactly.

Jessica:            Yeah. I see it.

Zaya:               Exactly. Exactly.

Jessica:            I see it.

Zaya:               Because it is so fitting into what I need to work on.

Jessica:            Yes.

Zaya:               Not in a destructive way, right?

Jessica:            Correct. Yeah. No, it's⁠—

Zaya:               Not saying it's a relationship where it's like, oh, yeah, I'm activated every day. But it's like it's building me so much that sometimes it's a lot.

Jessica:            It is a lot.

Zaya:               So that's⁠—

Jessica:            That's it.

Zaya:               That's it.

Jessica:            That's it. Well, I could talk to you forever. This has been really awesome, and I hope it has been helpful.

Zaya:               It has.

Jessica:            Oh, good. I'm so glad. I'm so glad.