Pluto entered Aquarius on Saturday, January 20th along with the Sun, highlighting where it is we may feel intense emotions, perhaps a sense of crisis, and where we may need to make a big change (over time) as a result.
Pluto transits, while often experienced as difficult, make us confront things that have been lurking beneath the surface, forcing us to make long-needed transformations.
Pluto transits often make us face our pain, anger, traumas, untrue beliefs, and help us to be honest about deep desires as a result.
Here are some thoughts on how to be with big, scary emotions and particularly on how to be with our pain.
Our society holds a collective belief that pain is bad and we shouldn’t experience it.
When we aren’t numbing pain with pharmaceuticals or screens, we are by staying busy, over-eating, under-eating, shopping, doing drugs, avoiding, etc. you get the point.
And I’m not saying that we shouldn’t help others or ourselves get out of pain if we need to. This is more about emotional/psychological pain.
The irony is… what if by avoiding pain, we cause more pain?
I also want to say that feeling or not feeling our pain isn’t always a choice. We are biologically wired to find what’s safe. And our bodies and psyches feel threatened by pain, so it’s quite normal that we would want to avoid it. It’s not just our society that says pain is bad- it’s also a nervous system reflex.
While we often avoid our pain unconsciously as a reflex/reaction, we do have a choice in practicing a widening of our window of tolerance for discomfort. The more we create room for all the range of feeling, including pain, the more resilient we can be in a world where pain and hurt are realities.
As I have begun opening my heart up more and more to all my feelings and parts of myself, I have noticed an increase in pain (& love- and other emotions!). And my reaction in the past (and still sometimes is) is to distract and don’t feel, which creates a numbness instead… leading to depression. The belief was “I can’t feel it- it’s too much for me”. But I’m starting to create a different story.
I am starting to feel grateful for my pain because it means I am alive. The more I am not identified with my feelings or my experience… the more I don’t see them as bad or something to avoid, the more I can practice being WITH them. And being with me.
As a highly sensitive person, I’ve always been attuned to other people’s pain. This made me sad because I was functioning under the belief that they shouldn’t have to feel bad. And that maybe I should help reduce or eliminate their pain.
An internalized belief like this is scary. Talk about co-dependence- a covert way of controlling others’ experience so that I CAN BE OK.
I am realizing I don’t need to stop my own pain or others’ pain. That in fact, I may be doing folks a disservice by trying to do so.
If I rescued people from their pain, I’d be taking away their sweet sweet alchemical process. Pain is how we can transform. It’s how we can move big energy. It’s how we can birth into new, more true ways of being.
Because of this, I want to help myself and others experience their pain. Be with their pain. For this is how we heal- this is how we live a full life.
And I’m not saying anyone has to or should heal. I’m not on that toxic ever-improvement, never healed/never good enough train. No, we get to choose.
We get to choose whether we feel or not…How much we feel or dissociate (although that isn’t always a choice). And we always get to experience the consequences or results of what we set ourselves up for or what we’ve chosen (or not chosen) in the past.
There’s no morality lesson here. No “you should feel your pain” message.
This is simply a reflection. Maybe an invitation. To see what it’s like. Try on a new belief that pain isn’t bad. That you can hold your pain. That it’s worth it- and that maybe the results heed the journey.
Maybe instead of saying to people “I’m sorry you’re in so much pain”, we could reframe by saying “I know you can make it through this”.
Sometimes all we need is a little encouragement. To be told that we can do it.
Over the next few weeks, we’ll have Mercury, Mars, and Venus conjoin Pluto. Keep these dates in mind: February 4th, February 12th, and February 16th, give or take a few days on either side.
We may experience similar flare-ups of intense emotion, perhaps facing some pain from old wounds, and therefore need to be in deep process.
My invitation is to be with yourself. Journal. Find a therapist or guide of sorts. Turn towards instead of away. Process the emotions. Feel them in your body. (And all this is way easier said than done!).
You may just find that there has been gold underneath your pain the whole time, that will enrich your life with an endless amount of internal resources that can’t be taken away.