Dealing With Conflicting Needs, Desires And Impulses

Dear Elsa,

Basically, I am wondering what one is supposed to do when several important things in one’s chart just don’t agree. I mean, I know the short answer is “live with it”, but I thought you could find a slightly more enlightening way of putting it. I have several times been asked if I had multiple personalities. I don’t, but much of what I say and do does mystify me. I sometimes feel I should pick a part of me (a planet?), run with it, and too bad for the rest of me. My life is challenging in every area, so I feel I can’t “have it all” and must choose which part of life to be happy in. WWYD?

Taurus
United States


Dear Taurus,

What a great question. I agree you’ve got a challenge. And I can understand your wanting to divorce yourself, it’s in your chart. But this will never work and I can think of two approaches.

First you do this the Capricorn way, one step at a time. Start with the Sun and Moon. As I say, live your Sun, satisfy your Moon. In your case perhaps you would want to partner with someone energetic and loving while living in an eccentric home with some Neptune flair. Point being if you nail these two down you can move to incorporate other aspects of yourself and if this seems odd, it is really as simple as finding your style. Compare it to knowing you look good in red and the finding you like to put purple with it and there. That’s you. A week later you may add a barrette… you get the idea. You will eventually pull in all your parts.

The other approach would be exactly the opposite. You might get in a mirror and look at all the parts of yourself and I’m not kidding. Look at allllllllll the parts of yourself, check your own ass as I would say and decide you are going to own every single shred of who you are. I read this next bit somewhere, I like it a lot. I did this 10 years ago and it sure worked for me.

The instruction is the look at yourself in the mirror and say these words: “I will not forsake you.”

Do it once, do it again, do it until the promise is internalized and the problem will begin to solve itself. Because these people who are telling you things like you have multiple personalities… well maybe you do. And maybe that will be your signature from now on. And with a little luck this happens as you age anyway. You find yourself… all of yourself and just present it.

For example I have no problem calling myself a skittish woman. I am also a do-gooder, horny as hell, flamboyant, shy, loving and probably dangerous and you know what? That is a lot more interesting than saying, “I am… whatever society wants hear.”

Anyone else?

fSubmit your own open question

9 thoughts on “Dealing With Conflicting Needs, Desires And Impulses”

  1. Wow what great advice! I wonder if this person feels pressure to decide a ‘focus’ because of the desire to, well, funnel desire?

    I read a very cool article about this very thing this weekend by a great Teacher. She said: ‘If it’s such a problem to be many people, if there is such a stigma on being multi-faceted, if people close to you want you to remain *who* you are…why do we ask ‘How are you?’ when we inquire to the well-being of others?
    Isn’t ‘are’ used for plurals?’

    I thought about that all weekend! Why ‘are’ if ‘I’ is a singular entity?

  2. Kashmiri – How is you today? Lol. Sounds like a Bushism. But seriously, that sounds like an interesting article you read, and I never thought about the pluralness of the phrase myself (I just know I’m supposed to say ‘fine’ or just ‘hello’ in response).

    I agree Elsa has good advice on this. An alternative (not a good one, necessarily, but an option nonetheless) would be to pull a Fernando Pessoa; who was a poet who used four different names for himself, each with it’s own astrological charts, each a different personality but all well-received writers. I’m not saying he was happy but he was pretty prolific I guess.

  3. i don’t think you can pick just one aspect of your personality and run with it, becuase the others will invarabily manifest in one way or another. and if it’s not a conscious choice on your part how they manifest, no telling what you’ll get, either.

    to me, the trick is knowing that there are an infinite number of ways any particular energy can be satisfied, so you look at it and find ways to satisfy that energy that you are happy with. once it’s addressed, it’s less likely to come out in unpredictable, unexpected ways that create tensions in your life.

  4. This is not advice, but an observation — Ms. Taurus has Neptune in the first house and aspecting her Sun and Mars. I have all of these factors too, and speaking from my own experience, that can make it feel much more difficult than for others to know who you are and what you want, because it all feels like an ever-changing kaleidiscope — I would daresay more than just the issue of having multiple planets to satisfy. I would love to hear other readers’ ideas on this…

  5. yes! the more you live all of yourself, the happier you are, and the less likely ignored bits are going to jump up and bite you out of pique. in my experience identity is complex, it’s not just one mode of operating- the world is constantly shifting and we need to use all of ourselves to adequately respond to it.

  6. I love all of this. Grace thanks for the tip–I’m def. going to look that poet up.

    the world is constantly shifting and we need to use all of ourselves to adequately respond to it.” So true, wyrdling!

    I couldn’t actually see the chart, the enlarger doesn’t work for me. My poor lil eyes struggle.

  7. Hah, could have written this post (we’re not too far off on our charts either, apparently). I don’t really know what to do with it. “OWN YOUR DESIRE” even if it goes against everything else in you is driving me nuts right now. Especially since I was a lot happier during the one period of my life when one half of me up and (alas, temporarily) died. I enjoyed not feeling totally divided a lot.

    Back in the day, I balanced the wanna partner/wanna be alone thing by dating people who had to be out of town or lived out of town. It was nice. But now I feel a *much* stronger connection to the wanna be alone side…. and thus the other is now screeching for attention. Ugh.

    The real problem is where there’s two sides that CANNOT compromise, and you really have to pick one side or the other. Don’t know how anyone solves that. Makes me glad I don’t want kids, because if I wanted kids and freedom at the same time, that just wouldn’t work.

  8. Dear Taurus, I think You say (If I think correctly) that lack of integration you feel on yourself is stressing you. That lack of integration is evident on that chart although may be, that integration doesn’t a easy thing but there you are in that several “you” as Kashmiri says – may be for the more mutable persons it is a easy thing, for a fixed person (in a astrological sense)it could be stressing. To deal with it I surely should flow with my neptune – If I where you… , that is my neptune talking….

  9. Thanks, Elsa, and everyone else too…your answer/comments all very thought-provoking and at least I have now some other ideas to go on.

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