Excerpt from "The Chiron Effect: Healing Our Core Wounds through Astrology [and more]"

Chiron entered the sign of Aries on April 17, 2018 and will spend about 8 years here. Historically when Chiron occupied the sign of Aries, changes in laws were initiated regarding human rights, personal freedoms, and social change. Chiron in Aries is about taking actions to “break free.” It brought sexual revolution during the “Roaring 20s” and the 18th Amendment (prohibition) in 1919. Well, we all know that prohibition really meant no inhibition! It brought the groundbreaking Stonewall riots of 1969 in Manhattan and the first LGBT Pride Parade in NYC in 1970. The Watergate scandal broke, and our president resigned office. All this, and even more internationally, under the powerful influence of Chiron in Aries who encourages us to action, to speak our voice, stand for our rights, and be who we are! How does Chiron in Aries affect you as an individual?

As an individual with Chiron in Aries, your relentless search for a stable and strong identity drives your life experience. At the same time, the psychoastrology of Chiron in Aries also creates a concurrent and conflicting emotional experience, which makes you feel like you already have an identity, but you invariably judge it to be weak. As a result, you find yourself in situations time and time again where you minimize your own needs. In the worst-case scenarios, your needs have been neglected by others. This episodic neglect of yourself and your needs speaks to your self-diminishment and unresolved sense of value and worth.

Because you have become so attuned to others and their needs, sometimes it may be hard for you to even know what you want or need. It may seem that you have lost connection to yourself. It’s as if your selfhood may have been eclipsed and you are invariably not seen, heard, or validated.

This experience is disempowering to your self-confidence. And your ability to attract what you truly desire is obstructed. Instead of directly expressing your own needs, and to protect yourself from the pain of being under-valued and treated dismissively, you employ coping mechanisms of compensation and adaptation.

You run the risk of burnout in your profession and being unhappy in your personal life. This occurs because of consistent people pleasing and putting other’s needs first. Overextending yourself is an ingrained habit you employ to keep conflict low. Working to keep the peace in your family, group, or organization is a must.

You may suffer privately from feelings of isolation, while simultaneously hoping that one day you will suddenly be seen, loved, and valued for the generous-hearted person you are.

The way you approach love has been built around a false belief that you have to work hard to be loved. Let me invite you to consider something you did not learn in your childhood, but that you can now step into and fully embrace. Here it is: you don’t have to work hard to be loved, you are loveable, you are worthy, and you are good enough, just as you are.

Your work is to let go of the self-deprecating and defeating beliefs that hurt you. While allowing others to manage conflicts on their own, you can learn to possess and then express your personal preferences directly in positive and meaningful ways.

The psychological overlay of a wounded sense of self, coupled with the undervaluing of self, leads to feelings of depression, isolation, and unworthiness, this resulting in a sense of confusion about what to do.

While experiencing these difficult emotions it is easy to turn to maladaptive coping behaviors like self-harming through substance abuse/dependence and/or holding onto relationships and associations that no longer feel good or serve your highest good.

Often self-criticism and judgment of ourselves keep us in an unhealthy relationship or situation. We don’t want to give up and move on, so we may stay and self-medicate instead. Self-harming behaviors reinforce our sense of unimportance because we stand in condemnatory judgment of ourselves. We may act to present a public image of having it all together, yet we may suffer privately. Lessening the grip of self-judgment and increasing the presence of self-love in our lives creates the psychic and energetic space to cultivate our value and worth. By committing to the prioritization of our needs, we learn to value ourselves. Coupled with pulling back from overextending ourselves for others, we shift and begin to embody our true value and worth.

We must gently and lovingly hold ourselves accountable for not, in the past, showing up on our own behalf. We are not unworthy for having made mistakes. Our identity is not engraved with our mistakes. Every misstep is an opportunity to learn and grow, and then do something different next time.

Because the wounding to our core value and sense of worth occurred in childhood, our “inner child” needs to be given messages of empathy and tenderness. Our inner child is a younger ego construct within our adult ego state. She/he typically makes her/himself known when we feel hurt, vulnerable, anxious, avoidant, jealous, upset, ungrounded, angry, fearful, or self-doubting.

Our adult ego state often tells our vulnerable inner child self to “go away, be quiet, or hide.” If you repress these uncomfortable feelings of vulnerability to the point where the feelings become unconscious, they begin to drive your life in direction of self-sabotage, etc.

Transformation and healing of this wound comes through sending your inner child, adolescent, and adult ego states nurturing and love with messages of support and empathy. This begins a process of insourcing healthy self-esteem and positive feelings for yourself, instead of outsourcing that job to others, resulting in a roller coaster of emotions for you.

Daily guided meditations that focus upon forgiveness and love can accelerate the healing process. A plan of regular self-care can include setting aside the time and space to think and assess whether or not your commitments are truly serving you. . . .

Lisa Tahir, LCSW, is a licensed clinical social worker. She is certified in EMDR Level I, in Reiki Level II, and as a thought coach through the Institute for Transformational Thinking. The host of the weekly podcast All Things Therapy on LA Talk Radio since 2016, she lives in both Los Angeles and New Orleans.

The Chiron Effect by Lisa Tahir, LCSW © 2020 Bear & Company. Printed with permission from the publisher Inner Traditions International. www.InnerTraditions.com

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