This is a topic most would not bring up but I’m going to do it anyway. I posted about deathbed pictures, warning that some might find it ghoulish. I explained that I have a strong Saturn Neptune signature. I know all about sharing a burden. I can dissipate my burden, or take yours on, easily. It’s one of the reasons that sensitive people who are in pain, call me. I can relieve them.
It’s important to know this stuff, to realize it when you are dealing with something as profound as the death of your mother. If call certain people, they will place another brick on my back. It doesn’t have to be intentional. It doesn’t have to be malicious. It just is.
I don’t think it makes a person bad to be this way. I have no idea idea how common it is to be one way or the other but I have definitely been hired by friends or family of a person in agony with the specific hope that I can relieve their pain. They do this when they see that they cannot!
Can you steal someone’s burden? Is it easy?
It’s easy for me though sometimes I have to rest afterwards. Usually though, I can just do it.
Elsa, I have taken your suggestion to go into pallative care, and will be going into training in Spring of next year. I hope that I can bring the same support and relief you do to others in your work. I definately have the Saturn thing to take on burdens and my Neptune in Libra wants to partner with others to help take that on. Also condolences to you and family regarding your mother.
Thank you, Dawn and I am really glad you made that decision. I think you’ll be really great at that. 🙂
Yanno, I wish I could say a blanket yes. But I know there were times where people came to me with a burden and I wimped out. There were times where I eased someone’s burden, and it was easy, but I think it has more to do with the fortuitous chemistry between us than a particular thing I brought to the table.
I think I am pretty much a poultice.
“It’s easy for me though sometimes I have to rest afterwards.”
I could see how it would be draining, but it truly is a beautiful thing to have this gift. And very underrated.
btw, love the new pic! your hair looks awesome 😀
I have a knack for taking away burdens. People come to expect it from me. For years, I had a hard time cleansing their burdens from my soul. Now, that I am almost 40, I seem to be able to cleanse these burdens.
I know a woman who is a paid caregiver. Families who live out of town hire her to visit with their loved ones in nursing homes. She will spend 3, 4, 5 hours a day with these patients, and if they are able, she’ll take them out (to the beach, to a concert, to church).
She can only manage 1 to 2 patients at a time, and sometimes, these companion-based relationships end up lasting years, until the patient dies. Sometimes she is the one there with the patient when that happens, and not the patients’ family.
When I first heard about it, I thought it seemed kind of cold (cash for companionship) but then I met her and heard her story. Now I think it’s sacred. I mean, what she offers is a gift. There is no question.
Elsa, when you say you & Annalisa have a strong saturn neptune signature in your charts; do you mean you both have saturn and neptune in aspect to each other or saturn & neptune in aspect to personal planets?
I can easily steal someones burden, but should not. When I do, I usually get upset, as they want me to steal/take it, so that they don’t have to fix it or do anything with it. When I do steal their burden, ‘walk in their shoes’ and then proceed to tell them how to fix said burden, it never ends well. I have learned this the hard way one too many times and stear clear, I’m learning to use the strengths in my chart in other ways 🙂
Angie
i help them find the door to the garbage chute…
(but a lot of people don’t want to let go…)
but i don’t tend to take it anymore. had a couple people abuse that and i’m not sure i’m recovered yet.
I’ve just recently just done this on my birthday. This friend of mine was hurting and was burden with guilt and blame for what he thought was wrong his doings. He took it upon himself to blame his dead friends problems onto himself. Of course I said don’t be silly and took his unfounded burdens away. And let his healing begin.
A lot of my friends come to me with serious problems and burdens. And I’m there for them. I will help them. I don’t feel or will be filled with their burdens.
I really have no idea if I lighten the load sometimes or make it worse. I try to help. I really try my darndest I just don’t know how effective I am.
I have been co-dependent most of my life. The challenge is knowing when you’re really helping or if the person really wants it. I am working on boundary issues.
Elsa, you are too good at it. How do you protect yourself? Kevlar? What is your Kyptonite when it becomes unbearable?
This is a really interesting question. I don’t look at myself this way, but seeing as how I take care of my friend’s mother (Alzheimer’s and glaucoma) a few hours every day, I guess I do this! Like Pixie, I struggle with boundary issues. It’s a good lesson for me – learning where to care, and when to back off.
Pixie, it doesn’t become unbearable. I rarely overload and if it happens, I just rest.
I do spend a lot of time alone though, I can’t deny that, nor complain about it. But typically the person is hurting and the hope is that they are hurting less after contact. This is easy to achieve… it’s like plugging in a vacuum, it reliable suctions up the bad stuff / stuff you want to be rid of. If you’re a born vacuum, then it’s going to harm you.
Occasionally, I deal with something super-heavy or extra sensitive to me and when that happens, I just take the rest of the day off while my psyche processes the thing. My psyche is also reliable. I rarely encounter something I can’t throw off by the next morning.
It is good for me to do this. It does not harm me.
Elsa, I love the vacuum analogy. What about psychic vampires? Those people that attach and can’t let go? How do you do it? I am impressed with your core truths and perhaps that is what makes you solid and sturdy.
Pixie, I don’t have a big problem with psychic vampires. I don’t know any in real life and while they do show up on the blog, I’ve become adept at dealing with them after 11 years.
It’s been a long time since someone was able to occupy me, so to speak. Had I not learned to stave this off, this blog would be impossible to maintain.
I just do my work and keep a machete handy, lol. 🙂
I have Saturn in Pisces (Neptune). I’m not sure I have the ability to relieve other’s burdens or not. I hope I do.
Elsa, I was just wondering about your comment #14 and how you say it is good for you and that it doesn’t harm you (ie when you have something super heavy to process). Do you think that you always had that ability or do you think it came through life experience?
“Do you think that you always had that ability or do you think it came through life experience?”
I think it’s an innate ability that I’ve developed and honed.
I’ve always been compassionate, but when the moment came, when I realized that I was being taken for granted, I think my aqua moon kicked in. I can give a damn, but Damn- Friendship goes both ways, and I have no time to be codependant, just so the other person can relieve themselves all over me. It was alllll about them. I just don’t have it in me to be a selfless doormat. I just don’t have the emotional strength to carry someone else’s burden. It does drain you.
It’s turned me into an insensitive person to those people.
I have saturn neptune opposed. I have no idea what this aspect means.
Relieving others of their burdens is an innate ability of mine too- but, I had never considered Saturn/Neptune energy being apart of it.
I’d assumed it due to my Scorpio Moon/Neptune conjunction- which is square my Saturn in Aquarius, so this is an interesting thought.
It’s taken me a long time to manage the ‘after effects’, due to my own lack of boundary skills (Mars/Merc in Pisces), but I’ve really worked at it the last couple of years and it’s so much easier now.
I am fairly sure I’m one of those people you described who cannot take on burdens. I can do little things to help manage a crisis, keep secrets, and soothe emotionally, but it drains and pains me to take on someone else’s pain. When it’s by accident due to boundary loss, it upsets me deeply. This is why I try not to burden people, but unfortunately when I need it, it’s heavy.
It’s such a gift, but the two of you have carried so much over the years for so many people. Thank you.
I have saturn conjunct my ASC from the 12th opposing Neptune(7th)/moon(6th)
the last year has been enlightening. First in a consult with elsa last year she pointed out my neptune signature which I had’nt recognized. Second she broached the saturn influence. My first step was to start to disapear the fear.
Then just a couple months later my instructor in lab stopped my work. She was concerned because she recognized the energy that Elsa had pointed out in the reading. My instructor is very sensitive to energy and works in healing. She started me on the path of “learning to ground”
People have always come to me …. like my whole life. I was the one in the early family to be the nurturer and to calm the home. I got married at 19 and had 5 kids and was so caught up in the work of holding the space (i didn’t know thats what it was at the time) that I stayed and my life and that of my kids was deteriorating. Pluto tore at it and the work of getting out started. But until I was shown the need to disapear the fear I was self destructing. I had my own pain and fear and as much as I feel and process for those around me I was was getting eaten up.
So I started school (scared but no longer paralized by fear) Let the bank have the house back(saturn in the 4th square pluto) and moved to a home(4th) where I could grow my own saturn self (saturn conj ASC) Listened to my instructor and worked hard (saturn) to begin to ground and not carry the burdens of others but to be a conduit to healing instead of a spunge. Anyone else get disgusted by the spunge in the kitchen sink? I mean they do a great job the first day or 2 then ick! they get slimely and stink and full of all the shi@ they have absorbed from the sink (their enviroment) and the dishes(their work) and soon they are no good. They last longer if they are well rinsed, squeezed, washed with disinfectant and set out of the muck to dry.
I am far from done with this process but I am thankfull that Saturn figures (like Elsa and my instructor) are in my life.
Yep, Saturn in Scorpio trine my Pisces Asc. Jupiter in h6Virgo trine my Sag sun I am happy to do it to. UNITL neptune in virgo and then I realize you just walked all over me : ( BAM blindsighted by nebulous boundaries and poor balance.
@learningtoground – I love your sponge description! Part of what I’ve been learning the last two years is exactly what you said, “a conduit to healing instead of a spunge.” That has been key for me and has made a world of difference.
The other part is realizing that there really is an ‘energy exchange’. I was feeling all resentful and taken advantage of… until I realized just how much I’m actually getting in exchange from helping relieve others of their burdens.
CArRiE, Thank you, with a Pisces sun and a Scorpio moon I had to learn to not absorb (Pisces) but transfer or be a conduit (Scorpio) or else it is self destruct(negative Pisces) instead of reconstruct (possitive Scorpio) you have that signature too right?
i’d love to hear ways people can throw off energy themselves. i absorb easy, but it can be very hard for me to let it go…
(besides the 8th and some pluto/scorpio aspects, i have pisces… and a saturn on the cusp of the 12th…)
I think it is a great gift to have. You most likely are able to take that energy and transform it just like many Buddhist monks are able to do even when they are sick. You are helping to heal the world. Maybe wear an emerald or a black tourmaline around your neck at about your thyroid gland. An old timey psychic here in TX told me about that years ago and I have not taken them off since. ME: cap rising, 8th house Sun, Neptune squaring one and seven. Keep up the good work. The world needs a healing.
Thanks for this, I’ve never considered it from an astrological perspective & it makes sense that way. I’m the person people call, too. It isn’t a burden in any way but it can be draining if I’m not taking care of me, too. I had to learn that part but other than that, it’s very organic. Lots of water in my chart; sun, Venus, mercury & Saturn in 7th/cancer. Neptune in 12th/sag. Jupiter 3rd/Pisces. I have neptune biquintile Saturn, so not too strong but I’m cap rising. Seen from this perspective, it makes perfect sense that I’ve made a career of healing 🙂
Thank you, Robert. 🙂