How Pluto Accelerated my Healing from Narcissists and Manipulators
This post is about my accelerated journey through healing from narcissists and emotional manipulators. This is about what happened to me. I'm not a therapist and this is not meant to be therapeutic advice.
However, I hope it brings the reader inspiration to continue doing the work. This is not about hopium or toxic positivity. I'm not saying that things will magically get better on their own. We have to do the work. We must reclaim our stolen birthright of wholeness. No one else is going to do it for us.
The good news is that the evolutionary ascension process is offering us massive support for healing and breaking free. If you feel like an orphan (I did) then it means you have the ability to go forward alone and you can trust that a new tribe of people will show up that better match the person you are becoming.
I am finishing up a very long Pluto transit in opposition to my natal 4th house in Cancer. The culmination was the opposition to my natal Sun in late degrees of Cancer.
Pluto is still close, just under 2 degrees and is still an influence, but the way Pluto shows up now in my reality is very different than a year ago. I have many layers on Pluto's transit and all the strange ways it manifested. I won't get to them all in one post. This one is just about how Pluto helped me break away from narcs and abusers.
Briefly, the 4th house represents home, family and foundation. Pluto is often considered a transpersonal planet but when in aspect to natal planets, the intensity is felt deeply.
Pluto is known as the destroyer (among other things) and it removes anything that is in the way of your evolution, including things in the 3D.
I have four planets in Cancer, and most of my natal planets are in Cardinal signs (Aries, Cancer, Libra and Cap). Pluto has aspected every planet in my natal chart by a hard aspect (squares and oppositions) the last 20 years except for Neptune and Mars.
Pluto opposite Sun has been THE most difficult time in my life. I am almost 50 years old. I am glad that this transit and season of my life is finally ending. Aside from that, I'm glad that I understood Pluto's effects and that I got this over early. Most women don't figure all this out until they're 60+ and feel like it's too late.
The beauty of astrology is that forewarned is forearmed. I was prepared for this, even if I didn't know exactly how it would manifest. Not everyone will have this transit, so that makes it kind of rare.
Many people wind up traumatized by this kind of Pluto transit, because it can leave you feeling victimized and powerless. The trauma in Pluto transits is usually because we don’t want to surrender to the changes being forced on us.
And, you don't have to surrender to ALL of the changes. You might have to fight for something, and that makes you decide how much a thing is worth to you.
I decided to fight for a lot of things, and for the most part, it was a good decision. I was not going to voluntarily let go of anything that I worked hard to earn prior to the Pluto transit. I emerged mostly intact with stuff that was important to me.
Pluto cannot take away intangible things, like experience, education, compassion and authenticity. These are way more important than homes, cars and stuff.
Ultimately, YOU decide what YOU want. This is part of being a sovereign human being with free will. Pluto can’t take away your free will.
He can mess with your head and make you feel like you don't have a choice, but is that really true? You can either fall for the bullshit or you learn to see through it. Question everything and whether it SERVES YOU.
You likely have your own unique talents and abilities that you can leverage to liberate yourself from these shitty situations. It’s just that you have to learn to use them instead of seeing them as weaknesses.
This is the point of the mind fuckery under a Pluto transit. It will push you to dig deep for resources you probably didn't know you had.
I learned to stop letting time wasters, troublemakers and low frequency people stick around too long.
Many of us, especially women, have been manipulated so much and for so long that we don’t even know what we want. We don’t know that we’re being manipulated.
We might suspect there’s some things going on but we’re programmed to ignore most of it, because “that’s just how they are” and we never question anything further.
I somehow figured out at a young age that there was something wrong with my family. I was reading things about shame and dysfunction early on.
By the time I was a teenager, I was reading a lot of things about dysfunctional families that were intended for adults. I often think about how my parents thought that what they were doing would keep me suppressed, but those tactics led me to freedom and learning to think for myself.
My parents never asked me about what I was reading, because they were too self-absorbed and didn’t value reading or education. Later I realized that those rules were INTENTIONAL, to prevent me from reaching my full potential.
I obviously didn’t see the whole picture at that time because I was a kid, and because I was still living in the toxic family system. I remember being gaslit repeatedly by uncles when I asked them about family patterns. They covered up for my shitty parents.
I was still being influenced by the family programming, but the seeds were planted.
There have been many more situations like this one that have clicked into place in the last several years, and now it ALL makes sense. And when I think back, I realize that I knew what I was doing here. I knew the challenges I’d have to face later in life.
And even though I made a lot of decisions based on trauma, they weren’t bad decisions. This is perhaps the best thing about doing this work right now.
Seeing how I alchemized the bad into good. The things we thought were bad are actually turning out to be pretty awesome. That we are good people and we were on the right track, had it not been for the abusers interrupting us.
Fast forward to the pandemic and having to move to be closer to the dysfunctional family, in which ALL the family stuff came out.
This is no joke. I can’t tell you how many realizations came up from the depths courtesy of Pluto. I “knew” things whether I wanted to know them or not. It was awful having these unwanted insights about my shitty family coming up from the depths.
One of the other things Pluto does is force you to stand up for yourself. You are either the steamroller or you get steamrolled.
Pluto will back you into a corner from these mindfucks where you feel like you’re going crazy until you realize it’s not you – it’s the crazy shit going on in the people around you.
As I mentioned, I was not able to leave the dysfunctional situation because of the pandemic. A lot of people find themselves trapped in situations with abusers, and to be honest, it was perplexing because I’d never been trapped after I left my father’s home.
I had always been able to earn enough money and stay away from most of those kinds of people. I recently realized that is hustling and that I’d been hustling extra hard to escape having to ask for help. I was hustling my way OUT of trauma.
During the most intense period of the Pluto transit, I noticed a lot of weird mind-fuck type situations that seemed so surreal that I thought they might be fake.
I can’t tell you how many times I felt like I was on the set of a sitcom where I knew the lines and I knew how I was supposed to play the part. It was like being on a stage.
The situation and energy of the situation was SET UP in a way to COERCE me to continue being dysfunctional instead of standing up for myself.
And when I didn’t…things got interesting. Rage from my narc Mom, who used to stalk-bait me for a week, trying to get me to fight with her. I learned to make her WORK for my attention and energy.
Once I figured out that these situations were just a psychological operation (also a hallmark of a Pluto transit, FYI), I was able to USE these situations to grow in my self-confidence, healing and transformation.
What I eventually realized is that I was PREPARED for the Pluto transit.
I also realize now that this Pluto opposition time period is the reason I am on this planet at this time. It’s time to settle up karma and separate from lower frequency people, in line with the evolutionary ascension process we’re all going through right now.
I used this time period to practice boundaries, increase my self-worth and confidence and surf the waves of becoming more empowered. I had a toolkit to use: therapy, books and reading, a good education and successful legal career.
The other thing I want to mention here is that I had been in the military and it was hell being a woman in the Army in the 90’s. The Pluto opposition was way easier!
Logic and reason are your friends during a psy-op. If you can discern between lies and bullshit, you are going to be just fine.
Once I figured out the theme and the patterns in the situation, even though I was unable to leave, I decided to engage the fake psy-op to start healing IN the situation where I was stuck.
This is unusual because people either get out or they continue in their role of being abused. I had to stay in the middle of those two opposites (Pluto opposition) and find a balance.
If you go to therapists, they will tell you that the ONLY way to heal is by leaving the situation. This was not an option for me for obvious reasons, but also, I realized that I had been running from abusers for most of my life.
Because these people were in my family, I kept giving them the benefit of the doubt. But eventually, when my Mom called Adult Protective Services on me, I realized that I had to stop giving her the benefit of the doubt.
My family didn’t care about what I wanted. They just wanted to suppress, distract, divert, interrupt, interfere, drain and manipulate me, all so that they could feel better about themselves. I had to stop allowing it.
I knew that I had to stay where I was to get back on my feet. I had a conscious thought about staying put to rebuild my life and recover from the damage caused my family. Yet, my Mom tried multiple times to get me into trouble so that I would be homeless yet again.
I realized this, and to be honest, I was TIRED OF RUNNING FROM ASSHOLES. It's no wonder I wasn't making any progress toward MY goals. I was getting sidelined too much to make any progress.
So even though I couldn't leave...it worked out that the best thing for me was to stay in the situation anyway. I just had to learn to set boundaries and protect myself, and wait out the pandemic.
I stopped believing many assholes and being afraid all the time. Once I figured out I was dealing with weird psy-ops, I stopped complying with fake demands.
I had to stand my ground in several frightening situations, but ultimately it turned out that my instincts were 100% correct. Anytime I DID NOT listen to myself, I wound up getting screwed. And so finally I just paid attention to my intution and used logic, and everything worked out OK.
I noticed that the more my family triggered me, the MORE I LOOKED AT THE PATTERNS. I noticed repeating patterns in all of my family members and as time wore on, I could predict them.
We think of narcs and borderlines as chaotic but in truth, when you step back you will know what sets them off and when they’re due for a dramatic outburst.
Ultimately, this situation taught me that I had been the designated scapegoat in my family, and almost everyone else has or likely has a form of narcissism. I’m talking about my extended family too. There are the narcs, borderlines, flying monkeys, enablers and codependents.
This situation happened FOR ME. I am not a victim.
There are plenty of people who want you to remain in victim consciousness though, and I'll talk about this in another post.