Solutions for Water-Gone-Wrong
In my recent post Personality Flaws of the Four Elements I described ways the 4 Elements can go wrong, each according to its own nature.
How To Know If You’re Drowning In Water
Water is arguably the hardest element to get right, because in the modern world our capacity to feel is misunderstood, derided and ignored. Many of us grow up with a poor understanding of our emotions. Your Water has gone wrong when:
- People around you call you a “drama queen.”
- Your sensitivity has you attempting to control everyone around you so you can feel better.
- You overreact to events around you and cannot separate what actually happened from how you felt about it.
- You absorb other people’s feelings so easily that you lose yourself. This may make you prefer to avoid people which is a shame because your powers of empathy are enormous.
- You are filled with bitterness, resentment and other feelings that have long gone unexpressed. You habitually repress them because you don’t know how to let go of them.
Solution One: Balance Water With The Other 3 Elements
If your Water is distorted, the other elements can help restore balance. Fire’s self-assertion is a wonderful foil for Water’s tendency toward self-sacrifice. When you’re lost in Watery feelings and can’t get out, try cutting straight through the bullshit. Fire says, “Things are really not as complicated as they seem.”
You can count on Air to bring in logic, rationality and a factual approach. Air helps you get out of the feelings and become more dispassionate—which can be very helpful when you realize you’ve become over-involved with somebody who is taking advantage of you.
Earth’s practical concerns form a helpful check-and-balance to Water’s subjectivity. Earth reminds Water that overwhelming feelings must be balanced by the need to feed, clothe and shelter oneself and one’s family. Water says, “I care about myself and others,” while Earth adds “. . . and I prove it by making myself useful.”
Solution Two: Emphasize Healthy Water
Expressing Water in a healthy way can allow negative expressions of Water to fall away naturally, with ease and grace. You might call this “Water-Fu.” Here are some ways to try it. . .
- Notice your intuitions. Validate them. Use them.
- Your feelings are there to connect you with other people. Get good at noticing what others feel and what you feel. Develop healthy emotional boundaries and enjoy deep relationships with those you feel sympathy or empathy towards.
- Find or create places in your life where you can afford to feel fully, to express your feelings and to be as sensitive as you really are. Hang around people you can be your true self with.
- Practice healthy self-care, which is not the same as being emotionally armored nor emotionally over-exposed. When you take care of yourself, others do not seem like a drain.
- If you are preoccupied with negative feelings, learn to let go of them. Focus on the positive, uplifting things in your life. Nurse joy instead of anger.
The Four Elements are an incredibly rich vein of astrological knowledge of which this article series only scratches the surface. Using the elements alone, even a novice can gain tremendous insight into herself and other people. I hope it inspires you to learn more about the elements, about astrology and about yourself.
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This has been part 5 of a 5-part series on the 4 elements. The other parts can be found here:
Personality Flaws of the 4 Elements
Is Fire Burning You Up?
Has Earth Grounded You—Permanently?
Does Air Have You Lost In A Cloud?
Are You Drowning In Water?
