How You’re Secretly Hurting, Based on Your Zodiac Sign

ARIES

You need help, but won’t ask for it.

Responsibility is weighing heavy on your shoulders, Aries, but you see this task as your obligation, so you keep your mouth shut and plod on. The problem is the stress is seeping out in curt remarks, shortness, and irritability with everyone not involved. People are walking on eggshells around you because you’re not opening up and expressing your frustration. You can’t just say you’re overwhelmed or ask for outside support. You feel like it’s your duty to suffer in silence, but it’s not benefitting anyone. How do you expect to care for anyone else if you’re not taking care of yourself? 

TAURUS

You need a new project.

Your reputation for professional leisure is flawed at best. It’s true you have a broad knowledge of the good life, but that doesn’t mean you didn’t work for it. You’re at your best when you engage in work that connects back to your interests, but right now you feel stagnant. Your ideal life is akin to a luxury cruise liner, with a million moving parts, and a clear destination ahead, but you’re currently moving at the pace of a lazy river in a mid-western waterpark. It’s not exactly your scene, and you’d do anything for a new project or goal to throw yourself into at full steam.

GEMINI

You’ve lost some autonomy.

Most of the time you’re barely keeping your head above water, and you find a sort of twisted pleasure in riding that fine line between your max capacity and complete and utter burnout, like a skateboarder you’re not sure will nail the trick or bite it. You thrive on the suspense and pressure, but lately, you’ve lost some control over your own risk-taking. Someone in your personal or professional life is enacting new rules or structures that make you feel micromanaged. You’re proud of the chaos when it’s of your own making, but now it feels like a mess has been dumped on you.

CANCER 

You’re working through an ongoing conflict.

You’re so strong because you’re able to adapt, Cancer. When things take a turn for the worse, you acknowledge the situation and learn to live with a new reality. You move through the stages of grief, without regressing to juvenile coping mechanisms, but sometimes old issues you’ve made your peace with bubble up to the surface. There will always be things we don’t get closure on, things we just have to deal with because of other people’s actions or decisions. You’re never trapped in a situation, but that doesn’t mean that getting out of it will be painless. It’s okay to witness your own struggle.

LEO

You’re doubting the sincerity of the people around you.

You’ve reached a certain level of success or comfort where the people around you may be benefitting from the association, and you find yourself wondering if you’re in an echo chamber of yes-men/women/people. Wondering who in your circle genuinely likes you, and who’s just faking it to go with the flow. Wondering who you can actually trust when push comes to shove. In all the swirl, you identify loneliness, a longing for relationships that feel secure, reciprocal, and healthy. You’re afraid to test the waters, but it may be the only way you get a straight answer. 

VIRGO

You are adapting to fast-paced change.

Your preferred role in life is the subject matter expert, Virgo, but things are changing too quickly for you to keep up. Everyone is throwing things at the wall trying to see what sticks. It’s very wild west, very pioneer-esque in a Laura Ingalls Wilder/Oregon Trail kind of way, and that is not the headspace you want to be in. You want Battleship, with a playing field that is completely mapped out for you to strategically plot your moves one at a time, and it hurts to be so out of your element.

LIBRA

You crave intellectually stimulating social interactions.

You’re craving conversations and relationships that go deeper, on a more thoughtful and soulful level than expressing shock and awe over the Jenner sister’s new high-profile relationships or the home team’s win record. You want to be able to talk about topics like news, politics, religion, and philosophy with people who are open to discussing what others shy away from out of politeness. You’re just exhausted by fluff and want to dive into meatier topics and ideas. What makes people tick, what keeps them up at night, what they can’t stop thinking about. Life is too short to glaze over the good stuff.

SCORPIO

You’re having an existential crisis. 

You wouldn’t be out of place on a double date with Gomez and Morticia Addams, so it’s not unusual to find yourself thinking about death, Scorpio, but you’re secretly hurting because of all the worries you associate with it. You’re worried about losing loved ones, about forming new bonds that could result in further loss or grief, and about what your own impending death means about your own existence. You are inundated with questions that greater minds have pondered for centuries without arriving at a firm conclusion. The only thing that is certain is that this life, however long it may be, is yours to enjoy if you’ll let yourself.

SAGITTARIUS

You’re afraid you’re wasting your potential. 

You are constantly looking for information, Sagittarius. Constantly trying to see the bigger picture, never afraid to look beyond your own little bubble. Safety and security never satisfy you, and you’re always trying to explore what “more” is out there. But because you have this expansive imagination, you are always living multiple hypothetical lives in your head. You worry you haven’t done enough because you imagine all possibilities in parallel. The more choices you make, the more paths are shut off to you. You fail to remember how different your life would be had you not made the choices you did.

CAPRICORN

You’re worried you can’t beat the system.

You are a workhorse, Capricorn. But sometimes you worry that your best isn’t enough to get you where you want to go. You worry that you’re just a cog in a machine and it’s too late to be anything else. You either only know how to be a cog, or the machine needs you where you are and doesn’t want to let you go. You get overwhelmed by a perceived lack of upward or lateral mobility and feel trapped in your current situation. The problem is that you haven’t properly begun a search for new opportunities because you don’t know where to look.

AQUARIUS

You are discovering the root of your discomfort.

You always do your emotional homework, Aquarius. You dive deep, into the source of what’s bothering you, and eventually manage to name it. That clarity is sometimes a whole can of worms that needs to be explored in itself. It can feel like you’re making more problems instead of finding a solution to the original one. It’s like going to the doctor for some cold medicine and finding out you’re actually allergic to your favorite pillow. You feel that push and pull that comes from correctly identifying the source of conflict. The answers we find are not always the ones that are easiest to accept.

PISCES

Something took you by surprise.

You were blindsided by personal or professional development, Pisces, and it’s made you second guess your powers of perception. You usually trust your gut to identify when something big is brewing. You usually see the red flags foreshadowing an undesirable situation. You usually get the opportunity to jump ship before things go south, but this time, you didn’t. You’re hurting because you don’t trust yourself to protect yourself anymore, but you’re underestimating your ability to deal with unpleasant situations. That doesn’t mean you did anything wrong. No one is ever able to avoid any negative experience by seeing it coming.