Horoscopes - I know it’s ridiculous but can’t stop

[Beckandcall85]

I’m checking my horoscopes obsessively multiple times a day. They have the ability to completely lift me out of a very difficult, confusing, uncertain time - if they chime with my situation and offer a glimmer of hope/comfort. Sometimes they just add to my confusion and make me rethink everything all over again. I’m a rational person. Don’t believe in a lot of mystical/spiritual stuff. So why on earth do I believe in horoscopes? It’s been like this since I was a teen. In good times, I hardly read them. But I honestly think they have a real hold on me now and actually stop me from getting to grips with reality and taking control of my life. Anyone else been in a similar situation? How did you get over it?

Sounds like an anxiety thing and a way to cope with uncertainty and if it’s a coping mechanism you’ve used since your teens it’s probably quite a habit.

I think one of the ways to stop obsessively checking things like this is to pause every time you feel the urge and ask yourself what exactly you feel uncertain or anxious about and what steps can you actually take to deal with it. Do you notice patterns - specific things you get more worried about - like work or relationships and so on? It can help to identify exactly what anxieties you’re hoping to relieve when you feel the urge to check the horoscope.

Horoscopes, even if they could predict things can’t change them, good or bad, so they aren’t that great of a tool (especially because even if they did work they are hardly detailed maps of the future but vague).

It’s a combo of taking control of what’s worrying you and also getting more comfortable with uncertainty and what you can’t change or know might happen.

Astrology is an amazing tool for self development, but only if used properly, and not for "prediction". It's not a belief system, but a way of interpreting energy to give you insight and help guide you to make better life choices, and to understand why you do things a certain way or feel certain things.

I suggest you get your birth chart read by a professional astrologer. Horoscopes have given astrology a very bad name, unfortunately.

You're an addict. I had the same thing, but with alcohol.

The key is in realising that the thing you're addicted to has no power whatsoever. A bottle of wine has no more power to get into my mouth than the bottle of shampoo in my bathroom. The only way it gets into my mouth is if I put it there, and blame it, and its power. The only way you rely on horoscopes is in blaming them and their power, which is what you are doing here:

But I honestly think they have a real hold on me now

Stop putting the responsibility for your contentedness in the hands of their power. It's hard because when you stop putting the responsibility there, you have to accept it yourself, and that's daunting.

You are responsible. Take the strain. It's not as hard as you think, and it's very rewarding.