A mirror reflecting a yin yang design with the moon on the dark side and the sun in the light site with a frame that has astrology glyphs on the frame.

Defense Mechanisms by Moon Sign

Bringing Light To Our Ageless Patterns of Avoidance

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“Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.”

– Dr. C. G. Jung

Healing our lines starts with us. We heal the collective by healing ourselves.

Night sky with full bright moon in the clouds

How would you like to understand people’s deepest motivations…sometimes even better than they understand themselves?

Through our moon signs, our emotional selves, there is a portal for healing. The more present we can be in our lives and in our relationships NOW, the more it helps to heal all the related distortions in the lines going back in time (as well as forward). And when you look at your own birth chart in relation to your lines, you get a better sense of how YOU, specifically, are here to do that.

It’s about being more conscious and awake, so that you’re not just repeating patterns from the past.

The Particular Importance of the Moon Sign

As the quintessential feminine archetype, the moon controls the tides, so it makes sense that she also rules the way you experience your emotions. Your moon sign points to the deepest, most private, least conscious parts of your inner self. It’s the first part of you that became active, as soon as you were born, before you had words. It’s how you process things at the deepest level.

In psychological terms, we would say that your moon sign points to your defense mechanisms (more on this below), attachment strategies, and security needs. The moon also rules your deepest instincts, which are again less available to your conscious control. 

This part of you also shows up when you are highly stressed or otherwise at your most vulnerable, because when you regress, your moon sign is your oldest part to regress to. Since it is less accessible to your conscious awareness, it holds many of the shadowy parts of you. Liz Greene calls it your “nighttime self,” but also points out that it’s “the organ of contact with others.”

The moon holds all of your deepest requirements and motivations in relationships, your underlying urges and longings, and your worst fears. Also included here are the parts of you that were repressed during childhood, in order to please your parents—or later, due to societal expectations and pressures. It also points to which emotions you feel especially uncomfortable expressing.

A full moon rising behind a lighthouse.

What are Defense Mechanisms?

Defense mechanisms describe what you do when you get triggered and highly upset. We all try to avoid pain, but we do it in particular ways. Your defense mechanisms involve the way you express anger (including passive-aggressiveness) as well as the way you try to escape distress. Every sign has unhealthy behavior it tends toward when out of balance or highly upset. Chances are, these issues are playing out in your relationships in some way, and you may not be fully conscious of them.

The moon at night shining down on a dark highway.

As adults, our moon sign traits tend to come out under two sets of circumstances: 1) when we get close enough to someone to feel safe to show them the innermost parts of ourself, and 2) when we’re regressed into those psychological states that make us feel the most vulnerable, such as during a crisis of some sort.

Given that we’re relational creatures who spend our entire lives trying to get close to (or avoid getting close to) other people, and given that your moon sign represents how you deal with your emotions and how you show up in your closest relationships, learning more about this crucial sign in your (and your important others’) charts is especially important.

Knowing and understanding your own and others’ moon placement is especially helpful in smoothing the fabric of your closest relationships and working to heal longstanding dysfunctional relational patterns. As spouses and family members, we experience our significant others’ moon signs at least as much as their sun signs, and the same is true for them of us. 

Course Info

This 5-class journey will give you a vantage point from which to peer into the deepest workings of each moon sign as the hidden emotional driver that it is…

A vantage point only a decades-long depth therapist with an astrological eye can provide.

Here are the things you will receive in this class...

Course Curriculum

Classes will be held LIVE with plenty of time for Q & A after each module’s teachings.

You’ll be welcome to bring in your questions or seek illumination for your own perplexing relational dynamics. (Please make sure your question or situation involves at least one person whose moon sign is the particular element we’ll be talking about that day so the discussion stays relevant.) As any therapist can confirm, much learning may be gained through discussions of others’ dynamics! 

All live classes will be recorded, and the recordings will be sent to you within 48 hours after the completion of each class.

Moonlight shining on a body of water, creating a long reflection of the moon.

Here are some of the spectacular benefits you can expect to receive through this experience...

  • More awareness of your own (possibly previously unconscious) motivations and defenses
  • Help understanding the underpinnings of your closest others’ triggers and defenses, leading to improved relational dynamics
  • Increased compassion for everyone, because all the natures can be wonderful and awful
  • A more tangible ability to break through your loved ones’ defenses with your loving and balancing wisdom, because they feel safe and understood enough to relax them a bit 
  • Profound insight into complex family dynamics, including even intergenerational patterns that have existed for hundreds of years 

If you already know a good amount of astrology, you will still benefit from learning more about the deeper psychological underpinnings of each moon placement from the perspective of a depth therapist who has been trying to help people grow and heal for over two decades.

If you know some about human psychology but not so much astrology, you’ll be floored by how much this ancient archetypal system can help you understand yourself and everyone else in your life with uncanny, magical precision.

And even if you’re not so much into the astrological components, you’ll still find it useful to learn about all the ways in which we defend against the terror of change forced by growth, since all of the signs show up somewhere in your own chart, in the people in your life, or both! 

Moonlight shining on a body of water, creating a long reflection of the moon.

A little about Stacy...

I’ve been a clinical psychologist in private practice for more than twenty years, and I taught psychology courses at University of Colorado – Boulder for almost ten.  In 2019 I wrote a book about psychological astrology called Psychstrology: Apply the Wisdom of the Cosmos to Gain Balance and Improve Your Relationships.

On my mission to find meaning and order (and much-needed self-compassion), I first found practical healing from astrology via feeling seen by the Universe. Eventually, that relationship evolved into a much deeper sense of trust and belief that there’s an important meaning and order to life, and that it’s holding us all – which is another way of saying that astrology paved my pathway into a spiritually rich existence. I spoke to this when I presented at the annual ACEP (Association for Comprehensive Energy Psychology) Conference in May 2022.

I consider myself an ambassador of ancient wisdom and strongly advocate combining mainstream psychology with spiritually-based modalities like astrology and ancestral healing to help us grow in the direction of balance and wholeness, both individually and as a profession.

Stacy Dicker sitting in a chair in the Boulder Bookstore smiling with a book on her lap.

I can’t wait to start this adventure with you!

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