Virgo Child and Overthinking
April 26, 2009 by cafeastro
Filed under Annie's Blog
When my Virgo daughter was 11, she sent me a link through email to a Wikipedia psychology article about some sort of personality disorder, the name of which escapes me now, with the words, “I think I have this”.
The description of this disorder included such things as “awkward in social situations” and “intense self-consciousness”. Part of me just wanted to laugh. Here’s an example of overthinking that is quite classic Virgo, and complicated, I believe, by her Sun-Pluto square. As well, Virgo can have hypochondriac tendencies. It’s not a good idea to let a Virgo loose with a medical book (or web site) of symptoms!
While part of me chuckled affectionately, the other part of me really felt her frustration. As a Virgo myself, I could certainly relate. I had acquired a book of symptoms when I was a young teenager, and one day couldn’t find it no matter how hard I looked. Years later, my mother told me that she had confiscated it. I was driving her crazy with all of the diseases I thought I might have. And, when I was 10, I plunked an encyclopedia in front of my mother, opened to a definition of “adolescence”, and told her, “I think I have this” (as if it were some disease) before running off.
The truth is, my Virgo daughter had reached puberty and Saturn had just begun its transit conjunct to her Sun. Her best friend had to move overseas, and it was sudden and really quite devastating. She was having a hard time believing that there was any other friend out there for her. She was also preparing for high school interviews and entrance exams, and felt a lot of pressure.
I replied to my daughter’s email with a link to an article about puberty, then had a talk with her: You don’t have this reactive-dissociative-whatever disorder, you are going through puberty!
I also talked to her about her tendency to overthink, and she told me she feels it’s a “curse”. That’s where Pluto comes in. A year and a half later, she is past the “acute” stages of puberty, but over-analyzing is still a way of life for her. She views it as a compulsion–something she can’t control. Still, I see her working on it all the time, and I also feel she is improving her mindset. She loves to talk about anything to do with the psychology of human behavior, and this is where I can see a possible solution to the problem. You can’t simply tell a Virgo child (or adult) not to overthink. Instead, the best approach is to appeal to the Virgo need to analyze, process, improve, and learn through conversations about how to manage that very same behavior.
So really what is happening here is my daughter is thinking a lot about her overthinking! It might seem counterintuitive, but in fact, the more aware she is of the tendency, the more she sees how it’s working against her.
She’s also beginning to see how it can work for her. The trick is to channel that analytical tendency into constructive areas, and to see just how valuable it can be. I try to point out where her ability to find flaws, to see inconsistencies, works well for her. She writes creative stories, for example, and she is often praised for her attention to detail. Same goes for her drawings of people. The accuracy of her drawings is noteworthy. While she is not always satisfied with her artwork, this perfectionist tendency drives her to keep improving. She has acquired a fair amount of knowledge for her age, as she is driven to learn and think, which is great for academics and socially as well. Her friends often turn to her for her opinion because she sees things that others overlook, and because she has a unique perspective. I’ve pointed out all of these positive things so that she can see the value of this characteristic when put to good use, instead of considering it a “curse”.
We’ve had countless conversations about overthinking, about how much energy is wasted worrying about something that either never happens or does but it’s not such a big deal in the end. I gave her an example of overanalyzing an isolated word. If you stare at a word too long, even though it’s spelled correctly, it starts to look funky and you begin to question if it’s actually spelled properly. Or, if you are writing an exam, checking your work (briefly) is helpful. However, if you have answered a question quickly, and then you go back to it and spend too much time thinking about it, you might change your mind and choose another answer, only to find that your first instinct was correct. Analysis is valuable up to a certain point, after which everything appears flawed, distorted, and funky. Worrying about something that might happen is valuable up to the point at which you are reasonably prepared, after which it’s just wasted energy.
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