It seems like monthly blog posts have become more my pace lately. And that’s perfectly fine. I am learning to be flexible with myself rather than feeling like a failure when I don’t meet my made-up, rigid expectations. (How very “working on my ADHD” of me)
Today’s blog post is brought to you by my latest hyperfixation: astrology.
Astrology isn’t a new interest by any means. I’ve dabbled in it for years. In fact, I can remember picking up copies of the Metro Times when I was in high school just to read the astrology section. And apparently, I bought the book Astrology for Dummies in January 2020 (thanks, Amazon purchase history), but didn’t really start reading it until 2021 (also, very ADHD of me).
Recently, after having a consultation with an astrologer, I fell headfirst back into learning about astrology. In fact, I told the astrologer that I was probably going to do that, and she said, “I would totally expect that based on your chart.” Something else she pointed out about my chart was that it was probably very important to me to be understood in my relationships.
No lies detected.
So I started examining significant relationships in my life, both past and present, through the lens of birth charts. Then I started researching astrological transits at significant times in my life and how those may have influenced me and my relationships.
That brought back a memory of a horoscope from the Metro Times that I had read shortly after I turned 18 that felt eerily accurate at the time. I remembered writing about it in an old blog entry, so naturally I had to go find it. And that’s how I ended up down the rabbit hole of reading my journal from 15+ years ago. The two biggest things I took away from that deep dive into my past:
- I was far more emotionally self-aware than I gave myself credit for.
- My ADHD symptoms were absolutely screaming from every page.
Whenever I look back at old posts from my blog or Facebook, I’m still shocked by how painfully obvious it was that I have ADHD. My brain still hasn’t fully accepted that there is no such thing as “late-onset ADHD” – it’s “late-diagnosed ADHD” because it often goes unrecognized for years, especially in women who are functioning “well enough” on the outside.
As I read those old journal entries, I saw the signs of ADHD that I (along with many others in my life) thought were personality flaws:
- I thought I was lazy, but I was really struggling with executive dysfunction and task paralysis.
- People said that I was irresponsible or disrespectful because I was always late, but I was actually struggling with time blindness and an inability to accurately gauge how long things would take me.
- I thought I was a bad friend because I forgot to call people back, forgot to text people, or accidentally disappeared into my own life for weeks at a time, but I was really struggling with overwhelm, object permanence, and inconsistent communication.
- People said I was impulsive, but I was actually dopamine-seeking.
- I thought I was dramatic, but I was struggling with emotional dysregulation and feeling everything intensely.
- I thought I was obsessive or “too attached,” but I was hyperfixating on emotionally unresolved situations and relationships.
- People thought I was flaky, but in reality I was overwhelmed and constantly trying to keep up with a brain that never seemed to slow down.
- I thought I was being immature, but I was terrified of permanence, adulthood, and losing parts of myself during major life transitions.
- People called me messy or disorganized, but I was struggling with executive dysfunction, task paralysis, and a nervous system that was completely overloaded.
For years, I interpreted these things as “sucking at adulting”. In reality, I was an overwhelmed young woman living with undiagnosed ADHD, trying to function in a world that wasn’t built for the way my brain works.
Something else became uncomfortably apparent as I kept reading through old entries. So many of my biggest friendship and relationship wounds came down to one thing: feeling misunderstood. Which immediately brought me back to what my astrologer had said about my chart.
The friendships that faded out or completely exploded showed patterns: clashing, rigidity, and miscommunication. What I can see now is that, in many ways, they didn’t understand me. They told me that I was “too much”, irresponsible, dramatic, selfish, or “not a good friend”. Some of them were the same people who completely dismissed me when I first started questioning whether I had ADHD.
And while I can’t entirely blame people for not understanding my neurodivergence when I didn’t even understand it myself, revisiting those relationships through both an ADHD and astrology lens gave me a very different perspective on them: Maybe those relationships didn’t fail because I was fundamentally flawed. Maybe some people simply were never going to understand me in the way I needed to be understood.
Of course, there is still a part of me that immediately spirals into, “Wait… what if it’s actually me? It’s me! Hi! I’m the problem, it’s me!” Hello Virgo moon, perfectionism, people-pleasing, rejection sensitivity, and a brain that runs on Taylor Swift lyrics.
(Speaking of Mother, here’s a little ADHD side quest for you: one of the old entries I reread mentioned “ruining the friendship,” and now I can’t stop thinking that maybe Taylor Swift somehow found my old blog and that entry partially inspired “Ruin the Friendship.” Realistically, what’s far more likely is that my brain subconsciously latched onto that song because those themes had already been living rent-free in my head for years.)
The people who have remained in my life long-term tend to be people who give me space to fully be myself. They are emotionally open, flexible, curious, direct communicators, and people who don’t expect perfection from me. They don’t interpret inconsistency as lack of love or care.
The part that really fascinates me about all of this is that these patterns show up in our birth charts.
Do I think birth charts explain everything? No. Do I think every friendship or relationship succeeds or fails because of astrology? Also no.
But I do think it’s fascinating that the people who have made me feel the most understood, accepted, emotionally safe, and free to fully be myself tend to have charts that complement mine in those exact ways. And there are also areas of tension between my chart and those of the relationships that left me feeling unseen, criticized, or fundamentally “wrong”.
It could just be a coincidence. But maybe it’s not. Either way, astrology has given me another language for understanding patterns in my life, especially when it comes to relationships, identity, emotional needs, and the ways people connect to each other.
People say “everything happens for a reason,” but sometimes that phrase feels almost insulting when you’re in the middle of something painful or confusing. Astrology doesn’t necessarily give me answers, but it does help me reflect on those seasons of my life with a little more perspective and a little less shame.
Maybe that’s why this latest hyperfixation has resonated with me so deeply. Not because I’m searching for certainty about the choices I’ve made and who I’ve kept in my circle… but because I’m finally learning how to understand myself a little more compassionately.
RD on the Run 