Here's what I think Cancer's shell is *really* for:

A Cancer in Mars question

It is somewhat taboo to suggest we should “let” others emotionally discharge onto us, and yet, I find myself making a case for it - read on.

What if liberating our collective emotional life might mean building skill and strength with our individual emotional shells?

Astrologers say that Cancer - symbolized by a crab (soft inners protected by tough shell) - protects itself, its needs and its emotions with a hard outer shell of caution, shyness, reticence, introversion, defensiveness or even aggression.

That’s what I thought too - the shell is to protect the insides.

And that’s not wrong - the shell is protection. But I wonder if we’ve been thinking about why and what from Cancer is protecting itself all wrong.

Yes, Cancer can be cautious about being emotionally vulnerable with others. Yes, Cancer wants to protect its tender sensitivity. Yes, the shell is partly to keep its own emotions and needs guarded and hidden.

But what if, more so than wanting to keep its OWN emotional life tucked away, the shell is actually to protect against the emotions of others?

What if the shell is to deflect the constant emotional turbulence of the outside world?

What if, inner/personal feelings and needs notwithstanding, what the shell is really for is to keep all the external, collective feelings and needs at bay, because there is a constant onslaught of other people’s feelings, needs, expectations, demands, etc? And Cancer feels that more keenly than others?

On our recent summer vacation with beach visits, I was reminded of the question, and it recently clicked for me, while interacting with my partner.

In the Pac NW, we went to Cannon Beach, the tide was out and the rocks were teeming with life. I was watching hermit crabs the size of coins get absolutely rolled by the tide coming in and out.

I wondered, the way the tide shakes, rattles and rolls these hermit crabs - how can they stand it? They are completely in chaos - why do they choose to hang out here, in this particular environment? Surely there’s calmer places than the shoreline, places less full of constant whitewater and ebb/flow?

These little hermit crabs were in this thin strip of environment where the tide is dragging, and smashing, and there is no peace, no stability, and no sense of having control or being able to maintain a direction or execute an objective - just the tide ripping, rolling, pulling, the minute you get your bearings it flips you again, over and over.

I had the thought - maybe they have shells - not to protect against predators but to protect against the ubiquity of the shoreline environment - when you live in a smashy place, it makes sense to develop armor.

Cancer has a shell perhaps, not only to protect its own emotions, but to protect itself from the emotions of others - a subtle new dimension that adds volumes to my understanding of the sign of Cancer.

Then, almost as though the Universe wants me to experience my theoretical ponderings in the embodied lab of real life, my partner, who is very sensitive to criticism, interprets a question I ask as criticism and he lashes out and melts down.

I had asked my coach how to best handle this difference in our natures. I know my partner is sensitive, and I know you can’t expect someone to change something like that overnight - besides, my astrological and Human Design explorations of my partner verify this quality - this is something deep and archetypal for him, so I know it’s not just conditioning/stubborn refusal to change.

My coach had offered me a ridiculously simple suggestion. She’d said something along the lines of - you know he is prone to doing this, and you know you’ve tried to prevent it through all kinds of strategies - being sweet, being very direct and neutral, fawning, over-complimenting, and none of that works so well, it still happens.

She said, when you’ve tried every trick in the book (including tricks verging on self-abandonment), then it’s time to surrender and protect your peace. She says, it’s going to happen, so just let it happen, but you can change the way you’re engaging with it.

She said, get good at recognizing when it’s happening, and keeping your distance energetically. Don’t get sucked into his activation by getting activated yourself. Don’t let his emotional explosion ruin your whole day - stay detached, disengaged. No longer let yourself be surprised and shaken when this happens - begin to surf it. These are the shores you chose.

I begin to relate this to the crabs - the tide is smashing them, their shell protects them, and they don’t take it personally. They are rattled externally, but they don’t let it seep in - internally.

Maybe we accept something by learning it.

When I “learned” my partner, our fights went down considerably. Retreating into a shell turned out to be a very good strategy for dealing with his sensitivity to perceived criticism. The tide still smashes, because the ocean is the ocean, so I become a crab.

So, my Cancer revelation is:

What if the tide is akin to everyone ELSE’s emotions smashing us around? What if we humans live on the shoreline, except its not water that’s smashing us constantly, it’s feelings? And not just our own - but everyone else’s.

And what if that’s ok? What if we just need shells, and the temerity of the crab? What if we just accept the tide, the white water a priori, and let it be?

I could have let myself get really rattled by my partners unreasonably reactive reaction, and I could have engaged, or shut down, or perseverated with stories and judgments, building up internal pressure and internal chaos, but instead, I just went on living my life.

When he walked around a few minutes later, I just said, has it stopped feeling like someone has poked an open wound? And we laughed.

His wildly emotional behavior is not easy for me, and maybe there is a way where he could take ownership of some healing (but that’s out of my control). But the alternative of constantly condemning him, letting him affect me, and expending a lot of energy on escalating emotions is deeply taxing on a life force level.

Am I letting “toxic behavior” slide? Maybe. Am I self-censoring? Oddly, I was self-censoring MORE when I was trying to make his behavior disappear through increasingly contorting myself in hopes of finding the “solution.” I hope you see that’s not what this is about - this is not a post that is about gaslighting yourself into staying in emotionally abusive relationships.

This is a post about emotional awareness, having agency and accountability as an adult. This is about problem solving complex relationships, relationships where people consciously want to remain together, but have very different natures, and patterns, and healing journeys. And want to make it work despite that.

This is about acknowledging how emotional humans are and how much we emote and discharge in ways that are NOT invisible, that DO impact those around us. This is about wondering if when we DO NOT emote, does that mean we are having to choose between our emotional health and the comfort of others?

Are we maybe no longer calibrated and skilled the way we could be around emotions and emotionality? Have emotions become taboo and have we slowly become over-sensitized to them, due to lack of adequate healthy exposure? Is that yet another negative side effect of the flatline culture we are living in?

We cannot control others. I could leave him, cancel the relationship completely, I suppose - but the older I get the less I’m satisfied by this answer of calling someone a villain and cutting them off - that is too reductive and not nuanced or TRUE enough. And besides, I’m old enough to know, the next relationship I enter is going to have its own set of problems - they all do.

But maybe humans are *meant to* emotionally discharge (the surf), and maybe humans are also meant to buffer themselves from it (shells and shore vibes) and just let it roll them and roll off them?

I want to say, I do not think it is right or ok, especially as an adult, to use your partner as an emotional punching bag. And so many of us, especially men (but not just men), do exactly this. Bring the stress of the day home and take it out on their partner, even their children.

That is very different than the type of emotional discharge that comes from knowing you are in a safe place. Knowing that if you tell your mother she’s the worst mother ever, she’ll know what you really mean is that you had a really hard day and she won’t take your words personally, or even shame you for them, she’ll just do her best to help you feel better, safe and loved.

I must confess, I emotionally discharge. Emotions are slippery, messy, and of the moment - we cannot be expected to always be in perfect control and perfectly regulated or to have the perfect safe outlet for emotional expression at any given moment - that is neither realistic or healthy. It can be very loving if others are skillful enough to not take it personally or let it overly affect them.

Then we can feel held by them - as though they are a shell-space for our tender insides that slipped out of our own shell.

Ah - so maybe our shells have a multiplicity of purpose - keeping our vulnerability protected, keeping the emotional discharge of others out, but also acting a surrogate shell and loving shell-space for the feelings of others in need of emotional co-regulation, when we’ve mastered not taking feelings too personally or feeling responsible for “fixing” the tides and the surf?

I have wondered why crabs choose crashy shorelines.

And maybe the answer is as simple as the fact that they have a shell, they know how to use it, and they do not have an agenda for the ocean and how it should behave.

And maybe that is a Cancer lesson to ponder.

I’m a Mamagician - I help mothers create individualized magical and/or spiritual and/or indigenous practices to reconnect to their life force, enrich their mothering, and nurture their soul-joy.

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