Wednesday reflections on lunar intensity, emotional bloating, and why you’re not losing your mind.
I keep hearing the same thing from clients whenever the moon is full. “I feel overwhelmed.” “I can’t make decisions.” “Everything feels too intense.” “I don’t know what’s wrong with me.”
And I keep saying the same thing back. “You’re in the Full Moon web.”
“Wait, that’s a real thing?”
Yes. It’s a real thing. And if you’re reading this on Wednesday, the Full Moon day, you’re standing right in the centre of it.
The 4-day web
The Full Moon isn’t just one day. I know it as a 4-day window of a day and a half before, the day of, and a day and a half after. Think of it like walking into a spider’s web you didn’t see coming, and suddenly you’re caught in something sticky and disorienting, trying to wipe it off, but it clings to everything. Your thoughts, your emotions, your ability to think clearly.
That’s what the lunar pull feels like when it peaks. You’re in it before you realize what’s happening, and once you’re caught, everything feels harder than it should.
I hear the same experiences over and over during these four days:
- Emotional intensity that seems disproportionate to what’s actually happening
- Difficulty making even simple decisions
- Overwhelm that appears out of nowhere
- Old patterns or unresolved emotions suddenly resurfacing
- The sense that you’re more reactive, more sensitive, more raw
If that’s you right now, you’re caught in the web.
The water we’re made of
Nobody wants to sound too woo-woo explaining this, but it’s actually physics. The moon pulls the tides. Your body is roughly 60% water. When the moon is full and exerting maximum gravitational pull on the planet’s oceans, it’s also pulling on the water in your body.
Not dramatically like you’re going to float away. But enough that your nervous system registers the shift, and your emotional regulation, which relies on biochemical processes happening in all that water, gets a little harder to maintain.
You know how some people retain water before their monthly cycle? They can feel bloated, uncomfortable, and more emotional. The Full Moon creates a similar kind of holding pattern, but emotionally and energetically as well as physically.
Things that were under the surface start pressing up. Emotions you’ve been managing suddenly feel unmanageable. And the performance you’ve been maintaining becomes exhausting to keep up because everything you’ve been keeping contained is suddenly trying to break through.
What’s actually happening
The Full Moon doesn’t create problems, but it sure does illuminate them. It brings to peak visibility what’s been building in the dark.
So, if you’ve been performing calm while feeling chaotic, the Full Moon makes the performance unsustainable. If you’ve been holding resentment while smiling politely, the Full Moon brings it right to the surface. If you’ve been avoiding a decision, the Full Moon creates pressure until something has to give.
Call it exposure energy. Remember the costume I wrote about last week? The Full Moon is what makes it impossible to keep wearing because it’s time for what’s real to be seen. And yes, that feels intense because suddenly you’re not just aware of what you’ve been avoiding, you’re feeling it with full force.
How to work with it instead of fighting it
Most people treat Full Moons like Mercury Retrograde. It’s something to fear, something that’s happening to them, and something to just survive until it passes. They use it as an excuse, too. “Oh, I’m just a mess because of the Full Moon.”
But that’s not how this works. The Full Moon isn’t making you a mess. It’s showing you where the mess already was. And there’s a big difference between those two things.
So, here’s how to work with it instead of being victimized by it.
Expect less clarity and more intensity. Don’t try to make major decisions during these four days if you can avoid it. Your perspective is skewed, and everything feels more urgent, more dramatic, and more final than it actually is. Wait until the web clears to decide what’s real.
Let emotions move through without making them mean something permanent. You’re not falling apart. You’re just more porous to what’s been accumulating. Cry if you need to. Rage in your car. Write the email you’ll never send. Let it out without attaching a story about what it means for your healing or your progress.
Notice what’s being illuminated without immediately acting on it. The Full Moon shows you what needs attention. It doesn’t need you to fix it all this week, but to take note and let it inform what comes next. But don’t burn everything down just because you can suddenly see the problems clearly.
Get grounded in what’s actually real. Your body, your values, the people who love you without performance, the things that matter when you strip away all the intensity. The Full Moon pulls you up and out, so ground yourself back down on purpose.
Remember it’s temporary. You’re in a 4-day window. The intensity will peak and pass. What might feel unbearable on Wednesday (today) might feel manageable by Saturday. Don’t make permanent decisions based on temporary intensity.
The gift under the discomfort
The Full Moon isn’t punishment as much as information.
It shows you where you’ve been performing instead of being present, and holding instead of releasing. It shows you where you’ve been pretending instead of being honest. You know, where the costume no longer fits.
And yes, that’s uncomfortable, but it’s also clarifying. Once you see what’s been hidden, you can’t unsee it. And that’s usually exactly what needed to happen for the next phase of your evolution to begin.
So if you’re in the web right now, if everything feels too much, too intense, too exposed, you’re not crazy. You’re also not regressing or falling apart.
You’re just caught in the lunar pull, and it’s showing you what’s real under all the performance.
Give it four days. Let it pass. Then see what remains when the intensity clears. That’s usually the truth you’ve been avoiding.
