Individuation: Who Are You, Now?

As we proceed through our ordeals, there is the tendency— the capacity I should say— to ‘break apart.’ Various ‘parts of the Self’ are exposed, often unwittingly, and this is good even though it might feel awful at times. Archetypal personas which live within your psyche and are generally hidden or suppressed may rise to a challenge yet may need to be balanced by other segments of your arc of Identity in order to become better integrated within the whole of your greater Self.

Emotions such as fear, anger and frustration may be telling indicators of a dislodging of some usually buried sub- persona. But be kind to your ‘little selves”; they are valuable, dynamic facets of You. Listen to them, dialogue with them, welcome their insights and concerns. Give them love, and invite them to be a more consciously integrated facet of your Self.

Challenges or ordeals may bring out these ‘pieces’ of our unconscious pantheon of archetypal perspectives because we grow through crises, constantly tearing apart and reconstructing the Self. So, at every Return phase of a cycle of adventure or resolution of a challenge, we can check in to ask:

“Who Am I, Now?”

Some experiences can serve to elevate our individuated consciousness of Self, while other experiences might tend to pull us downward, deeper into non-resolution or fragmentation. That is why Carl Jung and James Hillman, as archetypal psychologists, encouraged any process of active imagination and archetype dialogue that can help you to identify and ‘own’ your ‘pieces’ so you might re-integrate them into the unique, mature Self you are capable of expressing.

These parts of Self might show up as an uncharacteristic outburst (or, inburst, unspoken or unexpressed outwardly), alerting you that you are ‘out of sorts.’ Or they might show up as dream personas or images. Recognizing and imaginatively conversing with or journaling about these upset personas’ concerns can help you to embrace your own depths of character. Only not attending to them can split them off in ways that could be harmful to your health or permanently disruptive to your social relations.

I recall about 5 to 7 years ago while I was engaged in a process of archetypal psychotherapy myself, I had come to know a Descender archetype within myself that I refer to still as Little Linda.  I have watched her grow up through the years since I first identified her as a young child living in a deep, darkened area like a lower level recreation room in a tri-level house. She preferred to stay hidden, protected from the harsh bright realm of adult emotions, backbiting and drama.

One Saturday while I was at a spiritual retreat just after engaging in a deep contemplation technique, I was speaking with a friend when suddenly Little Linda peeked out from her normal reclusion, and spoke:

“Hi, I’m Little Linda; I am part of the Linda you know.

I want to be part of this seminar, too!”

Fortunately, my friend immediately understood where I was coming from, or should I say, where Little Linda was coming from that day.  He welcomed her and thanked her for stepping forth. Actually that experience has helped me ever since in that my Little Linda has grown up considerably since then and she is certainly with me always now as a positive contributor to our life together.

images are from pixabay.com

(selected for this post by Little Linda!)

So, “Who Are You, Now?”

I invite your comments stories and stories!

Advice from your Golden Child

A major advantage and goal of getting to know your archetypal ‘parts of Self’ is that you can call upon various of your archetypal sub-selves to draw upon their specific perspectives and strengths of character. After all, these archetypal energies are facets of your Self.  Your Golden Child is that charismatic part of yourself that is always willing to step forward to help you express yourself boldly when the situation calls for that. But Golden Child is one of those archetypal personae that many of us—not Leos, for instance—tend to suppress or bury.

Can you think of a current situation in your life that could benefit from your stepping forth to make bold proclamations? Well then, even if you may not be ready to let your Golden Child shine forth fully on your life stage, I invite you to a technique that can help you allow your Golden Child to give you (or others) the advice It is ready to proclaim.

This is an active imagination technique such as Carl Jung and James Hillman have used to encounter  archetypal personae in their own unconscious domains.

Set some alone time to spend a half an hour or so in a quiet space where you will not be interrupted. With eyes closed or open (your choice), imagine! Let yourself sink into a part of yourself where your Golden Child lives. Ask him or her about a situation in your life where you could use strong advice. Have a conversation or just listen/attend to what this bold facet of yourself wants to say to you about the situation. You could also imagine someone else there with you, someone you wish you could be bold enough to say something to that you really wish you could say.

images are from pixabay.com

When you complete your active imagination session, I encourage you to journal about it. Either write out the dialogue as you remember it or at least record the bold statements that your Golden Child proclaimed as messages from your unconscious. By the way, what is she or he like, that part of you that gets to say everything you’d like to be able to express? How might you allow that part of yourself to have more of a voice in your life? Maybe in that situation you were contemplating? Write ONE STATEMENT that boldly proclaims what you need to say. You can print this out and write your statement below if you wish to:

 

I welcome your Comments and Stories!

 

Your Life is An Epic Journey

 

 

You are a mystic life adventurer! But you know that, right? This month we will explore the Life Metaphor Life is an Epic Adventure, with the archetype of Mystic as our ally and guide.

James Hillman, archetypal psychologist, wrote in Healing Fiction about the healing power of your own Life Story. He made a distinction in his therapy practice between a “case story,” which a person brings to the therapy process, and a “soul story,” which a therapist can help the person to identify and own. The case story is just the facts, the weave and warp of situational events that have added up to where a person feels himself or herself to be in life.  But those same facts, told in terms of their meaning, their impact and significance to the person’s sense of life purpose, goals and desires, comprise the soul story instead.

With Life Paths I will introduce a technique I call the Parallel Myth technique. This method will provide a way to transform your basic Life Map—charting your significant, shaping experiences and their relative impacts on the person you have become—into a soul story. As a short version here, let me invite you to simply think about some Epic story in a novel, film, play or myth form that you have always identified with.  How? Why? What about that story or one of its key protagonists reminds you of your own life and your own epic life adventure?

Now then, write a brief, synoptic story that merges the story you have identified with and meaningful facts from your own life. Assign yourself a protagonist’s name, and write this synoptic story in third person, highlighting your own most dramatic challenges, successes, loves and dreams. Write a page or two encapsulating your life experience from the perspective of this ‘merged’ storyline.

I like to remind my life mapping clients and students of the following awareness:

You are the stuff that myth is made of, and myth is made up from the stuff of your lives.

Now then, go forth and prosper!

I welcome your insights and I invite you to share your stories. Let’s enjoy a conversation!

Dig Deeply for the Gold

 

The underworld is a realm of only psyche, a purely psychical World. What one meets there is soul, as the figures Ulysses meets—Ajax,Anticlea, Agamemnon—are called psyches, and the way they move is compared with dreams; or to say this in another way, underworld is the mythological style of describing a psychological cosmos. – James Hillman, The Dream and the Underworld

As we have begun this new annual cycle in mid-November, this month’s process is a shorter version of a full monthly cycle. Let’s complete this month by considering how you might combine the Better Endings Life Metaphor of LIFE IS A GOLDEN OPPORTUNITY with the DESCENDER Archetype Ally. How might your Descender traits help you to manifest your golden aspirations?

First we can look for some parallels to this pairing of metaphor and archetype, in popular or mythic tales, or in your own life and dreams. An excellent mythic parallel is Theseus and the Minotaur.  In his life adventure en route to assuming his father’s throne in Thebes, Theseus goes to rescue a group of his compatriots who have been captured by the King of Minos to be fed to the monstrous half-bull/half-man Minotaur. The Minotaur and the sacrificial prisoners are hidden deeply within a labyrinth; a maze nearly impossible for one to escape from.

Theseus receives a special gift from King Minos’s daughter, Ariadne, who is taken with the handsome lad. She gives him a skein of golden thread that Theseus can unwind as he enters the labyrinth, so he can escape by following this thread out again after defeating the Minotaur, manos a manos.

 

Theseus, as fate would decree, does kill the monstrous foe, freeing his compatriots, who all escape with him by following the golden thread. Theseus and his men depart Minos (without Ariadne). As they approach Thebes, accidentally a wrong colored flag is displayed on the boat, leading Theseus’s father to believe Theseus has died. The King attacks and is killed in the ensuing battle, resulting in Theseus assuming the throne sooner than otherwise.

Entering the mysterious Labyrinth is a classic image of Descent, as walking a religious labyrinth likewise can guide you pensively to a heartful core or Center from which you may then re-emerge. So, how can your Descender help you to achieve a golden opportunity in your life? What does the golden thread of Ariadne represent to you? What is it in your own life?

For me, for example, I would say it is spirituality. This is a thread I have followed for as long as I remember in this life, and I continue to follow its winding Song.

One flake from the wall of a gold mine does not give much idea what it is like when the sun shines down inside and turns the air and the workers golden.

 – (Rumi: “Word Fog”, The Big Red Book, pg. 149-150)

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I welcome your Comments and Stories!

 

 

Our Many Storied Selves: Twelve Universal Archetypes

Life Paths, which is a personal growth and development book and self-help handbook, will present readers with an understanding of 12 Universal Archetype character-figures that are derived from the specific archetypal psychology approach of Dr. Charles Bebeau and his consociates including his wife Nin Bebeau and Debra Breazzano (MA, LPC). The Bebeaus founded and taught at the former Avalon Archetype Institute in Boulder, Colorado.  Basing his work on a solid foundation of Jungian Depth or Analytical Psychology and James Hillman’s Archetypal Psychology, and using symbology tracing back as far as ancient Sumerian mythology and astrology, Charles Bebeau recognized a pantheon of Twelve Universal classes of Archetypes from which all other idiosynchratic and culture-specific archetypal forms can be derived.

The Twelve represent energetic archetypal character forms that represent the four elements (Earth, Air, Fire, Water) and the three energetic phases of Process (origination, maintenance, dissolution). Robertson has noted that Jung himself drew attention to the “quaternity” and the “trinity” as intersecting dimensions of archetypal energy, precisely in accordance with Bebeau’s insightful system. Also check out this excellent post about HermesTrismegistus from the blog Symbol Reader, which references the Alchemical relevance of the conjunction of elements and process.

Here then, are a primordial set of Twelve Universal Archetypes :

 

ELDER LEADER    ARTIST    TEACHER

LOVER    IDEALIST    COMMUNICATOR

WARRIOR    GOLDEN CHILD    HEALER

NURTURER    DESCENDER    MYSTIC

 

On Friday I will reblog an excellent post from the Ptero website, a brilliant Archetypal Psychology venue.  The Ptero posting (from 8/10/14), speaks evocatively of the ‘storied’ lives we all lead, and expresses how we personify our lives and Psyche with archetypal energies and forms; some collective, others of a more personal resonance.

On Sunday I will further develop this thread with a special Guest Blog to this site from Debra Breazzano (MA, LPC), a prime proponent of the Bebeau/ Avalon archetypal system who is a practicing Archetypal Psychotherapist. Her post will answer many questions about the history of this approach and its value and significance from a psychotherapeutic perspective. I first encountered this approach synchronistically, as Breazzano’s therapy client over several years; and gradually I began recognizing its significance and incorporating aspects of this approach into my own emerging study of the Life Maps Process, so that archetypal psychology now appears to me to be vital for anyone truly aiming to “know thyself” and to advance in a balanced way to the pursuit of their dreams.

But let’s go back to a more hands-on introduction for today:

This week’s technique of identifying character modes, or “guises” and traits associated with your SOCIAL ROLES in life, can go pretty far in helping you begin to recognize some of your own dominant archetypal impulses or influences. As a quick sample from my own life–which I invite you to try on and apply to your own life experience–I find the following archetypal influences operating within my presentation of self in various roles (You can refer to the table of 12 archetype names listed above):

Roles         Archetypes     Traits

Teacher     TEACHER        organized presentation, authoritative delivery, enthusiasm for student          learning

Pet Mom    NURTURER     caregiving, Motherese

DESCENDER   (grief over loss)

Friend        COMMUNICATOR   empathy, listening skills, loyalty

Spirituality   MYSTIC        contemplative, visionary, patient

Traveler      IDEALIST      adventurous, love of new horizons

So you can begin to understand all this in terms of an Archetypal Assemblage (or, as I prefer, Assembly or Council). This is like a constellation of your regularly activated archetypal viewpoints or persona guises in your life.

 

Using this method of reflecting on archetypal qualities associated with your roles in relation to your Life Themes will not identify ALL of the archetypal impulses that might personify your personal unconscious (in Hillman’s terms) or that reflect the collective unconscious archetypes like Shadow, Anima and Animus that Jung described. Your Psyche is much more fertile and dynamic than that! However, this approach of identifying SITUATIONAL or Role and Life Theme related archetypal impulses can help you recognize a set of your “dominant situational archetypes.” This can be helpful because these are sources of Strength as well as sources of recurring lessons and challenging perspectives within your Psyche or what I like to call your Total Self System.

 

These dominant archetypal influences can be among your greatest Allies, especially when properly “aligned” in an integrated manner. (Think, Wizard of Oz.)This is what I aim to help people put into practice with techniques I will further present and develop for you in Life Paths.

So please, stay tuned!

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As always, I WELCOME your comments and stories.

Carrying On: How Your Life Story Can Be Self-Perpetuating

A story takes a conventional form, a Genre, which influences how it unfolds.  We have expectations about a Comic Heroic Adventure, for instance: a Hero will survive—even if barely–all challenges and s/he will defeat Evil, both in themselves and in the world. The world will benefit from the Hero’s Adventure while the Hero himself or herself will gain awareness and strengths to live “happily ever after”.

Of course, what really happens “ever after” is a story yet to be told. I like Steven Sondheim’s “Into the Woods”, a play where the first two acts show a convergence of fairy tale heroes meeting their obstacles and ultimately surviving to live ‘happily ever after’; then the third act brings a collective threat—an angry, rampaging Giant—that the same characters must come together collaboratively to defeat if any of them are to survive.

Tragic storylines also have a self-perpetuating form, often unfolding over several cycles or generations before the difficult lessons are learned so that the characters can reach a state of balance and at least put an end to the tragic causal chain of repercussions. Albert Camus envisions Sisyphus—condemned by the gods to roll a rock up a mountain only for it to fall back down over and over again—as ‘happy’, because he has at very least this one thing to do; he has a sort of purposeful focus, a cause.

Carolyn Myss has written about how sometimes people cleave to an illness or to a harmful habit or pattern which might be ultimately self-defeating. Why? She asks people to consider what they are “getting out of” holding onto the situation that it might be healthier for them to release.  Maybe there’s an addictive attachment to drama or traumatic stress (or a chemical imbalance activated by hormonal or stress factors)? In any case there are valuable Life Lessons to be gained perhaps, before one can find healthful solutions and “move on”. (No one can judge this, though; only you can examine your own situation to determine what you really need.) Therapy may a good way to address these sorts of issues; it allows you to “reveal yourself to yourself” over time with an expert Listener.

James Hillman, an archetypal psychologist whose ideas I draw upon in Life Paths, emphasized in his book Healing Fiction that therapy is largely about a person telling and then eventually being able to “re-tell” their Story. Hillman recognized precisely the same three genres of Life Stories that I have observed in Life Maps, so I was excited to find reference to that in his work after I had arrived at this observation independently.

So, is your Life Story primarily a Comic Epic Adventure? What Quest are you seeking to fulfill? What tools and Guides do you have available to help you fulfill your Mission?

If your Story is primarily Episodic, does that mean you would rather not plan for the Future but you might prefer wait to see what is “around the corner” when you get there? How is that working for you in relation to establishing or planning for your long-term goals?

Or, would you honestly characterize your Story to date as mainly a Tragedy? This is as valuable and significant a story pattern as any other.

I sometimes think the Universe (or, Spirit) provides “set-ups”: situations that require us to experience what we can ultimately most benefit from—but that may not feel like gifts so much until ultimately we are able to work through the hardest phases of the ordeals involved. It takes much strength, and patience, to endure the ‘dark nights of the Soul’.  I have no great words of advice or comfort here but I simply ask if there has ever been a time/event when you have successfully resolved a traumatic situation or found light in the midst of the dark tunnel? Can you recall those small successes and contemplate those? What helped you then? Maybe you can find in those past “mini-success stories” a tool or strategy that might help change the story now or in the future. Please, don’t give up! There is always more of a story to come, with potentially positive twists or turns you may not be expecting.

From Ptero, “The Story So Far” (same day):

Time marks us with habits, memories and limitations through which a distinct version of a story is imagined as fact and takes up residence in our hearts. Although the whole truth of our selves and others can never be wholly seen, we weave a continuous story through the assemblage of historical facts. Digital bits plucked out of an analog background, although never to be grasped fully, can be intuited.

“Healing begins when we move out of the audience and onto the stage of the psyche, become characters in a fiction (even the godlike voice of Truth, a fiction), and as the drama intensifies, the catharsis occurs; we are purged from attachments to literal destinies, find freedom in playing parts, partial, dismembered, Dionysian, never being whole but participating in the whole that is a play, remembered by it as actor of it. And the task set by the play and its god is to play a part with craft, sensitively.” (Hillman, Healing Fiction, as reblogged from Ptero in synchronicity!)

Friday I will explore the idea that the same person might have two or all three of these Life Story Genres active in their lives at the same time—either in different Life Chapters or from the perspective of different ‘archetypal’ aspects of Self.

I am always interested in hearing your Comments, insights or stories you might choose to share! This is—I intend and do hope dearly—a Safe Space!

“You See Yourself in Others”–Family-Based Archetypal Projections

Archetypal psychology á la Carl G. Jung or James Hillman or Carolyn Myss—or via a unique Life Mapping approach I will be introducing you to in Life Paths—can help you to become more aware of how easy it can be to project aspects of your own unconscious personality or “Psyche” orientations onto, or into, others.  This way others may serve as mirrors for you of traits or beliefs you may not be ready to own about yourself. It’s like my father used to tell me often, “You see yourself in others”.  We do this with both positive and negatively perceived traits or orientations; it is a psychologically ‘safe’ way to assess traits we may be not ready to see as part of our own psychic makeup.

In prior weeks we have explored archetypal  “ensemble casts” of characters as represented in fiction, such as in the Wizard of Oz, one of my favorite examples. Discussing TV, we realized that several successful situational comedies such as M.A.S.H. or Gilligan’s Island use ensemble casts to represent various character aspects of a basic Self character (e.g. Dorothy, Captain Hawkeye Pierce, or the marooned Gilligan). Now I’d like to invite you to do the same with regard to members of your own Family. This might be your family of origin, or your immediate family you live with, or both, and it could as easily be seen in your family of friends or coworkers that you associate with on a regular basis.

What might your perceptions of specific family or significant relationship Alters reveal about Yourself?

Here’s an easy way to start applying this understanding from archetypal psychology to your universe—i.e., your own Ensemble Archetypal Cast of relations. Simply compose a list of positive and negative (and/or neutral, if you like) character traits that you associate with those in your family or in a close, family-like social group.

What character traits, for instance, do you associate with your Father? If that has shifted over time, you can represent his traits accordingly. What strengths or weaknesses do you see in yourself that you can trace to being to some degree a result of your relationship with your father?

Now try applying those same questions to your full set of close family relations. Especially if you recognize in yourself a particularly strong ‘attachment’ to some perception you hold about a family member, describe the traits you are responding to as carefully as you can. Have you perhaps avoided expressing some character traits in your own life as a reaction to seeing those as ‘negative traits’ expressed by someone close to you? What values do you relate to your aversion to such attitudes or behaviors?

On the other hand, what noble or heightened pedestals might you have constructed for some persons; pedestals you feel you fall quite short of yourself. Why?

Now then, what if all of these character strengths and weaknesses you see in your family Alters are actually all parts of your own Total Self System (as well as being traits you associate with these others)?

Try it out. I will, too…

Here’s a sample subset of a chart I might create for my own archetypal “family projections” exploration:

       Negatively perceived traits  Positively perceived traits

Dad  quick, harsh temper       excellent gaming strategist

Mom emotional over-sensitivity  excellent problem solver

 

Now then, looking at the negatively valued (to me) traits I’ve identified, what might they reveal about me? I definitely try to distance myself from a “quick, harsh temper” such as I associate with my father from specific memories. Does that mean this is not a trait within me? Quite the opposite. Because I do not want to own this trait, I have sometimes overcompensated in a disagreement with a relationship partner by “going away”–either physically or emotionally–when challenged by what may seem like frustrating or objectionable behavior or attitudes. Rather than erupt–as I construct my father might–I go away; or alternately, I might trigger this very response I eschew in myself, in my alter. Then though, when a situation remains tense and I finally DO express an angry temper, I might act out too much–in a brief but relatively uncontrollled outburst. Later I might apologize, or ‘go away’.

The more we can recognize “ourselves in others”, the better!  An approach I use now when I recognize that I might be projecting qualities I don’t wish to own into others, is called an Archetype Dialogue, a form of active imagination, as Jung would call it. You can journal a dialogue (or imagine one) precisely with that ‘character’ in yourself that you think you have seen in someone else. Write out or sustain an imagined conversation with this part of yourself. What is he or she upset about or fearful of or uncomfortable around? Listen to what this part of YOU has to say. You might be surprised to find some of the pent up negative energy dissolves as you ALLOW this vital part of yourself to have a voice.

I invite your insights and stories! Go lightly with this one; be Gentle with YOU! (and You, and you too…….); LOL

 

Archetype Dialogue

“For every typical situation in life,

There is an archetype corresponding to that situation.”

– Carl G. Jung (Archetypes of the Collective Unconscious)

Can you think of an issue about which you are conflicted or undecided, for which you can express “two sides” of the situation? E.G. whether to move or to stay with a job or to change a relationship? Or do you have a “personal conflict” over some area of your life that persists through the years without clear resolution?

When you have opposing viewpoints within yourself around an issue that is important to you, it’s as though you are two or more people about that. Here, we are talking about what Carl Jung and many others since have called Archetypes. These are submerged viewpoints, your ‘inner voices’ that might feel at odds with each other about how you should approach something.  James Hillman would say these various archetypal aspects of your Self are in your “Personal Unconscious”, and Jung would say we have even deeper sorts of archetypes in our “Collective Unconscious” that are universal.

As an anthropologist I take a practical approach as well as a “depth psychology” approach to archetypal character guises and traits. We all take on various ROLES in our lives that are associated with various STATUSES. These can include kinship statuses and roles (like Mother or Child, husband and wife) as well as occupational and recreational roles, like Doctor and Golfer. Each of these personal ROLES is associated with specific kinds of SITUATIONS we engage in regularly. And each of these brings out deep archetypal—not just formal ‘status’—aspects. Considering various Themes, or KINDS of situations in our lives, each Life Theme may be associated with archetypal character dispositions.  For example, ROMANCE might bring out the Lover in You, whereas EDUCATION may bring forth your Teacher and/or Student “parts of Self”, and SPORTS or MILITARY SERVICE might bring forth the Warrior. Each of these “situational archetype” parts-of-self has their own ‘character’ presence in your unique assemblage of archetypal outlooks. Some are deeply buried or suppressed (e.g. some may be in “Shadow” mode), while others may be more actively integrated within your conscious personality.

The Life Mapping activity for this week’s topic about Attitudes asks you to write or to imagine a DIALOGUE with two opposing viewpoints—both your own—around a topic you may feel conflicted or “dual” about. It can help to get these divergent sides talking to one another about a situation you are trying to better understand or resolve, especially if leaving it unresolved keeps you “stuck” about that issue.

Let me share an example from my Life Mapping cases. Mindy was a woman who had been experiencing a persistent dilemma for many years. In the course of life mapping she identified two Archetypal outlooks that she associated with a spiritual aspect—she called this her inner Warrior—and a Physical-life side of self, which she called her Descender. Around some of the same issues in her life, her Warrior-mystic and her Descender modes were at odds. Her Warrior wanted to follow inner spiritual nudges: make a move, take or end a job, accept a relationship. Her Descender, though, hated to be pinned to any decision.  Mindy journaled a dialogue between these two archetypal parts of self.  She found that one value was important to both of them: Freedom. But they each defined freedom in diametrically opposite ways! The Mystic thought freedom was about following inner nudges of spirit; it was “Spiritual Freedom”. The Descender wanted Freedom from commitments! So, for many years, Mystic-Mindy would boldly step forth and change locations, jobs or relationships. But almost immediately thereafter, Descender-Mindy would want to bolt; to leave that location, job or relationship. When Mindy put the two to talking with each other over a couple of weeks in her journal, they/she came to recognize how these opposing, archetype-driven points of view were interfering with her ever establishing a STABLE set of conditions. So she started asking them about their goals and she found some they shared. She needed a job, for instance, with built in variety and flexibility. Now Mindy has become a successful public speaker for a health supplements company she believes in. She gives workshops on various products and travels around the country. Both her Mystic and her Descender selves are happy, for once! Mindy has embraced and ‘integrated’ more of her total Self.

Writing an archetype dialogue allows you to tap into aspects of yourself you might otherwise suppress. Offer a “safe space” to these feelings and viewpoints, knowing that your core Self will remain strong and centered throughout the exchange. Just as an example to get you started, let me illustrate briefly. I call this approach: “Open Mike”. Just set a topic about which you have dual or multiple ‘attitudes’, and invite your various situational selves to speak. If you’re not sure what topic to introduce, ask ‘them’ to suggest one for you!

Open MikeTopic: My currently overburdened schedule

This is crazy! How can we keep this up? You are going to collapse at this rate.

(Self in italics) Who are you?

Someone who wishes you would lighten up a bit…

A Nurturer, I believe.

Yes. You do need to give yourself some time to relax, dear. Breathe. Go to the gym. Read a Maeve Binchy novel; I want to!

I know but there is just so much to do. I have bitten off so much this semester…

This Life, don’t you mean? I am with you and want to see you reach your goals, too, Lindy, but she is right; you need to add some balance. Trust that you will get what you need to get done even better when you accept your time limitations.

Are you an Elder Leader?

No, a Communicator.

Thanks for all you contribute; all of you, too.

Nurturer: So what are you going to do to ease up a bit?

I will do what I can…feel free to nudge me when you see an opportunity for me to open a novel or take Sophie for a walk.

[This is just an example of how to begin an Archetypal “Open Mike” dialogue. It is helpful to have a journal dedicated to this exchange. Explore many topics; get to know these ‘parts’ of yourself that are always within you and can help you reach your Dreams! Use whatever names you want for these; in Life Paths I will be introducing a specific ‘pantheon’ of 12 universal archetype figures based on Jung and on the works of a lesser known archetypal psychologist, Dr. Charles Bebeau-LW]

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I invite your comments and stories of your own.

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Thanks for reading and for those who are “Liking,” Thank You!

Happy Valentines Day

The Annual Party–Origins of a Situational Anxiety

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On Tuesdays I share a personal story to illustrate our weekly topic, and this week’s topic of Significant Life Events brings up many possible stories. I would love to share about my travel adventures, since these have been very positive, lifting events in my Life Story. Instead, though, I will share about the origins of a situational social anxiety, because I want to document how early Significant Life Events can have a lasting, dramatic impact and about how understanding that influence can also help to manifest Better Endings.

Every year for at least between when I was 12 and 17, my parents held an annual Christmas party. My father was an executive at Bell Aerosystems, so he staged this annual party for his professional colleagues. I, my three sisters, and my brother until he left for college when I was 14 were required to stay home on the night of the annual Party. We were paraded downstairs to the entry foyer once most of the guests had arrived, for brief introductions, then we were promptly sent upstairs to watch TV in my parents’ room for the duration of the Party.

Some aspects of the Party night were fun for us kids. We would plot a foray down to the kitchen island to nab plates of my Mom’s most wonderful chocolate meringue pie, and I was usually the scout and the procurer of pie. But the Party had its dark side as well, one that deepened from year to year. Let’s just say that since alcohol was freely flowing at the Party downstairs, we kids would have to keep raising the TV volume to try to drown out the increasing crescendo of conversations below that would ultimately coalesce into some loud altercation or another before the night was through. Then afterwards, once the guests had left, invariably my parents would collide over some issue that had surfaced at the Party. One next early morning, my sisters and I woke groggily to see my father dragging his full-sized bed down the stairs and into his den; it stayed there for the next several months. That day, Mom had a blackened eye, and Dad’s face was striated with three lengthy scratch marks. You get the picture.

Flash forward to my own later professional career. I am always warmly invited to the annual departmental Christmas party, held at a much respected colleague’s home. I attended the first few years, until one time, someone I was having some issues with, also attending, stringently avoided friendly contact. The next year, I aimed to go. I bought Belly Jellies to share and sat in my living room recliner counting down to the appropriate time to depart. I continued to sit, well past time to have left, for another hour or so, pinned in my recliner, until finally I called my older sister, Lee, for moral support. I had experienced a genuine panic attack over the very thought of attending the Party. And from then til now–the Party recently having come around and passed again–even though I genuinely like and highly value every colleague and the students I work with, I have not attended a single instance  of the annual Party since. After many years of kicking myself and offering fervent apologies on the following Mondays, I have finally come to examine and name my situational anxiety for what it is. I have come to a better understanding not just of its roots–that much seems obvious–but also of why, as a rational adult, part of me is still so adamant that this one thing–the professional Party–I shall not do.

In fact, this situational anxiety has become a solid proof for me of the reality and value of Archetypal Psychology, a la Carl Jung, James Hillman, and Charles and Nin Bebeau. I have become acquainted with two “parts of Self” within me that together conspire to absolutely shun the annual Party. One is an Elder Leader archetypal persona, one to whom I have unconsciously assigned final say when he asserts himself so strongly as to put his foot down. The other is “Little Linda’, an overly sensitive early childhood figure who prefers much of the time to stay alone, from an array of early childhood social hurts. I know that the archetypal Elder Leader member of my ensemble cast of inner characters, or Inner Council, has a purpose in forbidding me from attending the Party; he is protecting me (and Little Linda and himself, no doubt) from potential conflict and emotional injury.

Surely there is more to this avoidance behavior. I am single while most at the Party are not. I don’t drink alcohol at all; they likely will, evoking my childhood inhibitions from my parents’ annual festivities. But I have come to accept and to value and appreciate the wisdom of my Elder Leader protector, which may be the closest to a Better Endings scenario I will be able to achieve, at least for now. I have let my colleagues know not to expect me, and they are goodhearted about that although this antisocial tendency surely does not go unnoticed. I no longer pretend to myself that I will finally make it ‘this year’. Well, sometimes I still do try but after the time for leaving again has come and passed, I no longer beat myself up over it. Lately I might even journal a dialogue or converse inwardly with my Elder Leader, acknowledging his concern and  thanking him for his care. And so, while this might not seem to many to be yet the ideal solution, it has taught me to listen to and to include my Inner Council in my outer decisions. I am no more, nor less, ‘multiple’ than any of us are. Different situations can bring forth otherwise subtle or submerged parts of Self that help us to cope with or to master whatever it might be that the situation calls for. Significant Life Events often have their most obvious impact upon recurring kinds of situations in our lives.

Related articles

• SOCIAL ANXIETY DISORDER (social phobia) (cherished79.wordpress.com)
• Anxiety and Anxiety Disorders (fehintdaruma.wordpress.com)
• How to feel comfortable this holiday season FOR INTROVERTS (and extroverts too)! (jackiemayerr.wordpress.com)
• Your Significant Life Events (betterendingsnow.com)

A First Principle of Better Endings: Gratitude

 

The greatest tool we can use for manifesting Better Endings day to day and moment by moment is an attribute of Gratitude. So often, the hairsbreadth difference between a “success” and a “failure”–or, for that matter, between a ‘good’ day or not–is simply the thankfulness we feel about whatever our circumstances might be. Are we home with a cold? How wonderful that the body has given us time away from workaday routines to reflect and repair. Have you lost a job? Okay, granted, with this sort of cloud bank it is harder to find a silver lining. Still, there will be valuable life lessons that will inevitably follow from such a potentially major turning point in life.

Usually once the tension eases around a difficult ordeal, we can look back and be grateful for certain aspects in retrospect. But this is watching our lives unfold in the rear view mirror. Gratitude in the Present Moment is more empowering, right Now, than appreciating what life has brought us in hindsight.

To establish gratitude as a character attribute, an engrained attitude and not just a passing feeling, can be empowering because our attitudes govern our interpretation of facts. In my Life Mapping case studies I have found that two different people can experience the same sort of accident or illness under similar circumstances; yet, one will regard the event as an opportunity to bounce back even stronger than before, while the other might crumble into a prolonged remorse.

Please, there are no judgments here! I am not saying one person is right and the other not for responding to challenges with either gratitude or remorse. Each person’s lessons–and timing–are their own gifts, or burdens. Sometimes we must simply  descend into the depths of an experience before we can resurface and go forward in life. Even in Descent there may be vitality so that perhaps eventually we may come to value and be grateful for even our sadness and remorse.

Booktopia image (by Jung) from Carl Jung’s The Red Book

Carl G. Jung, James Hillman, and Joseph Campbell–three authors who have written from the perspective of Archetypal Psychology–have shown that often Descent is necessary. It can be embraced as a potent, deeply meaningful experience. We can be grateful for the darkness as well as the light. For both can help us to eventually unfold, to Better Endings.

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I am adding with this entry a regular Saturday spot: First Principles for manifesting Better Endings. Please feel free to Comment and share what you find helps most to manifest better endings in your life! Also please send your story on Fictional Better Endings, or answer What Are Better Endings to You? for a Guest Blog spot. I look forward to reading and sharing your insights!

Related articles

• The benefits of gratitude (therapypons.wordpress.com)
• Six Habits of Highly Grateful People (blogs.berkeley.edu)
• Gratitude (kristinbartoncuthriell.com)
• Start Expressing Your Gratitude Every Day (harounkola.com)