Vibrant Jung Thing: Jungian Images and Reflections

Here in the Middle Years of Life: Is That All There Is?

The great jazz artist Peggy Lee performed the following beautiful, highly disturbing yet haunting song in 1969, at midlife, in her 50th year: 

 

I doubt that questions get much more real than those in this song.  And the question that Peggy Lee sings about here is of the type, that, for many people, can become achingly urgent at the middle of life. 

For many people, especially in our tumultuous times, the middle years of life can come to feel like an endless process of coping with chaos.  It can feel like life has become a time of just responding to one crisis after another: issues with maturing children, issues with the health of parents; job issues; issues of financial security.  At times, life can come to seem endlessly wearying, and very much as if there is nothing to it, but "just going through the motions".  From such a place, for very many people, there can come a deep heartfelt cry: "Is this really all that there is to my life?  Is this all that I get?"

This moment, the moment of this question, is highly important in the life of the individual.  This is true, even especially true, if the time when this question arises is filled with depression, anxiety -- even despair.

From experience with clients, I can almost guarantee that there will be no canned, pre-packaged answer to this question that will slake the desperate thirst of those who ask such a question. Only an answer rooted in the individual's life will bring any peace, any hope, any meaning -- any sense of value.

By an individual answer, I mean one that emerges from the very depths of the individual.  Not something that the individual's intellect or conscious mind has cobbled together, but something that emerges from the very depths of the person, from what they most fundamentally are.  Something to which they can say "Yes!" with their whole being.

It is the task of good therapy (and of Jungian analysis) to assist the individual in finding the symbolic dimension that conveys meaning, to find the deep story or myth of an individual's life.  There are many in suburban places like Oakville, Burlington and Mississauga for whom the question "Is that all there is?" has become urgently real.  I invite you to enter into the therapeutic journey inward, to find your own inner treasure.

I'd gratefully welcome comments and reflections from readers.  Have you had the experience of wondering in this way "is that all there is"?  How has that question affected your life?  If you were willing to share this important and personal part of your life, I'd be deeply interested to dialogue with you.

My very best wishes to you on your individual journey to wholeness,

Brian Collinson, Psychotherapist & Jungian Analyst

Website for Brian's Oakville and Mississauga Practice: www.briancollinson.ca

Email: brian@briancollinson.ca

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© 2010 Brian Collinson

 

When You Hit a Brick Wall

Often people get to the point in life where they reach an impasse, and they don't know how to solve a particular situation in their lives.

There doesn't seem to be a way forward and there doesn't seem to be a solution.  Although this can happen at any point in life, it seems particularly prevalent at mid-life.

Often, the way one becomes aware of this is that you just realize that the way that you have been trying to solve a particular problem or deal with a particular life situation just isn't opening anything up.  What this tells you, at least in part, is that your attitude is no longer adapted to the realities of your life.

Now, please don't misunderstand me.  I'm not saying something along the lines of "If you want it enough, and you're unfailingly positive about it, what you want in your life will come" -- the kind of message that you find in books like The Secret.  I think that approach to life is quite naive, and I have seen a fair number of people come to real harm as a result of trying to live like that.  Such an attitude can be really unadapted, and can lead you into a major collision in reality.  I know of one person who left home and found herself absolutely destitute and friendless in Dubai as a result of that kind of thinking.  From all that I hear, Dubai is not a great place to be penniless, and to try and get by on just a sunny smile.

Having an adapted attitude may well mean that there are certain realities that I have to let in and acknowledge.  That may even mean that there are things that I have to grieve.  What it may mean, above all, is that I have to change.

Let's say that I'm a true died-in-the-wool "thinking type" person.  So I try to approach all the problems and situations in my life in very rational, thought-out, dispassionate ways.  Then perhaps one day I find myself deep in the grip of a depression that I simply can't shake.  It might well be that the only way that I'm going be able to come through the depression and feel alive again is by acknowledging my feeling side -- all those years of unacknowledged and suppressed feelings.  This is going to require a big change in the way that I see myself, and a lot of open-ness to dimensions of my life that I've previously done my very best to cut off.  It isn't going to be easy.  Parts of me are really going to resist.  But it may well be that it's the only way that I'm going to get my real, meaningful life back.

Similarly, a person who is all about willpower and control may well have to acknowledge the parts of him- or herself in the unconscious that they can't control.  They may have to admit that the ego is going to have to acknowledge that it is "second banana" to the Self, and let things emerge from their dreams and from other parts of the unconscious, and take those things into account in the way that they live their lives.  This might be quite difficult, but it might just give them a meaningful life again.

Many times "hitting the wall" has to do with coming up against the things that I really refuse to admit to myself.  The key to the lock that I need to open, I hide from myself, because there is some truth about myself or my situation that I really don't want to look at.

The only way past the wall is to be open to something new: the undiscovered self.

Please keep sending me your comments and your thoughts!  I would welcome any of your reflections on the "walls" in your life, past or present.  

My very best wishes to you on your individual journey to wholeness,

Brian Collinson

Website for Brian's Oakville and Mississauga Practice: www.briancollinson.ca 

Email: brian@briancollinson.ca

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© 2009 Brian Collinson    

The Mirror of Relationship

He woke up one day, and realized that he didn't recognize his marriage, his partner or himself.  He realized that things had gone on in a certain way for years and years, but that for a long time now, he had just been going through the motions.  

Certainly, he loved his kids, now in their early teens, and was a very giving parent.  He knew he wanted good things for them, was prepared to make all kinds of sacrifices for them, and could not bear the thought of hurting them.  Outside of the relationship with the kids, though, what was there that remained positive, or that had any life in it?

He thought of his wife and felt that he had nothing in common with her anymore.  It was almost painful these days to spend time together.  She seemed so different from the woman that he had been in love with, all those years ago.  He could remember how thrilled he had been to be with her, to share things with her, and just to talk early in their relationship.  It had been so intoxicating!  But now there was little that they enjoyed doing together.

With pangs of sharp feeling, he realized that he himself had changed.  The young adult "keener" who had worked so hard to supply all the material things, and who had sought to advance himself any way he could had disappeared now.  In that person`s place was someone who among other things, realized that he was not immortal, and who wanted the things that he did with his life and his time to count -- to be meaningful to him.  And right now what he was experiencing in his relationship was not meaningful, and was not making him feel good that he was alive.

The experience of this man is not uncommon.  He could just as easily be a woman, or a partner in a gay or lesbian relationship.  In our current world of shifting relationships, people are now often much readier to acknowledge when relationships and marriages are no longer working.  This is not to say that such awareness comes easily: it may often be a very difficult matter for a partner when they finally have to admit to themselves that their relationship, once so full of hope, is now a shell of its former self.

When such awareness dawns, there is usually no going back from it.  It may be that the couple concerned will end their relationship, or it may be that the relationship will change dramatically  One thing that you can be very sure of: the relationship that used to exist has outlived itself, and is dead and gone. Something new, either within or without the relationship, must now emerge.

QUESTIONS FOR WHEN YOU FIND YOURSELF IN THE RELATIONSHIP CRUCIBLE:

1.  Who has changed in the relationship?  Me?  My partner?  Both of us?

2.   How did I see my partner when we first got together?  What attracted me to my partner?  How do I see my partner now?

3.  Do I see my partner realistically?  What are the aspects of him/her that I don't acknowledge, or that I don't understand?

4.  Are there aspects of myself that I see in my partner.  Are there aspects of anyone else that I recognize in him or her.

5.  What am I really yearning for in relationship.

The journey of therapy very often starts in the crucible of relationship, or leads through it.  In many different ways, relationship can catalyze a deeper connection with the depths of the self.

Thank you to clients and readers alike who have shared with me aspects of their lives in relationship over the years.  As always I welcome readers comments ànd I thank you for taking the time to read.

My very best wishes to you on your individual journey to wholeness,

Brian Collinson

Website for Brian's Oakville and Mississauga Practice: www.briancollinson.ca 

Email: brian@briancollinson.ca

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© 2009 Brian Collinson    

Anxiety, Depression and My Own Truth

According to a recent New York Times article, people in North America are finding their lives more and more embroiled in anxiety.  This is a social trend that started prior to the start of the economic downturn, and which has been increasing since that time, if the mass media are to be believed.

The Times article  cites the example of one woman who found herself more and more in the grip of panic attacks, which impelled her "to read every single economic report" -- not an uncommon response.  It seems quite possible that this obsession with economic information could create a vicious cycle: in response to her anxiety, the woman might read more economic reporting, which in turn could be expected to further elevate her anxiety.  And so on, potentially without end.

This brings us to a very fundamental question.  As individuals, are we prepared to accept the assessments of social scientists, journalists and economic and business experts, when it comes to the most basic attitudes that we will have to our lives?

Jung has something interesting to say about this.  It is couched in the gender usage conventions of the past (1957), for which I ask your understanding.  Nonetheless, his point is clear, and as relevant today as it was then:

"...[A] man is not complete when he lives in a world of statistical truth.  He must live in the world of his mythological truth [italics mine], and that is not merely statistics.  it is the expression of what he really is, and what he feels himself to be.  A man without mythology is merely a product of statistics, as it were, an average phenomenon.  Our natural science makes everything into an average ... while the truth is that the carriers of life are individuals, not average numbers.  And, of course, all the individual qualities are wiped out, and that is most unbecoming....  It deprives people of their specific values, of the most important experiences of their life, where they experience their own value, the creative background of their own personality."

"The Houston Films" in McGuire, William, and Hull, R.F.C., eds., C.G. Jung Speaking (Princeton: University Press, 1977)

What is the dominant story that I choose to live under?  If I accept my life story as told by the mass media, I am a very small speck indeed, swept up in the great currents of economics, social trends and technological change.  My living and dying will be a matter of negligible significance.  I will be only a statistic.

But what if I make a determination to look for my story elsewhere, and to give that story my energy, my love and my trust?  What if my dreams impart to me some additional sense of the meaning of my life, of who I am, and what I really value?  To attempt to see my own myth, as not something so much consciously created, as a story made up, but as something that I am only partially capable of understanding, that emerges over time from the reality of my own life and my own psyche.

Real therapy, therapy that makes a fundamental difference, connects me to the deep story of my life.

I would welcome your input, comments or any sharing of your personal experience as you seek to encounter your own myth.

My very best wishes to each of you on your individual journeys to wholeness,

Brian Collinson

Website for Brian's Oakville and Mississauga Practice: www.briancollinson.ca 

Email: brian@briancollinson.ca

Get "Vibrant Jung Thing" posts delivered to your email using the "FeedBurner" box in the left column!

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© 2009 Brian Collinson 

A Quotation from Carl Jung on Midlife Transition

As I mentioned in my last post, I'm planning to add some posts to this blog that are built around quotations from Carl Jung, in addition to the posts that are my own reflections.

This is because I think that Jung's own thoughts and language often have some very good things to say to us directly about what life is now.

A good example of this is the following quotation, taken from C.G. Jung Speaking: Interviews and Encounters, a book which compiles many of Jung's public addresses and the experiences that other had in in encountering him.  This quotation expresses in its own way a kind of experience associated with mid-life transition and "the unlived life" that I recognize in many of my clients.  Perhaps you will recognize it, too.

"Take the example of a businessman -- successful, rich, not yet old.  He is perhaps forty-five.  He says, 'I have made my fortune; I have sons that are old enough to carry on the business which I founded.  I will retire.  I will build a fine house in the country and live there without any cares or worries.'  So he retires.  He builds his house and goes to live in it.  He says to himself, 'Now my life will begin.'

But nothing happens.

One morning he is in his bath.  He is conscious of a pain in his side.  All day he worries about it; wonders what it can be.  When he goes to the table he does not eat.  In a few days his digestion is out of order.  In a fortnight he is very ill.  The doctors he has called in do not know what is the matter with him.  Finally, one of them says to him, 'Your life lacks interest.  Go back to your business.  Take it up again."

The man is intelligent, and this advice seems to him sound.  He decides to follow it.  He goes back to his office and sits down at his old desk and declares that now he will help his sons in the management.  But when the first business letter is brought to him, he cannot concentrate on it.  He cannot make the decisions it calls for.  Now he is terribly frightened about his condition.

You see what has happened.  He couldn't go back.  It was already too late.  But his energyis still there, and it must be used.

This man comes to me with his problem.  I say to him: 'You were quite right to retire from business.  But not into nothingness.[Italics mine]  You must have something you can stand on.  In all the years in which you devoted your energy to building up your business you never built up any interests outside of it.  You had nothing to retire on.'

This is a picture of the condition of man today.  This is why we feel that there issomething wrong with the world.  All the material interests, the automobiles and radios and skyscrapers we have don't fill the hungry soul.  We try to retire from the world, but to what?  ....They are like the businessman who tried to go back to his desk.

....I say to him, "My dear man, I don't know any more than you do the meaning of the world or the meaning of your life.  But you -- all men -- were born with a brain ready made.  It took millions of years to build the brain and body we now have.  Your brain embodies all the experience of life."

'....Now suppose that I am in need of advice about living, and I know of a man who is already thousands of years old.  I go to him and say, 'You have seen many changes; you have observed and experienced life under many aspects.  My life is short -- perhaps seventy years, perhaps less -- and you have lived for thousands of years....

When I say this to my patient he cocks his ears and looks at me.

'No,' I say, I am not that man.  But that man speaks to you every night.  How?  In your dreams.'

The psyche is much older than our personal existence.  The Self is a present reality if we are prepared to look for its manifestations in our own life.  Carl Jung knew it, and we can, too.

In my next post, I'll be continuing my series "Therapy: Pain Killer or Path to Myself", of which I've already published PART ONE and PART TWO.

I wish each of you every good thing on your personal journey to wholeness,

Brian Collinson, www.briancollinson.ca

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Therapy: Pain-Killer or Path To Myself? PART TWO

 

This is the second part in my series "Therapy: Pain-Killer or Path to Myself?"  PART ONE appeared last week.  In this second part, I discuss some things from my own experience of therapy throughout the years, and in particular,

 

 

5 THINGS THAT SUSTAIN ME ON THE JOURNEY TO WHOLENESS

These are five particular insights that have often kept me moving forward and that have sustained me at times when I got discouraged or perhaps even felt like leaving my therapy.  Time and time again they have proven themselves true as I have sought to understand myself and to keep moving forward on my therapeutic journey.

1.  The Psyche Fundamentally Wants to Heal Itself.

There is something within each of us that strives to unify all the parts of ourselves, and that seeks to bring all our wounded aspects back into healing and acceptance.  At times we can experience a sense of despair at our own broken-ness, and it can feel like the parts of ourselves where we experience pain can never feel better.  But if I can face my pain and grief, if I can really experience how I've been hurt, and if I can be open to the unconscious, not only as obstacle, but as the source of my own healing, I can begin to find, not any kind of "perfection", but an acceptance of who I am in my totality.  This experience of our totality is the experience of the Self.

2.  Better to Relate to the Unconscious than to be its Victim

Whether you are aware of it or not, the unconscious is an active factor in your life.  It is always acting in relationship to consciousness.  Also, it is often trying to get the conscious mind to adopt attitudes or to come to different new kinds of awareness that align with what is in the unconscious.  Sometimes being unaware of the unconscious and its intentions can lead to very negative consequences.  I have certainly been aware of people who have been sabotaged by the unconscious in some dramatic ways, often through rage that they didn't understand.  For some very pragmatic reasons, struggling to make unconscious materials conscious can be a very prudent thing to do.

3.  The Truth Will Set You Free -- but First, Things May Get Demanding

It can be hard when what has been in the unconscious finally does come into consciousness.  Even though things may have been painful in my life in important ways, when the awareness of that pain really comes to stand front and center in my awareness, the pain can seem far worse than I had ever experienced.  But if we can tolerate, rather than run from the pain and the intensity of feeling, it will bring us to new kinds of awareness and new attitudes to our lives.  And that means more wisdom and more freedom. The pain doesn't mean that the therapy isn't working -- it means that it is.

4.  What Am I Really Yearning For?

"And I still haven't found what I'm looking for" goes the chorus of an old U2 song.  But how can I find what it is that I'm looking for, if I don't know what it is that I'm really yearning to find?  Often, I can't know what I'm yearning for, until I know more of who I am.  More often than not, the only real way to greater self-knowledge of this kind is through therapy.

5.  There is Someone in Me Who is Trying to Emerge

The reality of the Self is the emergence of my awareness of everything that I am.  For the whole of my life, all the various elements of myself are striving to be brought together in one unified whole.  That wholeness is human, and so has nothing to do with perfection, moral or otherwise.  But the thing that draws me on through life is this pull toward the unified and unique me.  That is the goal of individuation, the name Jung gave to the process that goes on continuously within me.  Something is calling my name: it is my own being, my Self.  Throughout my life, I'm either moving towards wholeness or away from it.  Beyond the end of the road of therapy, the Self beckons.

My next and final post in this three-part series will on "Some Common Roadblocks on the Path to Myself."  I would welcome your comments on any of the parts of this series.  How do these issues resonate with you?  What's your experience?

 

Brian Collinson, www.briancollinson.ca ;

Email: brian@briancollinson.ca

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Therapy: Pain-Killer or Path To Myself? PART ONE

People are most commonly motivated to come into therapy or counseling because they are in serious distress or pain.  I know that's what motivated me to start on my own therapeutic journey many years ago.

Often, it's only intolerable pain that can bring someone to the point where she or he is ready and able to go and sit with a therapist and start talking about the intimate aspects of his or her life.  It seems as if it is often only our pain that can bring us to the point where we are willing to entrust someone else with our own intimate and unique story.

So let's imagine that, bringing my pain, and no doubt with some fear and misgivings, I make my first appointment, and I start to go to therapy.  And perhaps I find that the therapy helps to some degree.  Perhaps some of my anxiety or depression abates.  I find that the process of talking about the situations in my life, the things that make me anxious, the things that make me depressed brings me some relief.  And after perhaps a few weeks, I start to actually feel somewhat better.

Often this can be a moment when it's easy to believe that the things that brought me into therapy have largely gone away.  There can be a sense of freedom and relief.  Things can feel good enough that my previous pain starts to feel rather distant.  Then the other priorities of life start to seem more urgent and to crowd in, and I get caught up in the old rhythms of my life.  Soon I am back, living basically as I've always lived.  Underneath the surface, the same old issues remain, and if I am honest with myself, the patterns that have governed my life are starting to fall back into place and to re-assert themselves.

Sometimes it can even feel like something is pulling me back into these patterns that are well-known to me and which are, in a sense, comfortable.  Those patterns may not give me any relief from my misery, but they are at least familiar, and there is a certain kind of comfort expressed by the old saying "better the devil you know than the devil you don't."  In circumstances like that, people can end up learning to ignore their pain, in favour of feeling secure.

It's easy for me to choose the status quo over going on my personal journey.  But who we most fundamentally are continues to call to us.  In Jung's great words, to which I find myself continually going back, "Only that which is truly oneself, heals."  It's only in having the on-going courage and strength to confront the different aspects of myself that I am going to find the awareness and energy that really transform my life and make my living meaningful.

This is the first part of my series on "Therapy: Pain-Killer or Path to Myself?"  I hope that you've enjoyed it, and I invite you to share your comments.  I'll be posting more on this topic in the very near future.

Wishing all of you the very best on your journey to wholeness,

Brian Collinson www.briancollinson.ca

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© 2009 Brian Collinson 

Forget Being "Special" ... Unique is Better!

It can be a very difficult thing to come to terms with being "ordinary".

Often, we even have very well-developed defenses that keep us from avoiding this realization.  In fact, the denial of our own ordinary being can be one of the things that propels us forward into our life during that phase that Jung refers to as "the first adulthood", when we are seeking to be independent of our family of origin, and to get on out into our own career, our own home and perhaps our own family life.  The belief that "we're special" or "destined for greatness" can be an essential motivator that helps us to overcome obstacles, and that draws us on into the challenges and the dance of life.

For most people, however, the realization will come sooner or later that we are not destined to become the world's richest person, the President of the United States, or the first astronaut to land on Mars.  Sometimes the realization can be heart-wrenching.  This is especially true when this realization is accompanied by the feeling that "my life is of no real significance".

But is it true that just because my life is not "special" or grandiose, that it cannot be a good life?  That is the message that we get from the media all the time.  It is a message that is constantly used today to sell products: you are not special, you are just nondescript, and the same as everyone, but if you buy our product, we can make you special.    

Unfortunately, it seems that the English texted version of this IBM ad is not longer available on YouTube.  The last frame, which in German carries the text "Was macht sie so besonders?" translates in English to "What makes you so special?"  The implication is, that if there isn't anything that makes you or I special, it's a tragedy.  But have no fear, you can buy your special-ness from us...

Although I may not be "special", I am unique.  There is no one else in all the universes or kalpas who will ever be me.  This is not provable: it is just something that we know, by virtue of our own being.  By virtue of understanding ourselves from the inside.

This is a vital truth.  How much anxiety and depression is caused in Oakville or Missisauga and suburban communities around the world by the crushing sense that I am just like everybody else? 

I have to decide: am I going to derive my value from the inside, or from the outside?  Has someone told my story for me, or do I discover my own myth, in the depths of myself?  My uniqueness is to be found there: in my dreams, my imaginings, my deepest secrets.

Have I ever really taken the time and the effort to understand who I am?  Or do I just have a fairly superficial picture of myself, e.g., "I'm a mother" or "I'm an accountant"?

Do I look at the story of my life as an evolving, growing thing, something with zest and colour and richness?  Or have I just despaired and accepted that I just don't get what I want in my life, and that there isn't anything really fulfilling about it?

Do I take my own inwardness seriously?  Can I ever be filled with wonder that I exist?

When are the moments in my life when I have felt my own uniqueness and reality?  In those moments when I feel the unique mystery and reality of my life and myself?  Who am I at that moment?

"What a piece of work is a man", Shakespeare said.  If he had been alive today, he would have used more inclusive language, but he isspeaking a profound truth: the secret of our own being is so intricate, so mysterious.  If you can do so at all today, I encourage you to take a few moments and just to be with yourself.

Good psychotherapy is about bringing the reality of myself into the forefront, where I can see it and grasp it.  Good psychotherapy allows my uniqueness to be held up to me in a mirror.  In this sense it is an exploration, an adventure, and a journey to wholeness.

Brian Collinson,  www.briancollinson.ca

 

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Middle Aged Person Traumatized by Financial Losses...

Maybe you know this person, or maybe it's you.  When it comes right down to it ...  who DIDN't lose a lot of money in the Fall of 2008?

However, the person we're describing thought that everything was going great financially, and that they were in investments that were "safe as houses" -- until last Fall.  Then things suddenly and unexpectedly went south in the stock market, or in the housing market, and all of sudden there were losses -- big time.  Right out of the blue things began to feel really insecure and unpredictable.  Hopes, dreams and plans that people had for themselves, or for their families suddenly began to seem threatened.

And the feeling overall was a feeling of being overwhelmed, and just plain helpless as things spiraled out of control.  Perhaps things started to seem very fearful, and completely out of control.  And the effect was so dramatic that our person was shaken shaken right to the core.  And it may well be that he or she (or you or I) realize that things just haven't felt the same since.

I'm seeing people in my practice who have been through just this kind of experience, and who are strongly feeling the need to find their footing again.  And I'm convinced that there are a lot more people out there who have had just this kind of experience who really need to be talking to someone and getting this kind of help.

As you might be aware, usually, when professionals refer to people who have been through trauma, they think in terms of specifically life-threatening events.  Things like life-threatening incidents in wars, or terrorist attacks, or very serious car accidents, or violent crimes, where the individual specifically feels that they are in actual, physical danger of losing their lives, or are subject to watching others lose their lives, or get maimed, or something of that sort.  But this is too narrow: experiences of serious financial loss that are experienced as threatening the well-being or economic survival of an individual or of those close to that individual have a traumatic character.

If you have experienced any of the following, you should be seeking out help from a skilled, compassionate professional:

• Feelings of Being Overwhelmed - THis may be something you even experience physically, i.e., "limbs turn to jelly";
• Flashbacks or Intrusive Recollections - A flashback is a memory that is so intrusive that it feels like the event is happening all over again; an intrusive recollection is less intense, but is a memory that can set off a whole chain of traumatic recollections;
• Sleep Disturbances - Do you wake up in the middle of the night, drenched in sweat, or sleep restlessly and cry out in your sleep?
• Nightmares - Do you have dreams that involve re-living the circumstances of your financial loss, or that have horrific content?
• Bad Temper and Lack of Concentration - Do you find yourself becoming negative, argumentative, or easily irritated in ways that you were not before the experience of financial loss? 
• Intrusive Thoughts - Do you find that your thoughts about the financial loss will simply not leave you alone?
• Exaggerated Startle Response and/or Panic Attacks - Do you startle more easily now than you did before the loss?  Does the reaction stay with you for a log time?  Do you have panic attacks now, with sudden shortness of breath, severe chest pains or feelings of dizziness or faintness?
• Avoidance Behaviour, Emotional Numbness or Difficulty with Intimacy - Are you avoiding people, feeling "shut down" emotionally or finding intimacy difficult, emotionally or sexually?
• Increased Use of Alcohol, Drug Use or Comfort Eating - Are you using any of these things to block out painful reactions to what happened?
• Depression or Traumatic Grief - If you find yourself sleeping or wanting to just do nothing, or confronting feelings of unbearable sadness since the financial losses, you may be dealing with depression or grief.
• Guilt or Self-Blame - Do you blame yourself for the financial losses, or find yourself thinking "If only I had done things differently"?
• Decreased Self-Esteem and Loss of Confidence - If you are confronting feelings of lack of confidence in your abilities, or of hopelessness, then it may be that the financial losses have impacted your self-esteem.

If you are experiencing these reactions now, and you have recently sustained serious financial losses, it would be a very good idea to speak to a qualified professional, as your losses may have triggered a traumatic response.  Please remember: the sooner you address the signs of trauma, the easier it is to deal with them.  You do not have to live with these responses: there are concrete things that can be done.

All the best,

Brian Collinson, www.briancollinson.ca

PHOTO CREDITS:

© Wingedsmile| Dreamstime.com

© Suzanne Tucker| Dreamstime.com

Jingle Bell Shadow: A Jungian View of Holiday Depression and Anxiety

Almost all therapists experience it: the phone gets more and more hyperactive the closer the calendar gets to December 25.   

As the holidays get nearer, more and more people call.

  While for many people, the holidays may bring great joy, for many others, they bring a sense of depression, an empty feeling, or even positive anger.

This season of the winter solstice is filled with incredible images of light and optimism.  Paradoxically, it also sheds light on a lot of the darker places in our lives.  Often these are places that we would rather not look at or bring to consciousness.  But growth is to be found in exploring the very places that we would rather not go.

Contrary to the glowing images of togetherness, family and fellowship with which the media bombard us at this time, many people experience intense loneliness during "the holidays".  These days can be times of real difficulty for many people whose lives don't fit the conventional patterns adopted by the majority of people.  What is more, people can often get the message that they are "supposed" to be together with others at this time of year, and that there must be something wrong with them if they find themselves alone.  But that is not the case.  Being alone, and even being lonely, is a part of human experience.  It does not imply pathology or blameworthiness, although it can be more than difficult enough to experience it.

On the other hand, just because someone is in a family structure or way of life that looks like the images of "family togetherness" portrayed by the media does not mean that there is any less holiday loneliness or depression in their lives.  Many people have to contend with deep experiences of loneliness right in the midst of their marriages or family relationships.  It can be excruciating lonely to be locked in a relationship with someone who does not see us, who is completely oblivious to our needs, or whom we discover to have values that are 180 degrees away from our own.  Also, for those who have to deal with the reality of betrayal in intimate relationships by those in whom they have previously put their trust, Yuletide with its memories of trusting togetherness can be excruciating in its pain.

For many, it's not so much that the present reality of the holidays clashes with the warm memories of the past.  For many, the associations with Christmas include terrifying memories such as an alcoholic parent coming home drunk and starting fights, engaging in abuse, or knocking over the Christmas tree.  For others, the pain of the holidays comes from the pain of a childhood sense of expectation that went nowhere.  The child whose sole parent had to working killing hours in the hospitality industry over Christmas Day, and who met each Christmas eve with the expectation of a present or even just close family times that never came to pass often grows up to be an adult with a deep Christmas wound, often expressed in anger, resentment or just plain hatred of the season.    

Many people are acutely aware of the deep religious feeling that used to characterize the Christian experience of the Christmas season.  Even though they cannot enter into the expressions of faith of the past, or perhaps even of their own youth, they feel that there is something deeply wrong with the sentimentalization, commercialization and overall bad taste that they see in the way that we currently keep the season.