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

 

Identity and Anxiety in the Film, "Up In the Air"

Make no mistake, moving is living.  -Ryan Bingham

"Up in the Air", directed by Jason Reitman, stars George Clooney, Vera Farmiga and Anna Kendrick.  Clooney's character Ryan Bingham is a full-time corporate down-sizer whose life consists of an endless stream of business travel ("322 days last year").  He moves from place to place, letting people go from corporate roles when their employers cannot stomach doing it.  He has no permanent attachments to people, a desolate and hollow single bedroom apartment he never sleeps in, and he has accumulated 10,000,000 airmiles...

Up In the Air Official Website

Ryan Bingham's life is in airports and hotel rooms and is filled with constant movement.  The stability and security in his life, his secure base, is found precisely in those things that others find impermanent and impersonal.  His finely orchestrated and choreographed travel routine, his mechanized method of moving constantly from place to place gives him re-assurance, and in an odd way a sense of belonging.  Which is good, because Ryan has no permanent connections to anyone in his life. 

Ryan also has a budding career as an motivational speaker.  His message: "Make no mistake: your relationships are the heaviest components in your life....  The slower we move, the faster we die."

Ryan is completely identified with his corporate role.   His aircraft-bound life is an appropriate symbol of his existence on a deeper level.  In the terms of Jungian psychology, Ryan, like Christopher McCandless, the subject of Into the Wild is a true puer aeternus ("eternal boy").  He floats above life in his social self, and never puts down roots into the deep soil of his genuine self.  And he is danger of discovering that his life is tragic because there he has no remaining way to turn back.

In its own way, this is a very disturbing and provocative film, but it's a very good one.  It raises the question for each of us about how connected we're willing to be to the real substance of our lives.

I'd welcome comments below from readers on anxiety, identity and work.

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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PHOTO CREDITS: © DW Studios LL.C. and Cold Spring Pictures

© 2010 Brian Collinson

 

Purpose in Your Life

The Toronto Globe and Mail in an article this morning cited research by Dr. Patricia A. Boyle and her colleagues at the Rush University Medical Center in Chicago, and published in Psychosomatic Medicine, tending to empirically confirm something that psychotherapists and counsellors have known from their practices for a very long time:   Greater purpose in life is associated with a reduced risk of mortality among older persons.

Almost needless to say, the insight that meaning and purpose in life are tied to greater vitality in life is not something that is confined to the old.  In some important ways, depression can often be related to a particular crisis of meaning in a person's life.  Jung has written on the theme of meaning with great frequency in his writings.  He particularly emphasizes its importance at mid-life and all points thereafter in life, but it is a theme that he would readily acknowledge throughout the life journey, as does psychiatrist Dr. Viktor Frankl in his classic work Man's Search for Meaning.

That's all good, but where does one get this meaning?  Most fundamentally, something is meaningful to a person when the meaning emerges from deep in the self, and is connected with the very core values and life experience of the individual.  The depth of the Self is not nearly the same thing as the reality of the ego and its particular projects: it has to do with the whole dimension of us that is seeking to find unity and wholeness.  The work of psychotherapy at its deepest and most valid is to assist the individual in getting to know these undiscovered aspects of the whole psyche.

How does the issue of what is meaningful touch your life?  WHere have you found meaning that is vital and important to you?  What parts of you continue to look for meaning?

Thank you to those of you who suggest possible topics for my posts either on-line or face-to-face.  This post came about as the result of a personal conversation with someone.  As always I welcome your comments, and I look forward to dialoguing with each of you.  

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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PHOTO CREDITS:  © Kirill Kurashov | Dreamstime.com

© 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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PHOTO CREDITS:  © Playboots | Dreamstime.com ; © Kristian Peetz |  Dreamstime.com

© 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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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

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© Wingedsmile| Dreamstime.com

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In Suburbia At Age Forty-Five

 One of the larger age groups that come to me for therapy are people who are at or right around the age of 45.

© Aleksandar Nikolov Dreamstime.com

This is not entirely surprising to me.  For many people at this age, there is a tremendous amount going on in their lives.  As life unfolds for many people, this is an point in life where the individual is confronted with fundamental changes in his or her life.  These may not be obvious to outsiders, especially given the suburban lifestyle with its unique pressures.  Nonetheless, sometimes what is going on for people on the psychological level is enormous.

Does this mean that these people are mentally ill, or somehow suffering from "psychological disorders"?  Of course not.  But it does mean that these people are confronting some of the most fundamental psychological or existential issues in human life. 

For many of these people, the question of meaning is becoming a matter of increasing urgency.  In a lot of cases, the people who come to me are people who are very accomplished, and who have achieved a lot in their lives.  They have done what society has asked of them, in that they have moved out from the family of origin, gotten the necessary education, gotten into good careers, and often gotten married and raised families.  They are exemplary "good members of the community".  However, for many of them, there is a need for something more, now.  They are seeking for a life that is fulfilling for them.  They are seeking for a life that has value for themselves, individually.

Many such people are struggling with relationship issues.  There can be a strong feeling that the relationship that they are in is simply not currently meeting their needs.  Or else, they may have a strong feeling that their partner, who is often dealing with some pretty fundamental issues in his or her own life is no longer as fulfilled by the relationship as they once were.

Often these people are in the midst of deep changes in their lives.  Often they are unsure "which way is up", and they are asking questions about where lasting value is in their lives, and what they can hold onto that will give them a sense of orientation.  They are asking these questions in a deeply personal way: no "ready made, off the shelf" answer is going to work for them.  They are asking about who they really are, and they are asking what in their lives has lasting, incorruptible value.

These are the questions at the heart of what Carl Jung called the individuation process.  For many people in the age bracket anywhere from later 30s through the 50s. these questions can take on a tremendous urgency.

Who, most fundamentally, are you? 

What is most meaningful to you, personally, in your life? 

How will you live in the light of what is most important to you? 

These are not questions that stem from some sort of psychological disorder.  Rather they are questions that sane, healthy people naturally confront as they move through the journey of their lives.  Nonetheless, finding the answers that we need may be tied very strongly to incorporating new insights that emerge from the deepest parts of ourselves, and from the collective unconscious.  Often people need help to orient themselves in this unfamiliar territory, and to wrestle with their own depths.  I firmly believe that this is something that working with a compassionate therapist with deep experience with this type of issue and with the unconscious can provide.

The Unlived Life

We all live our lives, and in the course of just "getting through" our lives, we all have to make decisions.  With each major decision that we make, we open a door and walk through it.  We also close at least one door, perhaps several.  Sometimes that closing of the door is forever.  Sometimes we cannot go back and make the choice again.  The river of our life moves on, and we cannot easily reverse the flow of time, and head back upstream.

Whatever the choices are that we make, we are closing off options that we could have taken.  Sometimes these options call to us, beckon to us, despite our having left them behind.  Sometimes we leave them behind, and don't think of them.

But we can reach a point at which our unlived life comes back to us.  Consciously, or sometimes unconsciously, we can begin to feel the weight of what might have been if only we had made different choices, if our luck had gone slightly differently, if we had seen things just a little bit more clearly.  When I was at the Art Institute of Chicago, I saw a painting, which seemed to me to capture this feeling with a great deal of eloquence,  American artist Ivan Wright's That Which I Should Have Done I Did Not Do (The Door).  For me it evoked all the "doors" that we do not open, and all the feelings -- hopeful, melancholy, grieving -- that are associated with them.  As clients remind me constantly, there are so many choices that could have been made, each with the seductive aura of possibility surrounding it.

                                                                    © Igor Terekhov | Dreamstime.com

© Vividpixels | Dreamstime.com

Individu- What???

I'm enjoying the process of writing this blog on a regular basis, and having the chance to communicate with all of you about different aspects of what it is to be a therapist and a Jungian in Halton and Peel Regions in this continually surprising "place" that we call suburbia.  I'm really open to any of your comments, either privately via email, or in the comment sections on the blog.

Carl Jung developed the idea of "individuation" to describe the individual journey that human beings undertake in their lives.  I believe that this is a very useful way of looking at things, and that it helps people to answer the question "What is it that is happening to me in my life?"

Jung's idea is that the journey of our lives takes us on a more and more individual path.  That we are in the process of becoming more and more uniquely ourselves.  Jung often used the analogy of an acorn and an oak tree, saying that the potential to be an huge oak tree is latent in the acorn, waiting to expand and to become.

© Micheal Armstrong | Dreamstime.com