Author: Stacey Jenkins

Stacey Jenkins is a Jungian-oriented psychotherapist and senior training candidate with the Ontario Association of Jungian Analysts. She is a member of the Canadian Association of Psychodynamic Therapists and holds an honours Bachelor of Science from the University of Toronto.
Posted on

Dreaming in a Pandemic

Many people are dreaming more vividly during Coronavirus. They wonder what their Covid dreams mean.

The press is responding to this interest by interviewing people with knowledge of dreams, including this article I was interviewed for.

Sometimes, dreams are more vivid because our lives are less boisterous and less energy is directed to career and socializing. That frees up energy for what is going on inside. The inner life may be calling, and it is tired of waiting. Now that there is a forced lull, that inner life kicks the dust up, urging us to pay attention by giving us disturbing dreams.

Dreams come from the deepest roots of the personality. When we are living only in the outer world, we are disconnected from our roots. Then when a serious event like a pandemic occurs, a neglected emotional and spiritual root system does not support us, setting the stage for heightened anxiety and existential angst.

These deep roots can support and sustain us during difficult times. But to do that, they need watering. They need care and attention. What might your deepest personality be like? Imagine if there is a you who is not what your relationships have made you, or what your career has taught you. Imagine if there is a you that is older, eternal. Who is that person? Are you interested in learning more about them?

Getting to know this deep part of yourself is what I mean about cultivating an inner life. It is this deep self that creates the dreams which may be disturbing you now. But this does not mean that this part of the personality is something you should fear. As you put in time to water your own roots, learn to feel and hear that part, it feeds you back, and your dreams start to portray images of new life, and even rebirth. You may learn to relate to that part as a trusted ally who warns you of trouble and nudges you along a path to greater authenticity and depth.

As we look at Covid dreams, we do confront some fears. Some people dream they have caught Covid-19, or that they’re looking for their mask or have lost their mask. Sometimes people dream they are hiding out from the world in an apocalyptic setting where it is becoming increasingly difficult to avoid catching it.

The specific meaning of your Covid-19 dream will depend on the details of your dream, the setting, and the other figures besides you who appear in the dream. A dream often presents a problem, describes the inner factors that are in conflict, and may suggest a resolution to the problem.

For example, you might dream that you’re trying to put a mask on your beloved, affectionate pet. In the dream, your pet doesn’t understand why it needs a mask and keeps trying to get free of it. You have to keep an eye your pet constantly to ensure the mask stays on.

Symbolically, we might think of this dream as a conflict between your mind and your instincts. Your pet could represent the part of you that wants affection and will instinctively seek it without awareness of the consequences. That part may not have got the message from your rational mind that physical affection with people you don’t live with needs to be put on hold for the time being. And so the vigilance you have to exhibit in the dream might point to the level of conscious effort you have to regularly put in to watch that your instinct for physical affection doesn’t cause you to put yourself in danger during these remarkable times. You might engage in a dialogue with the instinct for affection and try to nourish it without endangering yourself.

Sometimes your unconscious may use Covid-19 as a symbol, rather than referring to the actual virus. One might say that other contagious factors are spreading worldwide now like a virus. For example, if you dream that you have caught Covid when you have not in waking life, your psyche might be be using the virus to warn you that you’re in danger of catching a heightened irrational fear that contagion is everywhere, in spite of your conscious knowledge you are quite safe because you are following recommended hand washing and distancing practices. Or you might be plagued with the fear that people from different cultures or countries are dangerous, even though under normal circumstances, you wouldn’t feel that way. Irrational fears can be contagious.

Most often, dreams express their meaning symbolically rather than literally. A dream that you have caught coronavirus likely does not mean that you will catch it. But it does have an important symbolic meaning unique to you and your life circumstances, which you can explore through Jungian analysis. Contact me to learn more.

Posted on

Positivity vs. Wholeness

The Persona – a mask or attitude we adopt, but not truly who we are

The big thing these days is positivity.

Be positive.  Don’t be negative.  If something tough happens and we’re venting, someone may say ‘don’t be so negative.’  This prevailing cultural value does put pressure on us to ‘see the positive’ in situations.

But there are several dangerous pitfalls to 24/7 positivity.

Pitfall #1: When we consider others, if we’re determined to focus on the positive, we may get duped by other people who take advantage of our naiveté.

A mandala – a symbol of wholeness and healing

Jungian psychology values wholeness and the whole person. Seeking wholeness, an integration of as much of one’s conscious and unconscious aspects as one can, is a goal. Connecting with my highest self is a goal. But part of the unconscious includes the Shadow. The Shadow contains parts of the self we find unacceptable, sometimes incompatible with the morals or values of society, so we repress them. The Shadow also contains forgotten parts of self, as well as aspects that have never been conscious.

By only acknowledging the positive in oneself and trying to see only the positive in others, we become deliberately blind to the Shadow in others as well as oneself. We ignore our instincts that may tell us when someone is dangerous to us in some way.

Denying another person’s Shadow is rather reckless, in actual fact, as not everyone around us has the best of intentions. Sometimes people want to take advantage, steal material resources or energy from us, or simply manipulate us to do what they want. Allowing our instincts to speak within us to warn us of the danger of someone else – to ‘sniff’ that something isn’t safe or in our best interest in a particular situation – is self-protection and self-care.

Our instincts may be telling us something ‘negative’ about someone else. But that negative is real and requires a cautious attitude in us. I think it is important to have a healthy respect for our own instincts that try to protect us. If we listen to them rather than ignore, dismiss or repress them because they sometimes whisper of other people’s darker motives, we make use of a valuable inner ally.

Pitfall #2: There are difficult emotions and experiences like anger, sadness, grief, heartbreak, that don’t just go away simply by trying to be positive.

A rose window in Chartres Cathedral – a mandala and a symbol of the Self

Painful experiences and emotions don’t go away simply because we choose to stay positive. Those wounds stick around and sometimes they fester. It’s true, time does help to heal wounds. But talking about them, acknowledging them – these help to let them breathe, let them be released and heal. The inner pressure of keeping those experiences bottled up for fear of seeming negative can really cause a great deal of stress and inner pressure. It can be rather crazy-making. And in my experience, I start to feel cut off from the people closest me if I pretend to be positive when I am suffering inside. That isolation just deepens sadness, pain or grief.

Pitfall #3: The happy front we put up is just one part of the personality, not the whole personality.  In Jungian terms, this is called the Persona. By pretending that this is all that we are, we become a fraction of our real self, a mask, even a caricature.

Tibetan mandala

There is a real value in authenticity. My own background in media and my upbringing have strongly predisposed me to perform in many social and extroverted situations rather than trying to be more authentic.

When people are performing with you, do you feel the fakeness of it? Do you get a sense that who they’re showing you is not who they are at all?

For myself, as I have become more conscious of when I am performing rather than being, I have had to start asking myself ‘who am I really?’ ‘How do I really feel in this situation?’

If I am trying to be positive in a situation where I really don’t feel that way, I am not being real. Being authentic rather than being positive is a healthier and more honest goal than trying to be positive all the time.

Those are some of the pitfalls of the positivity trend:  it blinds us to others’ dark sides, it covers up our own suffering, preventing healing and even worsening our wounds, and it makes us shallow, a superficial layer of our whole selves.

Why is wholeness something to strive for anyway?

The more we look at and own our shadow aspects through Jungian therapy work with our dreams, the less those contents are projected onto others. For instance, if we acknowledge our own dishonesty in certain situations, we will be less likely to view people around us as overwhelmingly dishonest or untrustworthy. We may also be less likely to be tricked by others who are very dishonest.

Working with our dreams, we will also come to meet parts of ourselves that are wiser than the ego, calling forth more wisdom than we had access to previously. Working at becoming more whole, our consciousness is widened and deepened.  We gain depth and knowing, and an inner sense of being guided in our lives.

A final note – I have included images of mandalas in this post because a mandala is a symbol of wholeness, an antidote to the over-valuing of the Persona in oneself and in our culture.

Posted on

The Secret To Unblocking Your Creativity May Be In Your Dreams

Prior to becoming a Jungian Analyst, I worked for 20 years in the film and television industry on over 200 episodes and hundreds of hours of media. I have experienced the frustration and pain of having creative ideas remain unmade. It can feel like a stillbirth, like you’ve abandoned your child.

And I have felt the deep satisfaction of bringing a creative idea out of the ether and manifesting it in the world. Again and again.

For a creative person, completing the creative cycle is healing.

Creative Hurdles

I have worked with clients who experience challenges to becoming the artists they want to be. Or perhaps they want to bring more vivacity and authenticity to their lives. To live more creatively.

What I have found is that blocks to creativity often appear in their dreams. Sometimes, we see parental attitudes to creative work showing up inside as barriers to self-expression. There can be perfectionism. Perhaps a tendency to toggle between feelings of inferiority and grandiosity. Sometimes addictions and compulsive behaviours show up too. There can also be vexing physical symptoms.

These can seem like the cause of the creative problem, or the thing that most needs to be handled before addressing frustrated creativity.

But sometimes, these things provide a useful distraction. They give a place to hide from the scarier challenge of tackling one’s creative ideas and working towards living a more meaningful, inner-directed life-path.

Moving from awareness to action

Now, it’s one thing to have an awareness of the blocks to expressing one’s creative voice. It’s quite another to resolve those blocks and open the channel.

The good news is, dreams – the spontaneous creations of the unconscious – can provide strength and direction when the ego runs out of ideas. As in fairy tales, when the hero is hopelessly lost in the forest, the wise old man or woman or the helpful animal appears to lead the way out of the darkness. With help, the hero can pursue their destiny.

Examples

What kind of dream images might hold the key to resolve blocked creativity? There may be male robbers or killers who pursue the dreamer. Sometimes a parent appears in a distracting way, and must be ignored to complete an important task. Or something needs to be cooked and there isn’t enough heat from the stove. A creative person the dreamer admires may ignore or condemn them. Or law enforcement officers insist that all of the rules be strictly followed. Perhaps the dreamer or someone else is flying and can’t or won’t land. Or the dreamer loses track of a baby they are meant to care for.

A clue in the setting of the dream

An important but easily overlooked clue to solving your creative blocks may lie in the setting of the dream. Like the house you lived in until you were 10. Or your elementary school. The setting can point to when in your life that creative block was formed. By remembering what happened at that time in your life, you may have an a-ha moment about when your creative expression became impaired.

These and many other images can appear in a dream addressing creative challenges. To resolve creative blocks, the dreamer can work with a Jungian Analyst, a psychotherapist trained in working with dreams. They can consider the dream as a whole. The analyst will ask about personal associations to the dream setting and other characters. In this way, specific clues emerge about how to transform creative blocks.

Next steps

Photo by Sally Mann

If these ideas resonate for you, consider booking an appointment with me in person or online.

Around the time you do, either just before or after we meet or you read this, you may find you have a dream which suggests that your unconscious wants to help. Write down that dream, and what happened the day you had it. That context is important.

Careful attention to the images in your dreams can light the path to expressing the voice that is uniquely yours.

Posted on

Why being full of potential may be deadly

In an era that prizes youth and being full of potential over wisdom, age and experience, there is a condition which affects many of us. We often have no idea we have this condition, or that it is even an affliction.

The Latin name for it is the Puer Aeternus complex. Several Jungian Analysts have written books about it, including Marie Louise von Franz’s superb book The Problem of the Puer Aeternus, Ann Yeoman’s Now or Neverland, and James Hillman’s collection of various writers’ essays on the subject, Puer Papers.

A popular image of this condition is Peter Pan. It is sometimes called a Peter Pan complex.Puer Aeturnus Complex

So what is it and what are the symptoms?

The Puer complex is a condition wherein we want to remain full of potential, young and free.  We avoid commitments and we ESPECIALLY avoid hard work.

While this may pass as a normal youthful attitude in one’s teens or early twenties, the Puer complex starts to really differentiate itself from a normal attitude of youth when one gets into the late twenties and early thirties.

You may be recoiling from this unflattering picture.  Not me, you say?

Here’s a test to see if you have the Puer complex – or more precisely, It has you.

  • Do you feel special, better than others?
  • Are you in your thirties or older with many different jobs in your life, but no solid career?
  • Do you get on a plane and fly off to an exotic destination, end a relationship or quit your job when things get too heavy?
  • Do you agree with the song lyric “I hope I die before I get old”?
  • Do you chronically over-promise and under-deliver?
  • Have you been unable to sustain a long-term, committed and monogamous relationship?
  • When you get a job or settle down to do some work, do you get restless and come up with just about any reason to get out of it?
  • Do you dream that you’re flying or staying in a hotel?
  • Do you look a good ten years younger than your age? If people find out your age, are they extremely surprised because of how young you look and behave?
  • Have you experienced other people getting on with life – relationships, kids, careers, responsibilities – while you remain a youthful free spirit?

If you answered Yes to 3 or more of these questions, chances are that the Puer complex has you.

Peter Pan Complex

If that’s the case, you may be living a PROVISIONAL LIFE, waiting for your real life, a special life to begin. But as the years flow by, that special life never does get started, so you remain in the antechamber of your life. You never really commit to anything, never stay put, never actually manifest anything from all of your big dreams and wonderful potential.

I can tell you from having this complex that it does NOT give up its hold on us without a fight. It will go to great lengths to keep you ‘full of potential’, but not actually committing to anything or digging in and living life.

So why is all of this bad? Why not just remain full of potential? Why fight something that feels good? Being youthful is a desirable quality, right?

The reason is that as you move into your 30’s or 40’s, your soul agonizes at not being allowed to live life. It doesn’t WANT to float above things all the time, as appealing as that state may often feel. Your soul incarnated to experience life, not to float above it.Puer Aeturnus Complex It came here to have deep experiences, even pain and grief, so that it could develop wisdom.  Inside each of us is a deep desire to find a meaningful, inner directed, chosen life-path.

And as the years pass and the 30’s or 40’s set in, a conflict between the Puer complex and the soul begins to rise to the surface. The Puer may begin to engage in increasingly risky, even self-sabotaging behaviour, for example hanging out with dangerous people, going mountain-climbing, bungee jumping, skydiving, engaging in risky sexual behaviour and other unsafe activities. You may have started having freak accidents that nearly kill you. You may feel yourself contemplating suicide. That suicidal impulse is likely the complex making a false argument for why suicide is a better or more romantic choice than living. At least it will be dramatic, the complex may whisper in your ear. At least you won’t have compromised.

The reason behind the risky behaviour or the ‘accidents’ is that the Puer would rather die than stay on the ground. And it will take you with it.Peter Pan Complex

The alternative is indeed to land on the ground and stay there as much as possible. The alternative is to find a job or a person you like well enough and work hard at keeping them, even though they’re not perfect.

You will probably need some assistance to do this, because the Puer will constantly balk at this and present your with a million reasons why staying on the ground, experiencing the mundane details of life and doing hard work in a job or relationship is to be avoided like the plague. There will seem to be very real reasons why you must exit yet another job, relationship or city. You’ll feel absolutely claustrophobic at the thought of staying in of those things.

I recommend that you find a Jungian analyst in your area or work with one via video or telephone sessions. They are perhaps best trained to understand the challenges of the Puer complex and help you move into creating a  meaningful life for yourself.

It is worth landing in your life, with its imperfect complexity. To the Puer looking at it from the outside, real life FEELS like boredom and death. But really living your life – inside it rather than above it – is better than all the unlived possibilities you kept in your back pocket just in case, which never actually get to be experienced anyway. And the very things you thought would be a prison become the sources of deepest meaning and fulfillment.

Posted on

Jung’s Modern Relevance

There are a lot of misconceptions about Jung and his psychological theories.  This article addresses the mis-information and Jung’s actual approach well.  

Until a person engages in an exploration of their own dreams in Jungian analysis, the true genius of Jung’s theory of the psyche remains elusive. When you experience the power of symbols alive in your own psyche, the true genius of Jung’s psychological approach comes alive.

Posted on

The peril of not leaving home

“It is not possible to live too long amid infantile surroundings, or in the bosom of the family, without endangering one’s psychic health. Life calls us forth to independence, and anyone who does not heed this call because of childish laziness or timidity is threatened with neurosis. And once this has broken out, it becomes an increasingly valid reason for running away from life and remaining forever in the morally poisonous atmosphere of infancy” (C.G. Jung, Symbols of Transformation, CW5, par.461)

Anyone who has ever known an adult in their 30’s, 40’s or 50’s who hasn’t left their parental home can attest to the stagnation this results in. What is appropriate for growth for a child is terribly destructive for an adult. Kittens thrive on milk, but adult cats can’t tolerate it.

When I think of this scenario, I think of one of the Spider_approaches2Lord of the Rings movies where Frodo is wrapped up in a giant spider web by a huge and terrible spider. It LOOKED like a cocoon, but really, it was how the giant spider captured its prey. And once the prey was imprisoned in it, she would suck the juices out of them until they died, just a dry husk remaining.

Spider_cocoon

The spider can be a symbol of the devouring mother. Not the real mother ‘out there’, although the actual mother can contribute to not letting an adult child get out in the world and fend for him or herself.  But more often, the devouring mother is an intra-psychic phenomenon working within a person who has been unable to leave home.

The Lord of the Rings story sequence with the spider reveals a solution that I believe can be a true resolution of this challenge in the symbolic sense. By using the light of consciousness and a sword, a healthy masculine aspect that is both discerning and can cut the cords woven around one by the negative mother complex, the hero can free him or herself.Conquering the spider

A person must LIVE.  Live on their own, make their way, try and fail and try again. When one is an adult, sliding back into the comfortable hug of the family home with a cozy bed, food on the table, clothes cleaned and ironed, is both extremely seductive AND destructive.

The psyche does not forgive hiding out in the maternal cave and refusing to grow up. It tends to punish with any number of symptoms or neuroses. Anxiety, phobias, physical symptoms. And as Jung says, once these are at play, it is even harder to leave home.  But it is possible to make one’s way out of the nest even once these symptoms have appeared to bar the way and apparently justify the need to remain at home.  What does it take? Courage, therapeutic support, patience and faith.

This situation can happen in subtler ways, I think, by hiding in the comfortable. If I come home each night, settle down in front of the television, watch my shows, eat a bunch of food that helps me blot myself out, and just shut down, what life am I avoiding living?  Is there something in me which is hungry to move out, try new things, take chances, and LIVE?

‘Fortune favours the bold’  (Latin proverb)