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IDENTITY CRISIS: When Our Story Falls Apart · This Jungian Life Podcast

• 0:01
  Speaker 1: Welcome to This Jungian Life. Three good friends and Jungian analysts,
• 0:05
  Speaker 1: Lisa Marciano, Deborah Stewart, and Joseph Lee, invite you to
• 0:09
  Speaker 1: join them for an intimate and honest conversation that brings
• 0:13
  Speaker 1: a psychological perspective to important issues of the day.
• 0:19
  Speaker 2: I'm Lisa Marciano, and I'm a Jungian analyst in Philadelphia.
• 0:22
  Speaker 3: I'm Joseph Lee, and I'm a Jungian analyst in Virginia Beach, Virginia.
• 0:27
  Speaker 4: I'm Deborah Stewart, a Jungian analyst in Cape Cod. Today
• 0:38
  Speaker 4: we are going to talk about the stories we create,
• 0:42
  Speaker 4: the narratives we create, the way we make meaning out
• 0:46
  Speaker 4: of what we experience. So there is a big differentiation
• 0:51
  Speaker 4: between all kinds of mental processes and between what we feel,
• 0:57
  Speaker 4: what we experience in the moment, and then how we
• 1:01
  Speaker 4: remember it, what we think it means, how we make
• 1:05
  Speaker 4: sense out of it. And both of these systems which
• 1:10
  Speaker 4: date back to Plato and all the way up to
• 1:14
  Speaker 4: a recent book called Thinking Fast and Slow are as
• 1:18
  Speaker 4: old as time and as difficult for us to step back,
• 1:24
  Speaker 4: think about, and be choiceful about. So with that, let
• 1:29
  Speaker 4: us begin.
• 1:30
  Speaker 3: Well, the first time I ever came across this idea
• 1:34
  Speaker 3: was I was reading and somebody quoted in Proverbs, as
• 1:38
  Speaker 3: a man thinks in his heart, so is he. And
• 1:43
  Speaker 3: I came across that in my teenage years when I
• 1:47
  Speaker 3: was getting involved in kind of mysticism. And it was
• 1:50
  Speaker 3: the first time that I really came to appreciate that
• 1:53
  Speaker 3: there is a profound relationship between the way I think
• 1:57
  Speaker 3: about myself and things and how the world is shaped
• 2:01
  Speaker 3: around me. And that was a revelation, is it? As
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  Speaker 3: a kid, I had never heard such a thing.
• 2:06
  Speaker 2: That's great. That's great. You know, Teb, you mentioned Plato
• 2:10
  Speaker 2: and Joseph, you mentioned the Old Testament. And, you know,
• 2:14
  Speaker 2: there's some thinking about this that, you know, Carl Jaspers
• 2:17
  Speaker 2: coined the term the Axial Age. And it was this
• 2:20
  Speaker 2: time period, you know, sort of roughly around 800 BCE
• 2:24
  Speaker 2: when all of these wisdom traditions were beginning. Both, you know,
• 2:28
  Speaker 2: Plato and the Old Testament and also Persian Zoroastrianism. Hinduism, Buddhism, Confucianism,
• 2:35
  Speaker 2: Taoism in China. And a lot of these thought systems
• 2:42
  Speaker 2: bring in this idea of kind of second order thinking
• 2:45
  Speaker 2: or being able to think about thinking or thinking about
• 2:49
  Speaker 2: the consequences of things. And there's this growing awareness of
• 2:53
  Speaker 2: our minds, of the importance of mind and our mind's
• 2:57
  Speaker 2: ability to create illusion. That's in some of these thought systems.
• 3:02
  Speaker 2: And Joseph, it's just kind of perfect what you mentioned.
• 3:07
  Speaker 2: There's this book of Buddhist wisdom. It's the sayings of
• 3:11
  Speaker 2: the Buddha called the Dhammapada, and it's from 1500 BCE.
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  Speaker 2: And I just want to share a couple of the things,
• 3:20
  Speaker 2: the quotes from it. Just as rain breaks through an
• 3:25
  Speaker 2: ill-thatched house... So passion penetrates an undeveloped mind.
• 3:33
  Speaker 4: Wow.
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  Speaker 2: And even mind precedes all mental states. Mind is the chief.
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  Speaker 2: They are all mind wrought. If with an impure mind
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  Speaker 2: a person speaks or acts, suffering follows him like the
• 3:51
  Speaker 2: wheel that follows the foot of an ox.
• 3:54
  Speaker 4: Yes.
• 3:55
  Speaker 2: So you're right, it is a revelation to really, really
• 3:59
  Speaker 2: get how much our thoughts shape things. And of course,
• 4:04
  Speaker 2: this is the central insight, I think most people would
• 4:09
  Speaker 2: agree with me with this, behind cognitive behavioral therapy, that
• 4:13
  Speaker 2: it really aims to challenge your thoughts.
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  Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah. What I'm thinking about to contribute to the,
• 4:22
  Speaker 4: you know, sort of the history of all this It's
• 4:25
  Speaker 4: a great image, is that Plato differentiated these things, imaged
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  Speaker 4: them as the chariot and the charioteer. And the chariot
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  Speaker 4: with the horses is passion. And the charioteer is an
• 4:43
  Speaker 4: image of reason or ego and control. And how do
• 4:48
  Speaker 4: those two things work together or how are they at
• 4:51
  Speaker 4: odds with one another? Because this dichotomy, so to speak,
• 4:57
  Speaker 4: between reason and feeling is as old as man. We
• 5:02
  Speaker 4: have these two different systems, an emotional system and a
• 5:08
  Speaker 4: sort of frontal cortex system. And we don't often pay
• 5:12
  Speaker 4: attention to what's coming from where. And then, as you
• 5:16
  Speaker 4: were saying, Lisa, how do I think about what I'm
• 5:19
  Speaker 4: thinking about this? Are the horses running away with me?
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  Speaker 4: Or is the charioteer being over-controlling? How are we working
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  Speaker 4: with ourselves?
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  Speaker 2: You know, though, I think it's not quite as clear
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  Speaker 2: as kind of thinking and emotion, right? Because to add
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  Speaker 2: another metaphor here, you know, Jonathan Haidt in The Righteous
• 5:41
  Speaker 2: Mind has this other metaphor about the rider and the elephant. And,
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  Speaker 2: you know, research shows that we think we're thinking... but
• 5:54
  Speaker 2: usually we're feeling. And then we come up with a
• 5:58
  Speaker 2: clever way to rationalize our decision or our action without
• 6:05
  Speaker 2: even being aware that that's what we're doing. So that
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  Speaker 2: we actually are being driven more by emotions. But I
• 6:13
  Speaker 2: think that sort of the insight that how we think
• 6:18
  Speaker 2: can affect how we perceive things that is a really
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  Speaker 2: valuable insight. And again, I think it's one of the chief,
• 6:29
  Speaker 2: it's sort of the insight upon which cognitive behavioral therapy rests,
• 6:33
  Speaker 2: that you can think about things in ways that aren't accurate,
• 6:36
  Speaker 2: or you can think about, you can, you know, catastrophizing
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  Speaker 2: is a perfect example. You know, you fail to test,
• 6:44
  Speaker 2: and then you tell yourself, well, that's it, I'm going
• 6:46
  Speaker 2: to fail out of college. then I'm never going to
• 6:49
  Speaker 2: be able to get into graduate school and I'm going
• 6:52
  Speaker 2: to be homeless. No, but I mean, I talk to
• 6:56
  Speaker 2: people who, I mean, we all catastrophize, right? And it's
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  Speaker 2: a good thing to catch yourself doing. But what happens
• 7:03
  Speaker 2: is there's this kind of interplay between emotion and thought
• 7:06
  Speaker 2: where you're upset because you failed the test and out
• 7:10
  Speaker 2: of the upset state are generated very upsetting thoughts. Like
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  Speaker 2: I'm going to become homeless because I'm going to fail
• 7:18
  Speaker 2: out of college and never, you know, ridiculous. but that
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  Speaker 2: can make you feel worse. So you do have to
• 7:26
  Speaker 2: attend to the quality of your thoughts and kind of
• 7:30
  Speaker 2: test them. So it's, it's, there's a complicated interplay, you know,
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  Speaker 2: how we feel, uh, affects how we think and how
• 7:40
  Speaker 2: we think and what we think affects, affects how we feel.
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  Speaker 2: But it's, it's not entirely clear cut and it's, there's
• 7:47
  Speaker 2: a kind of interdependence of those things.
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  Speaker 3: I think, There's a big difference between thought and attitude.
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  Speaker 3: Jung really felt that that was very, very important. That
• 8:00
  Speaker 3: thoughts are like birds that seem to have a kind
• 8:03
  Speaker 3: of temporal presence. Things fly in and fly out and
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  Speaker 3: that they can be precious. Jung was really dedicated to
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  Speaker 3: grabbing thoughts, particularly if they were helpful to what he
• 8:14
  Speaker 3: was writing. And attitude is another level of thinking that
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  Speaker 3: has become a belief. That is, That is a foundational
• 8:24
  Speaker 3: thought upon which many other things are built. And so
• 8:28
  Speaker 3: much of what we do in all the psychoanalytic traditions
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  Speaker 3: is trying to create a condition where a new attitude,
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  Speaker 3: a new foundational thought could become present.
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  Speaker 2: That's great. Yeah, that's a great way to describe it.
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  Speaker 4: So we have as our foundational beliefs, we have stories.
• 8:52
  Speaker 4: We have stories about what's right, what's good, what you're like.
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  Speaker 4: We have stories about identity and values and goals. And kids,
• 9:05
  Speaker 4: we get told, oh, you're really, really good at music,
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  Speaker 4: or you're not really good at math. And we absorb
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  Speaker 4: these stories without the capacity to think reflectively about them,
• 9:19
  Speaker 4: depending on our homes, our childhoods, our you know, cultural, surround,
• 9:24
  Speaker 4: et cetera. And we also have buried stories, stories we're
• 9:31
  Speaker 4: not even aware of, also known as secrets. They're just
• 9:37
  Speaker 4: implicit in our families, schools, religious institutions, whatever. And they've
• 9:45
  Speaker 4: never really been raised to consciousness, but nevertheless, there they
• 9:48
  Speaker 4: are operating in the background. Shaping what we do, shaping
• 9:54
  Speaker 4: our decisions.
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  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, they're just sort of like implicit assumptions.
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  Speaker 2: about the way the world is or about who we are.
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  Speaker 4: And it goes down hard when some of these implicit
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  Speaker 4: stories about things like fairness and goodness and morality are
• 10:16
  Speaker 4: challenged out there in the so-called real world.
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  Speaker 3: And so we have narratives in many different domains around us,
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  Speaker 3: some of which are temporal and some of which are foundational.
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  Speaker 3: One of the things that we work with so much
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  Speaker 3: as analysts is the narratives that have to do with
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  Speaker 3: self-identity and coherence. That we have a story about ourselves
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  Speaker 3: which is can affect all kinds of things inside of ourselves.
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  Speaker 3: And some disorders, like a borderline personality disorder, where there
• 10:54
  Speaker 3: is this constantly changing self-narrative, and so the identity can
• 10:59
  Speaker 3: feel very unstable as the narrative shifts based on intense
• 11:04
  Speaker 3: moods and what we happen to remember and what we
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  Speaker 3: happen to forget. And that kind of overly fluid... shift
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  Speaker 3: of narrative can create an enormous amount of anxiety inside
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  Speaker 3: of us. So we do need a story about our past,
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  Speaker 3: our present and our future that we are able to
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  Speaker 3: hold reasonably in memory so that we don't feel disjointed.
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  Speaker 2: You know, Jung helpfully offers this idea of the complex.
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  Speaker 2: And I think that when we're in a complex, one
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  Speaker 2: of the things the complex does is the complex comes
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  Speaker 2: with its own story. And it's like when the complex
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  Speaker 2: gets constellated, that story gets activated. And that story might
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  Speaker 2: be really different from our usual story about ourselves. So,
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  Speaker 2: for example... Let's say that we had some situations in
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  Speaker 2: childhood that felt abandoning. And so we kind of have
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  Speaker 2: an abandonment complex. And most of the time we feel
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  Speaker 2: okay about ourselves, but when our abandonment complex gets triggered,
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  Speaker 2: The story goes something like, I'm not lovable, no one
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  Speaker 2: will ever care for me. And it's like a distort,
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  Speaker 2: it's a distortion, right? It's not true. And we have
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  Speaker 2: a lot of evidence to the contrary. But when we're
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  Speaker 2: in the complex, we really, really believe that. And so
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  Speaker 2: that's why, you know, let's say that you have this
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  Speaker 2: abandonment complex and a friend, uh, cancels on you and
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  Speaker 2: you go into your abandonment complex and you're like, oh,
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  Speaker 2: she canceled because I'm fundamentally unlovable or whatever, you have
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  Speaker 2: kind of like an outsized, inappropriate response to it. That's
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  Speaker 2: one of the ways that you know that you're in
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  Speaker 2: a complex. And then, you know, later on when you've
• 13:02
  Speaker 2: sort of recovered from it, or maybe you've had a
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  Speaker 2: chance to speak to your friend and have your incorrect assumptions,
• 13:07
  Speaker 2: you know, corrected, you then you might be out of
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  Speaker 2: the complex again. And it might seem strange that you
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  Speaker 2: felt that way. But Jung said that complexes were kind
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  Speaker 2: of splinter personalities. And part of the way they affect
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  Speaker 2: us is because they come with an embedded story.
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  Speaker 3: I like the idea of thinking of the complex as
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  Speaker 3: a kind of sub-narrative that suddenly takes the main stage.
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  Speaker 3: And then that becomes... my story of being abandoned all
• 13:41
  Speaker 3: the time and in numerous circumstances, and then all the
• 13:45
  Speaker 3: other acts of the play kind of fade from memory
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  Speaker 3: and how incredibly disturbing and painful it is to trick
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  Speaker 3: ourselves into thinking we have only that narrative while we're
• 13:59
  Speaker 3: in the complex.
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  Speaker 4: And I think job one with that you know, working
• 14:07
  Speaker 4: with somebody in the consulting room or an intimate conversation
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  Speaker 4: with someone is to say, wait a minute, you know,
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  Speaker 4: you were feeling really, really bad. You felt abandoned. You
• 14:21
  Speaker 4: felt rejected. You felt unwanted or unimportant. And that's a
• 14:27
  Speaker 4: hard feeling. It really hurt. It doesn't necessarily mean that
• 14:34
  Speaker 4: the friend who canceled lunch or something at the last
• 14:38
  Speaker 4: minute finds you unlovable or not worthwhile. That's the story.
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  Speaker 4: So your feelings are legit. You were hurt. You were
• 14:51
  Speaker 4: looking forward to it. It was disappointing. But in order
• 14:55
  Speaker 4: to find out the story, you're going to have to
• 14:57
  Speaker 4: check with that person who canceled at the last minute.
• 15:02
  Speaker 4: You know, what if something happened in that person's life?
• 15:06
  Speaker 4: What if it has nothing whatsoever to do with you?
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  Speaker 2: Mm-hmm.
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  Speaker 4: So pulling those two categories apart after the heat of
• 15:18
  Speaker 4: emotion has passed is the task. This is what I felt.
• 15:26
  Speaker 4: It's totally legit, and that's category one. Mm-hmm. This is
• 15:31
  Speaker 4: the story I created. I don't know if that's really
• 15:36
  Speaker 4: out there in the external world. Is that really the story?
• 15:41
  Speaker 4: Probably not.
• 15:43
  Speaker 3: And that goes to that wonderful distinction between an event
• 15:46
  Speaker 3: and a story. The event is I'm sitting in the restaurant.
• 15:50
  Speaker 3: It's 1230. My friend said they would be there at 12.
• 15:53
  Speaker 3: That's an event. And then, you know, just the way
• 15:57
  Speaker 3: dreams are set up like Greek dramas is we have
• 16:01
  Speaker 3: a tendency to need to have a story about that,
• 16:06
  Speaker 3: which of course gives it meaning. The meaning can be
• 16:09
  Speaker 3: generous or the meaning can be negative. The meaning could
• 16:13
  Speaker 3: be frightening. Some people will sit there and tell themselves
• 16:16
  Speaker 3: a story. Oh, my friend must've gotten to a car
• 16:18
  Speaker 3: accident or that I'm no longer loved or I was
• 16:22
  Speaker 3: forgotten or some other story that perhaps is much more resilient. Like, Oh,
• 16:28
  Speaker 3: You know, my friend, she probably just lost track of
• 16:30
  Speaker 3: her calendar. So I'm going to sit here and make
• 16:33
  Speaker 3: friends to the person, you know, to the left of me.
• 16:35
  Speaker 3: And we're going to have, you know, bolognese, you know,
• 16:38
  Speaker 3: and wine. But the discovery that we can self-author is
• 16:44
  Speaker 3: a radical thing. That we have some control, as you
• 16:49
  Speaker 3: were both saying early on in the introduction, is once
• 16:52
  Speaker 3: we realize that we're going to either unconsciously author the moment,
• 16:58
  Speaker 3: or we are going to consciously author the moment is
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  Speaker 3: a revelation.
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  Speaker 2: So I want to just offer a couple of personal
• 17:06
  Speaker 2: stories about this, one of which I'm going to be
• 17:09
  Speaker 2: annoyingly obscure about because I just don't, I'm just not
• 17:14
  Speaker 2: going to reveal a lot of personal information. But there
• 17:17
  Speaker 2: was a time a number of years ago when a
• 17:20
  Speaker 2: person important to me asked me that I just kind
• 17:24
  Speaker 2: of make a change. And And it hit me. It
• 17:28
  Speaker 2: was in some ways a minor change, but it hit
• 17:31
  Speaker 2: me like being, I don't know, like punched in the gut.
• 17:34
  Speaker 2: I just was so upset. And I think I intuited
• 17:38
  Speaker 2: that it might have big, big consequences. And I was really,
• 17:43
  Speaker 2: really upset. And then like literally 30 seconds later, I
• 17:47
  Speaker 2: thought about the upside of the request and there were
• 17:50
  Speaker 2: considerable upsides of the request. And when I thought about
• 17:54
  Speaker 2: it that way, like my heaviness lifted around it. And
• 17:57
  Speaker 2: I was like, oh, well, this is great. I'm just
• 17:59
  Speaker 2: going to kind of go with that. I'm going to
• 18:00
  Speaker 2: go with this positive framing of it. And that was good.
• 18:03
  Speaker 2: And that was helpful. But I will tell you, years later,
• 18:06
  Speaker 2: it kind of came home to roost. And my initial
• 18:10
  Speaker 2: sort of gut punch was, I mean, yes, there were
• 18:13
  Speaker 2: good things about it. But my initial reaction to it
• 18:17
  Speaker 2: was true.
• 18:17
  Speaker 3: Do you know what I mean?
• 18:18
  Speaker 2: Like there were consequences to it. So I thought that
• 18:22
  Speaker 2: that was a very interesting experience that I've thought a
• 18:26
  Speaker 2: lot about because I could see how the story I
• 18:29
  Speaker 2: told myself about it at the moment radically changed how
• 18:33
  Speaker 2: I experienced and allowed me to go forward with a
• 18:36
  Speaker 2: lighter heart and also obscured the emotional truth that I
• 18:40
  Speaker 2: had when it first hit me. So it's kind of
• 18:42
  Speaker 2: a both end. And then I'll tell another story, which
• 18:45
  Speaker 2: is a little bit lighter, but A week ago today,
• 18:49
  Speaker 2: I was in London trying to get to Heathrow Airport
• 18:52
  Speaker 2: to catch my flight. And I was on the Heathrow Express,
• 18:55
  Speaker 2: which I will never do again. Anyway, all the trains
• 18:58
  Speaker 2: were stopped. There was like a problem on the tracks
• 19:01
  Speaker 2: and all of the trains were stopped. So we're just
• 19:03
  Speaker 2: sitting there, you know, they have no information and the
• 19:05
  Speaker 2: British are so, you know, the conductor's like, I'm so sorry,
• 19:09
  Speaker 2: I wish there was something I could do. You know,
• 19:11
  Speaker 2: and you're just like, So I, so I'm, I'm, I'm
• 19:14
  Speaker 2: on the train and I'm, uh, you know, I'm, I'm
• 19:17
  Speaker 2: beginning to get that I'm going to miss my flight.
• 19:20
  Speaker 2: And so I start to kind of process this and,
• 19:23
  Speaker 2: and I'm, I'm telling myself, you know, kind of be resilient, Lisa.
• 19:27
  Speaker 2: Like this is, this is the worst case scenario here is,
• 19:30
  Speaker 2: I don't know, you spent, you wind up spending money
• 19:32
  Speaker 2: you didn't want to spend, you know, but it's, it's
• 19:35
  Speaker 2: not a life-changing amount of money and it's, you know, yeah.
• 19:38
  Speaker 2: And it's a pain, you get home, you know, a
• 19:39
  Speaker 2: day later or whatever it is, but You know, I
• 19:42
  Speaker 2: was trying to do this. I was trying to kind
• 19:44
  Speaker 2: of give myself the resilient narratives and, you know, it's
• 19:49
  Speaker 2: better to leave Heathrow first thing in the morning anyway,
• 19:52
  Speaker 2: or whatever it was. But I have to tell you,
• 19:55
  Speaker 2: my nervous system was having none of it. Yeah, I
• 20:00
  Speaker 2: was trying really hard to kind of talk myself down
• 20:04
  Speaker 2: from a very anxious place. But at the end of
• 20:07
  Speaker 2: the day, that was just like, yes, I was saying
• 20:09
  Speaker 2: all the right things in my head, but damn it,
• 20:12
  Speaker 2: I was really stressed. And so I don't want to overstate,
• 20:19
  Speaker 2: you know, the ability to sort of, oh, all we
• 20:21
  Speaker 2: have to do is think positively and then snap, everything's great. No,
• 20:26
  Speaker 2: it's a little more complicated that, at least in my experience.
• 20:29
  Speaker 4: So it is hard to keep calm and carry on as...
• 20:35
  Speaker 4: As the Brits famously say, but, and I can certainly,
• 20:40
  Speaker 4: I can certainly get that of, you know, there's something
• 20:45
  Speaker 4: awful about the prospect of missing a flight, you know,
• 20:49
  Speaker 4: and you know, there are going to be other airplanes,
• 20:51
  Speaker 4: you know, you're not going to be stuck in London
• 20:54
  Speaker 4: for the rest of your life.
• 20:55
  Speaker 2: Which wouldn't be the worst thing in the world anyway.
• 20:57
  Speaker 4: But, but the feelings run away with us. It's, it,
• 21:04
  Speaker 4: And I think that's just true. I think there are
• 21:07
  Speaker 4: times that anxiety or shock or a hundred other things,
• 21:16
  Speaker 4: feelings are strong and they're powerful, but it can help.
• 21:19
  Speaker 4: I'm asking and imagining that it at least helped you
• 21:24
  Speaker 4: to know that even though you couldn't talk yourself out
• 21:27
  Speaker 4: of the feeling, it was only a feeling. It didn't
• 21:31
  Speaker 4: mean that you were going to be stuck across the
• 21:33
  Speaker 4: pond for the next decade. Yeah.
• 21:37
  Speaker 2: And I mean, it's true that, first of all, at
• 21:40
  Speaker 2: some point, I started laughing like really hard about it.
• 21:42
  Speaker 2: Like it just it just got hilarious. I mean, I
• 21:46
  Speaker 2: have this text thread with the United representative that I
• 21:49
  Speaker 2: am never taking off my phone because it's so funny.
• 21:52
  Speaker 2: And it, you know, just it was like absurd trying
• 21:55
  Speaker 2: to rebook on a flight. Anyway, I have read it
• 21:57
  Speaker 2: aloud to a few people as like a dramatic performance.
• 22:00
  Speaker 2: And it has us all in stitches. But So I
• 22:03
  Speaker 2: was laughing about it, and I was also able, even
• 22:06
  Speaker 2: in the midst of this very ridiculous experience with United,
• 22:10
  Speaker 2: I was never rude. I mean, I think that's one
• 22:14
  Speaker 2: of the things, right, is when we get really worked up,
• 22:17
  Speaker 2: our feelings kind of run away with us, and then
• 22:19
  Speaker 2: we can kind of act it out. And I think
• 22:21
  Speaker 2: mostly I wasn't doing that, even though I wanted to.
• 22:29
  Speaker 3: What that reminds me is that the unconscious... Or the
• 22:33
  Speaker 3: unconscious fantasy is already scripting things so quickly in the
• 22:38
  Speaker 3: moment and sometimes in major arcs of our lives. And
• 22:42
  Speaker 3: that we have to first find the unconscious fantasy in
• 22:48
  Speaker 3: order to deconstruct it before we can construct something else
• 22:53
  Speaker 3: that perhaps is more insightful or adds additional information. And
• 22:58
  Speaker 3: this is something that I've come to appreciate so much
• 23:01
  Speaker 3: in our analytic work. is I used to just pause
• 23:07
  Speaker 3: when people would say, well, what really concerns me is
• 23:12
  Speaker 3: thus and such. And then maybe there would be an
• 23:16
  Speaker 3: amplification or maybe that would be challenged. Maybe it seemed silly.
• 23:19
  Speaker 3: Maybe it seemed valid. But what I've started doing, which
• 23:22
  Speaker 3: is so helpful, is asking people to continue that fantasy
• 23:27
  Speaker 3: to its conclusion and actually lean into the fact that
• 23:32
  Speaker 3: they really do, just below the threshold of awareness, have
• 23:37
  Speaker 3: another bit. And then what would happen? And then what
• 23:40
  Speaker 3: would happen? And if they can relax, there's a pretty
• 23:44
  Speaker 3: full story just underneath the surface, which is often a,
• 23:50
  Speaker 3: particularly if it's an upsetting story, is a maladaptive way
• 23:56
  Speaker 3: to get to something. And perhaps the thing that they
• 23:59
  Speaker 3: want to get to is not necessarily negative at all,
• 24:03
  Speaker 3: but the unconscious strategy that they're holding as they get
• 24:07
  Speaker 3: to it, it's very difficult. I'll use an example.
• 24:10
  Speaker 2: I was going to say that'd be great if you
• 24:11
  Speaker 2: have one.
• 24:13
  Speaker 3: This is quite some long time ago. I was working
• 24:15
  Speaker 3: with somebody who is having chronic leg pain and, uh,
• 24:20
  Speaker 3: really severe, probably sciatic, probably a number of different things,
• 24:24
  Speaker 3: but it was going on for months and it was
• 24:27
  Speaker 3: just extraordinarily painful. And, uh, It just occurred to me
• 24:32
  Speaker 3: to ask as this person, as he was going from
• 24:36
  Speaker 3: doctor to doctor to doctor, and then was saying, you know,
• 24:39
  Speaker 3: I'm getting like two hours of sleep a night. And
• 24:41
  Speaker 3: I said, well, I suppose the Tylenol isn't working. And
• 24:46
  Speaker 3: then he looked at me and goes, I'm not taking
• 24:48
  Speaker 3: any Tylenol. I said, oh, well, what are you taking
• 24:53
  Speaker 3: for the pain just so you can sleep a couple
• 24:55
  Speaker 3: of hours? And looked at me and said, I would
• 24:57
  Speaker 3: never do that. So I thought, oh. So then we
• 25:03
  Speaker 3: started the script. I was like, so what are you
• 25:07
  Speaker 3: fantasizing would happen if you took the Tylenol? Well, but
• 25:11
  Speaker 3: then I would wind up needing medication all the time.
• 25:14
  Speaker 3: And then what would happen? Well, then it would just
• 25:16
  Speaker 3: get worse and I'd probably get addicted to Oxycontin. Well,
• 25:19
  Speaker 3: and then what would happen? Well, then I would just
• 25:21
  Speaker 3: give up on life and I would just lay in
• 25:23
  Speaker 3: that bed for days. And then what would happen? Well,
• 25:25
  Speaker 3: I'd lose my capacity to walk. And then what would happen? Well,
• 25:29
  Speaker 3: then I'd have to be institutionalized and I'd want to
• 25:31
  Speaker 3: have been in a nursing home. This is where it
• 25:33
  Speaker 3: got really interesting. And then I said, well, and then
• 25:37
  Speaker 3: what would happen? And he went into this spontaneous reverie
• 25:41
  Speaker 3: and he goes, well, I would get up really early
• 25:45
  Speaker 3: in the morning when no one was there and I
• 25:49
  Speaker 3: would roll my wheelchair into the art room and I
• 25:54
  Speaker 3: would look out of this enormous window all the art
• 25:58
  Speaker 3: supplies would be there. And I would draw this magnificent
• 26:03
  Speaker 3: artwork of what I was seeing outside the window. And
• 26:08
  Speaker 3: he began to tear up. So we just sat there
• 26:12
  Speaker 3: and I said, so you can't imagine liberating yourself from
• 26:17
  Speaker 3: the enormous number of obligations and compulsive working demands in
• 26:23
  Speaker 3: order for you to give yourself an opportunity to take
• 26:26
  Speaker 3: an art class, to set up a little art studio
• 26:29
  Speaker 3: in your house. And so the unconscious strategy is to
• 26:33
  Speaker 3: refuse to treat the pain in your leg in the
• 26:36
  Speaker 3: hope that it will deprive you of your agency or
• 26:40
  Speaker 3: your capacity to work so that you can be taken
• 26:43
  Speaker 3: care of and then you can become an artist. Isn't
• 26:47
  Speaker 3: there a different way to get there? Isn't there a
• 26:50
  Speaker 3: different narrative? Yeah. And that speaks to so much. how
• 26:54
  Speaker 3: these unconscious scripts, narratives are just below the surface and
• 26:59
  Speaker 3: really influencing our choices, sometimes tragically.
• 27:03
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's really great.
• 27:05
  Speaker 4: That is a really wonderful story that really epitomizes and
• 27:11
  Speaker 4: illustrates the Jungian concept of enantiodromia, which Jung borrowed from
• 27:20
  Speaker 4: one of the Greek philosophers, Can either one of you
• 27:24
  Speaker 4: remember which one that was?
• 27:26
  Speaker 3: Heraclitus.
• 27:27
  Speaker 4: Thank you. That's it. And what Jung posits, and Heraclitus posited,
• 27:35
  Speaker 4: is that one thing will naturally turn to the other.
• 27:40
  Speaker 4: This is a different concept from the pendulum swinging in
• 27:43
  Speaker 4: the other direction. The concept is that out of a
• 27:47
  Speaker 4: powerful state, that state will actually generate its opposite. And
• 27:56
  Speaker 4: by following along and following along and following along with
• 27:59
  Speaker 4: the disaster scenario that this man, you know, hadn't unpacked fully,
• 28:09
  Speaker 4: it led to something that Psyche really wants, wanted access
• 28:14
  Speaker 4: to creative expression and freedom.
• 28:18
  Speaker 3: And we were barking up the wrong tree, looking at, oh,
• 28:21
  Speaker 3: the somatic problem with the leg and And so he
• 28:25
  Speaker 3: just started taking some Tylenol. He was getting six hours
• 28:28
  Speaker 3: of sleep a night. He felt much more optimistic. Actually
• 28:32
  Speaker 3: found the right person, found an osteopath, bump up on
• 28:35
  Speaker 3: the pains, you know, was cut by 75%. But he
• 28:38
  Speaker 3: had to make a deal with his unconscious, which is,
• 28:42
  Speaker 3: you know, we'll fix the leg, but you've got to
• 28:45
  Speaker 3: find another way to the art room. Yeah. So that
• 28:48
  Speaker 3: the unconscious doesn't trick you into getting its needs met.
• 28:53
  Speaker 3: So the story had to be discovered or the thought
• 28:56
  Speaker 3: had to be discovered so it could then be deconstructed
• 29:00
  Speaker 3: and honored and options could be offered. And that's so
• 29:04
  Speaker 3: much of what therapy in general is, is discovering where
• 29:08
  Speaker 3: the bias is and then discovering there are many different
• 29:13
  Speaker 3: options that are possible. Mm-hmm.
• 29:16
  Speaker 2: And I think, you know, it's true that this idea about,
• 29:20
  Speaker 2: you know, what are the stories we tell ourselves? What
• 29:23
  Speaker 2: are our maladaptive core beliefs? What are some of these
• 29:29
  Speaker 2: logical fallacies that we engage in? I'm using all of
• 29:32
  Speaker 2: this kind of CBT language, which is all really valuable.
• 29:35
  Speaker 2: But I think the depth psychological approach goes deeper because
• 29:39
  Speaker 2: we're what we're saying is it goes beyond just maladaptive
• 29:44
  Speaker 2: core beliefs, or, you know, we're thinking we're catastrophizing, or we're,
• 29:48
  Speaker 2: you know, thinking the wrong thing into saying now there
• 29:51
  Speaker 2: are deeper narratives that arise not from the conscious mind,
• 29:57
  Speaker 2: but from the unconscious mind. And those don't just need
• 30:01
  Speaker 2: to be corrected necessarily. They need to be engaged with.
• 30:06
  Speaker 2: So this idea that I can just correct my thinking
• 30:09
  Speaker 2: as I did when I had this kind of upsetting
• 30:12
  Speaker 2: request from a loved one. Yeah, it worked in a way,
• 30:17
  Speaker 2: but something else got jettisoned or forgotten about that might
• 30:21
  Speaker 2: have actually been useful to engage back then. So that's
• 30:26
  Speaker 2: a really lovely story, Joseph.
• 30:29
  Speaker 3: The other thing I want to put on the table
• 30:30
  Speaker 3: is 12-step programs. Because many of us that have maladaptive behaviors,
• 30:38
  Speaker 3: whether it's alcoholism or heroin addiction or compulsive overeating, let's
• 30:45
  Speaker 3: take alcoholism. I've had many recovered alcoholics in my practice
• 30:48
  Speaker 3: and found them to be incredibly insightful, wise humans that
• 30:55
  Speaker 3: One of the reasons that they go to the AA
• 30:57
  Speaker 3: program is they need to tell the story of their
• 31:01
  Speaker 3: alcoholism and the consequences of it and hear other people
• 31:07
  Speaker 3: tell that narrative because something inside of them wants to
• 31:11
  Speaker 3: justify drinking again because on a certain level it was
• 31:15
  Speaker 3: so pleasurable. So reviewing the full narrative of consequences allows
• 31:22
  Speaker 3: them to situate themselves in right relationship to the addiction.
• 31:28
  Speaker 3: And there is something about the gods of addiction that
• 31:32
  Speaker 3: make us want to forget and then minimize the destructive
• 31:39
  Speaker 3: potential of something. So sometimes the story we tell ourselves
• 31:45
  Speaker 3: can be painful, but the suffering in our stories is
• 31:50
  Speaker 3: often the part that's transformative.
• 31:54
  Speaker 2: And then there's maybe something that's the opposite of that,
• 31:58
  Speaker 2: which is I think we can ruminate, which is something
• 32:02
  Speaker 2: I'd love to do a whole episode on, by the way.
• 32:05
  Speaker 2: But I think that, you know, sometimes to go back
• 32:08
  Speaker 2: to catastrophizing, something will happen. And, you know, like let's say,
• 32:14
  Speaker 2: for example, that I'm on this train to Heathrow and
• 32:17
  Speaker 2: it stops and I realize I'm going to miss my flight.
• 32:19
  Speaker 2: So then if I were going to catastrophize, my thoughts
• 32:23
  Speaker 2: might be, I'm going to miss this flight. I'm going
• 32:27
  Speaker 2: to have to cancel all of my hours tomorrow. I'm
• 32:30
  Speaker 2: going to miss a whole day. Then maybe my clients
• 32:34
  Speaker 2: will be angry at me and they'll terminate treatment or
• 32:40
  Speaker 2: any number of these kind of catastrophe stories that I
• 32:43
  Speaker 2: could have told myself about it. And what we can
• 32:47
  Speaker 2: do when we're upset, we're sitting on that train, there's
• 32:49
  Speaker 2: nothing else we can do, right? Part of it is
• 32:51
  Speaker 2: other than talking to United, I really just had to
• 32:55
  Speaker 2: sit and accept what was happening. I couldn't get off
• 32:57
  Speaker 2: the train, start walking to Heathrow, there was nothing to do.
• 33:02
  Speaker 2: So what we can tend to do in those cases
• 33:05
  Speaker 2: is to ruminate on the negative stories like, oh, no, well,
• 33:08
  Speaker 2: if I have to cancel all of my clients, they're
• 33:10
  Speaker 2: all going to terminate with me. And that means that
• 33:12
  Speaker 2: I'm not going to have enough money to pay my bills.
• 33:14
  Speaker 2: I mean, I could really go to town. Right. And
• 33:18
  Speaker 2: so we can tend to do this. And sometimes when
• 33:20
  Speaker 2: I'm working with someone and I catch them doing this,
• 33:22
  Speaker 2: you know, there's a lovely Irish expression that's like, well,
• 33:26
  Speaker 2: don't meet the devil halfway. That's one way to think
• 33:29
  Speaker 2: about it. But there's a metaphor that I use for it.
• 33:33
  Speaker 2: I say, look, it's like you're walking down the street
• 33:36
  Speaker 2: and an old beat up car pulls over. And in
• 33:39
  Speaker 2: the driver's seat is a kind of a scary looking
• 33:43
  Speaker 2: dude with a baseball bat. And he says, get in.
• 33:47
  Speaker 2: Don't get in the car. That's my funny story for it.
• 33:50
  Speaker 2: Because if you have a frightening thought like, oh, no,
• 33:53
  Speaker 2: all my clients are going to end treatment and then
• 33:55
  Speaker 2: I'm not going to have enough money. And, you know,
• 33:57
  Speaker 2: that's like That's like getting in the car. You don't
• 33:59
  Speaker 2: want to go for that ride. You don't need to
• 34:01
  Speaker 2: go for that ride. You can say, no, thank you.
• 34:03
  Speaker 2: I'm not getting in the car. And hilariously, one of
• 34:06
  Speaker 2: my clients who has sort of obsessive compulsive tendencies laughed
• 34:11
  Speaker 2: when I said that and said, yep, the thing is
• 34:13
  Speaker 2: he just drives around the block and comes back again,
• 34:16
  Speaker 2: which is true, of course, you know. But I think
• 34:19
  Speaker 2: we can choose not to go on that ride. It's
• 34:22
  Speaker 2: like when those thoughts occur, you can say, okay, I
• 34:25
  Speaker 2: know what that ride is, and I'm not going to
• 34:28
  Speaker 2: go on that ride right now. One of the things
• 34:30
  Speaker 2: that I'll say to people when they're very upset, like
• 34:33
  Speaker 2: let's say, you know, they're very, very distressed. They just
• 34:37
  Speaker 2: lost their job or their boyfriend broke up with them.
• 34:39
  Speaker 2: And what will happen is when you get in one
• 34:41
  Speaker 2: of those places, you'll start kind of narrating. You'll start being, well,
• 34:45
  Speaker 2: no one's ever going to love me, and I'm going
• 34:46
  Speaker 2: to be single forever. And You know, and I'll say
• 34:49
  Speaker 2: to the person, I'll say, you don't need to decide
• 34:52
  Speaker 2: that today. You don't need to think about what's going
• 34:55
  Speaker 2: to happen in five years. You can just stay with
• 34:59
  Speaker 2: your feelings and feel your feelings, which, you know, it's
• 35:02
  Speaker 2: really sad. But don't start, you know, in AA, they
• 35:05
  Speaker 2: call it future tripping. Don't, you know, but it's like,
• 35:10
  Speaker 2: you don't need to make a decision. You don't need
• 35:12
  Speaker 2: to decide how this happened. You don't need to decide
• 35:15
  Speaker 2: when you're really upset. Don't try to think. Don't try
• 35:19
  Speaker 2: to make plans. Don't try to do an analysis. Just
• 35:22
  Speaker 2: be upset because you're not going to think well. And
• 35:26
  Speaker 2: then those thoughts are only going to make you feel worse.
• 35:30
  Speaker 4: And that's the temptation and that's the trick that we're
• 35:36
  Speaker 4: wired to play on ourselves. It's very, very hard to
• 35:40
  Speaker 4: sit on the train and just be anxious.
• 35:44
  Speaker 2: Yeah, yes. It feels better almost sometimes to ruminate.
• 35:48
  Speaker 4: Absolutely. And to make up stories and that this is
• 35:50
  Speaker 4: going to happen. And it's a false kind of comfort.
• 35:54
  Speaker 4: And take your example about like a breakup with a boyfriend.
• 36:01
  Speaker 4: It's also very tempting to then say, you know, what
• 36:06
  Speaker 4: went wrong here? What did I do wrong? And what
• 36:09
  Speaker 4: did he do wrong? And there were red flags and
• 36:12
  Speaker 4: I didn't see them. because he always did this or
• 36:15
  Speaker 4: he didn't do that. It's a kind of false comfort
• 36:19
  Speaker 4: because then you can fool yourself into thinking that you're
• 36:24
  Speaker 4: doing something.
• 36:25
  Speaker 2: Yes.
• 36:26
  Speaker 4: Now I'm figuring it out and struggling to create a
• 36:32
  Speaker 4: narrative that makes sense so that my cognitive process can
• 36:38
  Speaker 4: serve to hold my emotional distress down. Versus I'm just distressed,
• 36:46
  Speaker 4: I'm upset, I'm hurt, I'm terribly disappointed. And we don't
• 36:53
  Speaker 4: like to be just stuck with our feelings.
• 36:57
  Speaker 2: On a train.
• 36:58
  Speaker 4: On a train. Going nowhere. The emotional breakup train or
• 37:03
  Speaker 4: the train to Heathrow.
• 37:06
  Speaker 3: Midnight train to Georgia.
• 37:08
  Speaker 4: But we all need to know, did you make the
• 37:11
  Speaker 4: plane or not?
• 37:12
  Speaker 2: Oh, no, I missed the plane. And what was so
• 37:16
  Speaker 2: funny is there was another plane two hours later. Okay.
• 37:22
  Speaker 2: And I was trying to get booked on that one.
• 37:24
  Speaker 2: And literally the train started moving. We pulled into Heathrow.
• 37:28
  Speaker 2: I'm jogging along in Heathrow trying to get to the gate,
• 37:31
  Speaker 2: still not booked on the next flight. So I'm like
• 37:34
  Speaker 2: literally standing in front of that little kiosk where you're
• 37:37
  Speaker 2: checking in, like waiting for them to say, okay, you're booked.
• 37:40
  Speaker 2: But in the end, it all worked out. It all
• 37:42
  Speaker 2: worked out. And you know what? The later flight back
• 37:44
  Speaker 2: was kind of a bummer because I got in quite late. However,
• 37:48
  Speaker 2: the later flight was so empty. that I had three
• 37:52
  Speaker 2: seats to lie across. So in the end, it worked
• 37:55
  Speaker 2: out better.
• 37:55
  Speaker 3: Absolutely. Life is in your favor.
• 37:59
  Speaker 2: Well, there's usually a good way to look at things, too.
• 38:03
  Speaker 2: I want to just go to the work of Byron Katie,
• 38:08
  Speaker 2: if anyone is familiar with her. She has this thing
• 38:12
  Speaker 2: that she calls the work, and there are four questions.
• 38:15
  Speaker 2: And the questions are, is it true? So it's either
• 38:20
  Speaker 2: yes or no. And then the second question is, can
• 38:22
  Speaker 2: you absolutely know that it's true? So let's say that
• 38:26
  Speaker 2: your friend stood you up for lunch and the fear is,
• 38:32
  Speaker 2: I'm unlovable. Is it true? Yes or no? So maybe
• 38:36
  Speaker 2: you say, well, yes, it is true. And then question
• 38:39
  Speaker 2: two is, can you absolutely know that it's true? Which
• 38:42
  Speaker 2: I think Joseph goes to some things that you talk
• 38:45
  Speaker 2: about a lot, you know, it's like Do I really
• 38:47
  Speaker 2: have any evidence that this is true? What is the evidence?
• 38:50
  Speaker 2: Can I know this for certain? A lot of times
• 38:53
  Speaker 2: it's like, no, you can't. And then the next question is,
• 38:56
  Speaker 2: how do you react? What happens when you believe that thought?
• 38:59
  Speaker 2: So how does that thought influence your actions, your beliefs?
• 39:04
  Speaker 2: And then the final question is, who would you be
• 39:06
  Speaker 2: without that thought?
• 39:08
  Speaker 3: That's a great question. So I like the, there's so
• 39:12
  Speaker 3: many good things in that, to have that as a
• 39:14
  Speaker 3: bit of a protocol. Because it evokes the observing ego.
• 39:19
  Speaker 2: Yes.
• 39:20
  Speaker 3: That some other part of us is able to look
• 39:22
  Speaker 3: down and ask questions that are not inherent in the moment.
• 39:28
  Speaker 3: And that gives us breathing room. Not just by answering those,
• 39:33
  Speaker 3: but breathing room in many other places we might go
• 39:36
  Speaker 3: just questioning. It's a kind of an invocation of a metacognition. Yeah.
• 39:43
  Speaker 2: It's reflective capacity. Absolutely.
• 39:45
  Speaker 3: Absolutely.
• 39:46
  Speaker 4: And it gives us the ability, which is very helpful,
• 39:50
  Speaker 4: to step out of the feeling and being caught up
• 39:56
  Speaker 4: in a complex or a lot of emotion. At least
• 40:00
  Speaker 4: you can know that there is another perspective. You know,
• 40:05
  Speaker 4: it may not sort of have a lot of emotional
• 40:09
  Speaker 4: resonance in the moment of, you know, if you've just
• 40:12
  Speaker 4: broken up with somebody or you're stuck on the train
• 40:14
  Speaker 4: to Heathrow.
• 40:15
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 40:16
  Speaker 4: But at least you can know that there is more
• 40:20
  Speaker 4: than one facet to this. And that in itself is,
• 40:25
  Speaker 4: I think, a huge comfort. At least you're not all
• 40:28
  Speaker 4: caught up in the whirlpool of the emotion and the
• 40:33
  Speaker 4: meaning and the thinking that all get mixed in together.
• 40:37
  Speaker 4: It's like having a big feeling, I can't really think
• 40:41
  Speaker 4: about this right now, but at least I know there
• 40:44
  Speaker 4: are other possibilities.
• 40:46
  Speaker 3: I'd also like to mention the power of narrative and
• 40:52
  Speaker 3: storytelling relative to our relationship to the collective and our
• 40:57
  Speaker 3: relationship to other people, which is something that has, in
• 41:02
  Speaker 3: one way or another, has become so powerful in the
• 41:05
  Speaker 3: world of social media that we manipulate, consciously or unconsciously,
• 41:11
  Speaker 3: manipulate personal narratives to serve various psychological needs. So we
• 41:18
  Speaker 3: create envy posts on Instagram so that we can try
• 41:23
  Speaker 3: to maintain self-esteem. We demonize our ex-husbands and wives as
• 41:33
  Speaker 3: a way of justifying our past behaviors or preemptively protecting
• 41:41
  Speaker 3: against criticism. We tell stories of devaluing our bosses or
• 41:47
  Speaker 3: companies we were fired from. So we have a sense
• 41:50
  Speaker 3: of minimizing any feeling of loss in ourselves. We slander
• 41:56
  Speaker 3: people and tell a narrative in order to somehow express
• 42:01
  Speaker 3: our anger or our need to be powerful. So I
• 42:05
  Speaker 3: think we live in a world right now where stories
• 42:10
  Speaker 3: about ourselves and stories about others have taken on a
• 42:16
  Speaker 3: kind of power that is extraordinary and incredibly distorting. I mean,
• 42:24
  Speaker 3: it's one thing to sit alone and say, oh, I
• 42:26
  Speaker 3: was mistreated. It's another to get 500,000 other people saying, yes,
• 42:31
  Speaker 3: you were. And how much voltage is added to our
• 42:38
  Speaker 3: little coping mechanism that way. And how difficult it is
• 42:43
  Speaker 3: to step back. Once you've got 500,000 people on Instagram
• 42:49
  Speaker 3: screaming your story, how do you unwind that when you
• 42:54
  Speaker 3: realize that you were just in a bad mood or
• 42:57
  Speaker 3: you were just resentful because something didn't work out?
• 43:00
  Speaker 4: That really speaks to what you were talking about, Lisa,
• 43:05
  Speaker 4: of can you know it's true?
• 43:08
  Speaker 3: Is it true?
• 43:09
  Speaker 4: Can you know that it's true? and how infused some
• 43:13
  Speaker 4: of these things are with passion and emotion, and with
• 43:18
  Speaker 4: mythological significance. You know that they, whoever the they happen
• 43:24
  Speaker 4: to be, are out to get you. And they, you know, etc., etc.,
• 43:30
  Speaker 4: and we're susceptible to those kinds of the mysteries of
• 43:35
  Speaker 4: the gods, that there are forces out there. And if
• 43:39
  Speaker 4: we read that there are, I don't know how many
• 43:42
  Speaker 4: thousands of people on some social media channel, you know,
• 43:46
  Speaker 4: that all believe that, my God, the sun is starting
• 43:50
  Speaker 4: to rise in the West. It taps into that part
• 43:54
  Speaker 4: of us that is like, whoa, oh my God, we
• 43:58
  Speaker 4: live in a crazy world. This would be the craziest
• 44:00
  Speaker 4: thing ever, but it could happen. And we have to
• 44:03
  Speaker 4: go back to, is it true? Can you know it's true?
• 44:08
  Speaker 4: Can you take the time to check out other sources?
• 44:13
  Speaker 4: Step back from it a minute? You know, that objective
• 44:18
  Speaker 4: verifiable data is foundational in the interpersonal work of Gestalt.
• 44:27
  Speaker 4: And in the training I did years and years ago,
• 44:31
  Speaker 4: you were never, never allowed to start a sentence with
• 44:36
  Speaker 4: the word you. You always, and you never, the only
• 44:42
  Speaker 4: time you could start a sentence with the word you
• 44:46
  Speaker 4: is when you were reporting objective, verifiable, observable, behavioral, inarguable data.
• 44:55
  Speaker 4: You just blinked your eyes. You are breathing in and
• 44:59
  Speaker 4: out on a regular basis. And so I'm going at
• 45:04
  Speaker 4: this from a couple of different angles of, Is it true?
• 45:09
  Speaker 4: Can you know that it is true? Do you have
• 45:14
  Speaker 4: other data to break the very strong tidal pull of feeling,
• 45:23
  Speaker 4: personal feeling and anxiety, and that mythological substrate that is
• 45:29
  Speaker 4: very powerful? Can you step outside and go, wait a minute,
• 45:34
  Speaker 4: wait a minute. Do I know that it's true? And
• 45:41
  Speaker 4: can I really trust that? And I think it comes
• 45:45
  Speaker 4: up over and over and over again in the consulting
• 45:47
  Speaker 4: room is the feelings are real. Your feelings are very,
• 45:53
  Speaker 4: very real. You know, honestly, if you're worried about a
• 45:57
  Speaker 4: giant meteor hitting the earth, you know, or any one
• 46:01
  Speaker 4: of a number of things that's distressing, it is distressing.
• 46:05
  Speaker 4: But your story about it is a different, that's just
• 46:09
  Speaker 4: a different category.
• 46:11
  Speaker 2: You know, I want to just maybe lift it into
• 46:14
  Speaker 2: a slightly different register here as we approach the end,
• 46:18
  Speaker 2: which is stories, as you've said, Deb, are just an
• 46:22
  Speaker 2: inherent part of being human. We're just wired that way.
• 46:27
  Speaker 2: And stories are important for Connecting us with the sense
• 46:32
  Speaker 2: of meaning and belonging to the cosmos. They can be ennobling.
• 46:38
  Speaker 2: We need, I think, grand narratives that give our life meaning, purpose,
• 46:42
  Speaker 2: and shape. And so there's that element of stories, too.
• 46:47
  Speaker 2: And I think that when we find... You know, when
• 46:50
  Speaker 2: we feel particularly moved, for example, by the stories contained
• 46:54
  Speaker 2: in the world's great religions or by a mythological story
• 46:58
  Speaker 2: or by a wonderful movie or a novel or by history.
• 47:03
  Speaker 3: A fairy tale.
• 47:04
  Speaker 2: A fairy tale. Then we have placed ourselves somewhere in
• 47:11
  Speaker 2: the human story. And stories can be, are absolutely essential,
• 47:17
  Speaker 2: I think, in that sense.
• 47:20
  Speaker 3: Perhaps this is a good time to transition into a dream,
• 47:23
  Speaker 3: which is another kind of story we often find ourselves
• 47:27
  Speaker 3: inserted to somehow.
• 47:30
  Speaker 2: And before we move to the dream today, I just
• 47:33
  Speaker 2: want to remind all of our listeners about Dream School.
• 47:37
  Speaker 2: If you're interested in learning to work with your dreams
• 47:41
  Speaker 2: the way that we work with dreams on the podcast,
• 47:44
  Speaker 2: we can help you do that. So Dream School is
• 47:47
  Speaker 2: a self-paced, interactive 12-month program. There's a live component. You
• 47:52
  Speaker 2: get to be with me, Deb, and Joseph. We each
• 47:54
  Speaker 2: do something live every month. And it's also a wonderful community.
• 47:59
  Speaker 2: So you can take a look at thisjungianlife.com and just
• 48:05
  Speaker 2: scroll down and you'll see a button to learn more
• 48:07
  Speaker 2: about Dream School. Today's dream comes from a woman who's
• 48:18
  Speaker 2: 30 years old and works as a writer and she
• 48:20
  Speaker 2: has titled her dream because it is a story we
• 48:23
  Speaker 2: ask people to title their dreams, Lost Cat. And here's
• 48:29
  Speaker 2: the dream. I'm in school again. I learned that this
• 48:33
  Speaker 2: semester we're reading a book that in real life I
• 48:36
  Speaker 2: helped to adapt during the height of the pandemic. She
• 48:39
  Speaker 2: notes that she's a screenwriter. I have a sense of
• 48:42
  Speaker 2: dread because while I've read it many times before, despite
• 48:46
  Speaker 2: my knowledge, I never connected with it. The class takes
• 48:50
  Speaker 2: a field trip to my childhood home. I dream about
• 48:54
  Speaker 2: my home often. My mother lost it abruptly to bankruptcy
• 48:58
  Speaker 2: when I was 19. A thick snow covers the ground.
• 49:03
  Speaker 2: I open the back door and a cat runs out
• 49:06
  Speaker 2: into the snow. I call for it and then realize
• 49:10
  Speaker 2: that I'm calling the wrong name. Irina? Ivanka? can't believe
• 49:16
  Speaker 2: that I can't remember its name. I feel a panic
• 49:19
  Speaker 2: that I have lost my childhood cat. Every time I
• 49:23
  Speaker 2: call out the wrong name, another animal shows up, and
• 49:26
  Speaker 2: soon I am surrounded by cats and dogs and goats
• 49:30
  Speaker 2: and chickens, but none of them are her. I get
• 49:33
  Speaker 2: increasingly desperate and sad, certain I've killed the childhood cat.
• 49:38
  Speaker 2: Then I wake up. Here's the context for the dream.
• 49:42
  Speaker 2: After a year without work due to the writer's strike,
• 49:45
  Speaker 2: I got a job as an assistant to a writer
• 49:48
  Speaker 2: that I have worked for before. We have had candid
• 49:51
  Speaker 2: conversations about his desire for me to have more creative
• 49:54
  Speaker 2: say and autonomy than in the past. But I fear
• 49:58
  Speaker 2: that I will not be able to transcend the subservience
• 50:01
  Speaker 2: of the role, something I have struggled with in the past.
• 50:05
  Speaker 2: It feels like a regression to take another support staff
• 50:08
  Speaker 2: role at all. The main feelings in the dream were panic, guilt, self-flagellation,
• 50:14
  Speaker 2: and disbelief. How could I not remember something so simple
• 50:19
  Speaker 2: about my past that the cat's name? And for additional context,
• 50:25
  Speaker 2: she notes, leaving my small town in Michigan for a
• 50:28
  Speaker 2: selective East Coast university was the defining part of my
• 50:32
  Speaker 2: young adult life as I was very devoted to my
• 50:35
  Speaker 2: studies and think often about the significance of education to
• 50:39
  Speaker 2: my early identity. The loss of my childhood home felt
• 50:43
  Speaker 2: in many ways like the end of my childhood. I
• 50:46
  Speaker 2: had seen my father die of a heart attack when
• 50:49
  Speaker 2: I was five. outside the back door that I mentioned
• 50:52
  Speaker 2: in the dream. When my mother lost the home, it
• 50:56
  Speaker 2: stirred up an anger in me that I would forget him.
• 51:00
  Speaker 2: So there's so much in this dream and in the context,
• 51:04
  Speaker 2: and I found it very poignant.
• 51:07
  Speaker 4: I'm aware that sometimes when encountering a dream like this one,
• 51:15
  Speaker 4: of just one way to start with a dream is
• 51:18
  Speaker 4: that I'm starting from today with this dream, is I
• 51:22
  Speaker 4: can feel the tears behind my eyes. It's a clue
• 51:26
  Speaker 4: to pay attention to how powerful the affect is, that
• 51:32
  Speaker 4: it feels like I'm catching something from this dreamer. Of course,
• 51:37
  Speaker 4: it's resonating in me, but just when something like that
• 51:41
  Speaker 4: happens with a dream, just pay attention to it. Something
• 51:46
  Speaker 4: very powerful is happening here.
• 51:50
  Speaker 2: One of the things that I noticed about the dream,
• 51:52
  Speaker 2: picking up on a slightly different note than you, Deb,
• 51:57
  Speaker 2: is that it has two parts. It has a little
• 52:00
  Speaker 2: kind of preamble, and then there's the main action. So
• 52:04
  Speaker 2: we have to be curious about how those might be
• 52:06
  Speaker 2: related to one another. So there's the, she's in school again,
• 52:10
  Speaker 2: which is a very common setup for dreams. she's reading
• 52:14
  Speaker 2: this book and she has a sense of dread because
• 52:17
  Speaker 2: she knows it really, really well, but she's never had
• 52:20
  Speaker 2: a connection with it. And by the way, I'd be
• 52:22
  Speaker 2: so curious what that book is. And then boom, the
• 52:26
  Speaker 2: class takes a field trip and to her childhood home. So,
• 52:30
  Speaker 2: so I'm curious about the relationship between something that you've
• 52:34
  Speaker 2: had to work on. You've had to, I mean, I
• 52:36
  Speaker 2: would imagine adapting a book to a screenplay. I've thought
• 52:39
  Speaker 2: about what would be involved in that. It must be
• 52:41
  Speaker 2: Just a tremendous amount of work. Every time I think
• 52:44
  Speaker 2: about that, it feels like, oh my God, that would
• 52:46
  Speaker 2: be a huge amount of work. You must have to
• 52:48
  Speaker 2: really know the book so well. You must have to
• 52:52
  Speaker 2: read it and reread it and reread it. So she's
• 52:55
  Speaker 2: done all this work on it, but she never felt
• 52:58
  Speaker 2: connected with it. So there's maybe a kind of emotional
• 53:01
  Speaker 2: block there or something. And then there's this sense of
• 53:06
  Speaker 2: not being connected with or fearing to lose connection maybe.
• 53:10
  Speaker 2: with the cat, and then we know from the context
• 53:13
  Speaker 2: possibly with this memory of her father.
• 53:17
  Speaker 4: And I'm going, you know, to the part two or
• 53:20
  Speaker 4: scene two, but a lot of loss of the lack
• 53:25
  Speaker 4: of connection with the book, dreaming about the childhood home
• 53:29
  Speaker 4: that mother lost abruptly to bankruptcy, and a thick snow
• 53:34
  Speaker 4: covers the ground. And water images are very powerful in dreams,
• 53:40
  Speaker 4: and snow is a form of frozen water, which often
• 53:45
  Speaker 4: relates to feeling that something has been blanketed in cold,
• 53:53
  Speaker 4: pristine snow.
• 53:58
  Speaker 2: So I'm having an intuition that I want to share,
• 54:01
  Speaker 2: which I think builds on everything that we've just said,
• 54:04
  Speaker 2: which is... She's worried about losing the connection to her father.
• 54:09
  Speaker 2: She's worried about losing, or at least that was her
• 54:12
  Speaker 2: experience when she was 19. In the dream, she's worried
• 54:15
  Speaker 2: about losing the connection to the cat. I wonder a
• 54:19
  Speaker 2: little bit if the meaning of the preamble, as I've
• 54:22
  Speaker 2: dubbed it, alongside these other images is that, you know,
• 54:28
  Speaker 2: She lived the loss of her father. She was there.
• 54:32
  Speaker 2: She saw it. She must have missed him. And yet
• 54:36
  Speaker 2: it may be that it was such an overwhelming experience
• 54:40
  Speaker 2: that those feelings somehow never really got felt. And that
• 54:45
  Speaker 2: would sort of map onto this idea that you know
• 54:48
  Speaker 2: the book really well. but she never really felt a
• 54:51
  Speaker 2: connection with it. So somehow she lived this experience, but
• 54:55
  Speaker 2: there's some unfelt feelings around it. And that's both in
• 55:02
  Speaker 2: the dream with the sorrow and the panic about losing
• 55:05
  Speaker 2: the cat, the actual feelings, but also the fear of
• 55:11
  Speaker 2: not finding it. I mean, cats are very feeling full animals,
• 55:15
  Speaker 2: so that there would be some feeling that was never
• 55:19
  Speaker 2: really fully registered or metabolized from that period of life.
• 55:24
  Speaker 4: The dreamer's history, the loss of her father at such
• 55:31
  Speaker 4: an early age, and then the missing masculine, you know,
• 55:36
  Speaker 4: mother and child and maybe siblings in the realm of
• 55:41
  Speaker 4: the feminine. And cats are such a famous image of
• 55:45
  Speaker 4: the feminine. Marie-Louise von Franz wrote a, a book, sort
• 55:49
  Speaker 4: of an exegesis of a fairy tale, but cats as
• 55:52
  Speaker 4: images of feminine feeling, and that that's what is endangered.
• 56:00
  Speaker 4: And the dreamer has lived that with a presumably somewhat
• 56:05
  Speaker 4: precarious ability to keep a house that's finally lost, and
• 56:12
  Speaker 4: maybe her job of being a staff writer again And
• 56:20
  Speaker 4: the bankruptcy of losing the home of, you know, an
• 56:25
  Speaker 4: overall image of precariousness.
• 56:30
  Speaker 3: I'm taking in what you're both saying. I find myself
• 56:35
  Speaker 3: coming back again and again to that sentence. Every time
• 56:39
  Speaker 3: I call out the wrong name, another animal shows up
• 56:41
  Speaker 3: and soon I'm surrounded by cats and dogs and goats
• 56:44
  Speaker 3: and chickens. And there's something so generous. Yes. in the
• 56:49
  Speaker 3: psyche in that moment, that it's not that she isn't
• 56:53
  Speaker 3: being responded to. It's not like the psyche is ignoring her,
• 56:57
  Speaker 3: that all she has to do is call, and this company,
• 57:00
  Speaker 3: this concourse of instincts comes happily to be with her.
• 57:06
  Speaker 3: And yet, the only thing that she can see is
• 57:12
  Speaker 3: the thing that's lost. And I just want to hold
• 57:15
  Speaker 3: how that can be for us. And we were talking
• 57:18
  Speaker 3: about perseveration earlier. The idea of the lost part can
• 57:25
  Speaker 3: become so large in our psyche. And the search for
• 57:30
  Speaker 3: the thing that, and particularly, I have lost and I
• 57:35
  Speaker 3: feel guilty about and I feel responsible about. So she's
• 57:40
  Speaker 3: got a story that I killed the cat. I opened
• 57:44
  Speaker 3: the door and I killed the cat. One which one
• 57:48
  Speaker 3: could challenge that narrative. Because in the dream world, every
• 57:53
  Speaker 3: part of the dream is a part of her soul
• 57:56
  Speaker 3: and it has a telos. So what she might not
• 58:00
  Speaker 3: realize is she opened or removed a barrier so that
• 58:05
  Speaker 3: this instinctive life in the house could escape because it
• 58:09
  Speaker 3: was meant to escape. It was meant to be freed
• 58:14
  Speaker 3: from the complex of the childhood home. And even though
• 58:18
  Speaker 3: the ego is saying, no, please let me stuff you
• 58:20
  Speaker 3: back in there. You couldn't possibly be okay for you
• 58:25
  Speaker 3: not to be trapped in the childhood home. Something wiser
• 58:30
  Speaker 3: inside of her, namely the cat, is like, hell no.
• 58:35
  Speaker 3: I'm not going back in that house. Because whatever's going
• 58:39
  Speaker 3: on in that house is not so great. And there's
• 58:43
  Speaker 3: all kinds of life, as I said, around her that's
• 58:46
  Speaker 3: incredibly responsive. And I have to say that if she
• 58:49
  Speaker 3: wasn't so determined to stuff the cat back in the house,
• 58:54
  Speaker 3: it might be happy to come back, but happy to
• 58:57
  Speaker 3: meet her in the backyard.
• 58:58
  Speaker 4: And the dream itself does not say that the cat
• 59:04
  Speaker 4: has been killed.
• 59:05
  Speaker 3: Yeah, exactly.
• 59:07
  Speaker 4: The dream says the cat ran off. out and isn't
• 59:11
  Speaker 4: coming back. And I love, you know, the generativity of
• 59:15
  Speaker 4: the psyche. As you mentioned, Joseph, it's just got a
• 59:18
  Speaker 4: whole barnyard now. That's right. I think it's the old
• 59:23
  Speaker 4: James Taylor song of when I call on your name,
• 59:27
  Speaker 4: you know, wherever I am, I'll come running. So the
• 59:30
  Speaker 4: goats and the chickens and the dogs all come running.
• 59:35
  Speaker 4: So it's worth exploring, what is that one thing that
• 59:39
  Speaker 4: supersedes everything else? And what we were talking about before,
• 59:44
  Speaker 4: do I know that it's true that the cat has
• 59:48
  Speaker 4: been killed? I don't know that it's true.
• 59:51
  Speaker 3: Could be out skiing.
• 59:54
  Speaker 2: You know... It's, I was having this sort of intuitive
• 59:58
  Speaker 2: feeling that somehow the dream was related to her work dilemma.
• 1:00:01
  Speaker 2: And Joseph, you've helped me maybe kind of get there
• 1:00:05
  Speaker 2: part of the way, because, you know, the point about
• 1:00:07
  Speaker 2: her assuming, oh, I killed the cat, you know, that's absolutely,
• 1:00:11
  Speaker 2: that is a particularly neurotic kind of tendency that many
• 1:00:15
  Speaker 2: of us have, is something happens, we give it the
• 1:00:19
  Speaker 2: worst possible meaning, and then we say, and it's our fault.
• 1:00:24
  Speaker 2: And my guess is that that may be this dreamer's
• 1:00:28
  Speaker 2: tendency to do that because she mentions the term self-flagellation.
• 1:00:34
  Speaker 2: And oftentimes that can be kind of a personality tendency
• 1:00:38
  Speaker 2: to self-flagellate. And she also mentions having been very kind
• 1:00:42
  Speaker 2: of studious. So this is all kind of in the
• 1:00:46
  Speaker 2: realm of perfectionism as well. And of course, if that's
• 1:00:49
  Speaker 2: where you're tending, it can be very difficult to attack
• 1:00:54
  Speaker 2: a creative project with authority, because you're too busy kind
• 1:00:58
  Speaker 2: of scrutinizing everything that you do. So I wonder if
• 1:01:02
  Speaker 2: that's part of what's going on with her finding it
• 1:01:04
  Speaker 2: difficult to really kind of present herself in an authoritative fashion.
• 1:01:09
  Speaker 2: And it's true, there is this incredible kind of creativity
• 1:01:12
  Speaker 2: in the psyche that she can just kind of conjure
• 1:01:15
  Speaker 2: up all of these different animals. So there's a lot
• 1:01:19
  Speaker 2: of wonderful, well, it's not exactly wildlife because most of
• 1:01:22
  Speaker 2: these are domesticated, but there's a lot of life in
• 1:01:27
  Speaker 2: the psyche too. And it may be that there has
• 1:01:31
  Speaker 2: been a kind of perseveration on what has been lost
• 1:01:35
  Speaker 2: without seeing all of the richness that's there.
• 1:01:38
  Speaker 3: I also want to just suggest that she's, She has
• 1:01:44
  Speaker 3: a fairy tale about the death of her father that
• 1:01:47
  Speaker 3: is perhaps being scripted, the screenwriter in her, that seeing
• 1:01:52
  Speaker 3: or discovering, she says she had seen the father die
• 1:01:56
  Speaker 3: of the heart attack.
• 1:01:57
  Speaker 2: Yeah, that's got to be hard.
• 1:01:59
  Speaker 3: Which is a little bit like the cat running out
• 1:02:01
  Speaker 3: the back door, that his soul just kind of ran
• 1:02:06
  Speaker 3: right by her and out into the wild, and she
• 1:02:10
  Speaker 3: was unable to stop it. And I think as children,
• 1:02:15
  Speaker 3: we create all kinds of narratives lacking sophisticated psychological theories.
• 1:02:22
  Speaker 3: And so I could imagine a five-year-old seeing a parent
• 1:02:27
  Speaker 3: pass away in front of them and thinking they had
• 1:02:29
  Speaker 3: done something wrong.
• 1:02:31
  Speaker 2: A hundred percent.
• 1:02:33
  Speaker 3: Should I have known how to save them? And then
• 1:02:37
  Speaker 3: years and years later, I'm 30, but I should have
• 1:02:40
  Speaker 3: done this and I should have done that because you
• 1:02:42
  Speaker 3: can't remember. You can't remember who you were at five,
• 1:02:44
  Speaker 3: of course. And so going back home is to revisit
• 1:02:51
  Speaker 3: what must have been a remarkable trauma, much of which
• 1:02:54
  Speaker 3: is still unconscious. And I think capturing the feeling of
• 1:03:04
  Speaker 3: being responsible for what has escaped the house, the soul,
• 1:03:10
  Speaker 3: and the father that had escaped the house of his body,
• 1:03:13
  Speaker 3: and at five undoubtedly crying out into the yard for
• 1:03:19
  Speaker 3: him to come back, crying his name, looking for him
• 1:03:24
  Speaker 3: the way children will look for someone who's passed. It
• 1:03:28
  Speaker 3: doesn't make sense that they're not there the next day
• 1:03:32
  Speaker 3: when we come home from school. And part of her
• 1:03:36
  Speaker 3: is still calling out, for him to return even. And
• 1:03:41
  Speaker 3: as you had said, Lisa, if we step way back,
• 1:03:44
  Speaker 3: think about it structurally, the father is the first anonymous figure.
• 1:03:49
  Speaker 3: So if there's a sense that the masculine has escaped
• 1:03:52
  Speaker 3: into the snowy field, has that changed the evolution of
• 1:03:57
  Speaker 3: her own sense of internal masculinity, which then somehow inhibits
• 1:04:03
  Speaker 3: that dynamic forward movement later in life? And the dream
• 1:04:08
  Speaker 3: may be an opportunity to recognize that there are all
• 1:04:14
  Speaker 3: kinds of dynamisms that come at her call. And it
• 1:04:19
  Speaker 3: doesn't have to be in any way related to the
• 1:04:22
  Speaker 3: loss of the father.
• 1:04:24
  Speaker 2: I think that's beautifully said, Joseph. And certainly that tendency,
• 1:04:29
  Speaker 2: of course children have a tendency to believe that if
• 1:04:31
  Speaker 2: a parent passed away, it's their fault somehow. That is
• 1:04:35
  Speaker 2: universal and It really does track with the cat got out,
• 1:04:39
  Speaker 2: so therefore I killed it.
• 1:04:41
  Speaker 4: Well, when we're kids, correlation and causation are not differentiated. So,
• 1:04:48
  Speaker 4: you know, we do this as adults too. You know,
• 1:04:51
  Speaker 4: that when two things happen together, we tend to create
• 1:04:55
  Speaker 4: a narrative about how they are connected. You know, that
• 1:04:59
  Speaker 4: when the heat goes off in the house, then... It
• 1:05:05
  Speaker 4: may mean something else altogether. And that veers into all
• 1:05:10
  Speaker 4: kinds of things that are strangely connected, like synchronicities. But
• 1:05:16
  Speaker 4: kids are not able to differentiate that. If you're five
• 1:05:21
  Speaker 4: years old and you see your father die, it has
• 1:05:26
  Speaker 4: to do with all the complicated feelings that children have
• 1:05:31
  Speaker 4: and a wish to make sense of things. Those are
• 1:05:34
  Speaker 4: feelings that kids need help to really process that is
• 1:05:39
  Speaker 4: often not available because everybody is affected.
• 1:05:42
  Speaker 3: It's also a wonderfully educative moment. I find myself in
• 1:05:48
  Speaker 3: this reverie of times when, even as an adult, my dog,
• 1:05:53
  Speaker 3: I used to have this very spunky little dog that
• 1:05:57
  Speaker 3: I got from the ASPCA who just hated being called Bema.
• 1:06:01
  Speaker 3: Oh my, what a scamp. You know, I would be
• 1:06:04
  Speaker 3: looking out in the backyard for him and I would,
• 1:06:06
  Speaker 3: it was a little tiny mutt, 20 pounds. I'd see
• 1:06:09
  Speaker 3: him balancing on his tiptoes on the top of the
• 1:06:13
  Speaker 3: chain link fence. And then he would look back at
• 1:06:15
  Speaker 3: me and then I'd see him sailing over the fence
• 1:06:17
  Speaker 3: and out into the yard. And he would be like
• 1:06:20
  Speaker 3: lightning and that feeling of, of panic and responsibility. And
• 1:06:26
  Speaker 3: then I'm like roaming around calling his name and looking
• 1:06:30
  Speaker 3: for him. And I'm just sitting in that feeling. And thinking,
• 1:06:35
  Speaker 3: to feel like that looking for your dad, that educates
• 1:06:42
  Speaker 3: my soul about how a five-year-old might have felt. The
• 1:06:49
  Speaker 3: desperate longing and the hope and the fear it conveys
• 1:06:55
  Speaker 3: so powerfully.
• 1:06:56
  Speaker 4: Yeah, and I think that's what got me right at
• 1:06:59
  Speaker 4: the beginning of the dream of that place that we
• 1:07:04
  Speaker 4: all have of, you know, this was just awful.
• 1:07:08
  Speaker 2: Yeah.
• 1:07:10
  Speaker 4: And to really sit in that feeling as an adult
• 1:07:16
  Speaker 4: is still very, very hard.
• 1:07:18
  Speaker 3: To call and to call and to call and to call.
• 1:07:22
  Speaker 2: For all of that longing to collapse. And he's never
• 1:07:24
  Speaker 2: coming back. Yeah.
• 1:07:26
  Speaker 4: He's never coming back. But dogs and cats and goats
• 1:07:31
  Speaker 4: and chickens have shown up. There's new life.
• 1:07:34
  Speaker 2: Absolutely.
• 1:07:35
  Speaker 3: You're not alone. You're not alone.
• 1:07:41
  Speaker 1: You've been listening to This Jungian Life. From our website, thisjungianlife.com,
• 1:07:47
  Speaker 1: you can follow us on Twitter, like us on Facebook,
• 1:07:50
  Speaker 1: help us produce future episodes by funding us through Patreon,
• 1:07:54
  Speaker 1: and submit your dreams for possible interpretation on another episode.
• 1:07:58
  Speaker 1: We'd like to thank our listener who shared a dream
• 1:08:01
  Speaker 1: for today's show and hope you'll let us know what
• 1:08:04
  Speaker 1: topics you'd enjoy hearing more about. Until next time, keep
• 1:08:08
  Speaker 1: living this Jungian life.
• 1:08:11
  Speaker 4: Thank you.