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[SUBSCRIBER BONUS] Is My Wanderlust Related To My Mother Complex? · This Jungian Life Podcast

• 0:08
  Speaker 1: Welcome to Jung Love, where we answer questions and interpret
• 0:12
  Speaker 1: dreams from our subscriber community. And here's today's question. I'm
• 0:18
  Speaker 1: wondering if you can talk about the issue of place,
• 0:23
  Speaker 1: the ability to settle down somewhere, and how this could
• 0:26
  Speaker 1: relate to a mother complex. And for context, she writes,
• 0:31
  Speaker 1: I've always felt the need to move and can find
• 0:33
  Speaker 1: anything to be unhappy about in my surroundings. Sometimes I
• 0:37
  Speaker 1: wonder if it's related to how I was mothered. My
• 0:40
  Speaker 1: mother could be very distant at times and made me
• 0:42
  Speaker 1: feel strange for wanting her or having opinions or feelings
• 0:47
  Speaker 1: certain ways. She would often make fun of me and
• 0:49
  Speaker 1: I believe there could be a connection here in that
• 0:52
  Speaker 1: I can't take myself seriously for creating my own life.
• 0:57
  Speaker 1: I desperately want to move back to my hometown, but
• 1:00
  Speaker 1: I wonder if it is just an unconscious longing to
• 1:03
  Speaker 1: get back to my mother, a mother type, that I
• 1:07
  Speaker 1: never actually had. I like her self-analysis. She's really done
• 1:11
  Speaker 1: a great job self-reflecting on this.
• 1:14
  Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, the first thing that comes to my
• 1:16
  Speaker 2: mind is what they talk about in AA as a geographic.
• 1:20
  Speaker 2: So they talk about, you know, you can't do a
• 1:24
  Speaker 2: geographic cure, they talk about. So we do sometimes have
• 1:27
  Speaker 2: an impulse to move, to change, and that that can
• 1:32
  Speaker 2: be a way of externalizing or concretizing an inner dynamic.
• 1:38
  Speaker 2: And so therefore, the taking action in the outer world
• 1:42
  Speaker 2: is unlikely to change anything. Now, I want to say
• 1:45
  Speaker 2: that I think that it's a little more complicated than that,
• 1:49
  Speaker 2: because sometimes moving is the right thing to do. But
• 1:52
  Speaker 2: just in general, that language from AA is a caution
• 1:56
  Speaker 2: against thinking that just changing locations is going to change you.
• 2:00
  Speaker 3: And I think she, we assume, a she, is already
• 2:07
  Speaker 3: aware of that. And one of the paradoxes of being
• 2:12
  Speaker 3: human is that we can't just go inside ourselves and
• 2:16
  Speaker 3: do all our work internally. We have to get out
• 2:20
  Speaker 3: in the world and have experiences in the world, whether,
• 2:24
  Speaker 3: you know, jobs and relationships and places that we live
• 2:28
  Speaker 3: and recreational activities we engage in. The list is on
• 2:32
  Speaker 3: and on. And then use that as our listener is
• 2:39
  Speaker 3: doing to say, you know, how does this inform me
• 2:43
  Speaker 3: and my inner world? What is the meaning that I
• 2:46
  Speaker 3: make of it? I will say I have had some
• 2:52
  Speaker 3: number of people in my personal life and as clients
• 2:58
  Speaker 3: that have had this exact issue. And it really goes
• 3:03
  Speaker 3: to the issue of home. The hope is that we
• 3:09
  Speaker 3: find the home inside us, of that place where there's
• 3:15
  Speaker 3: a wholeness, a collection, a connection between our physical selves,
• 3:22
  Speaker 3: our emotions, our thinking and feeling, and so on. And
• 3:27
  Speaker 3: if there has been a difficult time a relationship with
• 3:32
  Speaker 3: the mother who first provides that home. She is our
• 3:37
  Speaker 3: first home, holding us, carrying us around, feeding us, singing
• 3:42
  Speaker 3: to us. It can be hard to find a sense
• 3:46
  Speaker 3: of home in adulthood, and it can get concretized as
• 3:52
  Speaker 3: a search for, maybe I should live in the country. No,
• 3:56
  Speaker 3: maybe I should live in a city. Maybe I should
• 3:59
  Speaker 3: live here. Maybe I should... have a different kind of house.
• 4:04
  Speaker 3: So I think I would want to circle around that
• 4:09
  Speaker 3: more than the question of should this person move back
• 4:14
  Speaker 3: to his or her hometown. Build it out a little
• 4:17
  Speaker 3: bit more. It's a much bigger conversation with herself or himself.
• 4:23
  Speaker 1: That's beautifully said, Deb.
• 4:25
  Speaker 2: Yeah. You know, one of the things that I'll say
• 4:28
  Speaker 2: is I've seen people move back to their hometown. And
• 4:31
  Speaker 2: in fact, it was very growth promoting in that it
• 4:34
  Speaker 2: allowed a confrontation with reality of what was or wasn't there.
• 4:39
  Speaker 2: So it might be that you move back and you're
• 4:42
  Speaker 2: both nourished by connections, either with people or with places
• 4:47
  Speaker 2: or memories that were there in the early years. You know,
• 4:50
  Speaker 2: and or you also see that things are not actually
• 4:54
  Speaker 2: as you remembered them to be. And that that sort
• 4:57
  Speaker 2: of confrontation with the reality of it can be kind
• 5:00
  Speaker 2: of help you reorient. If we have an impulse to
• 5:03
  Speaker 2: do something and it doesn't seem very rational, I think
• 5:07
  Speaker 2: it's important to kind of sit with it and be
• 5:09
  Speaker 2: curious about it and wonder. Where is this coming from?
• 5:12
  Speaker 2: Where is this impulse coming from? Is it welling up
• 5:15
  Speaker 2: from deep within the self and therefore it's something that
• 5:18
  Speaker 2: I need to follow even though it doesn't make sense?
• 5:21
  Speaker 2: Or is it coming from kind of trying to compensate
• 5:26
  Speaker 2: for something or is it kind of a concretization of
• 5:31
  Speaker 2: something that needs to be dealt with on an inner level?
• 5:34
  Speaker 2: We don't know that right away when a complex, when,
• 5:37
  Speaker 2: I'm sorry, when an impulse comes up. So what I
• 5:42
  Speaker 2: do when something like that happens is I hold it
• 5:45
  Speaker 2: for a while and I just try to sit with
• 5:47
  Speaker 2: it and see what happens and see if it changes,
• 5:51
  Speaker 2: see if it shifts, see if it keeps coming back.
• 5:54
  Speaker 2: I mean, I've talked about on the podcast before, I
• 5:57
  Speaker 2: went back, I'm getting a doctorate. I had an impulse
• 6:00
  Speaker 2: to get a doctorate and I was like, well, that
• 6:02
  Speaker 2: is the most ridiculous thing in the world. I pushed
• 6:05
  Speaker 2: it aside, but I kind of left some space around it.
• 6:07
  Speaker 2: What I found was that it just kept on coming back.
• 6:11
  Speaker 2: I'm getting this doctor. I'm loving it.
• 6:13
  Speaker 1: It's great.
• 6:14
  Speaker 2: I'm so glad I did this. I don't know that
• 6:17
  Speaker 2: I would have had the language to say why it
• 6:19
  Speaker 2: felt important to do it, but I did it, but
• 6:22
  Speaker 2: it took, but I held it for a while before
• 6:24
  Speaker 2: I acted on it. So that's maybe another way to
• 6:27
  Speaker 2: think about it.
• 6:28
  Speaker 3: Where I go with what you've just said, Lisa, is
• 6:33
  Speaker 3: try it. If you, it goes away or it doesn't
• 6:38
  Speaker 3: go away, it keeps coming back. You can try it.
• 6:42
  Speaker 3: She could go to her hometown for a week, for
• 6:47
  Speaker 3: a long weekend. I don't know how great the geographic
• 6:50
  Speaker 3: distance is, but at least oftentimes we can try something.
• 6:55
  Speaker 3: And if it's not right, then we know for sure
• 6:59
  Speaker 3: that it represents more of an internal issue than an
• 7:06
  Speaker 3: optimum fit in the external world.
• 7:08
  Speaker 2: That's a great idea.
• 7:09
  Speaker 3: Yeah.
• 7:10
  Speaker 1: One frame I'd also like to offer is I think
• 7:13
  Speaker 1: people can fall into two very broad categories, those who
• 7:17
  Speaker 1: consume experiences and those who generate experiences.
• 7:21
  Speaker 2: Ooh, interesting.
• 7:24
  Speaker 1: So I think that if we just find ourselves, and
• 7:27
  Speaker 1: this is blameless, you know, it's like a typology. If
• 7:31
  Speaker 1: we find ourselves in the consuming experiences category, These are
• 7:35
  Speaker 1: people who just love to travel. Traveling is the most
• 7:38
  Speaker 1: wonderful thing they could imagine, and they want to consume
• 7:42
  Speaker 1: the novelty of all kinds of wonderful experiences, and it
• 7:46
  Speaker 1: truly enriches them. Some people have a temperament where you
• 7:52
  Speaker 1: can drop them off anywhere. Within a couple of months,
• 7:56
  Speaker 1: they've founded an organization, they've made a bunch of friends,
• 7:59
  Speaker 1: they've integrated into the community, they're throwing parties. And they're
• 8:04
  Speaker 1: creating experiences for themselves or making things happen. So I
• 8:10
  Speaker 1: think what I'm hearing, it's a big jump, that this
• 8:13
  Speaker 1: is a person who likes to consume experiences. She goes
• 8:16
  Speaker 1: to a place, she tastes the experiences that it has
• 8:20
  Speaker 1: to offer. Then there's something inside that says, ah, but
• 8:24
  Speaker 1: you know, I'm not getting a certain flavor. I'm not
• 8:27
  Speaker 1: getting fed in a way that I think I still need.
• 8:32
  Speaker 1: And so the search kind of goes on. Now, I
• 8:36
  Speaker 1: wouldn't say this in general, but relative to the dream,
• 8:39
  Speaker 1: is it possible that this person's hunger to consume experiences
• 8:46
  Speaker 1: is related to being fed by the mother? Possibly. I mean,
• 8:51
  Speaker 1: that's an interesting lens. And so if we're looking for
• 8:55
  Speaker 1: that mother milk or the experience of that from the
• 9:00
  Speaker 1: surrounding environment, Yes, that fantasy that the environment will mother
• 9:06
  Speaker 1: me in a way that I was not as a child,
• 9:10
  Speaker 1: that would be a powerful thing to confront. If that
• 9:13
  Speaker 1: is the place that we find ourselves, we won't be
• 9:17
  Speaker 1: free until you realize that you are the mother you've
• 9:23
  Speaker 1: been waiting for, that your mothering needs can be supplied
• 9:29
  Speaker 1: by your conscious self. by taking on self-mothering behaviors that
• 9:37
  Speaker 1: would benefit you and that would gratify you. And that
• 9:40
  Speaker 1: goes with you anywhere you go.
• 9:41
  Speaker 3: That's really wonderful that you have the power. It is
• 9:46
  Speaker 3: within us. That's really optimistic. I like it a lot.