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“She’s just like my mother! — so weak!”
“He’s just like my father — so controlling!”

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"Journey" by Mimi Stuart
Live the Life you Desire

The quality of all of our relationships is a direct function of our relationship to ourselves.

~James Hollis

Since no one influences our relationship to ourselves as much as our parents, we are often drawn to people who have some key qualities of our parents (or their extreme opposites.) While at first familiar and comforting, eventually those qualities become all-too-familiar triggers to our childhood responses. For example, what at first seemed attractive, “strong and in control,” turns into “controlling and dictatorial.”

“How many marriages are wrecked for years, and sometimes forever, because he sees his mother in his wife and she her father in her husband, and neither ever recognizes the other’s reality!” wrote Carl Jung.

Imagine a wife is projecting onto her husband, “You’re just like my father — controlling and dictatorial.” Naturally, she will respond with the same defenses as she did as a child — she will behave like a child, whether with hostility, withdrawal, or reluctant compliance. Such a response intensifies the dynamic between the couple. He will see her as weak and become more domineering as a defense against vulnerability.

Projection triggers automatic responses, closing off the opportunity to relate in a fresh way in the current situation. By projecting all the control onto her husband, the wife assumes a lack of self-empowerment and continues to give away the power that she can develop within herself. The husband projects away his vulnerability and becomes increasingly forceful to repress any healthy though uncomfortable feelings of uncertainty.

To avoid this unhappy vicious cycle, the partners can try to take back their projections and overcome their automatic reactions.

Taking back projections is not easy. Partners feel obligated to point out the weaknesses of their partner that really reside within themselves. However, by taking back our projections, we have a chance to grow and learn to approach our partners fair-mindedly.

So, if we see our partner as controlling, for example, we must

1) learn to deal effectively with controlling people,
2) develop more personal authority to become less of a victim, and
3) deflate the power of controlling behavior by seeing the fear of vulnerability beneath the controlling behavior.

by Alison Poulsen, PhD

Read “Negative Projection.”

“Why do you always contradict me when I tell a story? Besides you’re wrong!”

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"Why not?" — Einstein by Mimi Stuart

Live the Life you Desire

So what I really meant was…

“Now don’t let the truth get in the way of a good story!”

People often like to correct their family members in the middle of their telling a story. Unless the correction is critical to the story and given respectfully, it usually just causes embarrassment and bickering.

So don’t get drawn in. Admit creativity, keep a sense of humor, and calmly continue the story.

by Alison Poulsen, PhD

Read “I can’t stand it when people talk over me.”

Re-Visioning Psychology:
“With all my psychological baggage, I feel like damaged goods.”

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"Quintessence" by Mimi Stuart
Live the Life you Desire

In “Re-Visioning Psychology,” James Hillman describes a new way of looking at psychological symptoms and pathology. He views them as giving one an opportunity to do “soul making.” Interestingly, the original Greek term “psyche” means “soul.” Thus, psychology should be the study of the soul, as psychological healing only begins when we focus on what an individual’s soul needs and wants (not simply what the ego wants.)

The psyche may upset or disturb us with symptoms such as depression, outbursts, sleeplessness, eating disorders, harmful relationships or worse, in order to get our attention. We are right to start with the symptom, but we are under the spell of the medical myth when we believe that psychological symptoms are something to be removed or “cured.”

Psychological symptoms can be transformed when they are “re-visioned” as multi-faceted, human pathways of soul.

Pathologies are the means by which the soul gets our attention when we are missing the soul’s intended journey. We must therefore investigate the meaning behind the symptom.

Rather than simply trying to get rid of a symptom, one should ask, “What does this symptom want to say? Why has it arrived at this time? What kind of life am I leading that it needs this disturbance? What does soul want?” We learn that soul heals by telling itself a better story—a healing fiction that can dissolve the belief system, which keeps the soul locked in misery.

This is not to say that we don’t want to change risky behavior or remove dangerous symptoms. However, the symptoms are more likely to truly transform when you look at the meaning behind them. For instance, in the case of over-eating, one might ask, “Why am I never satisfied? What nourishment is my soul seeking that would satisfy it?” Seeking to be filled up by food may be a metaphor or substitute for the nourishment the soul is seeking.

Hillman’s “archetypal psychology” requires a re-directing of psychology away from logical analysis into the inner empathic meanderings of the heart. Soul-work is grounded in an aesthetic, poetic basis of the mind. The “crazy artist,” and the “mad scientist” are metaphors for the intimate relation between pathology and imagination.

Soul speaks the language of imagination—through image, music, and metaphor. Thus, paying attention to what the soul wants through an imaginative consciousness is what makes the difference between feeling “damaged” and learning to live “soulfully.”

Archetypal psychology…claims that it is mainly through the wounds in human life that the Gods enter…because pathology is the most palpable manner of bearing witness to the powers beyond ego control and the insufficiency of the ego perspective.

~James Hillman in “Archetypal Psychology”

By Alison Poulsen, PhD

Watch “James Hillman on Archetypal Psychotherapy & the Soulless Society.”

Read “Changing your victim story: ‘My dad was an alcoholic and my mom was never there for me.”

Parental Boasting for Self-Esteem:
“Honey, I was just telling the Jones how smart and athletic you are.”

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When parents boast about their children to other adults in front of their own children they generally have good intentions. While in some cases they are trying to look good themselves by showing off the successful results of their parenting, usually they want to make their children feel good and thereby enhance their self-esteem.

Ironically, the effect is the opposite. Children are natural detectors of in-authenticity, manipulation, exaggeration, and false praise. They sense when their parents are trying hard to boost their self-esteem. It tells them they think their self-esteem needs boosting. So they must be inadequate.

Kids, especially teenagers, don’t like their parents to talk about them. It’s annoying to them because it places unwanted expectations on them. They want to be separate and individual beings, not dreams and expectations of their parents. Nor do they like feeling that they have to be exceptional to be worthy. They want to be valued for their more subtle uniqueness, which they don’t want to have analyzed by their parents either.

Children develop self-esteem by being in an environment where they develop skills, contribute to others, and have some freedom to express their individuality. Self-esteem is developed when parents are able to set boundaries and have reasonable expectations of their children. (It’s helpful to remember that it’s natural for children to test boundaries and to act disrespectfully at times in order to create separateness.)

Instead of raving about your children’s talents in front of them, it’s better to develop a good relationship with them. This involves knowing when a child needs space or attention, that is, being there to provide support, warmth, and boundaries without being intrusive or meddlesome. What counts is developing mutual respect and being able to talk and listen to your children, not boasting about them.

by Alison Poulsen, PhD

Read “My son’s the best. He got straight A’s again and is the varsity basketball team captain.”

Read “Flattery and Bragging. ‘Meet my amazing friend who has two masters degrees, is CEO of a big company, and is an iron-man tri-athlete.'”

Transformational Vocabulary:
“I’m angry, totally confused, and an emotional mess over these overwhelming problems.”

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"Alpha" by Mimi Stuart
Live the Life you Desire

Feelings are warning signals to look at things differently or to change a particular course of action. However, magnifying your emotions can paralyze you and prevent needed action.

The vocabulary you use to describe your emotions colors the way you feel. Thus, Tony Robbins coined the term “transformational vocabulary,” to describe how by using different words, you can change the intensity of the emotions you feel and how you perceive the events in your life.

If instead of saying that you are “angry” or “enraged,” you described yourself as being “disappointed” or “irritated,” the heat of the emotion would actually diminish. The feeling of disappointment is less devastating than anger. Disappointment encourages you to change your expectations to match reality, whereas anger and outrage invite you to dwell in the heat of the emotion.

How would you feel if you thought of yourself as “puzzled” rather than as “an emotional mess and totally confused?” Instead of implying helplessness, being “puzzled” invites an attitude of curiosity and solution-seeking.

Rather than being overwhelmed, what if you framed your situation as a “need to refocus?” If you called your problems “challenges” rather than “problems,” that would imply that they can be more easily overcome.

Reframing the fear you may feel into a healthy concern would result in your anxiety being less likely to turn against you.

The point is not to minimize or ignore feelings. Emotions usually occur for a good reason and it’s important to pay attention to them as a warning about a potential hazard in your life. But you don’t want to overplay your emotions to the point where they incapacitate you rather than help you.

by Alison Poulsen, PhD

Reference: Tony Robbins on Transformational Vocabulary.

Read “Disappointment: I’m so disappointed. How could she?”

Read “Flexibility: My negative emotions bring me down. I tend to dwell in feeling hurt or angry.”