Diane Hancox

Jungian

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Those Holiday Blues

Ironically, this time of year, often filled with increased opportunities for relaxing and connection with others, is a time of increased stress and depression.  Although the song tells us, “It’s the most wonderful time of the year,” for many it is clearly not.

One study stated that two-thirds of women report depression during the holidays and according to a Mayo Clinic study there are a few familiar triggers behind the depression. Psychiatrist Dr. Johnson noted that “Depression is higher in the winter months in general, but the biggest cause of holiday depression is unmet expectations.”

We may expect our relationships to be perfect during the holidays. However, if you have a tense relationship throughout the year, the holidays may not be any different. In fact, family conflicts are often intensified during holidays. Be aware of your family dynamics and what you can expect (or not!) from others. Make realistic plans and openly talk with others about any expectations around time spent together.

Financial stress from buying gifts, travel expenses, and purchasing specialty foods as well as other holiday items can lead to feeling financially overwhelmed, and even frustrated and resentful.  Give yourself permission to cut back on purchases. Remember, it is the intention behind the gift, the offering of food and spending quality time with others that matters.

Holidays evoke memories, and often the memories are unpleasant. This may be especially true around memories of something bad happening during past Christmases and of missing loved ones who are no longer with us or not able to be with us. Returning home or to other places can often trigger such memories and their associated feelings.

Acknowledge your feelings. If someone close to you has recently died or you can’t be with loved ones, realize that it is normal to feel sadness and grief. It is okay to take time to cry and express your feelings. You can’t force yourself to be happy just because it is the holiday season.

Facing the huge expectation that one is supposed to be with friends and family over the holidays can bring disappointment and feelings of loneliness to those who are alone. Being by ourselves on Christmas does not mean we cannot bring meaning to the holidays.

If you are anticipating loneliness, seek out social interaction through community, spiritual, volunteering or other social events. Participating with others, even if they are strangers, raises the levels of the feel-good oxytocin molecule. Create a list of self-care activities that bring you joy and peace (e.g., walks in nature, buying a treat, making a gratitude list, listening to music, viewing a favourite movie, etc.). Make the holiday what you want it to be like.

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The Importance of Feeling Our Feelings

Most people have difficulty experiencing the full range of emotions. We may have been raised in a family where certain feelings were not allowed to be expressed or one in which everything had to be “fine.” We may have been overwhelmed, even traumatized by intense emotions. In all cases, discomfort arises when we are exposed to and/or feel certain emotions.

Additionally, the psychiatric field often influences how we perceive emotions. Normal and much needed emotions are often pathologized. For example, sadness is often viewed as dysfunctional, is given the label ‘depression,’ and is to be eradicated with medications. 

A more recent example is the pathologizing of introversion or shyness. In his book, “’Shyness: How Normal Behavior Became a Sickness,” author Christopher Lane states, “Shyness isn’t just shyness any more. It’s a disease.” Traits of ordinary shyness such as seeking time alone, inward reflection, and avoidance of public events or speaking are now listed as qualities of “social anxiety” and “avoidant personality disorder.” 

There is an increasing trend to negate certain emotions. Although far from meeting the criteria for being clinically diagnosed with Depressive or Anxiety Disorder, patients are routinely prescribed Prozac, Zoloft and Paxil to regulate symptoms of depression and anxiety. As Jerome Wakefield and Allan Horwitz suggest in their book, “The Loss of Sadness,” “The normal range of human emotion is not being tolerated.” 

However, it is healthy and necessary for us to feel all our emotions, including sadness, anger, boredom and anxiety. In his book, “Against Happiness,” Eric Wilson makes a case for our more sober emotions and their “integral place in the great rhythm of the cosmos.” Melancholia is the source of much of the great art, poetry and music. Wilson suggests, “The blues can be a catalyst for a special kind of genius, a genius for exploring dark boundaries between opposites.” 

Feelings indicate how we are relating to our situations and ourselves. For example, discontentment motivates us to improve not only ourselves, but also our circumstances and our community at large. Anger often indicates unfairness and injustice prompting us to take action. We may become bored with eating the same items for breakfast. The boredom indicates that we need to bring some newness into our life – well, at least during breakfast selections. 

From a depth psychology perspective, boredom (a milder form of depression) is really a temporary stoppage of the spontaneity of new images. We are momentarily stuck. Depression, however, represents a deeper entrenchment into sameness and is a call for exploration into what needs to be changed on a deeper level than just changing our breakfast cereal.

In Aldous Huxley’s “Brave New World,” the hero John Savage exclaimed as he retreated from the monotonously pleasure-seeking society: “I don’t want comfort. I want God. I want poetry. I want real danger. I want freedom. I want goodness.” He wanted to feel the range of his emotions.

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The Divine Child Offers Hope

At this time of year, many people celebrate Christmas and the birth of the child of God, Jesus. As with any child that appears in dreams or myths, it usually signals the emergence of previously unknown psychic material into consciousness. What is the Christ child trying to bring into our consciousness? 

Archetypically, the child appears in many forms such as the Orphan, the Innocent, and the Magical Child. The Christ Child celebrated at Christmas, as with Buddha, Krishna, and Mohammed, is the Divine Child in that it possesses a special gift, born with great destiny. He is the hero, the true Self, ready to be fully realized. He is a symbol of future hopes, potentiality, newness and even redemption.

Psychologically, the Christmas Nativity scene represents the possibility of human wholeness. Christmas occurs during the winter solstice, the darkest and coldest point of winter. Symbolically, what is needed when we are in our darkest and most unconscious times is the Divine Child; one whom brings light in the form of increased consciousness, new feelings and ideas.

Christmas offers annual hope of the emergence of new developments in the human psyche. 

However, in all great myths, the birth of the hero or Divine Child is always threatened by negative reactions from the status quo. In this case, King Herod, the ruling authority, is fearful of being superseded by the new authority, represented by the Christ Child.

Symbolically, King Herod represents our egos and the collective forces that threaten, as they did Jesus, our true complete selves, our own inner Divine Child. Like the Christ Child, we are inevitably bullied, coerced and wounded. The result is a lack of wholeness. 

The task is to reclaim our wounded parts that have been exiled into the darkness, into the unconscious. These parts wait for the reintegration into the light, into our consciousness. Jung called this task individuation. 

The Christmas story proposes the right to be our true selves, to live to our full potentials without pressure from the collective, and to be no other than whom we are destined to be. We are the Christ Child. The Divine Child is within each of us. 

Jung explained “the remarkable story of a divine child” as the “function” of our true selves. He stated, “Despite the harsh and unwelcoming environment, the hostility of the powers that be, and all the forces arrayed against him, the child survives, and even flourishes.” There is hope. 

Take time over the holidays to recreate a ‘Silent Night’ – a time of soulful calmness, silence and darkness. Envision yourself at the manger, looking at the Divine Child, at you. Contemplate on the qualities of yourself that need to be brought back into consciousness. Light a candle to honour these traits, as they are the light required for your wholeness.

Whether the trait deals with being more generous or accepting a prejudice, the integration will bring you closer to wholeness, to the light that the Divine Child offers. As Jung suggested, to “confront a person with their shadow is to show them their own light.”  

What light will the Christ Child represent for you this year?

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Scarcity & Abundance

In the reality show, Hoarders, the accumulation of material possessions, especially with items deemed worthless, such as yogurt containers, may evoke our wonder as to possible underlying psychologically reasons for such behaviour. 

When we accumulate or have difficulty in giving, we are working from a scarcity mindset. This worldview believes that there is not enough success, money, food, friendship, sale items or parking spaces. It creates power and control, withholding, stinginess, forcing and the seeking of security. 

Scarcity mentality believes in a win-lose situation that isolates people and establishes a ‘me-you’ or ‘us-them’ camp. A sense of comparing and competition is established. We often relate with people from a position of what we can get from them. Scarcity based people believe, “Don’t trust anyone; they’re out to get you.” 

Despite having enough and knowing we are capable of getting more, there persists a wanting for more and a feeling that the good will not last. These scarcity driven attitudes are symbolic of deeply feeling that we are not good enough. We cope by taking an attitude that life is about struggle, competition, and grasping for items and experiences to boost our ego. As Gary Zukav, author of Seat of the Soul, noted, “Scarcity of self value cannot be remedied by money, recognition, affection, attention or influence.” 

The opposite of scarcity is abundance. This worldview is based upon the principle that there is enough for everyone. It works from an attitude of generosity, patience, trust, and the letting go of security and control. We deeply feel we have enough and wholeheartedly belief, “I am enough.” 

Abundance relies heavily upon the principle of interconnectedness. As author of the book, The Trance of Scarcity, Victoria Castle stated, “An abundance paradigm views the world in terms of boundless potential, where there is the possibility of enough for everyone.” 

When we work from abundance, we rejoice in the successes of others, knowing that we have and will continue to receive our own successes. Stephen Covey suggested we take an attitude of believing that other people’s success “adds to … rather than detracts from … our lives.” 

We learn about scarcity and abundance in childhood. If we experienced childhoods in which our physical, emotional or psychological needs were regularly unmet, we received messages that there is ‘not enough.’ 

Conversely, with ‘good enough’ parenting, where our needs were met to some level of healthy ego development, we learned to trust that our needs will be meet and tend to feel we are ‘good enough.’ We develop early an abundance or scarcity complex that relates to seeing the world through an optimistic or pessimistic lens. 

Timely for this gift-giving time of year, we also need to be conscious of in what realms we are abundant. Franklin Roosevelt wisely stated, “The test of our progress is not whether we add to the abundance of those who have much. It is whether we provide enough to those who have little.” 

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Honouring the Feminine

December 6 is recognized as a National Day of Remembrance and Action on Violence Against Women in Canada. Although men are victims of violence, statistics indicate that half of Canadian women have survived at least one incident of sexual or physical violence and 29% of Canadian women have been assaulted by a spouse. What might be the underlying cause?

For psychological development to occur, boys need to psychically separate from their first or primal relationship, the one with their mothers. This break results in both a splitting and liberation of the masculine from the feminine. As with any splitting, the quality abandoned does not go away, and in this case, much of the feminine is exiled into the unconscious.

Girls also undergo a similar psychic split necessary for their psychologically development. Girls need to psychically separate from their fathers, resulting in the repression of some masculine qualities into their unconscious. 

As with any pair of human traits, problems occur when there are imbalances. For women, and in some cases men, the imbalance manifests as being too reliant upon relatedness and caregiving for others, as martyrdom, and as a lack of taking action. We become ample talkers of feelings and ideas, yet rarely get anything done. 

Men, and in many cases women, who have separated from their feminine side have difficulty feeling empathy for others, nature and themselves. There has been a retreat into order, ruling and the importance of knowing. There is a devaluing of feelings, intuition and nature. The result is a lack of relatedness with self, others and the environment. We become emotionally detached thinkers and doers.

As with any repressed material, the ego becomes anxious, even fearful of the repressed feminine qualities such as relatedness and the expression of feelings. Ironically, many men unconsciously control the feminine out of fear of the very thing they deeply yearn for – both inner and outer relatedness. 

Control of the feminine is apparent in physical and sexual abuse. More subtle control occurs with put-downs, making light of or rationalizing hurtful behaviour, intimidation, blaming, financial control and not including the woman in making decisions. 

Collectively, we see communities and nature ruined with decisions based primarily upon logic and economics without considering the overall impact on the environment. We see the devaluing of women and girls through abuse, inequity in pay, and lack of social support for (abused) women. 

We often hear about Mother Nature’s fury when tsunamis, earthquakes and forceful weather systems happen. Although destructive, the rage is justifiable. As with violence against women, the anger is about the unfair treatment of the feminine, this time against Gaia, Mother Earth herself.   

On both individual and collective levels, masculine and feminine imbalances need to be addressed. Patriarchal control can be equalized by integrating feminine principles such as acknowledging feelings and taking an interconnectedness and holistic outlook. This honouring back of the feminine into both male and female psyches will enhance our relatedness with others, the environment and ourselves.