Through a Jungian Lens

Emerging from the deep freeze of a long and dark winter.

This is an image that fits well with what I am “feeling” at this time. I am posting shorter reflections and a bit less because I am learning to shift from thinking and analyzing into a place of feeling. I have to admit that I have denied, bottled up, and diverted feeling for almost all of my life. In saying that, I am talking about my feelings with regard to my self. Otherwise, I have been a “feeling” kind of guy, one who finds it easy to empathize with others and resonate with emotional affect. I might be prone to deny my own self-feelings, but I am definitely a “Nice Guy.”

I want to thank one of my faithful readers, a photographer (Hi Paul) who suggested a book about nice guys to me in one of his comments – No More Mr. Nice Guy, by Robert Glover. As I read I am seeing so much of my story, my responses, my habits and my sub-conscious belief system exposed for what it really is – being a “Nice Guy” is not such a good thing. I want to bring a few of Glover’s words here that have resonated with me:

“Why would it seem rational for a person to try to eliminate or hide certain things about himself and try to become something different unless there was a compelling reason for him to do so? Why do people try to change who they really are?

After spending several years examining the Nice Guy syndrome from every angle, there is only one answer to this question that makes sense: because it does not feel safe or acceptable for a boy or man to be just who he is.” (Glover, No More Mr. Nice Guy, p. 19)

Beliefs of little children who take on the blame and responsibility for everything that goes wrong in family and tries desperately to fix it through disguising and changing him or herself with the belief that in doing so, the world be be a better and safer place. And sometimes, the process of disguising oneself is a vital strategy for real safety as if one is swaddling oneself in layer upon layer of buffering materials. But, because a child is a child and is essentially powerless to affect change in the adult world that surrounds the child, all that really happens is that the child grows up to be an adult still hidden behind layers and layers of buffering material – layers that deny feeling and leave one frozen  in the childhood belief system.

Fortunately, we do have an option to leave this eternal winter of being locked in under and within the ice which freezes feelings. Spring has begun the melting process.