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Tapping The Unconscious: Jungian Techniques For ACoA's By Ward D. Johnson, M.F.T In my twenty years of working with children of alcoholics including adults and those still dependent upon their parents, I have found the spiritually based, psychological concepts advanced by Carl ~ Jung of increasing value. I have derived significant benefits by incorporating a few basic Jungian constructs into my practice with this group and similar populations. Carl Jung was a Swiss-born psychiatrist (1875 -1962), and a contemporary of Freud, who broke with Freud over the idea that repressed sexuality is the origin of most, or all neurosis. Jung postulated the idea of psychological opposites, causing what he and Freud both called complexes. Perhaps most importantly, Jung popularized the idea of finding meaning through wholeness, rather than goodness. This means not repressing either opposite of a problem, but of finding a balance between the opposites. In working with adult children of alcoholics, I have found this principal enormously helpful. Finding a balanced middle ground is the focus so often sought in therapy. Adult children of alcoholics are victims of excessive highs and lows, over-commitment and then withdrawal, fight or flight, rescuing and/or rejection. It is as if there is no center to them; no place to call home. In order to understand why this is so, it is important to review what can go wrong in childhood development. Children, above all, need to be allowed to be children. This means going through a natural period of narcissistic exploration, where they feel the world is their oyster, because they have parents who will allow them to challenge their environment, yet save them from disaster. This relationship creates a basic trust in children toward their world, which includes parents, families and friends. After this sense of basic trust and this natural sense of security, and this invincibility evaporates into a thinly disguised veil of terror and anxiety. Basic trust in others is destroyed when children cannot rely on their parents to take care of them. In the alcoholic home, unpredictability is the rule; children learn to monitor the outward environment long before they begin to monitor their own feelings. The result is a false appearance of maturity and responsibility, when, in fact, it is just the opposite. These children are learning to avoid themselves and their terrifying feelings by focusing on others. Typically, this comes in the form of protecting, rescuing and nurturing. This develops into a syndrome, which Robert Ackerman in Children of Alcoholics calls hyper maturity and what Ivan Boszmoreny-Nagy in Invisible Loyalties calls parentificatlon. In the former case, children don't seem to need parents. In the latter case, children seem to need to be parents to their parents. "Hyper maturity" or "parentification" both contribute to a basic lack of mirroring of the child. If children do not get feedback on their behavior, they do not learn, and more basically, they do not develop a basic sense of identity. With this lack of identity comes a thirst for recognition and approval. This lack of recognition and approval produces incompleteness, an separateness, often with an accompanying sense of isolation and abandonment This, in turn, produces deep-set inferiority complexes, in which children express "if only I were better they would love me." The feeling of inadequacy is far easier to bear than that of abandonment Thus, it is less painful to keep trying, than to feel that no one cares, or is responsible enough to care. It is not uncommon for an adult child to feel that something deep down is really wrong with them. Fear of both madness and alcoholism, or just being out of control is common. Adult children of alcoholics often feel that they are in a tug of war with them-selves, just to stay in control. Being in control, so important when the external environment is threatening, becomes a threat to Reintegration. The fear of losing control is so great that the active surrendering to one's feelings becomes difficult Children of alcoholics generally have catastrophic expectations about themselves. "If I start crying, I will never stop" . . ." If I stop trying, my world will fall apart." Surrender is an important word for adult children, and generally one that is not understood. I have found that children of alcoholics, much like their parents, have difficulty in surrendering or releasing control. It is no wonder that in practicing therapy with adult children of alcoholics, there is an avoidance or downright refusal to examine conscious or unconscious thoughts, feelings, and fantasies. One of the first tasks in working with adult children, and other "responsible" children from dysfunctional families, is to teach them how looking inside can bring immediate relief, as well as a new sense of what "control" really means. The Jungian appreciation of unconscious images and fantasies offers fertile ground for adult children to start to look at themselves. Jung defines the unconscious as that which is beyond the control of the ego, and not that which is "unconscious," or unknown to the ego. By understanding this, adult children can learn there is a whole world inside themselves that they can't control, that is not there to be controlled; it is there to be observed and leaned from. The first step in tapping into this unconscious world comes in the form of a very simple technique, one that is not specifically Jungian in origin. It is a technique that works very well in group therapy, because it provides a basic framework for group members to complete and report on. Adult children are simply taught how to be aware of them selves, much like learning to meditate formally. They are taught how to sit down with pen and paper or typewriter and just observe what they are experiencing, particularly when they are troubled with a problem. This experience might include some awareness of a pain in the stomach, a tightening of the jaw or forehead, tensing of the legs, a mental racing of thoughts, a desire to run, or the need to engage in some compulsive behavior. Adult children want to change their external environment first as a way of dealing with anxiety'. This basic anxiety tends to lodge in the body, then in the form of chronic tension. Once adult children learn to identify the location of these chronic tensions, learning begins to take place. Adult Children often describe, for instance, jaw or neck tension as leading to a desire to cry, or to pound or to break something. As simple a process as it is to observe, adult children want to begin problem solving first, rather than just sticking to awareness. What emerges is the awareness that feelings seem dangerous and unwanted. Many adult children literally suffer from "post-traumatic stress syndrome." Experiences of violence, ~ abuse and, in many cases sexual abuse, have been repressed and seem overwhelming when emerging to consciousness. The suffering caused by these experiences often does not become obvious until several years after they stop happening. Simple observation skills become shutdown in many individuals from these families because it is too painful for them to experience what is obvious, e.g., "Dad is an alcoholic and Momma doesn't notice."' Many adult children of alcoholics, and many adult children from homes with similar dynamics, need to rediscover their experience. This means retraining them to pay attention to a full range of feelings and sensations, from the superficial to the sublime and poignant The technique mentioned in this article ('and others like it) accomplish the following helpful results. I. Builds a sense of identity separate from the ups and downs in life; 2. This greatly reduces the incidences of generalized anxiety, phobias and nameless fears. It also allows emotions to flow more freely, because conscious control to repress them decreases, or at the very least becomes more conscious; 3. Decreases the duration disturbing opposites. Group participants learn to watch for psychological opposites in themselves. As a result of this technique, group members who were formerly terrified by feelings, soon discover a reassuring phenomenon; disturbing thoughts and feelings function as helpful feedback loops to speed growth and recovery. Repressing these thoughts and feelings only make them more intense, because they must breakthrough to consciousness to signal an imbalance. Because these thoughts and feelings are unconscious, that is, beyond the control of the ego, they' can't be willed away. How often have all of us tried to will a thought away, only to think of it constantly? They can, instead, be accepted and thus made conscious. Once accepted, that Is not restricted, they tend to fade In intensity and eventually disappear. Another way of saying this, according to Jung is that the unconscious, and everything it produces, is compensatory. This means that unconscious content is meant to balance conscious contact. Jungian Therapy teaches a different attitude toward approaching disturbing thoughts and feelings. Instead of being willed away, they are instead viewed as "messengers" from an unconscious part of oneself, meant to bring balance to the conscious mind, or at least. signal that an imbalance is present. In summary, Jung says that the defined meaning of all conscious and unconscious awareness is self-regulating. This means that dreams and images come from the unconscious to balance one-sidedness and consciousness. When children of alcoholics understand that their dream images and fantasies help them to be more whole, a tremendous change takes place. Often the unconscious exaggerates these images to get the point across. One patient of mine had repeated images of being run over or mutilated in the stomach. This patient was not psychotic, but had a fear of becoming so. After examining her individual and family history, it became clear that she had put tremendous pressure on herself to be a success. She had no childhood to speak of, because of the hyper maturity syndrome discussed earlier in this article, and had carried the hope of her third world parents on her back for her whole life. When she learned that her unconscious was trying to tell her to slow down, the disturbed quality of these images began to lessen. The more she learned to play and relax the less her unconscious had to tell her to slow down. She learned that her disturbing thoughts and feelings reappeared when she would pressure herself again, and were a signal to her to slow down. Obviously, none of these images were under her direct conscious control. When adult children learn that they can alter these unconscious thoughts and feelings through acceptance and surrender (as the third step in the Twelve Steps of AA says), a tremendous change takes place. Instead of feeling like a victim to this phenomenon, and a "failure" at controlling their feelings consciously, they get Intrigued that they can engage in internal mental processes that disengage "conscious" attempts to control troubling imagery. To summarize once again, group members learn, to quote Jungian therapist Robert Johnson author of 'He and She, that either they do their inner work or their inner work does them." Disturbing images and fantasies, experienced either day or night, tend to increase in severity if a proper attitude toward them is not maintained. Group members learn that these images are there to help and inform rather than to disturb. With this attitude, and additional therapeutic work these disturbing images then to disappear completely. Sometimes they can even directly transform into benign figures, much as that noted, in fairy tales. Group members often report that terrifying images shrink in size and severity by being talked to. These Jungian techniques have been shown to assist individuals in finding a balanced middle ground, freed from opposites. Mood swings, so often a troubling part of recovery from people coming from alcoholic families, can be greatly' reduced by these techniques. The group setting creates an environment in which individuals from alcoholic homes, as well as other dysfunctional families, can learn to lead more fulfilling lives. Violence, verbal abuse, and in many cases, sexual abuse, have been repressed and seem overwhelming. Ward Johnson, MFT, has a private practice in San Diego, and has been licensed for over twenty years. Telephone: (619) 992-4244. |
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