“An ancient adept has said: ‘If the wrong man uses the right means, the right means work in the wrong way.’ This Chinese saying, unfortunately only too true, stands in sharp contrast to our belief in the ‘right’ method irrespective of the man who applies it. In reality, everything depends on the man and little or nothing on the method.” C.G.Jung∗
If you decide to have a psychological consultation or begin psychotherapy with me, here are some of the things that characterise my work as a psychotherapist.
1.
At the beginning of my professional practice, I wanted to understand as much as possible about different psychotherapeutic modalities in order to see mental health problems holistically – from different angles and perspectives. Then came the moment when the puzzle of many pieces began to fit together and I began to see the unity behind the diversity of theories and working methods.
Then I realised that the real healing happens elsewhere – it has to do with the personality of the therapist, who can only be a factor in someone else’s healing to the extent that he has also been able to find a cure for his own wound. From then on, the main focus of my further development moved to asking, “To what extent is the problem my client has been solved in my own psyche?” And, if I find that there is still something unresolved in me, to try to illuminate and resolve it.
2.
This is how my personal style of work developed, stemming from the specific nature of my wound – the same one that led me to choose the profession of “wounded healer“. This wound stems from my early encounter with death and the question of the meaning of life in the world of matter, where everything we are connected to and strive for sooner or later crumbles. This question was most painful for me in relation to the theme of love.
Thus began my long and dedicated search for an answer to the question of what it is that does not die and what is the right way to take care of it. For only a spiritual view of life in matter can heal wounds like mine. I now know that as long as I am in the human dimension, this wound will always be there. In the meantime, however, so much has changed since I have walked this path. For example, I now know more about how we can embody love on Earth. And how my wound – my severed connection to the Source – is intimately connected to the forces that formed me as a healer.
3.
In this process of seeking, I have become acquainted with the teachings of various spiritual traditions and numerous spiritual teachers. Thanks to what I read from them I was able to understand the meaning of the experiences I was going through, which are inherent in the processes of spiritual transformation. Had it not been for this knowledge, I do not know how I would have coped – initiation into the depths of the human psyche is a tremendous test of the endurance of mind and body.
This is why I started sharing what I learned from them on my website, espirited.com – in the hope that this knowledge will be a source of support for others like me who are also walking this arduous path. Because the suffering of walking in the dark, the confusion and misunderstanding of what is happening to you, is often greater than the other kinds of pain. The irony is that my spiritual quest eventually brought me back to the field of psychology, where I had not previously found answers to the questions that plagued me.
This was through Jung’s ideas of analytical psychology, which, before I had the experience of encountering the depths of the human soul, were very alien and weird to me.
4.
Exploring Jung’s ideas opened a new page in my spiritual quest as I began to understand in a new way how ” the care of the soul” happens. In his psychology, the process of spiritual transformation is called the “individuation process,” and soul care happens through the creative dialogue between consciousness and the contents of the collective unconscious that invades our own psyche from within, breaking through the ego’s defences.
As a result of this dialogue, a new centre of consciousness is born – a different self that is an intermediate point between the empirical personality (the ego) and the archetype from which the self emerges (the archetype of the Self). However, the strongest influence Jung’s ideas had on me was the understanding of the theme of the duality of life in matter and how it manifests in the human psyche. Unlike the spiritual practices of the East, whose goal is the attainment of enlightenment, the goal of the individuation process is the process of spiritual creation through the development of consciousness. This occurs when the individual begins to unify the opposites within himself, unfolding the potential of his individual psychic form.
Understanding the difference between the spiritual paths of the East and the West was a real revelation to me. From here on things began to become more and more clear and aligned for me. And the theme of duality and the unification of opposites at the centre of the Self became central to my interest in the soul.
5.
The irony is that my individuality has led me to approach things differently from Jungian analysis. Instead of using dream work and active imagination, my way of work is with the logical side of the mind and using its ability for differentiation to process the emotions and experiences of the day. I can describe my approach as “dreaming with eyes open,” where we examine projections and different beliefs in order to unite opposing thoughts in a new way. By making distinctions and examining these projections, one brings together previously incompatible opposites.
6.
Thus my personal understanding of uniting opposites has influenced my work as a psychotherapist. At its centre is building a harmonious relationship between the mind and emotions through honest self-observation and self-examination. So, despite of big influence of Jung’s ideas on my understanding of soul care, I do not work in the tradition of Jungian analysis in my work. Instead, my approach resembles cognitive psychotherapy in its active engagement with the rational mind as the primary catalyst for change.
However, the difference with cognitive psychotherapy is great also because I see the goal of therapeutic work is a transformation of the mind by working with the pairs of opposites and seeking the third that unites them.
7.
And here comes something else very important, which comes from my experience that changing the way we think is fundamental to healing human problems – it has to do with the need to UNDERSTAND what is going on. This is why I see psychotherapy as a form of learning.
To change our thinking profoundly, it is not enough to examine our beliefs and replace them with others that are more in line with reality (as happens in cognitive psychotherapy). It takes more than that – understanding how the hidden dynamics of the human psyche work, developing skills of emotional intelligence, and knowing the laws that govern the development of the human soul.
8.
This is why, in my work, I often explain what I see from the sidelines and how the universal laws and hidden dynamics of mental processes are at work in this particular situation. Adding new knowledge is an important part of the therapeutic process because a developmental crisis is a sign that previous ways of thinking and average responses are no longer working. It is with this in mind that I have created the 29-DAY PROGRAMME, which shows how the ego and the soul can co-exist harmoniously, with due attention to each.
The former is about developing emotional intelligence skills, and the latter is about developing spiritual intelligence.
9.
Of these two, emotional and spiritual intelligence, I think we know much more about the former and less about what the latter looks like. Healing processes are always processes of inner healing, but integrating the personal shadow is different from integrating those parts of the collective shadow that we experience within our own psyche. The second is the main challenge in the processes of spiritual transformation, and it is in providing the knowledge of how to deal with this challenge that I see Jung’s main contribution. In this process, mere acceptance or presence without identification with the experience, as most spiritual teachers preach, is not enough. Alchemical action is required until the negative content of the archetype is revealed in its positive form.
Jung called this process of working with the collective shadow within one’s own psyche “assimilation“, and this is the most creative part of the individuation process, when what began as a personal and spiritual crisis begins to be transformed into the gold of our unique, non-replicable personality.
10.
If we know the meaning of what follows, the obstacles on the way become steps in development. Jung put the same idea in a different way: “Every psychic advance of man arises from the suffering of the soul”. From such an understanding comes the knowledge that the reason for what happens to us lies in the future, not in the past. Such an understanding radically changes our perspective on life. A partial example of this is the study of the formative role of the parent-child relationship, subordinated to the discovery of the developmental challenge left to us by our ancestors. This may be a family trauma or an unlived life.
Jung’s famous thought refers to the latter: “A child’s greatest burden is the unlived life of the parent”. The goal of children is to find an appropriate way to live this unlived life.
11.
And because respect for each individual’s unique life journey is very important to me, the individual approach in my work is also reflected in the rhythm of the therapy sessions. For some people, regular weekly sessions are appropriate in the beginning until they have mastered the skill of being a skilful observer of their inner life and of harmoniously integrating thinking and feeling. For others, meetings are less frequent – once a month or when enough psychic material has accumulated to discuss.
However, whether the meetings are weekly or not, each time there is a re-arrangement of when the next meeting will be. In this process of change, commitment to the growth process comes from an inner desire, not from externally imposed rules and regulations.
12.
Another important attitude that reflects on my work as a psychotherapist is my belief that psychotherapy is always a form of self-healing, in which the psychotherapist is only a catalyst for the changes that the client makes in himself or herself. In this sense, the real psychotherapeutic work begins when the therapy session is over and the person has to integrate the insights gained during our encounter into their life. This is why I sometimes give assignments for self-observation and self-exploration.
It is similar to the ‘between sessions change tasks’ given in the tradition of systemic psychotherapy, although the nature of the tasks I give is different.
The phrase “You can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make it drink” describes very well the process of giving and receiving that occurs in a therapist-client relationship.
13.
It can be said that the main purpose of psychotherapy is to liberate a person from ‘neurotic suffering’ by helping them to accept ‘existential suffering’. It is about all those limitations and pains that are an inevitable part of being a human being who is born, lives and dies. The greater the mind’s resistance to existential suffering and resistance to its own limitations, the greater the neurotic suffering, which is the real object of psychotherapy.
The paradox is that when a person succeeds in accepting his limitations, he feels a surge of inner strength to bring about positive changes in his life. This acceptance leads to differentiation and the establishment of healthy boundaries of responsibility.
Getting out of the victim mentality and connecting with the power within by taking responsibility for one’s choices is the most important change that occurs in psychotherapy work.
14.
Much more could be said, but I will end with this – I believe that the main field of spiritual practice for the modern man are interpersonal relationships. They are the test of the authenticity of what he thinks of himself, as well as the terrain for dealing with the main challenge before him – to embody the mature forms of love in his life.
Perhaps the word that best describes the fruitful outcome of this form of soul care is WISDOM. It is the wisdom that represents the distilled essence of experience, leading to an increased tolerance for a diversity of different world views. It is the wisdom that is the ability to make decisions guided by our inner authority and sense of inner truth. It is the wisdom that understands, does not judge and therefore alone can unite the opposites on Earth.
Wisdom, that is Sophia, the feminine half in union with the Son of God. On this occasion I am reminded of the words of Marie Louise von Franz about the incarnation of God on the feminine side of development.
“The incarnation of the masculine side of God has already happened historically – it is represented in Christianity by the birth of the Son of God. The task of embodying the feminine side of the Godhead is yet to come – it is a task for the centuries to come, which is becoming increasingly relevant today. In the incarnation of the male God there is a descent into humanity and matter, and in the incarnation of the female Goddess there is an elevation of the ordinary human being to an almost divine sphere. On the one hand we have the materialisation of the abstract Logos, on the other the spiritualisation of matter. The latter process is still in its early stages”.
These words of Marie Louise von Franz mean a lot to me because they contain everything that has been said so far about me and my way of working.
Kameliya Hazhiydska
∗Carl Jung, CW 13, Para 424
