Holidays, Family, Guilt, and Soul
Hello friends near and far,
For many people, this week before Thanksgiving here in the US is the start of 6-ish week period of anxiety related to holidays and family visits. I'm hearing about this day in and day out in my practice and it's fully understandable— returning to our families of origin are sometimes the hardest emotional experiences of the year, even if there isn't anything overtly challenging in our families like active addiction, mental illness, etc. And also if our families are supportive and loving. I wanted to offer a depth psychological take on common feelings around family, food and soul as we enter this period.
For people who struggle with food and their bodies, returning home or being with family can be an acute period of relapse or more subtly, a time of dis-embodiment— leaving our bodies energetically and sensorily due to emotional overwhelm. What's important to understand about emotional overwhelm is that we often don't consciously feel overwhelmed; instead, we feel flat, distant, vague, foggy. In other words, we can vacillate between peaks of clear anxiety and then crash into numbness and dissociation. Even for people who aren't in recovery of some kind, it's not unusual for overwhelming feelings to come up with family and, for people who have begun their individuation journeys, a common feeling is guilt. Guilt, in this case often sounds like self-doubt, confusion, or thinking you are somehow a problem.
For background, individuation is the process of becoming ourselves— from a soul level—it's a shift from identifying with our conditioning and inherited cultural values to our deeper, soul-based values. In Jungian terms, individuation is the process in which the ego becomes conscious of and subservient to the larger guiding aspect in the psyche—the Self.
Being around family often elicits guilt for no longer conforming with early conditioning and inherited values including how our families operate and their spoken/unspoken rules. This kind of conditioning is present in all families, again, even supportive and loving ones! Often guilt manifests as guilt for setting boundaries, guilt for not conforming to family cultural standards, guilt for not being around enough, guilt for having needs that aren't adequately met by family— the options are endless.
(This guilt is distinguished from healthy, justified guilt which happens when we hurt someone or something. It can be tricky to sort this out, however, since families often make us feel like we are hurting them by individuating... So this requires a healthy dose of self-inquiry and discernment to tell the difference between justified and unjustified guilt.)
Two of the more confusing experiences of guilt are:
Feeling guilty when we feel a different feeling first (anger, sadness, loneliness, etc.) and then feeling guilty for feeling the first one! (i.e. You feel angry about something and then feel guilty for feeling angry, even if anger is justified. In DBT this is called a primary vs. secondary emotion.)
Alternatively, we might feel guilty when we have a need or want (to be heard/listened to, to more deeply relate, to say "no" to something, to eat/sleep/move) and instead of validating that these are reasonable needs, we feel guilty for even having them.
Guilt in these situations can be related to early patterns of taking on emotional responsibility if we knew or didn't trust that our feelings or needs could, or would, be tolerated well by our families. As though it's easier to control ourselves, by feeling guilty, than it is to tolerate the gap between what we needed and what our families could provide.
This guilt doesn't tend to be as much of an issue for people who have yet to individuate from family and the collective, but for those who have needed to individuate, it's often quite painful. Luckily, C.G. Jung had something to say about this guilt that I find to be reassuring and affirming. To Jung, guilt was a natural by-product of individuation— when we break from collective (and family) values, we often experience guilt.
He wrote, "Individuation and collectivity are a pair of opposites, two divergent destinies. They are related to one another by guilt" (CW 18, p. 452). He saw guilt as tolerable only if personal values are made conscious and if we are able to contribute to the collective through our unique, vocational callings.
In other words, we deal with (unjustified) guilt by knowing what we deeply value and what we are here to do vocationally, and we do it.
Personally, I have a tendency to get confused and drowsy when I visit family. My husband has reflected this time and time again saying essentially, "Where are you?" I compare, I lose focus— it's as though I forget who I am slightly and why I live my life the way I do. Luckily this is a vast improvement from what used to happen! Now, I know what to expect. I lean on tools that center me, connect me back to my deeper, guiding values and commitments. These things are usually very simple— I take care of my physical body as much as possible, to stay as embodied as possible, through listening to my hunger and fullness cues, needs for rest and movement, and time alone. I often will work with a dream or engage in a spiritual practice.
But what helps me the most these days is engaging in my vocational work—if I have the time and space, I might have a connected conversation, write something, read an article, or even do some emailing. And, for me, this is what Jung was pointing to when he wrote in Two Essays on Analytical Psychology,
"The person who cannot create individually won values has to consciously embrace collective values. Only to the extent that a man creates values can he and may he individuate. Every further step in individuation creates new guilt and necessitates new expiation. Hence individuation is possible only so long as substitute, or personal values, are produced. Individuation is exclusive adaptation to inner reality. And what is offered up in expiation for the guilt of not adhering to the collective values, is contribution to the outer world or the collective" (p. 451).
Expiation is atonement from wrong doing and individuation carries feelings of having wronged others by breaking with collective values. An antidote to the fogginess I experience is this "expiation" or contribution to the world. It helps me remember and reconnect to my personal guiding values.
I'm not suggesting working on your computer through a holiday is the antidote to emotional overwhelm, but rather finding what connects you to your vocation—your soul's calling— is. And this might not be your paid work at all. It's the ways you uniquely contribute to the collective which can be the how you communicate, how you cook, the projects you work on, the healing work you're up to, or how you calm down a room. This is a deeper kind of life purpose that doesn't always translate into the work we do.
Some questions to consider before we enter the holidays full-on as a way to center into yourself:
What is most important to me, what are my values, in this particular phase of my life?
In what tangible ways do I live out these values? Or if someone were to watch me live my life, how would they know these are my values?
What is one thing I do, or could practice doing, that helps me feel like myself?
Hopefully these questions can help guide you back into your deep self in the swirl of holiday family time if you have a tendency to get lost in it all.
With care,
Kathryn
P.S. Retired psychotherapist Kaye Gersch, PhD has a great article on individuation and guilt if you want to learn more about depth psychology and guilt.