Listening to The Barbarian
"If you bring forth what is within you, what you have will save you. If you do not bring it forth, what you do not have within you will kill you." - The gospel of Thomas

Have you ever had a negative thought?  Silly question, right?  But I don't mean just any negative thought; I'm talking about thoughts that are so negative that we don't like to share them with other people:  resentful thoughts, suicidal thoughts, or even violent, hateful thoughts, especially towards those closest to us.

Typically, we react to thoughts like these in one of two ways. We either nurse the resentment, and become consumed with rage and hate until we decide to calm down again, or we try to wish the thought away.   Sometimes that's the right thing to do; after all, we all have temporary
moments of lunacy.  If I suddenly wish that my best friend were dead, it may not mean anything; it may just mean a crazy thought came into my mind and I can simply let it go.  But there's a third option; maybe that thought came into my head because my unconscious mind  is trying to get my attention.

The great psychologist Carl Gustav Jung understood that our unconscious mind often speaks in symbols and metaphors. For example, if we have persistent suicidal thoughts, it may mean that a part of ourselves needs to die. If we have dreams about running through the jungle and being part of a primitive tribe, it may mean we need to get in touch with that primal animal nature we discussed earlier.

Jung believed that the unconscious tends to compensate for our prevailing conscious attitude. For example, if you're a pastor's child, and you consciously try to play the role of the good Christian kid, your dream life may include scenes of partying, sexual orgies, or just "doing your own thing."  But the reverse is also true. If you consciously identify with a completely secular mindset, focusing on worldly ambitions and material pursuits, your dreams and even your daytime fantasies may be full of symbolism and religious imagery.

All of us have a conscious image we try to present to the world. Jung called this image the persona; a word used to describe the masks Greek actors wore on stage when assuming their various roles.  But a mask is a facade designed to conceal the reality of the true face behind it.  So, our conscious personas, while serving a purpose, inevitably hide much of who we are.  Some of this concealment is inevitable; we can't possibly express all of ourselves authentically at every moment. And some of it is absolutely necessary; after all, we can't run around naked in public; though dreams of doing just that are actually quite common.  It's one thing to conceal certain aspects of ourselves to maintain our persona, but it's quite another to repress them.

Jung had a name for this repressed psychic material; he called it the Shadow.  Unlike the persona, the Shadow cares nothing for social norms, collective mores, or preserving a public image.   The Shadow may express itself in violent fantasies, erotic dreams, or other thoughts and images not deemed socially acceptable.  While Jung often identified the Shadow with our dark side, it's important to remember that the Shadow is not bad or evil.  The Shadow contains all those aspects of ourselves that we have not made conscious, they are dark only because we haven't brought them into the light.

Among Jung's patients, who were rational, Westernized Europeans, the Shadow often manifested itself in images of primitive, sometimes dark-skinned people, far removed from contemporary civilization. The poet Robert  Bly develops a similar image in his book, Iron John. The book is based on a fairy-tale of the same name.  The title character is a hairy wild man who helps a young prince come of age, which Bly saw as a metaphor for male initiation.  Bly encouraged his male readers to get in touch with this "wild man," inside themselves and learn from him.  For now, let's simply call this wild man The Barbarian.

The Barbarian is our animal aspect, that part of us that predates civilization and is closely identified with our limbic system.  As I said earlier, The Barbarian, or  Shadow, has much to teach us, if we would  only take the time to listen. His tongue is the language of symbols, metaphors, and sometimes, shocking images.  He is not rational or logical; he is earthy, raw and very blunt. But he has our best interest in mind.  Let me give you two personal examples.

When I was in college, I had a good friend who needed a lot of help.  He was flunking out of school, and he had a dark secret.  He was a gay sex addict with multiple partners; many of whom he met in public bathrooms or on phone-sex lines. I tried to help him, but at some point I felt more like his therapist than his friend.

Coaching Philosophy

Part 1: What is Coaching?

Part 2: What Coaches Do?

Part 3: The Reality of Human Frailty

Part 4: Listening to The Barbarian

Part 5: The Limits of Willpower

Part 6: Indirect Change

Part 7: To Give or Not to Give Advice, That is the Question

Part 8: Transparency and Authenticity

Part 9: Don't Go Changin', to Try and Please Me

Part 10: Self-acceptance, Not Self-improvement

Post Script

  I became drained and frustrated, and began to resent his presence in my life.  Eventually, he showed up in a dream. I dreamed I tried to kill him; I
was banging his head against the side of a building.  Do you see how The Barbarian speaks in symbols?  That's how he talks.  He was trying to get my attention, so he smacked me upside the head with this violent, disconcerting image.  "Look, punk," he was saying, "you better kill this relationship before it kills you."  I didn't need to kill my friend, but I sure needed to kill the friendship.  It just wasn't good for me.

Here’s another example.  A good friend of mine has a very difficult relationship with his wife.  He loves her dearly, but his feelings tell him otherwise.  He often resents her and doesn't even like to spend time with her.  Apparently, she's been cursed with a critical spirit, and she puts him down on a regular basis.  One day, before she left town on business, she made some comment that truly pissed him off.  After she left, he sat in the living room and thought about how much he
hated her.  They didn't even sleep together anymore.

After wishing she would die in a plane crash,   he turned the radio on and tuned into the local Christian radio station.  He was listening to an inspirational speaker, and the man's soothing voice calmed his spirit.   He stepped back for a moment, and listened carefully to his feelings.
“Why am I so angry;” he asked.  Well, he was angry because his wife said things to him that were hurtful. That got him past the hard wall of anger down to the soft, tender feelings of pain and sadness.  And why was he hurt?  He was hurt because what he really wanted was her love and approval.  After digging through all that resentment, hate, and rage, my friend found that he loved his wife; loved her deeply.  That’s why her words hurt so much.  If she were a stranger, and he had never bonded with her, those same words would be like water rolling off a duck’s back.

I said in my last piece that our animal nature is resistant to change.  While that's true on the surface, the larger truth is that we cannot experience long-lasting change unless that change takes place at the deepest level of our being; what some psychologists call our inner core.  But this kind of deep transformation is only possible when we become aware of what we're feeling at the deepest and most authentic level.  Listening to our Shadow or our Inner Barbarian is like searching for buried treasure.  But the treasure is often deeply hidden under a lot of dirt, mud, and slime. But if you're willing to take the journey, The Barbarian, or Wild Man, knows the way.  He can take you by the hand, guide you, and help you avoid the poison ivy.

Sometimes this journey may require a level of assistance that a coach alone cannot provide. If unresolved childhood trauma, addiction, or mental illness is blocking your path, a good coach will refer you to the services of a competent therapist.  A coach can work in conjunction with a
therapist, but sometimes the trauma is so deep that a person must begin the healing process before they’re even ready to see a coach.  In many cases, though, we try to work against our animal nature rather than with it.  While will power may produce some short-term results, it's not very efficient.  Next, we'll talk about why conventional approaches to behavioral change are often so unsatisfying.

Continue to Part 5: The Limits of Willpower