Carl Jung's Famous Healing Advice

Carl Jung, despite being a world-renowned psychotherapist, was also, I believe, renowned because of his ability to see the whole person in their illness and in their wellness. To understand that there is really, what I discuss with my patients, there is a healing hero's journey, in addition to the traditional hero's journey. So in this video, I thought I would share one of Jung's pieces of advice and how I think this really applies to the healing journey that so many of us are on. Hey guys, Dr. Alex Hine, author of the health book Master of the Day and doctor of Chinese medicine. Now, before we jump into this video here today, there are two very important links right below. The first is if you'd like to become a patient of mine locally in Los Angeles or virtually via telemedicine, the links right below will give you the info to contact my private practice. And there's also a free download for daily rituals that can help you add years to your life with traditional Chinese medicine. So Carl Jung has this great quote and the quote goes, where your fear is, there is your task. So where your fear is, there is your task. Now, a half of what I do when I see patients is what I do. Half of the healing journey is then coming to see me and the interventions that I provide that hopefully are the impetus for the body to heal itself. But the other half, especially with greater chronicity of illness and illness that is very difficult to resolve, or maybe let's call it constitutional illness, symptoms that are intimately tied to the person's predispositions of being anxious or being kind of low energy or being maybe on the lazier side or being on the way too high strong side. These illnesses that are very chronic are linked to personality traits. And so you have to treat the person if you want to see the symptoms resolve. Because I can only do half of that work and the rest is the patient's own hero's healing journey. When symptoms are very chronic, very often it's strongly related to the way a person thinks or the way a person lives. And that other knowledge that's going to benefit the person is in the most difficult knowledge is self-knowledge, right? Because it is very easy for us to be objective with others and subjective with ourselves. But when it comes to intimately looking in the mirror of what are my patterns? What are the things I do that self-sabotage? What are the things I do with my diet? What are the things I do in my relationship? What are the things I do in my marriage that are maybe they're all on me and they're hard to break? Those are difficult conversations. And so when I see this quote, where your fear is, there is your task. I see it as where your fear is, there is your healing. So the way I think about this is understanding disease and personality archetypes. And I like to think of these as being on a spectrum of yin or yang, right? Yin being laxity and yang being rigidity. So let me give an example so you can maybe spot where you are in this spectrum. When we're talking about more of the rigidity, more on the yang side, we are talking about a person who is generally predisposed towards being a more hyper aroused nervous system, more tense, more anxious, maybe more neurotic or prone to neuroses, excessively worrying or excessively grasping, hard to let things go. This is a person where every little thing is a problem to be fixed now. Every little symptom is a great big problem that we have to worry about. Being excessively neurotic or strict with eating or excessive urgency in living. This is the more rigid or yang kind of psychology. Now when we come to the yin psychology or the yin kind of pathology, let's call this laxity. And laxity manifests often as laziness. It manifests as undisciplined eating. It manifests as a person who cannot or will not exercise or who's hard to get out of bed or a lax approach to life where there's no urgency to live and there's no deliberate living. It's just all laissez-faire, right? I'm not going to exert any of my own will. That sounds so much effort. Do I have to do it? This is laxity in pathology. These are part and parcel of the pathology of the person, right? Because it may be the neurotic person's excessive worry and excessive stress, this very particular diet. Now the person's 90 pounds. This is neurosis for lack of a better word, not in a disrespectful sense, but this is neurosis manifesting in the body and the actions. Psychology manifesting in the body. And when we talk about laxity, we're talking about the person who eats whatever and doesn't care, doesn't care how they feel. Laxity is I'm going to eat anything and not care about how much weight I gain. I'm now 350 pounds and I'm still eating whatever I want. When there's clear evidence in the mirror that this is sickness at this point, just as the highly neurotic person has manifested an emaciated or at its extreme anorexic physique due to their psychology. So when we understand these kind of personality archetypes in pathology, we can see where am I predisposed towards one or the other and why that is so valuable just like in Chinese medicine. If you understand where a symptom is on a spectrum of yin to yang, right? In this case of All you have to do is rather than chasing these symptoms, bring your personality back towards the midline, right? Back towards the middle. It's interesting. I had one person lectured about Chinese medicine and what it really means. And in Chinese, the characters for China are zhong wo, zhong meaning middle, middle kingdom, right? Guo is kingdom or country. And what's interesting is this person gave the example of not only Chinese or China being the middle kingdom, middle country, but also this analogy of or metaphor of Chinese medicine being the medicine of the middle, which is why yin and yang is so essential to understand. If the person is more damp constitution, we want to dry them up a bit and their bloating will get better. If they're more of a dry constitution, we usually want to give them moistening herbs so that they're not drying out too much. Well, in the same way, this is reflective of psychology where if you bring it back to the middle, it becomes the medicine of the middle. And so I can recognize, you know what? Maybe I wouldn't call myself neurotic, but I am on that spectrum. Maybe I wouldn't call myself lazy, but I kind of am on that spectrum. And these become tools to recognize all I have to do is bring it back towards the middle. I don't have to give up everything. I don't have to sacrifice everything. I don't have to stop eating donuts. But understanding that coming back towards the middle will be my healing. That is my healing hero's journey. So when we talk about healing the person, or when we talk about healing disease, we have to sometimes heal the person to heal the disease. More so in chronic illness that is very difficult and recalcitrant, there is always a quality of the personality. The personality is existing in the person, which needs healing. And without dedicating time and focus towards healing the personality, it is very difficult to heal the pathology. So this is a very, very important lesson of, in my opinion, where your fear is, there is your task, where the fear is often looking in the mirror at the things I've been avoiding. That is the stuff that is difficult to hear, right? The areas where people don't maybe like me. Those are reflective of personality traits and values and thought systems that I need to maybe address to heal. Maybe that high-strung nature manifests in the way I micromanage everybody and I need to have a candid conversation with my friends to know, where would you put me on this spectrum? And then maybe I don't really like what I hear, but maybe it's actually true and that's where the healing is. And maybe on the other side of the spectrum is I'm in a healing profession and maybe I realize I'm more lazy than I would like to admit and I don't ever go to the gym. And maybe that actually is the thing that would move the needle for my healing. So where your fear is, there is your task, but the fear is often of confronting oneself because like Jung said, it often means going down to the depths of hell and confronting the shadow aspects of ourselves. That is often where the greatest healing lies. So I hope this video helps you. Turned out to be fairly profound, nice fiery rant of mine as per the usual, but understanding where we are in that yin or yang spectrum, in this case psychologically, is very essential to healing. So I hope that helps. Again, you can contact my private practice right below this video. If you want to chat, come see me or do a free consult in Los Angeles. And otherwise, there are two other videos that can really help you in your healing journey right here.