Follow Your Myth

STARTING OVER IN MY FIFTIES

The Ouroboros dream I had some years ago that led me back to study psychology in my fifties was a touchstone all through my master’s program at Pacifica Graduate Institute where I studied Depth and Jungian psychology. Today I’m going to explore what happens when crisis comes calling, and how the unconscious may respond to that crisis call.

I studied psychology for the first time over twenty years ago while working in the visual effects industry. I went to night school while I was working at Rhythm and Hues Studios in Los Angeles, one of the first computer visual effects companies to emerge in the early days of computer animation — it was one of the kindest places I’ve worked, and also one of the most technical.

I spent over a decade of my career there — but at one point the pressure combined with the resurgence of feelings of loss and trauma coincided with what I would probably call a breakdown for me. I was feeling lost, anxious and angry.

It wasn’t until I sought help that I began to make connections to the trauma of my past and the long-term effects it had on me.

THE RUBBER BAND THAT CONNECTS US TO TRAUMA

In my writing and sessions with clients, I often talk about the rubber band that connects us back in time to trauma and grief, and how as we move away from those experiences unresolved trauma and grief just pull tighter. That rubber band stretches and builds up energy, and when there is a crisis, that rubber band can snap and it is now super-charged with all that potential energy it has collected over time. When it snaps back it can cause pain and emotional chaos, which may be seen in a variety of ways. One way is anger.

Will Smith just this week on The Daily Show with Trevor Noah spoke of this in referring to what happened to him at the Oscars saying;

It was the little boy who watched his father beat up his mother, you know. All of that just bubbled up in that moment. That’s not who I want to be.

He continued the conversation when Trevor says, “You seemed a little dazed afterwards.”

Yeah, I was gone dude, I was gone, I was gone. I was… that was a rage that had been bottled for a really long time. And you know, but it’s, I understand the pain.

For me, came from the breakdown and from following up with therapy to gain insight, which is likely where Will’s insight comes from as well.

After a long time in therapy, I decided to go to grad school to immerse myself in psychology and plumb the depths of myself. Before graduation is when I met my future wife, a Pacifica alumni, and amazing counselor Sheryl Paul. That’s when the transition I was on to become a therapist was put on hold in favor of beginning a family.

Together we decided to leave Los Angeles and moved to Colorado.

We came to Colorado because of the pace of visual effects and Los Angeles didn’t seem like the place we wanted to raise a family. In Colorado finding work as an artist though has been more difficult to come by. I have taught just about every subject at art schools and created a modern video game art department at another art school. I took freelance work where I could and made my own video games that did not sell. During that time I also designed the studios my wife and I work out of, refinished parts of our home, and focused on trying to be a present father for my two sons.

A priority for me was to be there for them and to help them find what they are passionate about since part of my father-wound was my dad not being there for me.

In Colorado, the work was scant though, and my satisfaction eventually reached an all-time low. I had thought for years about returning to the only other thing I felt called to, psychology but self-doubt had prevented me from even speaking it aloud to Sheryl.

I said nothing until I had my Ouroboros dream.

THE OUROBOROS: SNAKE BITING ITS TAIL

The symbol of Ouroboros is an ancient archetypal symbol of the snake biting its own tail — it is a symbol of death and rebirth, and it has appeared in various cultures around the world for thousands of years.

This is the dream I had:

I’m in my childhood home standing in the living room at the bottom of the stairs that lead to the second floor. Looking up the stairs I see a large thick snake descending toward me. It is not touching the ground, and as it approaches quickly it strikes, biting into my left side below the rib cage, and then quickly circles itself, still in the air, into the Ouroboros, biting its own tail. I’m suddenly seeing myself from behind. I’m wearing a white dress shirt that is starting to soak with blood, and I’m crying as I watch my own death.

I’m observing as a witness and analyzing the dream immediately while still within the dream. I realize it represents a death in my life and that the snake is a symbol of rebirth, a shedding something off. It likely means the death of my career as an artist. Perhaps the red blood soaking the white shirt marks an end to innocence, a naive way of thinking that needed to die. In the dream, I’m standing right above the furnace which was always marked by a badly replaced floor in the middle of the house. It was a scar on the heart of a house which itself often felt like a living part of our family. I know that my father was with me in the dream just before the snake came. I don’t see him anymore but sense his presence in the bedroom behind the blue doors, where he spent so many of his days in those last ten years of his illness.

I interpreted this dream as a metaphorical death, that this thing I was doing was over and I needed to change directions. When I woke I knew that this dream was the truth — and that I needed to listen to it.

Understanding this dream fully would take even more time and research in graduate school again, as I combed it for other meanings. I amplified it for its representation of my own self-identification as Parsifal, the naive knight who fails to find the grail that would save the wounded Fisher King who was a representation of my actual wounded father.

I write about the wound of the Fisher King here: https://medium.com/@daev.finn/the-fisher-king-a-mythic-journey-for-modern-man-part-1-90c5bbeeaf26

A DECISION AND A CROSSROAD

This dream represented a decision for me. This was my opportunity to embrace the death of part of my life so that I could start again. I felt like I was saying goodbye to being an artist — which felt like death.

We often identify so clearly (especially as men) with our chosen career path that we have trouble finding ourselves when that career path dries up. We can become fused with that career; when it goes away we may find it difficult to pivot and find something new that speaks to us.

At this point, we may feel old wounds coming to the surface. We may sense the ghosts and demons in the closet trying to come out.

For men, this can often be the beginning of trouble. It can be the dreaded midlife crisis we find ourselves at, the crossroad in life that can speak of self-destruction or new creation. When we stay in denial about the metaphorical deaths in our lives, it makes it more difficult to recognize that we can step through death’s door and avoid self-annihilation, to find something else that may even be more creative, and more fulfilling.

The dream for me was a catalyst. When I had that dream I knew my old life was done and it was time to embrace change. That dream is what allowed me to admit to Sheryl that I wanted to return to psychology and felt that I needed to go to grad school to study Jungian psychology this time… at her alma mater.

When I did I was not met with the skepticism I somehow imagined, but with excitement and encouragement, that has carried me through the years of long nights being a student yet again, and finding my way on this new path.

I don’t want to belabor the point of this post and keep underscoring the takeaway except to say that the Ouroboros is about rebirth as much as it is about death.