Are You Ready to Do Your Own Work?
October 15, 2024
Joseph Campbell, the renowned scholar on mythology, observed that the world’s myths and epic tales share a core pattern. He called this pattern the “Hero’s Journey.” Describing the plight of humankind, it can be found in epic stories, in religions, and in the lives of every person. The three major chapters of the journey include the separation, the initiation, and the return. Upon entering the separation, the hero must answer the call to adventure, leave the known, and travel into the mysterious unknown to begin the personal quest. This journey provides the hero with the lessons one needs in one's life.
Rearing children struggling with mental health issues, addictions, or even just the normal angst of growing up can be scary and confusing for a parent. This is the invitation to venture from the known to the unknown. We are asked to look into the dark places within ourselves and to confront or make peace with our fears. Our relationship challenges reveal the parts of ourselves we have been avoiding. We are asked to let go of what has made us feel safe and secure and to embrace some things that may cause us pain. When a loved one struggles with mental illness or addiction, they are not the only ones experiencing initiation; at times they provide the call for instigating the whole family’s journey down this road.
A profound aspect of the Hero’s Journey is that the call to adventure is often initially refused. In psychological terms, the refusal is a “defense.” And the defense doesn’t feel like a defense to the person employing it. Defensiveness is in the thoughts, “They don’t understand me. This doesn’t apply. I am different and if they only knew me, they would understand.” The refusal applies to both the identified patient as well as to their loved ones, as they experience a parallel process. As Abraham Twerski points out in his book Addictive Thinking, the refusal often has a familiar ring:
“I am not like those people; I don't have a problem; I can handle it on my own; I wouldn't want to be seen by someone I know.”
Twerski further explains that the same kind of self-deception that occurs in addiction also occurs in the other family members. Family members may obsess over the identified patient and their problems. The non-identified patient often believes that the problem is “out there,” in the other person and if I can just change or fix them, I will find the peace I am seeking.
The purpose of the heroic journey is to describe a “transformation of consciousness” so profound it is often referred to or symbolized by death and rebirth. The kind of change Campbell is talking about is more than just acquiring new skills or tools. This shift is fundamental; it is a different way of being. This transformation is beyond explanation; it is difficult to put into words or to explain to another person, which is why it is often illustrated through stories or examples. These epic stories then show us how it would look and sound if we experienced this change in ourselves.
The lessons from the prophets, poets, or storytellers are vertical rather than horizontal. They describe different levels or layers of life. They don't necessarily offer us a history lesson or a glimpse into the future, they provide us with a deeper meaning to our lives. As Campbell explains, “Mythology, in other words, is psychology misread as biography, history, and cosmology.” (from The Audacity to Be You: Learning to Love Your Horrible Rotten Self.
For one model of this journey, let us look at the legend of King Arthur and his Knights. They were charged with finding the Holy Grail. The Grail is literally the chalice or cup that held the wine served at the Last Supper of Jesus Christ. It is thought to have healing powers. But symbolically, it is any “container” that holds what is put into it. Therefore, it is something that heals. Its purpose (symbolically) can be understood that it is able to hold, hear, or listen to what is put into it.
In therapy, the healing container is the mind of the therapist. In childhood, it is the mind of a parent or the other big people raising the child. As I explained in The Journey of the Heroic Parent, “What you think and feel about your children is what they will think and feel about themselves.” If you think they’re a problem, that’s how they will see themselves. If they scare you, they will learn to be afraid of themselves. If you can learn to see them and their symptoms as messengers, trying to tell a story of how the old ways of being have worn out their form, they will then learn to trust the whispers of their own souls.
Remarkable in King Arthur’s story is that the knights decide to start their quest by going into the forest where there was no path, each going his own way. They thought it most noble—for if there was a path, it was someone else’s path.
The quest is to go into the darkness, to face what scares us in search of that which we cannot live without. Therapy? Support groups? A.A. or Al-anon? A wilderness therapy program, parent weekend, or therapeutic intensive?
And like the knights and the protagonists of so many other epic tales, we often don’t find what we originally sought. The same is true for us today. We go into meetings and therapy sessions looking for the cure for the ones we love. And what we end up finding…is ourselves.
In Star Wars, another epic saga, Darth Vader brings Luke Skywalker to meet with the evil emperor with the hope of converting Luke to a philosophical practice of using power and control in life and death to avoid pain and suffering. Sound familiar?
However, Darth Vader is unable to tolerate watching his son suffer from the emperor’s powers (symbolically suffering under the beliefs and practices Darth Vader himself embodied to avoid suffering due to the death of his wife, Luke’s mother). He intervenes, stands up to the emperor, losing his physical life in the process. In the end he and Luke are saved together.
Like Vader, we may not find what we set out for—some magical formula to prevent suffering, pain, hardships, and grief. What we find is ourselves, a newer, more whole, larger version of ourselves. On this journey, hearts are opened and enlarged, and new ears and new eyes provide the hero with a greater capacity to listen and see.
In my therapy and coaching practice, parents often ask, “What am I to do about my child’s anger for sending them to treatment?” This question is at the heart of the whole matter before us. What are we to do with our children’s anger? Or more precisely, “What are we to do with our children?” We are to hold them, to see them, to contain them…and these capacities must be built on the foundation of finding ourselves first.
Your children are not here to learn from you about life, but the other way around. You are the student, not the teacher. When you realize that you are not the teacher but the student, everything changes. As Sadhguru once stated, “When a child comes into your life, it is time to relearn life, not teach them your ways.”
Or as Kahlil Gibran said it,
Your children are not your children... You may strive to be like them, but seek not to make them like you.
We must listen to their pain, fears, and anger, especially when those feelings are aimed at us. We listen as much as we are able, and through this device, the child is able to move through their feelings. Perhaps better stated, the feelings are able to move through the child rather than getting stuck.
Beyond simple skills and tools, the heroic journey inward transforms who we are and how we relate to others. As Einstein explained, “You cannot solve a problem in the same level of consciousness that created it.”
In a real sense, the identified patient and their loved ones go into the forest together. The journey is into the self. This can be found in many ways. I personally have found therapy, podcasts, support groups, and therapeutic intensives to be the most helpful This is why I created the Finding You Intensive. Ultimately, however, the goal is to learn to know the parts of ourselves we have been taught to fear. We learn, or rather unlearn, things that no longer serve the organism of the family. As I stated in The Journey of the Heroic Parent,“Parent education and therapy doesn’t change children. It changes parents. And that change can have a wonderful impact on the child.”
We learn to unburden the child and parent of the outdated adage, “You are only as happy as your least happy child.”
We radically shift our thinking in our romantic relationships. We learn:
“It is not my job to make my partner happy. That is their job. And it is not my partner’s job to make me happy. That is my job.
Ultimately, we embrace the slogan offered in Al-anon and Codependents Anonymous: I am responsible for my own serenity.
Our struggling loved ones cease to be the project—nobody likes being the project. And once we stop trying to fix them, we find them.
Ideally, everyone embarks on the hero’s journey and makes themselves and their lives the project. Consider this your call to do your work, to explore your childhood and its programming, and to unlearn all the things that might be keeping you and your family stuck. As James Hollis, Ph.D. explains, “The truth about intimate relationships is that they can never be any better than our relationship with ourselves.”
In conclusion, I offer this from The Journey of the Heroic Parent:
What does the hero find? On one’s journey, one finds the elixir of healing wisdom, something that can be shared with others. We experience deep pain and develop compassion as we face the depths of our own struggles. And what we find is our story. We sit in groups, tell our stories, and listen to the stories of others. That is what I mean when I say that “the question is not the question.” It is our struggling children and our willingness to ask different questions that reveal our authentic selves. The hero brings back the real self: a deeper, richer version of one’s self. Loving your child is something you cannot not do. You will break and bleed. Old things will die in you and in their stead, new ones will grow. And what you will have in the end is your story.
For me, even as a teacher, the elixir isn’t always in the form of words. Some of what I have gleaned on my journey is difficult to put into words. That is because it is an experience rather than an explanation. You learn something by going through it that you cannot know any other way. My education and study have given me language, but being present on my painful and beautiful journey has carved out a place for more compassion toward others and myself.
I am honored to sit and offer some observations from the thousands of hero’s journeys I have seen children and parents traverse. This is my story. This is my gift. This is also the gift that the remarkable, wonderful, struggling children and parents have given me. And I, in turn, give it back to you.
I invite you to begin your own journey.
Read The Journey of the Heroic Parent or The Audacity to Be You: Learning to Love your Horrible, Rotten Self. Available on Amazon, or at your local bookseller.