How Your 20s Shaped Your Relationships

Summary

Podcast Summary: "How Your 20s Shaped Your Relationships"

Jung On Purpose Podcast by CreativeMind
Hosts: Debra Berndt Maldonado & Robert Maldonado, Ph.D.
Date: June 1, 2026

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Episode Overview

This episode explores how adolescence—and the transition from the family dynamic into broader social fields—fundamentally shapes our relationships in adulthood. Integrating Jungian theory, social neuroscience, and Eastern philosophy, Debra and Dr. Rob introduce their new "archetypal family field" system, discussing how unconscious family patterns influence identity, relationships, and the choices we make throughout early life and well into our 20s. The conversation also examines how emerging social roles, peer groups, and unconscious drives sculpt the ways we engage with others as adults.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Understanding Adolescence as a Developmental Phase

• Adolescence Lasts Longer Than We Think:
  • Dr. Rob points out that neuroscience now confirms our brains aren't neurologically mature until our early 20s. Adolescence is "much longer than most of us think, neurologically anyway" (02:00).
  • Socially, some never completely move out of adolescence.
• Identity & Persona Formation:
  • Adolescence is the time for "developing your sense of self socially... your Persona, your identity, and kind of identifying where you belong" (07:22).
  • It's a "liminal state"—no longer a child, not yet an adult—navigating new social groups (08:00–09:00).

2. The Archetypal Family Field

• Unconscious Inheritance:
  • The family field is an "invisible field that's influencing who we choose as friends, who we choose as partners, what kind of jobs we choose, how we act in the job, who we are in the world, our friends, how we fit into society, and then who triggers us and what we think is possible" (04:39).
  • These internalized patterns are mostly unconscious—“not just, ‘Oh, I know my mother was mean to me,’… It goes to the things you’re not aware of that you absorbed” (05:00).
• Not About ‘Fixing’ Wounds:
  • The goal is to use these patterns as "potential," not see them as wounds: "There's potential in every pattern" (06:16).

3. Moving From Family Field to Social Field

• The Peer Group as a New Field:
  • Peers present diversity and choice, moving beyond family for the first time. Adolescents "all of a sudden are seeing what's available to you in this society, in the culture, beyond the family" (09:08).
  • Families provide unconditional acceptance, but "then you go into this other field where not everyone loves you… It's very confusing for a person" (10:00).
  • Cliques, social roles, and group belonging emerge: "We start to like, segregate ourselves almost like we do in society as adults" (11:25).

4. Persona and Shadow Development

• Forming Social Identity:
  • Adolescence is when we build our Persona—“that identity that we consciously identify with and we choose… as well as what do we push away? What am I not?” (11:51).
  • The choices are both conscious and unconscious, heavily influenced by internalized family assumptions.

5. Patterns of Belonging: Roles, Cliques, and Identity

• The Safety of the ‘Middle’:
  • The “typical” or “neutral” group represents most people who don’t gravitate toward the extremes; there's “safety in numbers” (14:34).
  • Sometimes, individuals mask talent to blend in; “we'll muffle that talent or skill so that we fit in more to the… the middle” (14:34).
• Authenticity vs. Masking:
  • Debra reflects, "This kind of felt like we were more authentic… my relationships were very authentic, so maybe that's part of it too. We weren't masking around each other" (15:08).

6. Archetypal and Symbolic Aspects of Adolescence

• Emergence of Archetypal Roles:
  • Dr. Rob: “We're being shaped by… internal forces… deeper into the archetypal patterns. So archetypal patterns, these are universal patterns… what kind of dreams are we now…” (17:11).
  • Social groups and roles mirror myths—leaders, followers, the exile, the hero (18:34–18:52).
  • Fundamental question: "Who do I need to become to belong here?" (19:04)
• Survival Instincts:
  • Acceptance is rooted in evolutionary survival—being exiled from the group threatened ancient survival (19:04).

7. Family Patterns and Adolescent Choices

• Adolescence as a Reaction to Family Conditioning:
  • “By the time a young person enters adolescence, they're not simply becoming themselves, they're becoming themselves in response to the initial family field" (28:28).
  • Choices during adolescence reflect either rejection or acceptance of family-imposed expectations (22:51 & 29:28).
  • Internalized expectations can cause ongoing inner conflicts—“we internalize it. Meaning… now they're part of us… and therefore it creates an inner conflict” (29:35).

8. Fitting In, Potential, and Mismatches

• Examples of Environmental Mismatch:
  • Dr. Rob discusses a child placed in a top school due to family expectations that don't match the child's abilities; this can cause behavioral problems not based in pathology, but mismatch (24:22–25:38).
• Cultural Comments on Education:
  • The education system’s rigidity can clash with natural talents, leading some to sabotage or withdraw (26:45).

9. Ongoing Formation of Ego and Identity

• The Ego’s Gradual Development:
  • Adolescence and early adulthood are stages to “build the ego… a sense of volition, of power over time, gradually, over these years” (30:29).
  • Identity is not determined in childhood alone; “we don’t stop creating patterns when we're nine… we have to examine our whole life and who we chose as friends” (31:18).
• Next Episode Teaser:
  • Upcoming discussion will focus on ages 18–25—where the ego, career, and relationships solidify.

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Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• "Our youth lasts a lot longer than most of us think, neurologically anyway."
  — Dr. Rob Maldonado (02:00)
• "The way you do relationships... it all has to do with that early family field."
  — Dr. Rob Maldonado (03:45)
• "It's not things we're conscious of... this field of consciousness that we're carrying with us, it's invisible."
  — Deborah Maldonado (04:39)
• "There's potential in every pattern."
  — Deborah Maldonado (06:16)
• "Who do I need to become to belong here?"
  — Dr. Rob Maldonado (19:04)
• "By the time a young person enters adolescence, they're not simply becoming themselves, they're becoming themselves in response to the initial family field."
  — Deborah Maldonado (28:28)
• "We internalize it. Meaning… now they're part of us… and therefore it creates an inner conflict."
  — Dr. Rob Maldonado (29:35)
• "We don’t stop creating patterns when we're nine… we have to examine our whole life and who we chose as friends, who we continue to choose as friends."
  — Deborah Maldonado (31:18)

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Timestamps for Key Segments

• 00:39 — Introduction to adolescence and the "archetypal family field" concept
• 02:00 — Adolescence duration, neurological development
• 04:39–06:16 — The invisible archetypal family field and unconscious absorption
• 07:22–09:08 — Peer groups, shifting identity, and the confusion of adolescence
• 11:51–13:52 — Persona and Shadow: conscious/unconscious social choices
• 15:08 — Authenticity in social roles; the "neutral" group
• 17:11–19:04 — Archetypes, dreams, and role assignment in adolescence
• 19:04–20:03 — Belonging, survival instincts, and sexuality
• 22:51–24:45 — Family expectations, adolescent choices, and examples
• 28:28–29:35 — Internalized field and formation of adult identity
• 30:29–31:18 — Ego development and lifelong pattern formation

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Overall Tone & Approach

Warm, accessible, and deeply reflective, the episode blends personal stories, clinical insights, and theoretical frameworks. The hosts encourage self-compassion and curiosity, seeing every pattern as potential—not pathology—and inviting listeners to see their adolescent experiences as building blocks, not barriers, to fulfilling relationships.

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For Listeners

If you ever wondered why certain patterns in relationships keep repeating, or felt puzzled by your adolescent choices, this episode offers both scientific and soulful answers. The discussion is a helpful primer for anyone interested in Jungian psychology, personal development, and the deep (often unconscious) roots of adult relationships.

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Transcript

[Narrator]

Welcome to Jung on purpose with CreativeMind, hosted by Deborah and Dr. Rob Maldonado, creators of the NeuroMindra coaching method based on Jungian psychology, non dual spirituality and social neuroscience. Join us each week as we explore personal growth for purpose seekers and the incredible inner journey of becoming your true self. Let's get started.

[Deborah Maldonado]

Hello. Welcome everyone to Jung on Purpose. I am Deborah Maldonado.

[Dr. Rob Maldonado]

I'm Dr. Rob. Welcome.

[Deborah Maldonado]

And we are continuing our series on early development. And we talked about early childhood in the past few episodes, emotions and our emotional template. And today we're entering the world of adolescence. And we're talking about one of our new systems that we developed based on Jungian psychology and Eastern philosophy called the archetypal family field. And we're gonna talk about adolescence and those junior high, high school age, what is happening with our identity, our Persona, what we're putting in our shadow initially and how that affects us in the, in life, in the future, and how we're. They're like the building blocks of our adult life. We're starting to evolve away from the family. But before we begin great content today, we really request that you do us a great favor by clicking subscribe on the video. If you're watching us on YouTube or, or if you are listening to us on one of the podcast services, don't forget to subscribe. So you get every episode and if you have comments, please leave them. We'd love to hear what you think about this episode or any episode. Love to hear your feedback and questions you have. So, Rob, since is not what we think it is, we. I, I think I. When I always thought of adolescence, it's like, oh, between 9 and 11 or 12, you know, just that, that really, you know, when the hormones start flying. But you're saying the research shows it, it lasts a lot longer.

[Dr. Rob Maldonado]

Yeah. And there's ways of parceling it out. But neuroscience is giving us a new window on adolescence. And it appears that our brain really isn't done developing and becoming, let's say a mature brain until the early piece. So our youth, we're immature for a long time. Our youth lasts a lot longer than most of us think, neurologically anyway. So socially might be a different story. Some people never grew up. Right? Like, like.

[Deborah Maldonado]

Well, let's. Before you go in deeper, let's talk about the family field, Archetypal family field. And just a little overview of what that is.

[Dr. Rob Maldonado]

Yeah. So if we think about development, where does development take place? And we know from science that it's always a gene environment interaction that we're seeing in development how we develop as human beings is not simply based on your genes. A lot of people kind of get the impression of the news and the way they report genetics, that your genetics is your destiny. And that's not the case. It's always a brain, gene, environment interaction that turns certain genes on and off depending on the needs and the social, environmental pressures. So the family is really that first field that we interact with as newborn babies. Right. We, we, we're born into this womb of the family.

[Deborah Maldonado]

A container almost. Right. This.

[Dr. Rob Maldonado]

Yeah.

[Deborah Maldonado]

House you're in, you're living together, you're eating together, sleeping together, celebrating events together. Getting punished together.

[Dr. Rob Maldonado]

Exactly.

[Deborah Maldonado]

Getting in trouble.

[Dr. Rob Maldonado]

Yes. And the, this is the interesting thing from the Jungian depth psychology perspective is that we internalize that family system and carry it with us for the rest of our lives. And that's really important. Think about this. The way you do relationships, the kind of work that you do, the meaning that you find in your life, the way you interpret experiences, it all has to do with that early family field. So if you don't understand what happened and what kind of impressions and assumptions you were exposed to or absorbed during that period of development, then you're, you're not able to take the reins of your life because those in early imprints that in internalized family system, they're the ones calling the shot or the shots in your life, especially in relationships and in.

[Deborah Maldonado]

And so just one thing to point out that it's not things we're conscious of. So when we think of this family field, as we call it, this field of consciousness that we're, we're carrying with us, it's invisible. So there's this invisible field that's influencing who we choose as friends, who we choose as partners, what kind of jobs we choose, how we act in the job, who we are in the world, our friends, how we fit into society, and then who triggers us and what we think is possible. And all our personal power and spirituality, all that is unconscious to us. And so it's not just, oh, I know my mother was mean to me and critical, so I need to think positive. This goes way deeper than that. It goes to the things you're not aware of that you absorbed. And a lot of things that we get from our family are communicated unconsciously, so they're implied. So many times they don't verbally communicate to us what they, they need, what their fears are, what they think about life. Many times they do you hear the narrative in your family and all that but there's this subtle, like, we feel and notice when our parents are stressed and maybe not be conscious of it, but we're absorbing and learning their emotional states and what's right and wrong and who they hang out with, how they approach money, how they approach each other in relationships, if they believe in marriage, if not, and faithfulness and all these things. And we just. Just remember what we're conscious of, which is a very tiny percentage of all the things in our field. So very important that it's an invisible field, but we can make it conscious.

[Dr. Rob Maldonado]

Absolutely. That's our.

[Deborah Maldonado]

And the goal is to use those patterns for. To, like, not just fix them, like, oh, I want to make them better. It's to understand those patterns and then use them for their potential. So there's potential in every pattern. And we. That's what we look at. We don't think of them as wounds or something pathological. We think of them as a normal human being developing in the world and learning how to get along with everyone and surviving. And we, those of us who are seekers, you listen to this program, are probably thinking, I want more to life than just repeating the same patterns all the time. And so that's why this family field system that we developed is really powerful. It just came out this year. If you want more information, we have a link in the bio, too, in the show notes to check it out. So let's talk about adolescence. So you mentioned that, you know, we all think it just happens when we're 11 or 12, and then, you know, we go through puberty and then we're done, and then we're like young adults. But you're saying that the research is showing that these or some psychology models talk about adolescence lasting much longer.

[Dr. Rob Maldonado]

Yeah, I mean, if we define adolescence as kind of that period where you're not a child anymore, but you're still developing your sense of self socially. You're developing your Persona, your identity, and kind of identifying where you belong. Or, you know, you're starting to experiment where do I belong? And making those really important decisions about whether you're going to live alone or live in a partnership or, you know, play. Play it by year.

[Deborah Maldonado]

Like even what you're going to do for the rest of your life, you start planning like people do.

[Dr. Rob Maldonado]

Right.

[Deborah Maldonado]

In college. And so 10, like 10 or 11. I think 11 is closer to most people, but I don't know, everyone's age just differently. Yeah, it's that time where we stop playing with each other, like in games, and we start being more adults. And hang out and listen to music. We talk about boys or girls. And maybe some people dabble with smoking or testing, drinking, you know, doing things, smoking pot or whatever. And you, you leave this family field, this system, and then you're going into a larger ecosystem of your social circle. And so now it's like. But it's still tiny circle. It's like a, Like a limited circle. Basically local, basically who you go to school with in your local town. And now you're in this bigger family field of how do I belong in this field now? How do I. How do I fit in with everyone? We tried to fit in with our family. Now we have to fit in with this, these, this larger body of people that's very diverse and has very different backgrounds than us and different parents. So it's a very confusing time because you're leaving. You're not a kid anymore, but you're not an adult yet. So you're in that limbic. In that limbic liminal state where you're in between.

[Dr. Rob Maldonado]

Very much so. So between 9 and 10 average, right? Some people earlier, some people later. But around that age, there's a shift that happens where you start to think of yourself outside of the family system. You're still very much connected to the family, of course, and you need them and they need you. But you start to associate and identify with peers. This is a game changer for the human being because peers come from different backgrounds with different experiences, with different personalities. And you all of a sudden are seeing what's available to you in this society, in the culture, beyond the family, because the family gives you a certain sense of what you should and shouldn't do and who you should be and how you should be.

[Deborah Maldonado]

But also they have an unconditional love, typically in a family. Like your family loves you and accepts you. They're not going to kick you out because you're not cool or reject you because you did like there. It's very acceptable accepting in a way. And most families.

[Dr. Rob Maldonado]

Absolutely.

[Deborah Maldonado]

And then you go into this other field where not everyone loves you or not everyone thinks you're, you know, or, or calls you not cool. You know, maybe you're the coolest kid, but you're, you know, you're the only child. And everyone goaded to go all over you. And then you go to school and everyone thinks you're a nerd. Like, who are you? Who do you think you are? And it's very confusing for a person because now you're in this bigger. So it's like from the river to the sea. You're out in the sea of world, you know, you're not in this tight, little narrow winding road of. With barriers and guardrails. It's like this wide open space that you can get. You feel lost in a little bit, and then you're trying to really figure out, do I want to be what group I want to be in. And, you know, I. One thing we were talking about earlier is I noticed when we were kids in elementary school, there weren't really cliques. In my age, maybe it is now, but there weren't a lot of like, heavy cliques. Like, all the kids got along with each other. There were a couple like outliers. But when you go into junior high, like, everyone kind of gets their little. Their little pockets of. Are you the cheerleader? Are you with the brains? Are you with the drama club? Are you with this jocks? You know, I don't know what they call them now, the athletes. And we used to have the burnouts of the jocks, you know, the two different, you know, type of people. And so we start to like, segregate ourselves almost like we do in society as adults. We kind of have pockets of who we hang out with. And so that's really where we. Do we consciously choose who we. Who we pick, or do you think it's an unconscious gravitation toward. Toward that.

[Dr. Rob Maldonado]

Yeah, I think it's combination. Because really, from the Jungian perspective, what we're seeing here is the development of the Persona, which is that identity that we consciously identify with and we choose right. We say, I like these guys or these. This group, and I identify with them as well as what do we push away? What am I not? And those choices are both kind of conscious and unconscious because we. We're choosing in a. In a certain sense. But the choices are coming from a lot of the earlier assumptions that we're carrying and have internalized from our family as well. So that that internalized system, the family system, is playing a big role in the choices that we make in this time comes in our identity as Persona. This is who I am as a personality. And it begins that formation as well as that shadow of who am I not? What do I push away? What do I not belong to? Even what we hate or what we say, those are my enemies or my rivals.

[Deborah Maldonado]

So I have a question that just came up. So I'm thinking about my growing up and my friends and my group of friends. There's like the neutrals. They're not in any category. They're just kind of like the leftover. So my friends weren't like cheerleaders, they weren't into sports, they weren't into the band. They were just kind of a, you know, just general no click kind of place. I mean, some of them were burnouts, but they were like on the fringe. But my group of friends was just, I would say the neutrals. What does that mean? Does that mean that people in that kind of neutral. Not a fixed category, are they highly intelligent and they don't want to fit into a category, or are they more like they don't know who they are and they're just kind of hanging out with whoever wants to be friends with them? They're not really defining themselves. What would you say that's about psychoanalyze me, Rob.

[Dr. Rob Maldonado]

Right. Just kind of speaking broadly everything in, in sociology, for example, you know, you apply the, the normal curve. It's called the normal curve because most people will fall into the middle. And that's what you're describing kind of people that don't really. Don't gravitate towards the extremes. They're not the super smart or the super talented or the super stars, but they're not also the people that get left behind and that, that don't fit.

[Deborah Maldonado]

We're the ones that are teased a lot. Like we weren't like loser, like the losers, you know, or the weirdos, you know, we were just kind of bland. Like we weren't like almost like ignored in a way, you know, and maybe that was by choice, like not to stand out maybe.

[Dr. Rob Maldonado]

Well, yeah, there's safety in numbers, right? We see it in nature. Most herd animals and humans, we can think of ourselves in, in that. Those terms biologically anyway, we tend to gravitate towards the middle. The mean regression to the mean meaning if we have a skill or a talent that makes us stand out, sometimes we'll, we'll muffle that talent or skill so that we fit in more to the. Towards the middle and vice versa. Right. If we're too low on something, we try to compensate for it by doing other things.

[Deborah Maldonado]

Well, this kind of felt like we were more authentic. Like we weren't proposers, you know, we were just being ourselves. Like I always felt like my relationships were very authentic, so maybe that's part of it too. We weren't masking around each other and

[Dr. Rob Maldonado]

that we're expressing mediocrity.

[Deborah Maldonado]

But I mean, that's kind of like authentic in a way, right? You're so and so those of you who are or the mediocre what do they call it? The normal, the middle of the road, the blending, the generic.

[Dr. Rob Maldonado]

In psychology, the. The word typical is used as the appropriate typical.

[Deborah Maldonado]

So we're the just the typical. So. Yeah. And so, yeah, the development of that Persona. Maybe. Maybe is not to stand out. Maybe it is to just be yourself and, you know, kind of be low on the radar. Like, none of my friends were, like, popular.

[Dr. Rob Maldonado]

Typical. Functioning. Yeah, typical.

[Deborah Maldonado]

Maybe most of us fall in that round, but we still have a Persona that we're building.

[Dr. Rob Maldonado]

Yeah. That is an identity.

[Deborah Maldonado]

But we need to have, like, this identity that we put out. So biologically, adolescence is challenging because of our hormones are all over the place. We're emotional, we're making a lot of emotional decisions. We're very, like, reactive. And what's the symbolic part of adolescence, Rob?

[Dr. Rob Maldonado]

Yeah, so we see the biology plays a big role in kind of defining us as far as strength, as far as level, masculinity or athleticism, feminism, all these things, those are often biological markers that people can perceive and understand. And kind of we. We fall into line along those patterns. But then psychologically, right, you. You're talking about grades, you're talking about intelligence, social intelligence, emotional intelligence. How good are you at making friends at.

[Deborah Maldonado]

You know, that's a big thing in junior. Do you have enough friends? You have a lot of friends? Kind of a. Yeah. Are you popular or not? Or are you just a loner? You know?

[Dr. Rob Maldonado]

Yeah. And loan being a loner, not necessarily bad. It just simply means you're a certain personality type, perhaps more introverted, artistic, pensive, poetic. Those kind of personalities, they're comfortable being alone, and they require more time to be alone to do that kind of thinking, feeling. But symbolically, what's happening then is we're being shaped by. By internal forces that most psychologists don't even address. That's why we love up the Jungian model, because it's getting deeper into the archetypal patterns. So archetypal patterns, These are universal patterns that have to do with what kind of dreams are we now we know as children, we have powerful symbolic, archetypal dreams that we often still remember. You know, often when I talk to students, they're telling me I remember these powerful dreams when I was a child, and I still remember them today. And here's what they were. And we use them to. To kind of navigate our life. They point us in certain directions, even if we don't get an interpretation, let's say, of the dream. Often the feeling itself, of the. The emotional intensity of these Dreams shift our thinking and shift our psyche. They replenish it from the inside.

[Deborah Maldonado]

Well, when we talk about, like the myth, the kind of the roles that everyone plays, we start to pick our roles. Wouldn't it also be symbolic of archetypal symbols like the leader, the follower, those type of things that start to form in the social structure?

[Dr. Rob Maldonado]

Yeah.

[Deborah Maldonado]

And it like, happens automatically. So it's this unconscious formation of a social structure. And the question we're asking is, who do I need to become to belong here?

[Dr. Rob Maldonado]

Who do I need to become to belong here? And that has to do with survival because evolutionary, kind of the evolutionary perspective, right. We see that we needed to be accepted by the group so that we could get our share of the spoils, the meat, the food that was available to us. If we were rejected. Right. If we were excommunicated, if we were left out in the ice or, you know, in the night, we would not survive. Therefore, these instincts are very powerful in us.

[Deborah Maldonado]

But also there's mating too. That happens in junior high and high school. We start being interested in the opposite sex or the same sex, depending on what your preference is. And we start to, like, want to kind of. That's also ancient partnership partnering.

[Dr. Rob Maldonado]

That's one of the definitions of adolescence, is that we mature sexually, although socially we're not prepared to.

[Deborah Maldonado]

We're matured sexually, but socially we're not very mature.

[Dr. Rob Maldonado]

Yeah, right. But physically we are. We can reproduce. And so it's a dangerous period for us because we have this power of sexuality now, but we don't have all the social kind of understanding yet.

[Narrator]

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[Deborah Maldonado]

What would you know when we talk about roles and us picking that Persona and how we belong, how does our family feel? The initial family feel, the smaller field, the symboling rivalries, the parents, the complexes from our parents, all Those like kind of templates and patterns that we learn early in life. How does that affect our, our life as a teenager? And I would think that sometimes we would reject a role that maybe our parents implied on us. And then we want to be different. We don't want to be the princess that wears. My sister, for example, was like the cheerleader girl. And then she became very goth, wore the dark clothes and the dark, you know, she wanted to be dressed more cool, like she wasn't the little pigtail girl anymore. And so we kind of, we kind of develop our own style in a way. And many times we do it in answer to the early conditioning.

[Dr. Rob Maldonado]

Absolutely.

[Deborah Maldonado]

So if the house was really disruptive growing up, maybe in our social world we try to be all pinned up or look really together because we want to create the opposite of what our family did. So I wanted to like, talk about that a little bit of like how our early family field now impacts the adolescent choosing. Because we're not choosing from a blank, silly. We're coming with this inherited pattern.

[Dr. Rob Maldonado]

That's, that's right. So a simple model would be that the family gives us the expectations, right? They have expectations of us that are communicated both verbally, non verbally. They're communicated just through being around the family that we expect this of you. And you're playing a certain role from birth to nine within the family. You might be the black sheep of the family, you might be the golden child, you might be the soother, the peacemaker, those kind of things, right. We play these roles within the family system that really are coming from archetypal patterns. So Jung says we're entering, as we enter life, we're entering the hero's journey, right? At this point, we're very much a part of the clan, part of the family. We're playing our role, doing the chores, whatever we're instructed to do, playing along and doing our work in the school system once we leave the house and we start to enter beyond nine into 10 and those teenage years now we're, we're still tied to the family, but we're outside that those constraints. And so we have to now adapt those early expectations to this outer world of peers, of teachers, of society, of culture that is new to us. And so that period of adolescence really starts to put pressure on us to define ourselves.

[Deborah Maldonado]

So can you give me an example of that?

[Dr. Rob Maldonado]

Yeah, if, if you go to, let's say, a top notch school, for example, and you're not able to keep up with the curriculum because your parents expect you to Excel?

[Deborah Maldonado]

Is that what you're saying? Okay, so the expectation is you're going to be successful, you're going to be smart, you're going to excel because you're going to go to the best school in the world that we can afford.

[Dr. Rob Maldonado]

Yeah, most of us will, will find a way to adapt and compensate somehow for our situation. What I noticed in working with kids was that when they were put in situations where they didn't fit in, that's when you would see behavioral problems. But it wasn't so much that they had ADHD or, you know, kind of oppositional behavior disorder or these kind of things. It was simply that they were, it was a mismatch for them. The environment that they were in, in the school didn't fit the, the, the expectations they were bringing in from the family system or the, the expectations that had been communicated to them of what was expected for them. And therefore they had no other way to compensate except to physically act out.

[Deborah Maldonado]

So the environment, when you say environment,

[Dr. Rob Maldonado]

the, the environment, the teachers, the other

[Deborah Maldonado]

kids, you didn't fit in, is that what you're saying?

[Dr. Rob Maldonado]

Yeah, yeah.

[Deborah Maldonado]

You didn't feel accepted in there for some reason. Like a poor kid getting placed in a, in a top notch school because they were, got a special grant or something or rich relative. And so they're in this like, different. And the parents are betting on that kid to fit in, but then he's around these people that are completely different and trying to fit in and maybe the kids reject him because he's not a pedigree like the other snooty little kids there.

[Dr. Rob Maldonado]

Right.

[Deborah Maldonado]

And they, so the kid sabotages it. Like look at, you know, it's a great example of that is Good Will Hunting. Remember, he was so smart and he fit, he should have gone to mit, but he, his, his environment, early environment didn't fit that environment. Is that what you're saying? Like sometimes. And then he would sabotage it. He would hang out with his friends, his peers because he felt like he belonged with them because of his childhood. But his potential was thwarted because he wasn't accepted into this bigger potential.

[Dr. Rob Maldonado]

And we see a lot of that because the institution of education is very systematized and as human beings there's a huge variety of approaches to learning and how you learn and how you express your intelligence. So some kids have artistic intelligence, music intelligence, visual spatial intelligence, athletic intelligence, all these different kinds of ways of expressing their, their power, which doesn't fit the, the standard model that you have to sit still for, especially boys.

[Deborah Maldonado]

Right. They're not meant to just sit.

[Dr. Rob Maldonado]

Right.

[Deborah Maldonado]

That women, girls are easily to, like, sit. And they're more, you know, just kind of.

[Dr. Rob Maldonado]

Maybe that's why they're not as hyper. Yeah, they're. They're excelling now. Women are excelling in academia. In academia, whereas men are falling behind. Often it starts early because of the. These. These kind of rigid expectations that everyone should learn the same and the same things. So it. Let's say when we look at these mismatches, it teaches us a lot about our human nature. And this is important for understanding our responses to technologies. As technology begins to shape and kind of make our society different.

[Deborah Maldonado]

Well, we're talking to AI like it's a person now.

[Dr. Rob Maldonado]

So, yeah, we're talking this other.

[Deborah Maldonado]

We're going to have a future episode. We talk about technology and social media and that type of impact on our. On our Persona as well.

[Dr. Rob Maldonado]

Yeah, our human instincts and our human nature tends to get left behind, but, you know, it's still there. It's always there. It's always ready to go.

[Deborah Maldonado]

So to sum up, what we're doing is we leave our family to go into the social field, and we're still connected to our family because junior high, high school, we're still living in the. Like, we're still under 18, under the roof of our family. So it's kind of a midway point between. It's like a transitional point. So we're getting out, we're socializing, we're building relationships with our peers and preparing us for adulthood. Because we're not going to live in our parents forever. Although that's happening now. You never know. But. But what I like about this, there's a quote here, is by the time a young person enters adolescence, they're not simply becoming themselves, they're becoming themselves in response to the initial family field. So it's like we say a blank slate where you're going. I decide I'm going to be a cheerleader. I'm going to be the smartest kid in class, or I'm going to hang out with the jocks or be an athlete. All of a sudden, it's like, in response to it. So we're unconsciously either rejecting our family or complying with their messaging or somewhere in between.

[Dr. Rob Maldonado]

Yeah. And either way, it's a decision that we're making in the context of the family.

[Deborah Maldonado]

Yeah.

[Dr. Rob Maldonado]

In other words, we're either identifying with those expectations and saying, yes, I'm going to try to live up to these expectations, or we're rejecting them. But either way we're caught. We're caught in that system because, again, we internalize it. Meaning it's not even necessary that our parents keep being that way or telling us and communicating those expectations to us. It's that we've internalized them. Now they're part of us. We. We kind of expect it of ourselves. And therefore it creates an inner conflict when we push it away or. Or even when we identify with it. Because often we have our own individual creative impulse to do certain things. But because of the pressure of conforming to the family, then we're. We're caught in that internal conflict and that. That becomes part of the shadow as well.

[Deborah Maldonado]

And so the first, these two stages, the early childhood and then the adolescence, we're focused outward. We're. We're trying to fit in with this, like, 3D world where we're. We're looking at all these personalities and we're not really choosing because we're letting the environment influence us. So we're getting very influenced. It's not coming, like, in us because everything's like a hologram in a way. But we're. We're. We're allowing the world. Our ego's not strong enough yet to really, like, make these decisions. So what we're doing is we're building the ego. We're building a sense of volition, of power over time. Gradually, over these years. And then the next episode, we'll talk about really, the ego starts getting more solid. 18 to 27, 18 to 25, 26, where we're really. Now we're building our career and our relationships and. And so, again, the ego's being developed through this whole. Whole element. And I think. I'm not a psychologist, but I would say that our emotional template, we talk about that being very early on. So that's the foundation. And then all the stories and narratives and our Persona and the shadow are all, like, part of a larger development for us. So we want to underscore that we don't stop creating patterns when we're nine. Like, okay, we're done. Our early life patterns. We just need to go back to our childhood. We have to examine our whole life and who we chose as friends, who we continue to choose as friends. So very, very cool conversation. I can't wait to continue to talk about early adulthood or late youth, I guess, or late adolescence and talk about that impact, because that's really more of what we remember the most and how it's forming our life right now.

[Dr. Rob Maldonado]

I just want to say, even though you're not a psychologist. You're a writer. And writers are often the best psychologists because they know how to observe and they're always paying attention to how people speak and what they do.

[Deborah Maldonado]

I think introverts are great psychologists because we all are. We're always very observant. And then extroverts seem to be, like, facing outward more all the time. And introverts are kind of. And reading more. But yeah, so I think it's an introverted thing, too. And most of our coaches that we take our training are introverts, but we turn them into extroverts when they start going out there. Anyway, let's. We'll see you next week. For our next episode, we go into that age 18 to 25, those formative ages of really solidifying that ego and building it, which is a very necessary part. That ego is not bad, a necessary part of development. Take care, everyone. We'll see you next week.

[Dr. Rob Maldonado]

See you soon.

[Deborah Maldonado]

Bye.

[Narrator]

Thank you for joining us for Jung on Purpose with Deborah Maldonado and Dr. Rob Maldonado of Creative Mind. Don't forget to subscribe to our podcast before you leave and join us each week.

[Deborah Maldonado]

We'll see you soon. Sa.