← Jung On Purpose Podcast by CreativeMind
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- [00:04]
A
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. Hello everyone. Welcome back to Young on Purpose. I am Deborah Maldonado.
- [00:40]
B
I'm Dr. Rob. Welcome to the program.
- [00:43]
A
And we are excited to continue our series on emotions and early childhood development. Last week we talked about ages one through four and now we're talking about four to nine. We're talking about imagination, play and also the development of their self image. And these are all a part of your early life emotional template that you really set your life up for the rest of your life. And we're also going to tell you how you can transcend it. Not just how it forms, but actually what you can do with it. But before we begin, I do want to remind you to subscribe to our channel. If you're watching us on YouTube, click the button in the corner like and subscribe to us. We appreciate that comment. Let us know what you like, think about the show, what you'd like to see also on any of the podcast services. We'd love to see you subscribe. So you get an episode every week and we can reach more people.
- [01:39]
B
Sure.
- [01:40]
A
Okay. So we talked about 0 to 2 being this pure emotion without words, without logic and based on the environment. We're just feeling out the world and we're, we have a range of all emotions and that we should have experience with all emotions and experiences in life to pull both the good and bad or positive or negative, I should say, or whatever we want to label it these pleasant or unpleasant emotions so we can learn that repertoire, how to feel fully in life. And then from 2 to 4 is when we start using our actions to express emotions. And that's when we say no and we get frustrated and throw toys and we start kind of acting out a little bit, the terrible twos as some people call it. But the, the narrative isn't there yet. We're just starting to piece together language and emotion. This next stage that we're going to talk about today, 4 to 6 and 6 to 9. But 4 to 6 is really the, the realm of Jungian where we talk about imagination, play and story. So now they're in preschool age, going into kindergarten and symbolic play and drawing and all these things are starting to.
- [02:51]
B
Yeah, at this stage, play really gets serious. What I mean is we really as, as human beings use our imagination to get into these roles. It's almost like we're. We're actors and practicing these difficult roles in life. So we might play a soldier, we might play a husband and wife, we might play adults that are acting criminally. All of these scenarios that we, we can imagine and envision, we act them out in play. And so what we're doing is we're learning to negotiate life and we're creating our own scenes to practice.
- [03:39]
A
So would you say like. So the emotion. It's a way to like almost like a pre. Let me decide what my Persona is by trying out different roles. So like a child who feels vulnerable, like they feel like, you know, they're not getting attention. They would play, for example play the role of the rescuer to help save the day or the hero. Right. They. To counter the vulnerability. And they're trying to. They're really basically trying on different characters. Another one is if they're being. They feel controlled and they don't have power, they act out the king or the leader or even the monster, you know, that can have power.
- [04:17]
B
And narrative story, because language is really kicking in now. We're learning to read. We love stories as human beings. Even if we don't read, we develop the ability to remember to tell stories, to listen to stories. And it feeds our imagination and vice versa. Then the imagination kind of augments the language that we use.
- [04:45]
A
So how do, how do kids like we. We all read children's. Their stories at night, you know, at that age, especially 4 to 6. I want to read this. And then they say again and read it again. What's happening to the child as they're hearing about all these characters or watching let's say a Disney movie or Pixar movie. And they have kind of a, you know, all the archetypes in there. What's happening for the child and how is that important part of their development?
- [05:11]
B
Yeah, especially from the Jungian perspective. The. As children we're developing our own heroic journey. We are the heroes of the story and we identify with the heroes of the story or the characters, sometimes other characters of the story, but primarily the hero. Right. The, the one that is triumphant or the one that is undergoing these challenges and overcoming those challenges so that it's feeding our own self narrative that, that I. That began at 2. That sense of I now really starts to become a Persona as Jung says. Meaning we start to identify with particular roles in life professions. Perhaps I want to be a pilot, I want to be an astronaut. I want to be an actor. I want to be.
- [06:03]
A
That's that age, right? What are you going to be when you grow up? You know, I'm going to be a, you know, an astronaut or a football player. You know, it's interesting, they asked these kids at that age, who do you want to be when you grow up and draw a picture? And what was really interesting is they were all girls and they asked them, they want to be who's the hero in your life? And they all drew pictures of men. Like they drew a male image, which I thought was very interesting. So just culturally too, when we're looking at themes and roles that are being played, I think it's really important, especially for young girls to see women in leadership roles or women doing so. It's not gender based and they could feel like they can have power too. I remember early on me watching all the movies, Disney movies younger, the man was always the hero and the woman was the damsel in distress. And then they started doing the Disney princesses where they became more of the heroes and all these movies. So that does have an impact on a child and the way they see it. But still, we have a long way. But when we're thinking about those roles, we start to decide, like, what is us and what is not us from that very early age. And also we look at our parents too. What roles are they playing? And then we start to symbolically play mommy or daddy, you know, mommy's in the kitchen or Easy Bake Oven or are we out there, like, you know, going fishing or driving a truck, that type of stuff.
- [07:38]
B
Yeah. And so all that information that we accumulated early on, from birth to 4, now after the age of 4, 5, 6, 7, right, where we start to really use our language and our imagination. Now that content translates into the meaning of our life. And so we start to experience meaning, meaning through story, meaning through story, through narrative, through action. So that we start to really develop our personality, our Persona, as Jung would say, our kind of the way we're going to express our intelligence, our emotions, and hopefully we're learning more social skills. And again, we go back to the current technology. This is where spending too much time on screens is going to impact these generations that are growing up with all this technology. Because we know it's reducing your social interaction time and you need to. You need to practice that. Even if it's interacting with a bully, it's going to teach you a lot more than, you know, kind of playing a video game where shooting them, shooting zombies.
- [09:03]
A
So when. So this we're symbol, we're acting in symbolism. And we always talk about, in the Jungian perspective, you're born with the archetype. So we naturally have all these roles. They show up in these stories that the kids have the hero and the, the trickster, the monster, the, the mother, the, the, the magical helper, the witch. All these characters are showing up. And then one of the, the things that I think is very impactful as adults is that when we go into active imagination, we end that hero's journey. Like you said, we get to go back to that part of our mind that is that formation of the story of the narrative. And we can actually not rewire it, but like we can access that, that powerful creative element that we have in our psyche to create these worlds. And so we're not like going back to childhood, but we're using the tools that we've forgotten from childhood because we grew up and started becoming very rational to help us evolve. Because now we get a second childhood in a way.
- [10:08]
B
Yeah, this is an important point that all these stages of development remain with us. It's simply that we're adding now another lay of complexity. But we're still the three year old kid, we're still the six year old kid that we were. That playfulness is still there. We just need to access it and bring it out and use it, put it to work for, for our purposes.
- [10:38]
A
So when people think about like CBT and rationally thinking I'm good enough, I'm, you know, I'm going to regulate my emotions. You're not really being creative. And it's, it's sort of really helping the rational mind gain sense, which is fine. It works very well the great research on it. But activating this imagination, which is where Jung's realm is in the dream world and active imagination, we enter a whole new realm of expanding our awareness and our capacity to, to have joy and create things in our lives.
- [11:15]
B
At this stage we really start to enter kind of a new phase because school, school begins or is part of our experience. Right. We start to enter another environment besides the family.
- [11:33]
A
So five, six is when we're starting to cross that threshold into separation from the family.
- [11:40]
B
That's right.
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And then the rational world of public education.
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B
Yeah. And it just as it can be challenging for some, some of us, it can also be an awakening, a sense that I am different when I'm in the classroom. I'm not the same person that I am when I'm with my family.
- [12:01]
A
Well, you see this with bullies. Right. The kid is loved at home, and everyone, the king of the household, like he's the golden child. And then he goes to school and everyone calls him a nerd or picks on them. And it's like these two identities start to have contrasts. And then the child believes the social identity has priority because the social identity is really where they're going to take them to adulthood. So they start to believe more of what the culture's telling them than the family.
- [12:30]
B
Yeah, absolutely. And the peer system is really important
- [12:35]
A
because you said that the peers have a bigger impact on us than our parents do.
- [12:40]
B
Yeah, because early on, our parents are the gods. Right. That are instructing us, and we want to please them and we want to be loved by them, and we, we love them. But in, in peers, what we're seeing is people that are pretty much equal to us, and they're not necessarily the same as us because they have other ideas, other behavioral tendencies. And so now we're exposed to other ways of being that are just as attractive to us or even more. And we, that we start to identify and we start to incorporate into our Persona.
- [13:20]
A
And that's where the parents say, I don't like Mary hanging out with Becky. I think she's a bad influence. And all of a sudden they were, they start going goth. Well, maybe not at this age, but, you know, they start to get fresh, you know, where they weren't before because they see their best friend act a certain way. So let's get into 6 to 9, because I find that this is really crucial for many people when they think about, you know, the school, the peers. This is where their self concept is actually formed. And before that, the four to six are playing roles. And you be the princess, I'll be the monster, I'll be the victim, I'll be the helpless. You know, we're just playing. And now it's starting to become a little more serious now. It's like, am I the smart girl? Am I the pretty girl? Am I the athlete? Am I the, you know, the, the trickster in the group, the funny one? And we start really assessing where our pecking orders at that stage. I mean, I guess we do that all along, but this is like really where it kicks in. Am I good? Am I smart? Do people like me? Did I do it right? Am I in trouble? Do I belong? It's the I, I, I, I starts to develop in the child even more.
- [14:36]
B
There's a beautiful book by Herman Hess called Damien, and it is precisely about this period in a kid's life where he. He's kind of confused, right, because he. He understood. Okay, there's this family world of love and connection and yeah, there. There's tension, perhaps, but it's kind of very warm and. And it's a containment space where you're. You feel safe and protected and it's predictable. But then he. He started to notice that there's this other world of homeless people, people that are shady and criminals perhaps, and even kids that are different than me that are interested in other things that I'm not familiar with. And he said that felt to me like two worlds. Two different worlds going parallel, you know, at the same time. And that's kind of what we start to experience in this time in our lives, that there is not only that world of home and beauty and love, but that there's also an element of danger, an element of the unknown, that
- [15:55]
A
your parents aren't there to protect you all the time in the schoolyard. Well, another thing, too, I think that we now, we play these roles and we're not, you know, we're not picked, oh, in line like you're. You're. Who's going to be on my team
- [16:14]
B
and I want to.
- [16:15]
A
Yeah. The teams and belonging and at this stage, shame, pride, guilt, embarrassment, jealousy and anxiety become more prevalent as a psychological complex. Meaning that we're identifying with these feelings. They are ours. So before, we might have felt shame early on, almost like our memory, I guess, as kids, it goes away pretty quickly. This is where it really sticks to us more, would you say, as six to nine, when we start identifying that these emotions are me. When we really start identifying is where we get. They hook into us and they become a personality versus just a fleeting emotion that I'm feeling.
- [16:57]
B
Yeah, I always think of it that the. The ego enters this comparative mode where it's always comparing itself to. Because of the. The peers become important. It's comparing itself to others. And, you know, what tribe or what clique do I belong to? How do I dress to express kind of who I am? All these things come into play. And it can be a confusing time, of course, for kids because there's so much variety. It's like everything.
- [17:28]
A
Well, even, like when we. I don't. You said you had school uniforms. We never had school uniforms. So we knew pretty much, you know, you know, who is. Who was the. Who had the designer clothes and who had not and who had, you know, clean hair and clean, you know, clothes or dirty clothes or wore the same shirt every day. You know, you'd start to see the, the, the economic, you know, comparison and then also religion. I thought everyone was Catholic, you know, growing up. And then they were like, oh, there's a Jewish person in my class or there's a Episcopalian. What is that like? And you start like being exposed to a lot of different identities. And, and so it's, it's a. And I, I don't know. I think uniforms. I know you want to help the kid feel like everyone's the same, but that's not reality. Reality is there are different people in the world. And I don't know, I'm not a parent and I'm not an educator, but I just wonder if, if that's okay to expose kids to the different scenarios so they, they're more prepared for life versus cushioning them from this difference. I mean, what do you feel? I mean, it's controversial because I'm sure some parents are like, oh, I'm so glad. So they don't, they don't have to worry about that at that age, but I think they do. They know what car their other parents pick their kids up with. A broken down car or a beautiful Mercedes. You know, they're, they're seeing the difference in other ways.
- [18:53]
B
Anything the child is exposed to, it's always good for their parents to talk about it. Right. And give the, the understanding to the kid that it's okay to ask these questions and to discuss them and, and that some things don't have an easy answer.
- [19:12]
A
Like why, why does Becky's mom have a brand new car? Why do we have this car and talk about money? I mean, why not, instead of hiding it, just talk about it? You know, I think, I think that like you say, when the parents don't explain what's going on and they think if I don't say anything to the child, they won't ask or they won't, they'll, they won't be, you know, they'll be better off. But you say they already make their own assumptions, which usually is worse. Right. Are we going to be able to pay the rent? You know, when things like that happen, to be able to communicate with the child of what there is.
- [19:43]
B
Yeah, because there's a negative bias in our mind. And so when there's no explanation for something or the child, they assume the worst. And usually the worst is that it's somehow their fault or that it's somehow that they're inferior to others. And therefore you want to explain as much as you can and give them a sense of reality.
- [20:11]
A
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- [21:23]
B
It's not a fair world. Not everybody's going to get the same a trophy. But that you can work for it and that you can achieve. And those kind of messages are always good.
- [21:34]
A
I think everything, it's healthy to experience the range of everything in life and that makes life more rich and delicious. So let's talk about this. Is this the time? Because now the Persona's forming. So with the range of emotions, this person's feeling and they're in school and they're in a structured environment and they're not little babies anymore. They learn that they can't express certain emotions in public or it's not safe to express how they really feel. And this is really starting to build up the shadow in them at this young, young age.
- [22:14]
B
Yeah, because in, in building that Persona and identifying as this is who I am, you have to cut away things that are not you or that don't fit that image of your Persona. And those things don't go anywhere. They simply go into the shadow. And so once we become adults and we, we get to the stage of shadow work, that's what we're working with is the lot of the decisions and the, a lot of the experiences that we had from that early age of 4 to 6 where we, we were introduced to society, to the tribe, to the clan, to the culture and then we had to respond somehow.
- [23:07]
A
Like we stopped crying and having tantrums, you know, we started stuffing it or if we did get bullied at school, we came home, we didn't share it with our parents because we were ashamed. Right. And we just really start navigating our identity and who we show up as and keep things. We're not as like wide open as we were. And so I love this kind of trajectory. First it starts with the body 0 to 2. Then it goes to behavior where we're acting out 2 to 4 and then we start getting into words and play, you know, four to six and the story and then six to nine is where we have this identity and reflection and we start thinking about who we're being in the world, how do I belong to? And so very, very powerful. And then when we hit puberty, it's like a whole other ball game. But think about the emotional template that we talk about. The last two episodes is all formed through this like, very innocent, immature way of seeing the world. Without the worldly knowledge or higher knowledge that we have. We're building a structure of our identity to survive.
- [24:19]
B
Very much so.
- [24:19]
A
And so this is our emotional style. We zero to nine, we. And it's. It doesn't happen in one event. I know a lot of people look at like core events or traumatic events that form you. It happens in these micro events. And it's like the famous Brian Tracy said. The patterns of. Patterns of habit are too late to be felt until they're too strong to be broken. And it's just over time, it just becomes so natural for us to be a certain way and we don't question it. And then even as adults, most adults, unless you're watching our show or doing individuation yourself, aren't questioning these templates. And everyone's just living off the original template, the original Persona.
- [25:02]
B
Yeah. That's why we see these intergenerational patterns continue so that they persist for generations unless people take the initiative, do inner work and change these patterns. Once these patterns are changed, it's like breaking the chain of transmission. You can start a new pattern, but it does require shadow work, emotional integration, and ultimately individuation, as Jung says, and self actualization.
- [25:36]
A
Like you say, the emotion has the power to lock us in, but it also has the power to set us free.
- [25:43]
B
Yeah, absolutely. The power resides within us. It's simply that society gives us the impression that the rewards and the. The. The attention should be paid to these external elements of society. That it's the finding the proper job, getting the proper marriage, the creating the appearance, first of all, of success and wealth and happiness is what most people are taught. Now note that it's the appearance that they're not really interested in the. The actual real thing. They're content with the appearance. Meaning that if others perceive me as successful, as well adjusted, as happy, that's enough. Even though inside there might be, you
- [26:32]
A
have a good life on social media, everyone has the perfect life. Look where I'm Traveling. Look what I'm doing. Look how, look at my beautiful home. Look at my beautiful puppy. And look how my husband is so great.
- [26:43]
B
Yeah, yeah. So that's just me. Yeah. That's part of the kind of the veneer of society. Right. That it's, it's so focused on Persona meaning the appearance of things instead of the genuine human experience that we lose out on finding real fulfillment, real happiness.
- [27:05]
A
We, you know, a lot of people say you just name the feelings and then you'll have more concrete. That's fine for if you want to ego build, but I think that we need to go toward letting go of the self image we developed around what emotions were allowed, what emotions were valued and what emotions were rejected and being able to let ourselves feel them with non attachment without fixing them. I think that's so powerful. We're not taking unpleasant emotions and soothing them and hopefully, oh, I don't have to feel that feeling anymore. It's to be in it. That's the power to be in the like the midst of a tragedy and I'm upset in life and then know on the other side it's temporary and then like that's what life's about. It makes that life like rich. And the peaks and valleys of our emotional life, I mean, we want to live that emotional life. We don't want to cushion ourselves, like we said, from wearing our little uniforms and everyone's the same. We want to break free. And that's what individuation is all about. Not individualization, individual individuation which is really understanding who you are beyond this human psyche, you know, condition response. So. So I really love this episode. I think we'll continue. I think a great next step would be to go to the teenage years, which I think is fascinating also on an emotional level, because in teenage years we have another growth spurt in our brain and we start rewiring because now we go from a child self identity as a child to a self identity as a young adult. And the research shows, or the. What is commonly known is that the ego fully doesn't mature and all this stuff doesn't fully get locked in until we're 25. So we have a lot of more growth to do in the world. And we think, oh, it's the childhood stuff. No, it's the whole first half of our life. We're building up this Persona. So this is just the beginning of building up that Persona and what happens next. So we'll see you on the next episode and continue the series.
- [29:23]
B
All right. See you next time.
- [29:25]
A
Take care. Bye bye. Thank you for joining us for Jung on Purpose with Deborah Maldonado and Dr. Rob Maldonado of CreativeMind. Don't forget to subscribe to our podcast before you leave and join us each week. We'll see you soon.