Reclaiming Agency: A Reflection on Learned Helplessness

Author: Suzanne Katanic
Estimated read time: 5 minutes

From False Surrender to Authentic Power

What if learned helplessness isn’t just about being stuck, but about a hidden, painful choice made in the name of survival? Imagine the quiet inner surrender that emerges not from incapacity but from a deep, unconscious strategy to keep love and connection alive. This article explores how, through a Jungian lens, learned helplessness can be understood as the false self’s way of preserving attachment, even at the cost of one’s own voice and agency. And how, from this recognition, we can begin the sacred journey of reclaiming the authentic self beneath the mask.

Releasing the False Self to Restore the Whole Self

Traditionally, learned helplessness is viewed as a psychic condition illustrated by psychological experiments, most notably the one conducted by Seligman and Maier in 1967. In this now-infamous study, dogs subjected to unavoidable shocks eventually ceased trying to escape, even when the path to freedom was later made clear (Seligman & Maier, 1967). This grim finding revealed how chronic, uncontrollable stress can collapse the will to act.

Yet beyond its cruelty, the experiment overlooks the relational terrain in which helplessness often takes root. It fails to ask what deeper internal calculation a living being does when deciding to surrender. What is preserved in that surrender?

Learned helplessness is not always a sign of inability. Instead, it may be a childhood psychic strategy, an adaptation crafted to maintain attachment in an environment where genuine authenticity might threaten connection. From a Jungian perspective, this is the birth of a false self, a persona constructed to secure belonging while sacrificing agency and voice.

In many family systems, particularly those burdened by intergenerational trauma, neglect, or emotional immaturity, children often internalize the belief that if the adults could not shoulder essential responsibilities like care, protection, or planning, then those tasks must be impossible to achieve. This belief hardens into a core complex: If my caretakers couldn’t or wouldn’t do it, then surely, I cannot. Such internal stories become fertile ground for learned helplessness.

While this adaptation can preserve loyalty or family harmony, it does so by shrinking the individual’s sense of power, voice, and autonomy.

Seen through the Jungian lens, this dynamic involves the unintegrated shadow, the parts of the psyche disowned and often projected onto others. Caregivers who avoided responsibility, numbed themselves through distractions or addiction, or controlled through passivity were not necessarily helpless, but unwilling or unable to face their own inner work and transformation.

Yet their limitations do not have to script the legacy of the next generation.

As the adapted self begins to dissolve, a deeper truth emerges. Reclaiming agency does not require severing connection, but rather a rebalancing of relational patterns. Differentiating within relationship, asserting one’s true self while maintaining connection, is a cornerstone of psychological maturity.

Marion Woodman beautifully captured this struggle: “The struggle to be real… to shed the masks of the false self, is a sacred journey” (Woodman, 1982, p. 6). This journey often begins in the ruins of adaptation, where the authentic self has been buried beneath performance, silence, and inherited shame. The true self waits beneath, whole, waiting to be rediscovered and reclaimed.

Polly Young-Eisendrath echoes this transformation: “Individuation does not mean separation from others. It means becoming differentiated within relationship.” Reclaiming agency, then, is not a rejection of others but a return to oneself within the context of one’s relational life.

Signs of Reclaiming Agency:

• No longer pretending to be less capable or less intelligent than one is

• Refusing to seek help as a way of staying small

• Speaking truth even when it risks disconnection

• Releasing the need to be “less than” to feel safe

These shifts mark the movement toward individuation—the lifelong process of integrating the conscious and unconscious self, withdrawing projections, and embodying one’s inherent authority.

The Invitation

The rejection that once felt unbearable often fades in comparison to the pain of continued self-abandonment. To reclaim agency is to stop performing for love and instead cultivate the capacity to belong to oneself.

This is not a departure from relationship. It is the necessary ground from which real relationship can grow.

References

Seligman, M. E., & Maier, S. F. (1967). Failure to escape traumatic shock. Journal of Experimental Psychology, 74(1), 1–9. https://doi.org/10.1037/h0024514

Woodman, M. (1982). Addiction to perfection: The still unravished bride. Toronto, ON: Inner City Books.

Young-Eisendrath, P. (1997). Women and desire: Beyond wanting to be wanted. Boston: Little, Brown and Company.

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Suzanne Katanic, LMFT, is a licensed therapist with over 15 years of experience helping people heal old wounds and reconnect with their true selves. She blends integral psychotherapy with Depth Hypnosis, a body-centered practice that includes guided imagery, inner child work, and energy healing. Through her writing, she invites readers to explore the hidden depths within, awakening insight, transformation, and the quiet power of the inner self.

“My House, My Psyche”: What Our Childhood Homes Teach Us About Love, Worth, and Belonging

By Suzanne Katanic
Estimated read time: 6–7 minutes

There is a house that sits vacant now. It waits quietly, layered in dust and time. The woodwork my father carved still hangs in the rafters, a suspended beauty left unfinished. It’s easy to miss if you don’t look up. For years, I didn’t. I didn’t know there was anything up there.

That is where this story begins: with the parts of the house and of ourselves we do not see.

The House as Symbol

In therapy, dreams, and analytic work, the house often emerges as a central symbol of the self. Marion Woodman wrote, “The unconscious is not a chaos, not a black hole, but a house with many rooms,” showing us the inner world is not disorder but a sacred interior. Each room becomes an invitation, a chance to explore, heal, and remember.

We dream of basements when we are called to dig into buried emotions and ancestral memory.
We dream of attics when something forgotten stirs, like an idea, a longing, or a truth packed away for years.
We dream of broken windows when our boundaries have been breached, a signal from the psyche that what protects and contains us needs care.

In this light, the house becomes more than shelter. It becomes a living metaphor for the feminine psyche Woodman described, layered, mysterious, and capable of transformation.

When Home Was Not Safe

But what happens when the house itself was a place of chaos, silence, or psychic rupture?
What if the first container of our lives, our home, taught us that beauty was fragile and safety unreliable?

The Emotional Blueprint

Our childhood homes do not just hold our furniture. They become the blueprint for our internal object world.

• Was there space for you to speak?

• Or did you learn to hold your tongue to keep the peace?

• Was there warmth in the kitchen, or a chill that settled into your bones?

These are not just nostalgic memories. They are early templates that shape our capacity for trust, attachment, and self-regulation. We carry these structures inside us and unconsciously recreate them in adult life. The unpruned trees, the leaky faucet, the beautiful things left unfinished — all of it becomes metaphor. Sometimes it becomes a self-perpetuating symptom.

The Neglected House as a Mirror

Recently, I returned to the house. I trimmed the lower branches of a lemon tree, an act so small yet deeply symbolic. Afterward, the tree seemed to glow. It was as if the care I offered woke something that had been asleep for a long time. Later that day, a woman walked by and asked if she could buy some lemons. The tree had called to her.

This is the nature of the psyche. When we tend to what was ignored or denied, it begins to radiate vitality. Even when others do not know the story, they are drawn to what has been loved.

It made me wonder if a house can be emotionally neglected, and if so, whether it can be restored not just with repairs but with a different kind of care.

We often think healing requires catharsis or profound insight. Sometimes, though, it begins with sweeping a floor, hanging a picture, or listening to the creak of an old door, not to fix it but to finally hear what it has been trying to say.

In the Shadows

What was banished from the family home? What was shoved into the symbolic basement?

For some, chaos, disorganization, and harsh authority were visible while softness, beauty, and kindness were kept out of sight. For others, intrusion was hidden behind polite routines. Shame was buried under silence.

Every family creates an internal museum. We display what the collective ego can tolerate and push away what it cannot bear.

But the house remembers. So does the psyche.
Symptoms, dreams, and relationship patterns are often the return of what was pushed aside.

A Different Kind of Renovation

We live in a culture obsessed with dream homes, yet few ask what their home says about their inner world. Not in a design sense but as a reflection of our development.

• Is there a room in your psyche you have refused to enter?

• A light you have never turned on?

• A hallway that feels haunted by something unspeakable?

This work is not about new furniture or trendy decor.
It is about psychic renovation and reclaiming the spaces we once had to leave behind.
It means walking through the house of the self, not escaping out the back door but moving through it room by room.

Even if the wallpaper is peeling.
Even if the ceiling leaks.

Coming Home

There is a vision I hold close.
Fluffy beds with clean sheets.
Walls that soothe.
A floor that supports the weight of my body.
Breath that comes easily.

I used to think that was just a fantasy. Now I see it as a symbol of integration, a psychological map that points us toward wholeness.

To come home to ourselves means reclaiming what we were conditioned to live without.
It means noticing the woodwork still hanging in the rafters and realizing it was always ours to claim.

We just have to look up.

 #DreamWork #MarionWoodman #Psychoanalysis #SymbolicThinking #ChildhoodHomeHealing #TheInnerHouse #CarlJung

The House as Psyche: Dreamwork, Horror, and the Shadowed Architecture of the Mind

By Suzanne Katanic
Estimated Read Time: 5-6 minutes

In dreamwork, the house often appears not just as a building, but as a living, breathing metaphor, one deeply entwined with our developmental history. Carl Jung suggested that the house symbolizes the psyche: its rooms, its foundations, its forgotten attics and hidden basements reflecting the different layers of consciousness and memory. But the question remains: is this merely a tidy metaphor, or something far more consuming?

Can the house swallow us whole?

Many of us dream of homes that are expansive, crumbling, locked, flooded, or haunted. These houses aren't just backdrops; they’re psychic processes. They mirror the internal structures built in childhood: doors we were allowed to open, rooms we were told not to enter, walls we built ourselves. The psychological house becomes an active participant in our inner narrative. What does it mean when a sibling bars you from entering the dream house? When a parent lurks at the threshold, denying entry? Is the house rejecting you, or simply revealing the rejection you've already internalized?

Popular culture echoes these psychic dynamics, particularly in horror. Take Poltergeist: the quintessential suburban home built atop an unacknowledged Indigenous burial ground. Here, the pursuit of safety and domestic idealism rests on repressed violence, displaced history, and unhealed wounds. What we bury, historically, culturally, or personally, returns. And it usually returns through the basement.

In The Haunting of Hill House, the house offers itself as a place of safety, of retreat from the world’s chaos, but ultimately becomes a tomb for generational trauma. Safety, when overdetermined, can become a fortress that seals in shadow material: unspoken griefs, addictions, secrets. The house doesn't just trap us; it mirrors the ways we’ve already trapped ourselves.

And in Jordan Peele’s Us, the family returns to their beach house only to be met with their own literal shadows. The horror emerges not from the outside world breaking in but from what the house itself calls up and reflects back.

The home is often idealized as a sanctuary, but what if that sanctuary becomes the site of invasion? Or worse, colludes with the invader?

To ask psychoanalytically: where is the shadow stored in the home? In the crawlspace, the attic, the room you forgot existed? The home hides secrets, and not just familial ones, but the parts of ourselves we have exiled. What happens when the home, or the absence of one, becomes the container for disavowed pain?

Some of us never had a stable home. Some had one that was physically present but emotionally absent. The lack of a coherent psychological “house” shapes our sense of self as fragmented, unwelcome, and perpetually seeking safety in unsafe places. In response, we might cling tightly to constructed forms of safety such as over-control, perfectionism, or pristine domesticity. Or we may reject the very idea of home altogether, fearing it will betray us in the end.

In dreamwork and therapy, the house continues to unfold: its furniture rearranged, new wings discovered, ghosts stirred from the walls. As we explore it, room by psychic room, we must ask not just what the house is hiding, but what we are hiding from within it.

Is the house a refuge? A trap? A haunted mirror? Or is it simply us, waiting to be inhabited more fully?

The First House: On the Womb, the Mother, and the Search for Home

The First House: On the Womb, the Mother, and the Search for Home

By Suzanne Katanic
Estimated read time: 5–6 minutes

In psychoanalysis, the idea of home is rarely just about a physical structure. Home is the first psychic container: a womb, a mother, an atmosphere. Before we have language, before we can even breathe on our own, we are housed within someone else. We float in the amniotic fluid of our mother’s body, sustained by her breath, her rhythms, her emotions. She is our first house.

Whatever she feels, we feel. Whatever she ingests, whether nutritionally, emotionally, or relationally, filters into us. There is no boundary. In this earliest state, we are not separate; we are one. The developmental goal of life is to differentiate, but there remains a primal longing to return to that original oneness.

This longing becomes the psychic blueprint of what we call “home.”

But what happens when the mother, this first home, is unsafe? When her body is not a sanctuary but a source of emotional poison or psychic chaos? In clinical terms, we speak of the “bad mother” (Winnicott) or the “Dark Mother” (Fromm, Jung) as archetypes that represent the maternal figure who cannot hold, attune to, or safely mirror the child.

Fairy tales often symbolize this rupture. Take Snow White, for example. Her biological mother dies, and she is left with a stepmother who embodies the Dark Mother. Beautiful yet envious and cruel, this maternal figure poisons the child. The apple is both an act of violence and a metaphor for the way toxic maternal hatred can infiltrate the psyche, attacking the parts of the self that are most pure and alive.

Snow White must flee. She leaves her original home and escapes into the wilderness, which symbolizes the exile from the maternal environment. Even in exile, the longing remains: to find a new home, to feel whole, to be held safely again.

In therapy, this myth repeats itself in many forms. Clients often carry internalized versions of the Dark Mother. She can appear as a corporate mentor who devours their sense of worth, a female landlord who projects her own unresolved dragons onto others, or a visionary woman so consumed by ambition that she tramples those around her without noticing. These figures are not only external; they are psychic echoes.

Often, what people seek is not just safety but reconnection with a part of themselves that was stifled, dimmed, or nearly extinguished in that original environment.

This is the symbolic return to the castle, rebuilt this time by the self who has faced the dragons, named them, and survived. It is the return stage of the hero’s journey. This return is not to the literal place of trauma but to a new inner home built from stronger boundaries, conscious awareness, and self-compassion.

And what about the mother who devours instead of nourishes? She is insatiable. She consumes everything: her daughter’s vitality, her partner’s attention, even the emotional air in the room. Yet she remains empty. These mothers can feel like psychic black holes, endlessly taking in but giving nothing back.

In therapeutic language, this creates relational trauma. It is a pattern of giving without receiving, of being seen as an extension rather than an individual. Daughters of such mothers often carry immense guilt for wanting to separate, for needing space to breathe. But this separation is not betrayal. It is survival.

The journey continues: to find new mothers, new homes, even if they are symbolic. To rediscover a sense of safety in the world. To make peace with apartness, even while feeling the ache for connection.

Ultimately, the work is not about ending the longing for home but about recognizing which houses are haunted, which mothers wound us, and which inner sanctuaries we now have the power to build for ourselves.

The Wise Bird & the Dream Spinner

by Suzanne Katanic
Read time: ~3 minutes

There is a very wise bird who soars endlessly across the land, searching for soul stones and gathering healing balm for those who suffer. Her wings stretch wide enough to blanket the entire earth. As she flies, silvery dust drifts from her feathers, leaving a shimmering trail of peace behind her. Upon her strong back rides the Dream Spinner, who guides her through the night in search of hidden tinctures and forgotten treasures to bring back to the dreamers.

She is tireless, devoted to helping and to healing. All you have to do is call, and she will come, bringing exactly what your heart needs.

One night, the wise bird heard a call, not from the Dream Spinner, but from a child the Dream Spinner was tending. Though the child’s cry was silent, the bird felt it echo in her great heart and followed its thread through the darkened sky. With the Dream Spinner perched between her wings, she glided over sleeping forests and quiet towns. Her wings spread wide, draping the earth in a hush of calm, while peace fell from her feathers into the dreams of all below.

At last, the Dream Spinner pointed to a small house. The bird slipped through an open window, her feathers brushing moonlight aside. Inside, they found the child hiding, frightened by a noise that had come in the night. Beneath the bed, the child shivered. The Dream Spinner climbed down and wrapped the child in warmth and comfort, gently rocking and asking what had been lost.

One by one, the Dream Spinner gathered the colorful soul jewels the child had misplaced, pieces of joy, peace, and wonder, and placed them back into the child’s heart. Together, they spun a new dream, bright and soft, until the child glowed with a cocoon of warm, white light. Then the wise bird lifted her wings once more, carrying the Dream Spinner back into the sky, ready to answer the next call.

#ChildrensStories #DreamSymbols #HealingDreams #SoulStories #BedtimeMagic #Dreamwork #SymbolicStories

Threads of Grief: A Reflection on Loss, Transformation, and Emergence

by Suzanne Katanic
5 min read

The caterpillars come to teach me again.
Their cycle: five days. For me: years.
I am liquefied by this grief, held in a chrysalis spun from times gone by,
a web of memories binding me tight in its silken grip.
I wiggle and resist, longing for the days I was free
to roam the branches of my youth.
Now they visit me like words written by someone else.

The caterpillars come, and they teach me still:
accept each stage, meet it with an exuberance for life
that hums out into the world with each vibration —
letting go of past lives, greeting the present with a presence I crave.

My dear Sissy, a beautiful caterpillar in her own right —
her wings are as breathtaking as her time is brief.
I ache for more. There are never enough days once they are gone.

There are never enough days.

So I wait, swaddled in grief, for my chrysalis to open,
to release me into whatever comes next.
I surrender to the liquefaction of my old ways;
they do not belong here.
And so, I wait for the sun to break into this dark cocoon
and for my new wings to emerge.

#ThreadsOfGrief #GriefJourney #GriefHealing #GriefSupport #Transformation #Chrysalis #Metamorphosis #Emergence #HealingThroughGrief #TherapyJourney #MentalHealthAwareness #TherapistThoughts #PoeticGrief #LossAndHealing #PetLoss #GriefPoetry #SymbolicHealing #PsychoanalyticReflections #HealingWords

The Inner Critic: Healing the Voice That Keeps You Striving

By Suzanne Katanic
5-minute read

When Cheryl (pseudonym) came to me, she was exhausted and drained by an internal mechanism that kept her constantly striving for both real and imagined perfection. For years, she had been driven by an inner voice whispering, “You’re not good enough.” She was beginning to realize that this undeserved core belief relentlessly minimized her accomplishments and positive experiences, always demanding she climb yet another mountain, promising that the next peak would finally bring the fulfillment she craved. As Marion Woodman wisely put it, “Perfectionism is self-abuse of the highest order.”

The inner critic is a relentless taskmaster. It operates by deflating, erasing, and then rebuilding other parts of the self, creating an endless loop of never feeling “enough.” This critic can show up in many guises: as the hypercritical boss or parent who focuses on others’ faults to avoid looking inward; as the wounded healer who pours all their energy into rescuing others; or, like Cheryl’s critic, as constant ambition that compulsively drives her to achieve until breakdown or burnout is inevitable. Even when your spiritual gas tank is empty, the inner critic compels you to keep fixing, helping, striving, pushing, and proving. As Winnicott reminds us, “It is a joy to be hidden but a disaster not to be found.” The true self can become buried under the critic’s demands, leaving us feeling disconnected from who we really are.

No matter how your inner critic shows up, healing begins within. We align the critic with the higher self and the intuitive self, reconnecting with the whole self that sources its power through compassion, creativity, and wisdom instead of judgment and fear.

Here are four steps to help you stop being driven by your inner critic and start aligning it with your truest self:

• Stay positive. The “fixer” within the critic loves to erase the good by creating problems, then swoop in as the hero to fix them. This rescue cycle keeps you stuck. When that voice points out what you’re not doing right, pause and remember: This is my life, my lessons, and my consequences. Own it and stay in the solution.

• Block out the noise. Your inner critic loves shopping for opinions. This keeps you seeking outside approval instead of taking meaningful action. It may even fill you with doubt so you’re too afraid to act at all. To counter this, sit quietly, clear the chatter, and listen for your own wisdom. More opinions won’t silence the critic. Only inner work will.

• Practice self-validation. When you have a win, no matter how small, celebrate it! Give yourself an actual pat on the back. Acknowledging your wins step by step builds confidence and quiets the critic’s voice over time. As Kristin Neff reminds us, “Self-compassion is simply giving the same kindness to ourselves that we would give to others.”

• Use the critic for good. The upside of the inner critic is that, when aligned with your highest self, it can help steer you toward your deeper purpose. A transformed critic becomes a wise guide, but only when it’s integrated as part of your whole self and not a tyrant you run ragged trying to please.

As Cheryl did this work, she began to pursue goals with deeper purpose, creating more balance and meaning in her life. She learned to motivate herself through creativity and service instead of running from that harsh inner voice.

Healing the inner critic is complex and takes time. If you’d like help identifying and transforming your inner critic, I’m here to support you through individual sessions. You don’t have to untangle it alone.

References

Neff, K. (2011). Self-compassion: The proven power of being kind to yourself. William Morrow.
Winnicott, D. W. (1971). Playing and reality. Tavistock Publications.
Woodman, M. (1982). Addiction to perfection: The still unravished bride. Inner City Books.

#InnerCritic #SelfCompassion #PsychodynamicTherapy #HealingPerfectionism #TrueSelf #DepthPsychology #TherapistThoughts

A Multi-Disciplinary Approach to Couple Counseling

THE MULTI-DISCIPLINARY APPROACH TO COUPLES WORK

An integral approach to couples work uses a customized approach which utilizes both individual work and couples sessions to explore tactical tools and communication growth while also diving deeply into individual patterns that are magnified in the couplehood.

The first few sessions we get to the heart of the matter outlining the presenting issues from each members perspective using a psychodynamic and integrative perspective. Then we move into a customized combination of individual sessions which allows each person to examine and heal their part of the pattern while also meeting in couple session to develop practical communication tools that encourage heartfelt connection and deeply meaningful conversation. 

The focus of improving communication using Gottman Method couple therapy tools to grow from listening and speacking to finding right/wrong, fact find or to respond and explain to listening for finding and creating and opening to connection and to see and understand other members of the partnership. In each session the couple works through attachments and aversions that are causing suffering to move to a more equanimous way in relationship. When we can detach in this way, we become more free to love without our old rigid defenses while developing more flexible ways of holding boundary and openness.

Barbie and Post-Pandemic Recovery

By Suzanne Katanic
Approx. 5 min read

It’s the summer of 2023, the first summer that truly feels like the pandemic is over. Our bodies are relaxing again. We’re finally able to travel, go out, and be in the world. The fight-or-flight state our nervous systems have been stuck in is beginning to ease, releasing us back into something we’d nearly forgotten: play. There’s a sweet nostalgia for summers long past — long, lazy, playful days spent splashing in pools and basking in the sun. It was a time when our bodies told us there was nowhere else to be and nothing else to do, and in our childlike wonder, we believed it.

Nothing crowded our minds away from the present moment. We played with abandon, guilt-free and full of spaciousness. Long days and late sunsets let us forget about clocks and calendars as we became devoted followers of nature’s rhythms.

At some point, though, those carefree days gave way to more adult pursuits: producing, conquering, achieving, attaining. We traded playfulness for productivity. And then, in March of 2020, everything stopped. The message was loud and clear: go home, stay home, don’t gather in groups, don’t go to the beaches or parks, just stay home. We watched our friends get sick; some of them died. We felt scared and sad and worried all at once, and yet we kept working.

Often we worked piled on top of our family members under one roof. We set up offices in closets, under stairs, even in laundry rooms, each of us carving out a tiny cave of productivity and safety. We saw our coworkers’ children and pets wandering through our Zoom screens. We dropped our “office masks” and let ourselves be human, making mistakes, laughing at ourselves, and showing the messiness beneath the polished surface.

In this collective pause, the veil lifted. We saw ourselves and each other more clearly. We re-examined our values. We looked around at our families, our gardens, our lives, and we said we want more of this. We learned we could work and still keep parts of ourselves we’d neglected for far too long.

And then, as the pandemic slowly subsided into its endemic phase, we cautiously emerged from our caves, some of us more slowly than others. Movies? Oh no, not yet. I’m not ready to go to a theater, we said. But then came the summer of 2023: Barbie: The Movie. Suddenly, Barbie was everywhere: clothes, purses, sky-high shoes, bright fun pinks. Play was back.

It wasn’t just about the toy. It was the feeling. The nostalgia of our old toys, for some of us Barbie, for others just that somatic sense of being absorbed in play. Returning to play brings us back not just to a pre-pandemic time, but to a time before we believed our worth was measured only by what we produced. It reminds us of something deeper within ourselves. As Donald Winnicott wrote, “It is in playing and only in playing that the individual child or adult is able to be creative and to use the whole personality, and it is only in being creative that the individual discovers the self” (Winnicott, 1989, p. [insert page]).

His insight is timeless: play is not a luxury, it is a pathway back to our wholeness. In the simplest moments of imagination or laughter, we glimpse who we really are beneath the stress and striving. As Winnicott also reminds us, play is the language that lets us speak what we often cannot say outright. “Play is the universal language through which the child or adult communicates what is happening inside.” In play, we tell the truth about our desires, our fears, and our hopes — even when we can’t find the words.

Like the first buds of spring breaking through frozen ground, life is returning, bit by bit, playful moment by playful moment. Maybe this summer is the perfect time for a nostalgic movie and a gentle reminder: relax, play, and let yourself enjoy being alive.

Reference

Winnicott, D. W. (1989). Playing and reality. Routledge. (Original work published 1971)

#Winnicott #PlayingAndReality #BarbieMovie #InnerChild #PlayTherapy #PostPandemicHealing #Psychoanalysis #DepthPsychology #Creativity #Nostalgia #MentalHealthAwareness #TherapistsWhoWrite #Playfulness #SummerReflections

Anna & The Magic Bench

by Suzanne Katanic
~ 2 min read

The magic bench was a bench like any other. It was made of gray stone, its legs carved with gentle curves. This bench sat quietly in the middle of a rose garden in a busy city park. Every day, people ran, walked, and biked past it. Some wore headphones, some chatted with friends, hardly noticing the bench at all.

One day, Anna came and sat on the bench. She had been busy for so long that the busyness had started to spin around inside her like a never-ending merry-go-round. She had asked the Dream Spinner for help, and he had led her here.

"What, only a bench?" Anna asked the Dream Spinner. "Where are the answers? Where is the direction I’m looking for?"

But the Dream Spinner just smiled and drifted away on the breeze. So Anna sat quietly on the bench and closed her eyes. She listened to her breath. She felt her feet rooted on the ground. Slowly, her mind quieted. She felt her heart and her belly. She sat like this for a long while, until the whirling inside her slowed to stillness.

Finally, she whispered to the bench, "What do I do with my time?"

The bench came alive and answered, "Spend your time wisely. Follow your heart. And make sure to sit quietly every day."

A warm golden glow filled Anna’s heart. When she opened her eyes, the roses seemed brighter, the grass greener, and the sky a more brilliant blue. A little squirrel scampered up a tree in front of her, and she noticed it and felt happy.

Everything had come alive, all from sitting on the magic bench.

#mindfulness #storytime #naturemagic #meditation #slowliving #dreamwork #dreamspinner #dreamsymbolism

In the Narcissist’s Shadow: Reclaiming What We Gave Away

Author: Suzanne Katanic
Estimated read time: 5–7 minutes

In the Narcissist’s Shadow

In Greek myth, Narcissus was so captivated by his own reflection in the water that he wasted away gazing at it, unable to look up and love another. He saw only an image, an illusion of perfection, and died clinging to it. Today, the figure of the Narcissist lives on as an archetype — not just in certain people but as an energy in the collective psyche that we can all touch when we lose ourselves to the image and forget the depth behind it.

The Narcissist has a remarkable way of making themselves appear all light, projecting an image of what they imagine wholeness should look like. This image is not authentic selfhood but a carefully constructed persona. If you look and feel closely enough, you may sense there is nothing real behind the image. Yet it is hard to see this emptiness directly because the Narcissist silently casts their shadow onto The Other, any person in their field of awareness.

This aligns with Marion Woodman’s (1982) insight that, “We cannot fight the shadow; we can only acknowledge it and accept it as part of ourselves” (p. 90). To break free from this dynamic, we must see how the projection works.

The Shadow

These projections often show up in The Other as feelings of being “less than,” inadequate, or flawed in the presence of the Narcissist. You may feel unequal or inexplicably inferior. This is often the Narcissist’s disowned emptiness, doubt, and inadequacy being projected onto you. Because they cannot tolerate these human feelings within themselves, others must feel them for them.

Meanwhile, the parts they do own and display are the grandiose ones: indestructibility, omnipotence, guru-like wisdom. The Narcissist often appears charismatic, larger than life, and may seem loving, spiritual, or even transcendent, especially during the idealization or “love-bombing” phase. You may feel intoxicated, as if they hold the holy grail to your human suffering.

To test this dynamic, compare how you feel around the Narcissist to how you feel around people who can own their humanness. Those who accept their flaws do not cast this shadow onto The Other.

The Energy Drain

What makes this dynamic so dangerous is that the Narcissist must siphon energy from others to sustain their indestructible image. Their messages and behaviors are designed to pierce your protective layers and draw your admiration and energy toward them. On a practical level, this might look like always attending their events, listening endlessly, never disagreeing, or becoming an extension of them just to keep the connection.

In families, this can be especially complex. Attempts to assert your individuality may be met with disinterest, rage, gaslighting, or sophisticated defenses designed to reassert the Narcissist’s self-image. Clarissa Pinkola Estés (1992) writes, “To be ourselves causes us to be exiled by many others and yet to comply with what others want causes us to be exiled from ourselves” (p. 186). This is the crux: the subtle exile from self that occurs when we lose our center to another’s projected needs.

True Self-Esteem vs. the Narcissist

True self-esteem includes an honest relationship with one’s flaws, doubts, and vulnerabilities. It does not require diminishing others. True power lifts everyone. In contrast, the Narcissist’s false self is a fragile defense against their intolerable humanness and cannot allow others to challenge it.

Ask yourself: How do you feel in the presence of someone with healthy self-esteem versus someone with the rigid, fragile defense of a Narcissist?

Recovery

Healing starts with befriending the very feelings the Narcissist disowns: envy, self-doubt, insecurity. These feelings may seem to be “yours” when you are around the Narcissist, but often they are projections. Jungian psychology reminds us that projection is universal. What we reject in ourselves, we inevitably see in The Other. Woodman (1985) notes that, “The tension between opposites is held by the feminine. When we split, the energy that could have become transformation is lost” (p. 67). Recovery is about calling back that lost energy.

In archetypal work, we reclaim our own shadow qualities. This means recognizing that what we envy in another or feel depleted by is often a reflection of what we have disowned in ourselves. We must bring our shadow into the light so it cannot be stolen or manipulated by an archetypal pattern.

Cutting Off Narcissistic Supply

Much has been written about cutting off “supply.” This means halting the siphoning of your life force by redirecting your energy back to your own life. Own your shadow self, both the humanness and the innate worth within it. As Rowland (2002) reminds us, “The feminist critique does not reject Jung’s theory of archetypes but asks for a deeper understanding of how these archetypal patterns live and shift in cultural power dynamics” (p. 47). This relational dance is not just personal — it lives in the larger collective too.

For the empath, the work is owning your value and goodness. For the Narcissist (should they ever choose to do the work), the task is to let life in through their flaws and to feel the emptiness they have long denied.

A Final Thought

Jung’s archetypal model reminds us that the Narcissist and The Other are not just people. They are living symbols in the collective unconscious. Narcissus wasted away staring at a reflection. His tragedy reminds us that we do the same when we stay fixated on the image of perfection, whether in ourselves or in another. True healing is not about endlessly analyzing the Narcissist. It happens in us.

To heal is to reclaim what we once projected or gave away. It is to own our difficult feelings, yes, but equally, it is to own our talents, our goodness, and the part of us that shines. When we bring our full selves back into the light, flawed, radiant, and fully human, we lift our gaze from the illusion and step out from under the shadow completely.

True power welcomes imperfection, nurtures connection, and never requires The Other to feel “less than” in order for it to shine.

References

Estés, C. P. (1992). Women who run with the wolves: Myths and stories of the wild woman archetype. Ballantine Books.

Rowland, S. (2002). Jung: A feminist revision. Polity Press.

Woodman, M. (1982). Addiction to perfection: The still unravished bride. Inner City Books.

Woodman, M. (1985). The pregnant virgin: A process of psychological transformation. Inner City Books.

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