Becoming an Adult

This episode is about growing up and individuation. Join Robert and Debra for an interesting discussion on the concept of the Puella aeterna (Little Lost Girl) and how to recognize her in your life and the journey to transcending to adulthood.

We explore how society is caught up in idolizing youth and there is a collective need to shift to adulthood.

• What does it mean to become an adult?
• What is the Puella Aeterna and Puer Aeternus?
• How does the relationship with the mother impact individuation?
• What role do emotions play in our relationships and becoming grown up?

Transcript

Debra Maldonado 00:03

Welcome to Creative Mind Living, a podcast for personal growth based on the works of Carl Jung neuroscience and Eastern philosophies. We’re your hosts Debra Berndt Maldonado. And Dr. Rob Maldonado, founders of Creative Mind Coaching. Here we are, again. We’re back on a soul Saturday. Yeah, today rock. Good.

Robert Maldonado 00:28

How are you? I’m good. Beautiful. As always.

Debra Maldonado 00:32

I curled my hair today.

Robert Maldonado 00:33

We hope you guys are doing okay out there.

Debra Maldonado 00:36

Yeah, it’s a beautiful day people are starting to get out. It’s kind of weird. Still. It’s no one wants to get close to anyone. But we’re trying our best to go back to normal and at least be safe and take precautions and that’s all we work best we can do and just take care of the people we love and everyone around us.

Robert Maldonado 00:59

So what’s topic for today,

Debra Maldonado 01:01

the topic for today is something that I personally have endured in my life and all of you can relate,

Robert Maldonado 01:09

not you.

01:11

It’s called the becoming an adult. And what this means is not, you know, not just like working on your childhood and, you know, dealing with your family issues. Yeah, we’re going to be talking more from a individuation standpoint, not in a therapy standpoint. And I think for many of you, you may feel Hmm, this sounds like me. And we’re going to talk about the puella aeterna, which is the eternal girl that we all have within us that sometimes runs our life if we don’t become an adult. About that process.

Robert Maldonado 01:47

Yeah, definitely. We want to preface this by saying we don’t see it as pathology in our work. Although we’re talking about Jungian concepts and psychological concepts. We consider these more challenges than pathology.

Debra Maldonado 02:09

Yes, that’s a good point.

Robert Maldonado 02:12

Especially since it’s part of the culture, Mm hmm. Everybody wants to be young in the, in the culture and the culture. Modern cultures and she worships youth. Mm hmm. And everything is about staying young and looking

Debra Maldonado 02:25

for for a very good

Robert Maldonado 02:29

forever 21 Yeah,

Debra Maldonado 02:31

that store forever 21 It’s a story catchers.

Robert Maldonado 02:35

Yeah, it’s just to her. I was just thinking,

Debra Maldonado 02:37

no, it’s actually a store where they sell like, you know, very sexy little, like things you would wear in high school or in your 20s and you see some women in there that are over 21 still, you know, having that kind of wedding seeking to look young and there’s nothing wrong with that because I think maybe just from a style standpoint, maybe you know, in the 50s women dressed like they were their mother, you know, it was like they didn’t you know, once they got married in their 20s they were ready like the mother and when kids and and I think our culture women have evolved over the years to be more independent have careers and and then when to still be young and not be just the housewife.

Robert Maldonado 03:20

No, no, I think we all want to be 25 when we’re young kids, we want to be older. And then when we get older, we want to be younger.

Debra Maldonado 03:29

Yeah, we can’t wait to be able to drink and drive a car and do all those things. And, and so really, the individuation process we’re going to talk about today is really about becoming a woman becoming a man not staying. You know, it doesn’t mean that you give away your youth or don’t look good or don’t have fun in your life. And I think that’s what I think people don’t want to grow up because of that.

Robert Maldonado 03:58

Right? But there’s deeper Let’s say psychological consequences and emotional consequences to not really taking up the challenges of life.

Debra Maldonado 04:11

Hmm, yeah. And so let’s talk go into. So again, we said this is not about, you know,

Robert Maldonado 04:19

but we don’t shy away from the deep stuff.

04:21

Yeah, we’re going to talk about the deep stuff. So, when we are younger, just in general in the, in the, how young saw the world in psychology sees the development of a person is that when we’re younger, we’re bound to the parents, primarily the mother, and we learn how to react emotionally based on that experience. And that emotional template is stored in us before we were five. And then most of us, I’d say, 99.9% of us, those who don’t individually act out of that same emotional template unconsciously for most of their life, and That’s that, that you’re still you’re still at that child, like, reaction to life is still there. And, and our intellect increases, you know, we learn and we have cognitive learning and we are smarter and we go to school, but we no one ever teaches us how to develop the emotion and so becoming an adult is really First of all, taking responsibility for your life. And also understand kind of graduating from that old template of the emotional reactions and responses that we’ve been kind of knee jerk to into the triggers that we have and how we face the world. So how would you describe the Puella aeterna?

05:46

Yes, very aeterna

05:48

knows. It definitely comes from Jung but one of his pupils, Marie Louise von Franz really developed the idea because she started seeing a lot of people that were kind of stuck in their early development in her own practice. And so she started studying the concept and writing about it. And she finds it as somebody who’s stuck in their teenage years or adolescent years.

Debra Maldonado 06:21

Why are you looking at me?

06:25

We all kind of go through those phases. Mm hmm. But when you get stuck there, meaning that you don’t want to go to the the adult level, right? You don’t want to grow up Peter Pan, the Peter Pan syndrome, the Tinkerbell syndrome. The the Puella aeternas the eternal girl, or the eternal boy the Puera aeternas. There are people that just want to remain in that adolescent stage, no responsibility, no real commitments. The world to them appears too restricting too confining. They want to be free to do what they want to travel to, to enjoy their life. But without taking that step into real commitment to career to relationships. And, of course, we all go through those phases and there’s nothing wrong with it. But then you get into your 30s and 40s and even 50s and 60s and you’re still doing that. Mm hmm that’s when it becomes problematic.

07:34

And just from the standpoint of to check in to see if you’re a victim to the internet is so the are some of the the ways it shows up. It shows up as you know, kind of like you’re complaining about the world. You know, you feel like the world is unfair to you. You’re not getting what you need. Think about it. That sounds like a child would say see a mommy’s taking care of me. And the kind of like, nothing’s fair. There’s kind of an unfairness. A very famous puella aeterna is we were talking about this this morning, is I don’t know if you’ve ever seen the crown or know the story of Princess Margaret and the Queen Elizabeth, is that you know, Queen Elizabeth was the older sister, so she got to be the queen. And Princess Margaret was the sister that had to not, you know, have all the glory. And through the first season, it’s just she was just like, kind of always like complaining that she didn’t get what she wanted. And she was like, reckless with relationships. And she really wasn’t taking responsibility for her life and kind of jealous of her sister who had actually had to force to grow up at a young age to I think she was in her early 20s when she became a queen

Robert Maldonado 08:53

talk about taking responsibility. Yeah.

Debra Maldonado 08:55

And so you see the like, the 111 becomes has to is forced to become the mother of the of the country. And the other one is, is kind of, you know, just kind of not accepting her role but also complaining about it and feeling. It’s like this powerlessness that I, I can’t get what I want helplessness. And we feel like we can kind of be that in relationships where this guy didn’t take care of me or this person isn’t the person I thought they were. And then we kind of hang on to also the, you know, kind of the economy’s not working or the government and it’s kind of like this note, I’m not taking any personal responsibility. And the world is supposed to be better than this. And, and it really comes from that early age because as a kid, we do need to depend on our family in our in our parents because we don’t have the capability. But emotionally if we’re still acting that way in the world as an adult. We can’t get in control of our life.

Robert Maldonado 09:57

Yeah, and the mother relationship. I would say is that the heart?

Debra Maldonado 10:01

Yes,

10:02

the puella and the puer. Because you for the man if if he over identifies with a mother, you know, he’s always he’s a mama’s boy isn’t he’s over overly dependent on the mother maybe never moves out of the house or, or tends to go back and always be there and that kind of stuff. He’s never really able to assert himself in the world. For the woman, it’s often the reverse, it’s when they reject the mother, or reject the role of the feminine model that the mother’s presenting. Then they’re tied to rejecting that feminine element in their life. And they’ve see growing up as getting into that rut that they saw their mother being in

Debra Maldonado 10:59

so I always think of the the relationship with the mother is there’s three levels. And I see this show up. When we ask people when we did the Mother’s Day mother archetype. We ask people like what the relationship was. And there’s either I love my mother and you have that relationship, that extreme where you talk to her every day, you’re overly dependent on one extreme of her opinions. You want to be like her, you you put her on a pedestal, you listen to her advice, you don’t make a decision without her. You kind of feel like you’re still like in the apron was at the apron strings. You’re still tied to the apron strings. And then the other end of that spectrum is where you totally reject her. So there’s a total like, she’s the best, or she’s the worst. And both of those extremes A lot of people think, well, I’ve rejected my mother. She doesn’t affect my life anymore. But the fact that you reject her, you’re giving that energy and you are giving her more power in your life because you’re giving it energy. So those are the two extremes. And then the third one is where you’re somewhere in the middle. And this is kind of where most people are, they have their mother in their life because they feel like this. Well, she’s my mother and I gotta love her. And so you have that kind of conflict with I love her, but she annoys me and I want my freedom, but I don’t want to let go ever. And that ambivalence of, I want to have that connection, but I don’t want her to kind of control my life, but I still am dependent on her. Like, there’s some kind of entanglement there. So it’s not an outright rejection. It’s not like an overly praise, but it’s that kind of middle like complex, that measurement of that. Almost like you’re entangled with it, like you can’t let go but you can’t you love her too, and you don’t want to let go. And why do you think people you know, have that kind of relationship? Is it because we’re taught that you’re supposed to love your mother and it’s like that kind of a, she represents security to us and like hanging on to that kind of relationship gives us a sense of clarity. Security.

13:01

Well, there’s that but I think that life is hard and the the more complicated it gets, the more complex society gets. And the more ambiguous the the process of becoming an adult gets. The harder it is for people to really become an adult in the sense because there’s no mechanism for him, you know, ancient societies or let’s say traditional societies. They had these rites of passage where you, there was no adolescence stage, you were a child one day, and then you went through this initiation, and you became an adult. Now you were considered an adult by the tribe. And so we created a third, like a new phase, which is adolescence, which is where everyone stays.

13:55

Yeah, kind of like boy crazy girl crazy. You know, want to have fun want to rebel no responsibility, responsibility, but it’s still kind of an adult.

14:04

Yeah, you want all the privileges of adult but you don’t want any of their responsibilities. Yes, yeah. And that’s essentially what defines the point where that they want all the privileges of adulthood. But they don’t want any of the responsibilities and none of the hard work

Debra Maldonado 14:21

just like Princess Margaret, she wanted to be included in all the decisions and she wanted to be a part of the royal family. But then she also rejected the family at the same time by marrying the photographer and some other matters. She went and married a guy who was divorced and it was like a whole thing was so like, you need to like rebel.

Robert Maldonado 14:40

You know, in your history, the way you’ve told me is, is you moved to Colorado at a certain stage. Yes, that is kind of finding your own challenge. Yes, yes. You know, you you step out into the unknown. You accept this as a challenge to you know, you’re not sure you can do this. But you’re going to give it your best shot. Mm hmm. That’s a kind of rite of passage. Yeah, you know, you go off to school or you go off to a new city, or you take on a big challenge in your life.

15:12

That proves to you You’re, you’re kind of testing yourself. Mm hmm. And as you go through that process, you mature into it. You know, it’s interesting. I don’t know if I ever told you this. But before I moved to Colorado, the last relationship I had was like a year and a half. And he was living with his parents. And he was very enmeshed with the mother, and like mama’s boy, and was, you know, had issues with the dad, but he was kind of like, still a child and didn’t want to commit. And that’s why I left because I was like, I’m ready to grow up. And so we tend to our relationships tend to reflect, if we’re not ready to grow up will tend to reflect we’ll see that in the people that we date. They’re kind of non committal, too, or they’ll be too mature. And then we’re like, oh, they’re going to control us and they’re going to take over our life and they’re going to make me go grow up. And so we have that, that conflict conflict with that. And I see this too with people that want to start their own businesses as well. It’s like I want to just stay under Mama, the corporation mama under that wing, and afraid to step out and be really become. And I think the most important thing for me in that transformation in finally growing up is that I had to really let go that my parents screwed me up. And that is a tough thing because some of us had tough childhoods. Some of us had, you know, still have stuff that’s they haven’t resolved within themselves. But as long as that stuff is there, and you use that to blame why your life today is not doing well. You’re still stuck in the past and you’re living from the past. You’re not living in the future. You’re living from the past and it’s just unconsciously you know what you think your parents didn’t did not do for you. You’re going to reflect that on the world so your mother if she didn’t love you enough If she was too critical, then the world is going to be that way to you, and relationships are going to be that way. The money is not going to flow in because no one is there for you. And we tend, you know, I think in our society, too, we talked about being young. But it also glorifies. Like, there’s so much out there about the kind of the baggage of our childhood and let’s talk about it all the time. And you know, and forgive our forgive our past, but it’s just we’re still kind of digging it up and still making excuses for why we don’t have the things we want. And one thing I noticed that since we’ve been together is I stopped blaming and you catch me when I do blaming my father, my mother of for why things happen, because sometimes I’ll catch myself saying, Oh, I please, because that’s what my mother taught me. And it’s like, No, no, no, I please because I’m choosing to continue. Now I’m an adult. I’m taking responsibility on my mother’s problem and even more that she demonstrated a certain tech task or trait that I mimicked where I carried on. And so it’s that’s becoming an adult, it’s like stepping into that. What do you wait?

Robert Maldonado 18:09

Yeah, a lot of people make this mistake they think. Because now as adults in in their middle life or, you know, adulthood, they, they have a good relationship with their mother. So they think I’ve resolved all the issues. That’s not the way it works essentially the impression that you got very early on and what was going on in the family early on, like the first six years before you started, first grade and all that. That impression is what you internalize. And that’s what you’re dealing with. You’re not really dealing with the relationship with your mother. You’re dealing with your internalized mother archetype. Yes, and yes, that’s what you need to understand. And

Debra Maldonado 19:00

can you say that again, because I think that is so profound, just that we’re not really seeing our mother. We’re like, the idea of our mother that we have in our mind is not really who she is. It’s who we believe she is, like, who what we, our perception of that is, and every child in that family carries a different internal image of their mother.

Robert Maldonado 19:21

That’s why this way you see, siblings from the same family have a very different relationship with their mother. Because it’s, it’s the internalized structure of the psyche that you’re dealing with. You have kind of a slot for the mother already in you. That’s what you won’t call the archetypes. And so it’s like a

Debra Maldonado 19:42

file, empty file, and then you’re born and then it’s like, okay, let’s fill it up with Yeah,

Robert Maldonado 19:46

yeah. And and so that’s what you relating with, and the impressions you get very early on are emotional impressions. They’re not like, like cognitive strategies, or beliefs,

Debra Maldonado 19:57

like beliefs like are you good enough? or anything like that?

Robert Maldonado 20:01

Well, they kind of have that because an emotion tells you the meaning of the word. Yeah, that’s the meaning of the situation. It’s not just a thought it’s an emotion, but it’s not a thought it’s an emotion. And so it it colors the thoughts and colors, your perception. And we know that the the way you perceive your mother and the way you relate it to your mother very early on, is the way you relate to the world. Yes. And in relationships, especially

Debra Maldonado 20:29

so if you reject the mother, you’re rejecting the world and it feel people that say, like, I can’t stand my mother, she was terrible. I, you know, I don’t talk to her anymore. You have to come to terms with whatever that is not to forgive her. Because I think forgiving is just saying she screwed you up and giving her more power. But coming to terms with what do you want to create in your life, like, almost like a new mother? How do I, you know, kind of create an image of that. I want to consciously have the mother archetype versus the one, that’s default, because if you reject her, you’re going to feel the world is against you all the time, if you reject the mother, and you may not, it may not be on the surface, it may be just subtle, you know, like that kind of feeling like nothing ever works out for me that the Mother, I’m never, you know, in the world is never telling, giving me love and appreciation or acknowledgement or comfort. And so it comes in different ways.

Robert Maldonado 21:29

Yeah, thank God, it’s an archetype because otherwise we’d be stuck. Yeah, whatever we experienced with our biological mother, but because it’s an archetype, that means we can reframe it, rework it. And the process, of course, is to become conscious of what happened in those early periods. And what what are my emotional assumptions about, about my mother and the world? And it’s really a mystery if you understand that principle. The way you see the world is really reflecting back to you. What’s in your unconscious mind. So it like you were saying if people complain, they blame others, or they blame their parents or they blame their situation for

Debra Maldonado 22:16

like, I got my money issues from my mother and you know, my family was poor. So I’m having a hard time making money.

Robert Maldonado 22:23

Yeah, any of those things that’s pointing to kind of an unresolved mother complex. And you keep giving energy to it. You keep giving energy to it, because you’re, you’re seeing it outside and you’re thinking, well, this is confirming what my beliefs are. But it’s the other way around that you’re seeing those things, because you have those internal belief structures.

22:50

And that’s what we’re conditioned in the beginning to whatever our senses pick up. We start to accept is real and assume that because we weren’t, you know, for babies, we’re just emotional beings. And so we get this template. And then as we grow older, we forget that we decided all those things, but the event that happened is always neutral. And we’re the ones who decided, I’m the one who decided I wasn’t worthy. You know, here’s a really well, it’s kind of a story about my dad. But I remember one time my dad, I felt like he rejected me, or I hurt his feelings. And he, you know, spanked me that day. It was like one of the I was like I said, the wrong thing. And until I was 41 years old, I called my father up or told my mother about it. And I said, I had this memory come back, and she said, Oh, that was because you were climbing on something. And I as a kid, remember that memory It was like three or four. And I thought I was being punished for for being saying something else. And so we misinterpret our world all the time. As a child, we make up the worst case you have worked with children. And you said that the children will take the worst on themselves. They, you know, the parents are fighting, they blame themselves. And so, so much is embedded in us. That isn’t really, it’s an assumption that we made of what was happening

24:12

very much so and it’s very powerful, because the emotions are really the way we create meaning. Hmm. So it gives us the meaning of who we are in the world and what we expect from the world

Debra Maldonado 24:26

and our experience of the world because everything’s emotional, whether they’re happy, sad, you know, scared, we’re always responding emotionally to the world. And if we didn’t have emotions, we wouldn’t be able to enjoy the things that we love or the world to you couldn’t have relationships and activities that we love, and creativity and all those things. So it’s kind of like we’re, we have to live with it, their emotions, but we don’t have to let them drive anymore.

Robert Maldonado 24:56

Yes, so keep in mind We’re not talking about pathology, we we are talking about human suffering. If you do not take up the challenge of life, if you do not accept that, that that challenge, and the challenge simply means is that you’re not sure you can do it. Hmm. If it’s something Are you sure you can do that’s not a challenge. It has to be something big that you you can you say? I’m not sure I can do this, but I’m going to try. Yeah, you know, you’re going to push yourself you’re going to test yourself

Debra Maldonado 25:36

like me moving to Colorado. I just felt like that was a big, big, big leaving my family. We all grew up in New Jersey. We had a big Irish Catholic family, we would get together every week. It was very, very close. And then for me to just pick up and leave to go to another state. I don’t even know what possessed me but I think I needed to leave. Yeah, the nest

25:57

via the other parties that you have to do it on your own. Hmm, yes. Now, there are guides, there are people that help you there. It’s like a teacher. It’s like a second parent, a second mother or a second father. But they they’re there to just give you the kind of direction to point at the moon, in a sense not to help you not to do it for you. And you have to break away from the mother. Not rejecter because rejection is you’re still caught up. Yes, you’re still very much caught up in it. Breaking Away really means kind of finding your own self.

Debra Maldonado 26:43

Yeah, by not reacting.

Robert Maldonado 26:45

Yeah, not not pushing it away. Because pushing it away. You’re still caught. You’re still entangled in that umbilical cord.

26:55

So it’s like redefining yourself as a woman and becoming your own your own self, your creation versus every response to your childhood.

27:07

And that’s what the the Puella really gives up is the ability to really become herself which is individuation to really find her true center.

27:21

I find for me as a woman and I don’t know how it is for a man but there’s it’s an energetic shift that happens when I was a puella. I was fun Debbie in my early young age of dating and crazy not taking responsibility. I was still like acting like, you know, someone’s going to guys, Prince Charming is going to come save me the Disney movie one day and not and then not wanting to be tied down like wanting wanting that children and a family but also fear of being tied down. So it was that conflict and I was still kind of I was immature and there was something I think was when I started. When I broke away to become a hypnotherapist and left the corporate world when I really made the big change is I started to really take responsibility. I was the one responsible for bringing in the money. Now it wasn’t just my employer, it was me. And I had to grow up and I had to face so many challenges that my mother never taught me how to face I had to basically find inside of me the Divine Mother the wisdom within me to find the answers of how do I act this way? How do I become this other person? That’s a teacher that’s a you know, coach, that’s a helper, the world and entrepreneur, it was I had no framework for it. So I love what you said is like breaking away and doing something you can’t do. I think it’s almost like you have to become someone different than the parents told you or conditioned you to be. It’s like stretching where there’s no template. And you’re and the thing is, there is a universal template of anything you want to create. It’s you have to kind of choose it now like I want to choose to be become the teacher, I want to choose to be a woman in love. I want to if your parents didn’t have a great relationship, your mother never had a good Really, I choose to be the woman who’s loved and adored. Like there’s a new template and I need to face what’s in myself that’s stopping me from having that.

Robert Maldonado 29:20

Yeah, that’s a good point.

29:21

How about for men that would–what was your experience like? Was it did you feel the shift like energetically, I felt more grounded more in control. I felt left like I was bouncing around like the world was kind of bigger than me. I felt like there’s like I was kind of leading in the world versus the world telling me what was possible.

29:39

Yeah, it is stepping into your power and realizing that that you you can survive on your own and you can make it and not only survive, but thrive and create yourself or, or recreate yourself. Many of the rites of passages were framed as rebirth, the child dies and is buried and no longer exists. And often you are given a new name and a new identity because you become somebody else, you become your individuated self

Debra Maldonado 30:15

and I became the Debbie Lama. They started calling me the Debbie Lama. And I get,

Robert Maldonado 30:21

like everything that we talked about, it’s a spectrum. Yes. On the extreme end, we do see people that are completely crushed by their experience with a mother, they might have a mother who is narcissistic or depressed or really crushes them, doesn’t let them breed, you know, they they’re smothered in essence, and they’re never really able to take off and, and form their own identity. And so that that’s the extreme essence. Most people are in the middle, right? They, they, they struggle with it, but then they find their way is sooner or later. They find a way to assert themselves and to create their identity apart from the mother. Mm hmm. And of course, in the there are people who, who like you who who study it, right, who make it part of their lives mission to really study what is individuation about how do we how do we really enact it? And then teach it to other people, which is the best.

31:27

And yeah, so it’s not about reframing your childhood and building up your ego to have a better ego and maybe your you know, instead of being a feeling where they say, I’m worthy, I’m worthy. It’s about really transcending the identity that you were conditioned to be to become something completely different. I feel like I like a friend of mine told me like you’re kind of like stepping into a new, like a new experience, like you become a new person. And if our bodies recreate itself every seven years, why can’t we? Why do we hang on to this little idea identity that we had when we were little? Why do we keep hanging on to it and feeling like oh, my God, my life is ruined because I got a bad start. Where can we grow up and mature and say, You know what, I’m not what happened to me. I choose to create my life. I’m free to choose who I become. And that’s Carl Jung. He really believed that anyone can change and we have this ability with individuation. It’s not about fluffing up the ego forgiving the parents doing Gestalt with them and you know, saying Mommy, I love you and getting giving a pillow a hug. It’s now going to I’m, I acknowledged my past, but I’m not I’m gonna go to the next level now versus pushing it away. or buying into it. You’re kind of saying I understand. I know I have that default, but then I want to go to the next level.

Robert Maldonado 32:50

Yeah, and for men, it’s pretty much the same. The challenges are a little bit different in in that We’re dealing perhaps with different challenges. But the military sometimes serves as Oh, yeah, that that kind of rite of passage Hmm. For me was the same as you kind of going out into the world by myself. And, you know, you’re scared, obviously, like, you know, like we were saying, it’s got to be something that’s really challenges you. And so you’re, you’re, you’re scared, right? Because you’re not sure you can do this on your own. But you accept the challenge. And in accepting that challenge, you find yourself

Debra Maldonado 33:42

Hmm, you know, I had a dream right before I moved to Colorado. This is actually very interesting thinking about it, how our dreams are showing us and my brother had moved like a month a couple months before to Florida, and so he left New Jersey and I I was thinking about moving to Colorado. And there was a dream where my brother and I died. And there were like, these thick strings on top of the coffin. And I, when I woke up in the coffin thinking, I’m still awake, I’m still alive. And I was trying to get out of the coffin. And I said, I, you know, I still have a life to live, I still have a life to live. And my mother was there. And she said, Oh, Debbie, you need to just stay there, because we already paid for the funeral. And you know, we’ve paid for it already. So you have to die. And so it’s this kind of like the mother archetype was saying this, and death is transformation. And so it was that was my dream right before I moved to Colorado. So it’s like interesting how our dreams are, show us the path that we need to take. And so we need to understand what they’re saying. It’s not, oh, there’s my mother again, being you know, responsible, but it’s had such a deeper meaning and so our mind is constantly our psyches constantly feeding us the path where we need to go through events in the world symbolic events and then also dreams that guide us. Yes, if you are here, you’re here for, you know, there’s something here for you that you need to hear.

35:10

Yeah. And then Jung talks about deeper levels of it or higher levels, perhaps of it, which are the spiritual elements. Because if you think about what what you’re doing through individuation is you’re, you’re leaving the herd, not only the family and the mother, but you’re breaking away from conventionality. It’s not about conformity. It’s not about doing what everybody else is doing. It’s about finding your individual self. And often you have to be willing to give up what most people think is the right path hmm and find your own.

35:52

And you know, I think about what choices I could have made younger age of going to marriage or staying single And I feel like I resisted marriage because I, there was a part of me that didn’t want to fall into that same trap. Like there was a part of me that seeked individuation so I resisted commitment. So it’s not a bad thing. It’s it’s like a lot of times we think, Oh we’ll have blocks to love and you got to fix them. But it’s like it was meant because when I was ready for what I really wanted, I had to go through the journey I did or I could have married my high school boyfriend and had you know, lived in New Jersey and never had a career and stayed at home and my whole life would have been safe and maybe, you know, the society we say she’s successful because she got married, but I took the harder route and and it was heartache and all those things. But you know, I want everyone to know that if you’re having trouble in anything in life, you have to see it as these things that we’re trying to work out. You’re not settling for less. And so when we have those those those conflicts in life that way, it’s just reflecting the conflict within ourselves and the divine in us wants us to have so much more than our ego feels that it wants to have. It doesn’t want to just be a carbon copy of your mother or father and live with the herd wants you to live.

37:12

I know, if you think about it, we’re a contradiction. Hmm, we have animal bodies, right? That are subject to the laws of physics and this kind of animal nature. At the same time, we have this incredible imagination and mind that connects us to divine thoughts and divine kind of a sense of life. And to reconcile those things, often people can’t find a way to do it. They they ignore perhaps their their dreams and their imagination and their deeper instincts and just focus on work, right they they drown it out with work, or worse yet with alcohol and, and just kind of living that unconscious life. So there’s a lot at stake in thinking about these things. And that’s why we wanted to talk about it.

38:05

Yeah, this is such a juicy sub, but we always have juicy subjects, but the puella aeterna it really is something that people need to recognize in themselves. And yeah, I think my life changed when you you mentioned Jung’s theory of the relationship with the mothers the relationship to the world. And I always felt like the world is a very trustworthy place because I trust my mother was always there for us like she never ever let us down. But she also had this kind of conflict of like kind of feeling like she had to please in order to get the world to cooperate. So I got both parts of her and then I then I can’t blame my pleasing on my mother did this to me anymore. I have to say, well, I’ve decided that I’m, I’m, you know, I’m deciding to carry on this pattern. Now. I know it and now we can consciously choose to leave it but it’s not her fault. And you know, one of the things you talked about yesterday, we, you and I, we have all these talks all the time, and he imagined our household talks all day long. And you talked about this idea that there’s no perfect person like there’s this idea in psychology that there’s, you know, there’s a functioning normal adults somewhere that we can say this is a healthy adult, and everyone should be like that. But where is that?

Robert Maldonado 39:26

Yeah, it doesn’t exist. There’s a whole debate in in clinical psychology about what’s normal. Yes, malady? Yes. And the existential psychologists say, Well, if you’re trying to fit into a society that’s dysfunctional because we know societies, they’re not the best, the healthiest way to live in the world. Then what does that say about your mind? What do you what normality Are you aiming for? To be dysfunctional to be neurotic to be a workaholic? I know, you know that kind of, 

Debra Maldonado 40:03

or just be married like, oh, if you’re married, you’re normal. And I used to think that and in a lot of the women I’ve worked with over the years, it’s just a kind of stigma. If you’re single, there’s something wrong with you. You’re, you know, outcast, the society. And if you look at the world, it really does. The, you know, the culture is, you know, there’s people that idolize singles. But if you look at the reality shows, it’s all making fun of single people like the bachelor and the blood is blind. It’s like all these crazy people that can’t find a relationship. There’s something wrong with them. When I feel like there’s look at the people that settle and not really have the passion and love that they really truly want. Who’s better off and so, I don’t know, I just I love this, this conversation about that there is no normal normal, and that we’re all just human and our parents were human. And they you know, we had this expectation that should look like The Brady Bunch or something? Or am I dating myself? What’s the? What’s the proper? The most modern family now?

Robert Maldonado 41:08

Yes. So,

41:11

a pualla and eternal girl can get married and have children and still be well, meaning she hasn’t really individuated and accepted her her challenge in life.

Debra Maldonado 41:23

Well, I was mentioning a lot of times the mother wants to be best friends with the daughter. So they the teenage years, the the mother still hanging out with her, and then the daughter turns 21 and they drink together and they party together and they go on trips together and they think this and she kind of wants to live through the daughter still think she still wants to not be the mother role and play the mother. She wants to be her best friend,

Robert Maldonado 41:46

right? Or she she wants to live through the daughter. She, you know, she she wants the daughter to do all the things that she didn’t get. Yes, yes. Yeah. That, that puts a burden on the kid and unfair burden on the kid.

Debra Maldonado 42:05

And then if your mother was a puella, then you’re kind of you’re you were never had a framework for the woman and maybe the grandmother was and there was always probably a conflict between the mother and the grandmother because the grandmother was probably probably the opposite the mature one. And so we always when we look at, we do shadow with the, with the generations in our in our programs, and a lot of times we see the they flip flop as they go down, like generation, a generation. Yeah. And so you might align more with your grandmother than your mother, and, and so on. interesting how women pass that down. I guess the men have the same pattern. Oh,

Robert Maldonado 42:43

absolutely. Absolutely. And, like I say the institutions have really failed us. Jung used to talk a lot about the Catholic Church, how it had the potential to to really play that role of initially into the spiritual life at least. But he says even the church has failed, you know it. It plays out a lot of the rituals, but it lost its meaning. It doesn’t connect with what’s going on in the world. And the educational system, you know, we can see it failing in, it’s not able to really educate people as complete whole creatures. It just focuses on reading, writing, and even that sometimes it fails in marriage as an institution. Some people might say it failed to

Debra Maldonado 43:38

50% divorce rate,

Robert Maldonado 43:40

divorce rates are pretty high. And then people are doing it differently, right, they’re living together or finding new ways to do that.

Debra Maldonado 43:49

Or having three couples.

Robert Maldonado 43:51

Yeah, three people, governments, you know, a lot of corruption, those kind of things. So all institutions Seems to seem to be falling apart. And that’s why we need to have this conversation. Yeah,

Debra Maldonado 44:05

we need to grow up. I mean, if you look at even just now with what’s going on with, politically with the virus, it’s everyone’s acting like children on Facebook like that. It’s like children, it’s like, you know, whiny, you know, yelling and getting in fights with everyone and there’s like no voice of calm and reason. It’s just kind of, I mean, there are some, you know, wisdom, there’s some wisdom, but you see a lot of that kind of back and forth and immaturity in the culture.

Robert Maldonado 44:37

Well, there’s definitely that’s a whole other conversation by social media. But in general, the internet has kind of opened up this, this whole new bag of can of worms whereas it has great potential, just like every every technology that we have. It depends on how we Use it. Yeah.

Debra Maldonado 45:01

So I think you know, the best way to that. That’s why we do what we do is because we feel like individuation the way we do in a coaching model is it gives people that ritual that initiation. And I was telling one of my clients see a couple weeks, two weeks ago, she’s just had gone through the shadow and had a, you know, big transformation and she started to see things more clearly. And I said, Oh, you’re one of us now. She was like, what does that mean? And so it’s that kind of you you’re growing up, you’re kind of ready to take on your dreams ready to take on that powerful soul relationship that you want? the career of your dreams, you really ready for it now because you’re not you’re initiated into yourself. And what you’re really true you because you can’t really create from the boiler. You can’t it’s, you’re just going to repeat the patterns.

Robert Maldonado 45:58

Yeah, and this is not a new idea. In Buddhism, the Buddha’s reported said to have said something like this, that those that don’t manage their mind. They’re like children. Yes. They’re they’re essentially reacting out of that initial imprint that they got from the mother. Hmm. Very, kind of very low level understanding of what the mind is what spirituality is.

Debra Maldonado 46:29

And I remember when I was doing hypnotherapy, it was all about the inner child work and you got to, you know, heal the child. And I think what we need to do not as, I mean, if that helps you, that’s fine. But that only kind of builds up the ego. What we want to do is we want to become someone else. We don’t want to just like repair the, the little girl we want to become the woman and the woman who we become. The template isn’t from our past. It’s from the deeper or we were born with. It’s just bigger. You You were born with that didn’t get to be expressed yet. And so I want you to think about that think of that wonderful dreams you have the this aspirations for great love aspirations for a great career, for changing the world, all those things that wasn’t taught to you can kind of identify it even now, like, what’s part of you is not something that your parents taught you. That’s what you reach for. That’s what you do. And it’s again, not pushing it away. But you thank your parents for your, especially your mother for giving you life and for, you know, the challenges that you had to go through. And then that initiation into who you really are. And that’s really your true self. That’s what we talked about. It’s not maturing up the little you it’s actually becoming something completely different.

Robert Maldonado 47:47

Yeah, it is about transformation. Yeah.

Debra Maldonado 47:49

And so that’s what we that’s what we do. Yeah, we have some exciting things coming into July. We’re going to do a retreat. Live. It’s going to be amazing. Retreat. So we’re going to be doing it on zoom. So we’ll be announcing that soon. Getting a little pre registration, going for that, where we’re going to work with emotions. And those of you who want to teach this, we still have our life coach training that is available. Through it starts June 17. So we still are have some spots open. If you’re interested in joining our June cohort. The Registration is open, you apply. Ask us about it. If you haven’t seen the links everywhere, just say hey, I wanted that link to that life coach training, a six month program where you actually go through the process yourself, and also be able to help others because we feel like that’s the most sacred service that you can do in the world is help someone really step into who they really are.

Robert Maldonado 48:50

I want to look at some of these comments.

Debra Maldonado 48:53

Okay, yeah, we got a lot of comments here. So let’s go Hello, everyone. Forever 21 clothes barely cover anything. A lot of them are just one piece of clothing. Yes, I know. I’m new here. I think due to men and women have been driven to prioritize youth being thin, being smart, yet one step behind men also seeing father’s unfavorable treatment of our housewife mothers made us run from femininity and values stoic logic and corporate jobs like our father. Absolutely, absolutely.

Robert Maldonado 49:27

Yeah, that’s a good point.

Debra Maldonado 49:30

And then what happens is that we’re still well, even though we’re we think we’re taking on that masculine role. You know, I have a lot of clients that deal with their female bosses that are so immature, that they’re kind of like beliefs a little bit. So the mean girl, so there’s that kind of you become the mean girl boss. That can be that could happen to

Robert Maldonado 49:53

you because when you’re playing a role that’s not genuine, then you have to overcompensate. And so it’s Like they’re, they’re, they’re hyper male. Yeah, they’re the all the bad parts of being a man. And they’re trying to emulate those things. And that doesn’t work. Women have to find their own centers and their own way of being in the corporate world.

Debra Maldonado 50:20

This has been big for me all the adults growing up, never had any fun, all work and I match up with men who are involved with their mother feel like I rejected the feminine as well. Yeah.

Robert Maldonado 50:31

Yeah, that’s right. Any, anything you reject, you’re going to attract in some form or another,

Debra Maldonado 50:40

because again, relationships so if you reject your mother, you’re going to attract a man who loves her some other so it’s like the it’s like a mirror, sometimes the opposite. And so it’s about coming is looking at every relationship in your life as a reflection of your own psyche. That didn’t happen by accident. It’s like you wrote the script for that.

Robert Maldonado 51:00

The good news is you can you can change that through through the process of individuation.

Debra Maldonado 51:07

Yeah, let’s just go on this because there’s a couple of questions. What do you mean by feminine element? When a woman rejects the mother, what happens to the woman that rejects the mother? So as women, we have both masculine and feminine in us. So as a woman, we’re an Anima, we’re the feminine, we’re expressing that. So if we reject the mother, we’re rejecting like ourselves in a way because we’re women, we identify as a woman. So all those things that women that match the not socially but more of an energy. The women are intuitive, they’re creative, they’re emotional, they’re caring, you know, they’re they’re kind of the nurtures that the relationship helps the relationship. And so a woman that rejects the mother may have a hard time with relationships, maybe not dealing with their family, I mean with their emotions and so that would be a way to reject that femininity, the ability to process emotions and share emotions and

Robert Maldonado 52:06

yeah, and and this is all going on unconsciously,

Debra Maldonado 52:09

yes. Because you could feel like you’re so emotional, right, but you’re not really able to share them and deal with them in a mature way.

Robert Maldonado 52:18

Yeah. And the way the Puella is described is that she’s, she’s sometimes hyper feminine externally. Mm hmm. She’s very seductive, perhaps very charming and witty and the life of the party. But any, any hint, really getting serious about her emotional life. She runs away from anything, 

Debra Maldonado 52:43

so she can be sexy and fun, and that’s right.

Robert Maldonado 52:46

And, and social and, and all those things. But when it comes to the real intimacy, the real responsibility of having a relationship, she’ll run from that

Debra Maldonado 52:58

and if you think about when you reject the Mother you’re actually saying my mother like you’re mad at your mother for something that you’re you’re you’re giving your mother power to that you need to reject her for so you have to ask yourself, Well, what am I rejecting? Why? Why don’t why does she have power over my life today? I’m an adult. You know what, what am I carrying still? That I feel like she’s, it’s her fault. And as soon as long as it’s someone else’s fault, something outside of you, you can’t fully embody your own feminine power. Yeah, you’re giving them all that power to your mother. Even in rejection, you’re giving it to her. Yeah, I think you’re taking it away, but you’re actually giving it to.

Robert Maldonado 53:39

Yeah, and when we reject something, we’re splitting it off from our awareness from our consciousness. But it doesn’t go anywhere. It simply goes into the unconscious, then we project it externally.

Debra Maldonado 53:52

It can be hard when you have it damaged. Well, a mother as well. When you break away Can you trigger wounding and abandonment, the choice becomes harder. It’s so necessary getting to the other side. Yeah, I see this, this concept of a kind of a random, like a radical concept about childhood and wounds is that we were never really truly wounded because our ego actually created defenses against it. So what you’re really calling wounds are those things are what’s leftover is just your defenses against it. So you’re the one actually has power because you designed, stay away or you know, not trust or you’re those are actually prevented you from full truly being harmed. But we label those defenses as wounds, but they’re actually a sign of a healthy mind. So I really want to just underscore that, that when we call them wounds we it’s a powerless place to be. It’s like, Oh, they hurt me. And you’re in you’re implying that there’s something external that can harm me. And that is like, I might as a child that feels that way. But a woman becoming an adult says nothing outside can ever harm me. So imagine if you didn’t think anything could harm you. You wouldn’t be afraid of making money or taking risks in business or starting your own business or asking for someone to care about you or standing up for what you want. You wouldn’t worry, you wouldn’t you would have more power. But if you approach it as Oh, I’m attender. You know, it’s very careful, scary world that has power over me then.

Robert Maldonado 55:22

Yeah, it’s very, it’s a very subtle change. But it’s really important. Because nobody can really hurt the true self. And, yes, no matter what happens, and that’s really where our power comes from.

Debra Maldonado 55:39

That divine woman, the divine man, that we were born with that archetype is our potential that’s always been there and it’s nothing in our childhood could ever impact that. It’s that it covers up that you know that our conditioning and our emotional template covers up what our potential is and individuation is saying, Okay, I see this kind of construction that my ego made for me to survive. And the second part of life is for us to step into who we were meant to be. Yeah. becoming an adult. You decide who you become no matter what kind of start you had paid for the funeral someone’s laughing and accepting the challenge when activates the process of stepping into the true self.

Robert Maldonado 56:22

That’s right. It’s a challenge. And, and instead of seeing our past as these wounds or obstacles or traumas, we simply see them as fuel for the process.

Debra Maldonado 56:37

So this is a good comment shows I still have some work to do with this. I saw the title about adulting and fell triggered like it would be about how I’m not there yet, or meeting all these standards, but instead, it’s the opposite. I don’t ever have to be out this outside standard of getting there. It’s personal and not about society. Yes. It’s your own journey. You get to decide what an adult is, but you want it to be your choice. There’s no Oh, you can’t, if you want to hang on to your childhood that that as long as it’s a choice, you can if you want to call your mother every day and be really entangled with her, and love that, and as long as it’s a choice as long as you’re not doing it, because you feel like you’re going to die if you don’t, that’s the difference. Like there’s no rule of what’s what it is, you get to decide that. If you are not good with Mother, how can you accept her?

Robert Maldonado 57:28

Well remember, it’s an internal archetypal structure that we’re talking about. So we can always accept part of ourselves. It’s our nature really. It takes more work to keep it split off. Mm hmm. Really, the reason we’re exhausted often is because we’re we’re expanding so much energy trying to keep the the shadow elements away the unconscious elements. And so letting go is really an easy problem. Once you understand what’s at stake, that your, your adulthood, your your power, your ability to do things in the world really depends on you letting go of those past assumptions. and integrating them. Integration simply means that we become conscious of them, not judging them not pushing them away, not buying into them, just seeing them for what they are.

Debra Maldonado 58:28

Yeah, it’s not like healing it. It’s saying, Oh, I see what it is, but I’m going to choose otherwise. And we’re just more we have more information about what’s going on unconsciously. And now that it’s conscious and until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life. So it’s about choosing and making. So this is a this is what I have haven’t understand all the work I did if she was not a good mother, how can you accept her and your womanhood become mature? I think we just answered that. So I really need to understand the rejection. How it can affect my life. And I have another one too, so we can maybe answer them together, I feel like I’m going to no contact with my narcissistic mother helped me in my individuation process. And my choice to do that has helped me but is that rejection? And I want to say that I think a lot of people confuse individuation as taking action, like a lot of people think, you know, because there’s a cognitive behavior, like if I think differently and act differently, I get a different result. That’s kind of the basic self help, but it’s more of an internal thing, you could still act externally and do what you need to do. But the simple external act doesn’t mean that you resolved it internally. So you can cut someone off and they’re still in your head, you’re still thinking about them every day, you’re still hating them every day. It doesn’t mean that that you’ve totally cut off so it’s really you have to check in and say how can i did i truly let this go? like can I just accept that I have to let that you know, let the like it. accept her not that she. I think accepting isn’t that you approve? I think a lot of people think I accept her so I approve of her. You can just accept that, you know, she had her things, but I’m not gonna I no longer choose to live my life like that.

Robert Maldonado 60:16

Yeah, that’s a good way to put it because narcissism or or, you know whatever’s going on with her. It’s not her choice. She I love that any, any one of us in her place would react the same way. We we don’t really act that a free well most of the time. The only time we act out of free will is once we individually Yes, then we’re acting out of free will. But before that, most people they’re simply acting unconsciously, and they’re responding and reacting to their conditioning.

Debra Maldonado 60:54

And so most of us didn’t have parents that individuated so we have that’s that I’m glad you brought point up because it’s so true is like we just like we said, there’s no perfect normal person, our family, our parents, and they all had issues. They were raised by their parents. And we’ve, if you have kids, you’ve done things to your kids, I’m sure parenting them in a way that probably wasn’t perfect. And so how, you know, how are we ever going to resolve this? You know, we’re messy with our emotions. We’re messy with other people, we step on people, we hurt people. We don’t try to but we do. And if we can’t accept that, and sit and forgive ourselves, we’re never going to let go. And we can, we’re not going to let anyone else off the hook either. And then, by the yardstick, we measure others, we measure ourselves. So if you hold your mother up, she wasn’t perfect. You’re going to put yourself up to that perfection. I know a lot of people talk about, you know, my mother did this or my father did this. And then they have such high standards for themselves. And they don’t give themselves a break in their life. They make a mistake or they are not going through the process fast enough for you know, they had a trigger and it’s going overboard you know, it’s things are working out the way they want they mess something up, they broke up with the wrong person. It’s all that kind of self judgment because we we have to accept that our humaneness but there’s more to us than that and so if we accept it and others we accept it in ourselves.

Robert Maldonado 62:25

Yeah. Excellent. That’s a good one for another

Debra Maldonado 62:29

Yes, I know so much. So here’s, we’re gonna get off. But we have our mentors here that are going to answer some questions we’ll be on later today. If you’re listening to the replay, feel free to post questions we’ll post a separate post after this video if you you know a fresh one so we can have fresh questions. I know this is a juicy topic and and how do you let go? And I think letting go is just it’s not forgiving them. It’s not buying into what they do. It’s actually finding out who you are outside of that.

Robert Maldonado 63:03

Yeah. Thanks for all the great questions. Thanks for hanging out with us. We appreciate it.

Debra Maldonado 63:09

And we will see you next week for another soul session. And we hope to this helped you be more clear and becoming adults today. And just one piece of homework is really tap into this part of you that you know, is leaning to something else know, knowing that, you know, there’s aspects of you that you didn’t get from your family. That’s your true self like what is that freshness in you those that inspiration that something that sets you apart from them, that maybe they think you’re weird because you are that way and you’re different? That’s really getting close to who you really are. All right. Take care, everyone. We’ll see you next time. Bye bye.