December, 2022 | Brian Collinson

Vibrant Jung Thing Blog

Coping with Uncertainty During the 2022 Holidays

December 12th, 2022 · coping with uncertainty

Coping with uncertainty is a theme I’ve explored before, but it seems to have a lot of relevance for the end of our current year, 2022.

As we come to the end of this year, we certainly seem to be coping with uncertainty. In our post-modern world, things often seem pretty precarious, Yet, this year seems to take the cake! We seem to have just barely cleared the pandemic. We have a very strained medical system, and a crisis situation with children in need of care for respiratory diseases.

We also seem to have an economy that is giving very mixed messages. We still have high inflation. We also have interest rates that are going up to attempt to counter it. Due to the inflation, and the aftermath of the pandemic, many people are finding it tougher to make ends meet.

In addition to all of this, the pandemic’s aftershocks continue to be felt. Many social events that flourished with large attendances in 2019 can’t seem to get the same numbers of people out in 2022. Restaurants and coffee shops that bulged at the seams a few short years ago seem sparsely populated. A great many people seem quite tentative about their Holiday plans.

Just at the moment, we seem to be in a world where people hedge their bets far more than they used to do. At the end of 2022, there is a potent feeling of uncertainty in the air.

Coping with Uncertainty Affects Us

When we seek to cope with an environment that has a heightened level of uncertainty, we experience a heightened level of stress. This is something that we carry in both our bodies and our minds. The experience of stress associated with matters of importance in our lives can easily lead to anxiety or depression. It’s important that we understand in a self-compassionate way when we’re under stress, and that we have ways to deal with it that are healthy and good for us.

Holiday anxiety can have some very dramatic effects. The Holidays may foster love, generosity and kind-heartedness in many ways. However, they can also bring a heightened sense of obligation and expectations. Add this to the kind of uncertainty many are experiencing in the present time, and it can result in difficult anxiety-related symptoms. These could include:

Excessive worry, that doesn’t go away;
Physical anxiety symptoms (e,g., shortness of breath, shaking, dizziness, upset stomach, or dry mouth);
Social withdrawal and isolation due to anxiety;
Changes in appetite and weight, in either direction;
Feeling helpless or hopeless; or,
Insomnia or sleep disturbances.

The Questions That Uncertainty Asks

Uncertainty can ask us deep and difficult questions about our lives. It asks us to take in the chances and changes of life. It asks us what remains stable and retains its value, given the flow of life. How can we respond?

One possible response is simple denial. We can just ignore the reality of uncertainties. We can act as if everything is secure and stable. Or, engage in a range of distractions to keep from focusing on the uncertainty. Yet it’s likely that the effects of the uncertainty, and the anxiety associated with it, will creep into our lives.

This Holiday season can be a time of joy, but it can also highlight the precarious nature of our lives. What kind of answers can we give to the unknowns and anxieties that we experience? How do we manage coping with uncertainty?

Answers That Sustain Us

[T]he point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.

~Rainer Maria Rilke

Where can we focus, to sustain us in our own personal journey? Certainly, we need to look at how to take care of ourselves through the Holiday season, and into the New Year. We need to identify ways to be compassionate to ourselves, and to practice self-care. We also need to set appropriate boundaries with respect to time, commitments and expenditures. We also need to find ways to maximize our sense of personal power, and of being in control of our lives. And we need to find what carries meaning in our individual lives. Where do we find what has value for us personally, and where do we touch the reality of our own unique souls?

Work with a supportive Jungian depth psychotherapist or Jungian analyst can assist us greatly with all these areas of focus. With its emphasis on the unique importance of each of our individual life journeys, and the ways that the Self is seeking to express itself in our unique lives, a Jungian approach can open us up to the value and grace of our own individual life journey. At the Holiday season, this may be the gift for which we most deeply yearn.

With every good wish for the Holidays, and for your unique personal journey,

Brian Collinson, Registered Psychotherapist and Jungian Analyst

Certified Clinical Anxiety Treatment Professional

Certified Telemental Health Practitioner

© Brian Collinson, 2238 Constance Drive Oakville, Ontario (near Mississauga)

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Tending the Soul and the Passage of Time in the Holidays

December 5th, 2022 · passage of time

The yearly arrival of the Holidays reminds us of both continuity and the passage of time. What does this mean for tending the soul, the essence of ourselves?

As we go through the repeated cycle of the year there is something that is comforting and reassuring in its recurrence and stability. Yet, there is something else as well. As we see the years go by, we are reassured to see the seasons pass in their regular ways. But then, we are also haunted by an awareness of something else. That is the passage of time, and its meaning for our particular, individual lives.

The seasons, and particularly the Holidays, come back to us in their endless repetition. In many ways, with their traditions and patterns, they stay the same, recurring again and again. Yet what happens to us as individual humans, is different. We find that we change, and we age, in many ways. Each of us is a somewhat different individual every time that the Holidays come back to us.

With each year, we have had a little more experience, a little bit of change in ourselves. We notice this particularly as we get near to the midlife transition, and then travel on in the second half of life. These life stages draw our attention more and more to the passage of time and the changes in ourselves.

These types of realizations can evoke very strong feelings. The Holidays are a time when we might feel them particularly strongly.

The future is something which everyone reaches at the rate of sixty minutes an hour, [whatever they do, whoever they are].

~C.S. Lewis

It All Passes By!

In many ways, it’s very good news that we experience the passage of time through the return of events like the Holidays. As a culture, we experienced an unbearable sameness of time in the lockdowns of the recent pandemic period. I wrote about this in my 2020 blogpost Lockdown, Soul and the Passage of Time . We need some ways to mark and measure the passage of time, in order to feel that life has momentum and meaning—in essence, to keep it human.

The Holidays appear and then reappear in our lives, with something of the same feelings associated with them every time they make their return. Often this adds to the sense of meaning in our lives. We are connected, to our earlier and later selves, to family, friends and everyone who is celebrating the same season, and to previous and following generations. This connection with the fabric of the human race, and to the flow of the human story, is of great importance to us.

The Passage of Time in Our Individual Lives

Yet this same awareness of the passage of time associated with the Holidays may lead us to reflect on our lives as individuals. Each passing Holiday season may remind us of the passage of time in our individual lives. As another year goes by, we may well reflect on what the year has brought for us as individuals. It may lead us to ask ourselves whether we’re getting the things that we want and need from our lives. These questions may be particularly acute if we’re going through a major life transition, or are dealing with grief or major loss.

Our awareness of time may lead us to the question of individual identity and meaning. For human life to stay viable, we have to have some sense of meaning connected to our individual existence. What we find meaningful varies greatly from individual to individual. That we need something meaningful in our lives for us is a basic fact of each of our human lives.

Who am I? The question I had my whole life.

~Kim Namjoon, BTS

The passing seasons and years make us strongly aware of the passage of time. That may give a sense of deep importance and urgency to the question of what has deep meaning and reality in our lives. As the unique individual that I am, what, for me, carries the deep sense of reality and value for which I yearn?

Meaning and Reality for Me, In the Passage of Time

The search to discover what has meaning and reality for each of us, in our uniqueness, is a key part of the individuation process. It’s an essential element in the unfolding of our unique selves. Another way to look at this is to view it as a fundamental kind of compass. It gives us the ability to know to what we wish to say yes to, or no to, on the journey of our lives.

Working with a supportive Jungian depth psychotherapist or analyst can be of immense help in furthering our search for meaning and reality. It can be of great value as we seek to unfold the majesty and mystery of the passage of time in our lives.