Brain States by Tom Kenyon MA

Author:Tom Kenyon MA
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: World Tree Press

CHAPTER ELEVEN

Talking Heads and

the Multiplicity of Selves

“When an inner situation is not made conscious, it appears outside as fate.”

- Carl Jung

A my was an attractive, vibrant, and sensitive woman in her early thirties. She had been recently laid off from her position in a large corporation due to scaling down, and the sudden change in her lifestyle had left her with an intractable depression.

She was married with three children. Frustrated with corporate life, she had started a consulting job, but things were not going well. She reported to me that she could not concentrate the way she used to, nor attend to the myriad details that her new undertaking demanded.

The depression had gone on for about six months when she came in to see me. She did not feel confident that her depression could be turned around since other attempts had failed. She was reluctant to take medication.

One thing struck me immediately from the start. Amy had two sides to her. One side was the immaculate housekeeper, the highly successful business person, and the social philanthropist. Amy had a well-deserved reputation as a person who made things happen. She served on several non-profit boards, coordinated large corporate gifts to different charities, and headed many fund drives.

I admired this attribute of Amy’s and told her so during her first visit. It was right at that very moment, that Amy’s other side showed her face. My compliments, meant to put her more at ease, made her very uncomfortable. I had the very odd sensation, in that moment, that some part of her was actually recoiling from my words.

This part of her I called “the other Amy.” This other self was the source of Amy’s depression. Her current problems were not due to the change in her job situation, although the stress of them had set the stage. The source of Amy’s depression actually went back some thirty years earlier.

In the course of our work, it became very clear that Amy had come from a destructive, unloving, and uncaring family. The depth of her childhood pain was staggering, and I am still haunted by an early childhood memory she shared with me that illustrated the depth of her pain.

To Amy, it was as if it had happened yesterday. The memory was vivid, every detail intact. She was three or four years old and had wandered onto a bridge in her backyard. The bridge crossed over a large stream that had recently flooded its banks. The rushing water had pulled the foundation of the bridge loose from the other bank, and the small wooden bridge hung precariously over the turbulent water As Amy stood on the bridge, she watched the stream rushing beneath her and wished that the stream would carry her away. Transfixed in her childhood experience, she thought that death was like a stream that could carry her away from this hurtful world as well.

Just at that moment, Amy heard her mother frantically calling out to her. For a moment, Amy struggled with a deep and inner turmoil.

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