“Neurosis: A Suffering That Has Not Yet Found Its Meaning.“
Why we might actually "deserve" more self-compassion.
As sensitives, we can berate ourselves for the fact that we keep thinking about the same thing again & again or looping back over the same issues. The same sensitivity that makes us “pause before acting” can sometimes cause us to overthink and get into a funk.
Then, it’s easy to think of ourselves as neurotic because we can’t just “let things go,” especially things from our past that were traumatic or that sunk deep for us.
When I first came across this quote, the words broke through the fog of getting down on myself. This felt like a very self-compassionate way to think about areas that are charged with feelings.
The idea is from depth psychologist James Hollis’ book The Broken Mirror in which he quotes Carl Jung. The full quote goes like this: “Jung noted that what we call “neurosis,” a deep inner split between our instincts and our acclimated acculturations, is a suffering that has not yet found its meaning.”
Instead of beating ourselves up for “neurotically” obsessing about a wound, let’s both you and me, think about the pain that is underneath it & the suffering we’ve carried in our bodies for years.
Let’s turn the icy-blue pain of this wound into the flow of vitality. Let’s see it as the precious raw material from which we make little glimmers of meaning — our stories that might help someone, our paintings that might help them cross a chasm, our melodies that connect their past with their future.
As artists, I think this is part of what we’re all trying to do — bring back the homeless parts of BOTH our own selves and of those who connect with our art.
We are weaving shimmering webs out of the raw material of our experiences, and letting the meaning we create get deeply embedded inside us.
From the dross of meaninglessness — of despair, of powerlessness, of trauma — I hope we make diamonds that reflect our most beautiful light.
With love,
Ritu
Ritu Kaushal is the author of the book The Empath’s Journey, which TEDx speaker Andy Mort calls “a fascinating insight into the life of a highly sensitive person.”
Find out more about Ritu on her website at walkingthroughtransitions.com.
Note: A version of this post first appeared on Ritu’s website.