Archetypes can be compared to a stereotype, but more positive. In fact, a stereotype depends more on your culture, but an archetype is an image of certain roles people can assume that are recognizable across multiple cultures. These are in our collective unconscious, for example the role of a mother, a father or a warring king and the like.
Everyone has certain images associated with these types of terms, and they often match.
What is an archetype?
For many people, an archetype is a recognizable role to which they can link their behavior. This allows them to have an idea of what to do. This is what men mean when they say, "I would do anything for a woman I love." Then they want to defeat dragons, but not do the dishes 😉 . This then is somewhat part of the archetype of the knight on the white horse.
With archetypes, a kind of psychological energy also comes to you when you think of a particular archetype. You already get an image of archetypes as a child, this is partly because of the fairy tales we watch.
As a child, you can use archetypes to deal with mental or physical distress. For example, you may hide away a part of yourself (an archetype) because it cannot help you.
In this way, the inner child can also be seen as an archetype that you can put away if you cannot truly be a child as a child. Later in life, a hypnotherapist can then help to fully reclaim this part of a person as well[1].
Archetypes and dreams
Dreams, like hypnosis, are another state of consciousness, and the meaning of dreams is also often linked to Jung's archetypes. Dreams can be about anything, such as processing your thoughts, processing certain memories and even plans you have for the future. Sometimes dreams are also just completely symbolic.
During training at Hypnosis Institute Netherlands, they also focus on symbols and how to help people use them to gain insights about themselves and any problems and solutions.
Jung indicated that dreams are a connection to the subconscious, and with hypnosis you make this connection as well, but with a little more control over what you bring up than when you dream and everything seems to happen more randomly.
In addition, you can often relate symbols in dreams back to Jungs archetypes[2].
Archetype examples
You can also use hypnosis to actually retrieve power by appealing to archetypes. For example, you can talk to a god, ancestors, guides, animals with powers, the father who knows everything, the merciful mother, the magician, the guru and the disciple. Or you can see yourself as such an archetype. Who wouldn't want to be the all-knowing father or the kind mother who forgives everything? But how well does that work in reality?
It is often the case that if you try to live entirely according to a particular archetype, problems arise in your life.
So you can also think of your ego as an archetype with which to enter the conversation.
You can also have complex situations that you can relate to archetypes. For example, if you are a rebellious son, you may quickly suffer from seeing a negative father. The teacher, for example, is then also quickly one or the nutrition coach and also the cop. Any man with authority can then be seen as a negative father figure if you yourself embody the archetype of a rebellious child.
As you can see, archetypes can be used to interpret the world and determine your own behavior. It is a way to organize your understandings of the world.
A therapist can use archetypes to identify clients' core needs, giving clients a better understanding of their personality and their relationships with others.
Archetype is to the mind something like instinct is to the body. Being touched by a sunset can have archetypal meaning for you. Just as some people are actually touched by the power of a forest fire. Not everyone finds that beautiful or impressive, and how you interpret it depends on your archetype (source `1).
What is my archetype?
What your archetype is, or an archetype you use to determine your behavior, depends on what affects you in your life and what problems you experience.
- What do you like?
- Where do you go wrong?
Any problem in your life can often be related to certain archetypes. Authority, for example, may be seen by some people as loving and protective, while someone else interprets it as threatening and dangerous.
If you have problems with your mother, you can find people who can act as mother figures or where you can act as a mother or father figure.
Sometimes for a while you have no problem at all, but then something happens that triggers you to interpret something a certain way, and that can then be linked to the archetype.
So your archetype can also affect your environment in two ways. For example, if you are the hero, other people are the bad guy. It is good to be aware of this if, for example, you often quarrel with people or if there is a certain ritual that goes on and on because you are not aware of it and so you cannot consciously choose to do things differently (source `1).
The question of what your archetype is is actually difficult to answer via a blog, a hypnotherapist can help you with this.
However, if you are aware of it, then you can see if this archetype helps you in your daily life or if it would be more convenient to use a different archetype to dissect your behavior or by even just letting go of the archetype altogether.
Releasing and/or choosing your archetype
If you realize that you are mentally preoccupied with a certain good and evil archetype and are therefore not helping yourself with this, then you can choose to approach it all differently.
For example, you can check for yourself if you have certain archetype issues when it comes to your health, view of your body, relationships, family and your place in society.
As a hypnotherapist, you can help people here by applying regression. Then you can actually go to the first moment when a particular problem that has become linked to a particular good/bad archetype occurred. You then go back to the state of the ego that you had as a child. Hence it is often referred to as the inner child.
You can then help the person, for example, address the person who abused the child about the behavior by indicating that it was not right and that the child was not to blame for the abuse. In this way, a broken fight-or-flight response - which unfortunately has turned into a long-term freeze - can still be glued, giving it better closure and allowing you to let go of an archetype such as the strict father or mother.
This can have great effects on the client's life after regression (source 1).
Sometimes part of the archetype you have used to protect yourself can cause you to suffer from self-sabotage. Like when you've used resources as a form of self-protection to avoid feeling something. Or if it has caused anxiety, depression or even post traumatic stress because it is a part in you that you want to protect (source 1).
Fear is ultimately an emotion that does affect your behavior in such a way as to keep you from getting into dangerous situations. Only when these are a little too many situations to be comfortable in, it can turn into PTSD or depression .
Regression can also be used in these cases.
It is also important to detach yourself (or your client) from the archetype. One way to do this is to say that you are not something, but you are doing something.
In the book "You Don't Have It, You Do It," people are helped to detach themselves from their depression. It is just depression and not something that is part of themselves.
This is an important step in rebuilding the ego and releasing unhelpful archetypes.
Then space is created to live your life precisely as your true self wants (source 1). A hypnotherapist helps with this. One way to do this is with progression; a way to help you achieve a certain vision of the future.
Want to learn more about hypnosis and how to help people with it? Then come to the free online master class.
Or sign up for one of our seminars or trainings so you can learn directly how to help people improve their lives. Training courses are delivered in class or live online.
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