ambivalence

We've all been in situations where we experience mixed emotions. Maybe you've felt both joy and sadness during a big life decision, such as whether to purchase a home or accept a job offer. Or maybe you've experienced mixed feelings about the ways the COVID-19 pandemic has shaped your life. Psychologist Naomi Rothman says that while these feelings of ambivalence are uncomfortable, they can also serve us in important ways. 

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Having mixed feelings, or strongly opposing feelings is a normal occurrence in human life. We can find ourselves in a quandary about big decisions, upcoming life events, or experience being stuck without quite knowing why. Deb, Joseph, and Lisa consider various facets of ambivalence: anxiety around foreclosing options and missing out fear of regret over a possible wrong choice, or inability to raise complexes and shadow elements into consciousness. All aspects of the personality need to be allowed to dialogue and have it out with one another. Instead of complicating matters and adding to stasis, this process releases energy for movement in life. We can come to accept the certainty of uncertainty—and find our life-giving psychic wellsprings.

The Dream:

I was walking on a cobbled street looking for a store where honey was sold. I was looking for honey to heal (however, I don't know what was that I needed to heal). I entered into the store through what seemed to be the back door. Inside, I saw wooden shelves with glass mason jars full of different-colored honey on them. The room was rustic and had a dim light, though sunrays illuminated it. One of my great aunts from my mother's side, whose name is C., was there working, filling up bottles with honey. She greeted me and was happy to see me as she always is, and

the owner of the place, whose face I don't remember, came to me and told me the honey would help me heal. He gave me honey. I think I ate it because it was for me to taste; I don't remember clearly. However, I do remember he also told me to cover my body with honey, especially over my arms, chest, belly, face and hair, so he poured some honey on my hand (I think it was the left hand), because the hand was the most effective way to cover my body, according to him. I did cover.

The honey had chunks of honeycomb in it. The owner told me to eat the honeycomb chunks, so I grabbed a honeycomb chunk I had in the left side of my neck with my right hand, and ate it. Its taste was delicious.

References

Jung, C.G. Aion (Volume 9ii, Collected Works)

Harari, Yuval Noah. Sapiens, HarperCollins, 2015.