Transforming our dragon into gold

In my last article I talked about the recent death of my father and how struck I was by the extreme reactions when, in response to the greeting, ‘How are you?’ I replied calmly and gently, ‘I’m ok but my father has just died.’

‘Initially I was shocked by some extraordinary reactions, including panicked exits and wildly off-key remarks, but then my professional research-self kicked in, and I began to test what was going on. At first, I thought it was about culture, gender, age, nationality etc. but that didn’t pan out: the most beautifully empathic response sometimes came from the unlikeliest person. So, I began to dive deeper. What was causing these reactions? Was it the word ‘death’ that panicked them about their own mortality; was it a triggering of unprocessed grief of their own; was it simply an ignorance about what to say in this context; or was it more than that: an inability and/or unwillingness to be with emotions, their own or others? Digging deep part-ii: looking in the mirror

I was discussing the above with my friend Sue, and also how exhausting I had found it being on the receiving end of people projecting their unprocessed, unowned emotions of grief onto me, particularly at this time of my own vulnerability. I didn’t have my usual patience to understand and interpret, to second guess…and forgive… what they would want to say or feel if they tuned in intelligently to their feelings. We then began to talk beyond the specific context of grieving about being with people who have an unwillingness to take responsibility for their emotions in general and the impact that has on us. Sue commented ‘Your role, like mine, is to slay other people’s dragons. And, because this is our lifelong identity, we can get hooked into slaying the dragon for others.’ Wow…that skilful observation hit home!

First, what does Sue mean by ‘slaying the dragon?’ Psychologically, the concept of the ‘dragon’ is multi-layered: it represents our primal, survival instincts that, unprocessed, become unhealthy and harmful, e.g. ruminative and anxious thinking, hypervigilance, phobias, hypersensitivity to imagined comments and rejection etc. It also includes unexamined, unhealed traumas in our lives, including losses and deaths, that we have failed to grieve. The more we allow these wounds to fester, the fiercer our dragon will roar and attack ourselves and those we love.

The dragon can also represent an inflated ego: an arrogance, selfishness, and lack of empathy and care for others. Like the dragon, Smaug, in The Hobbit, hoarding his pile of immensurable gold, these dragon-people are cunning, manipulative and brutally narcissistic: it’s all about ‘me.’

Essentially the dragon is our ‘Shadow’ that place deep within our psyche where we reject, deny or project onto others, aspects of our self we are ashamed of and aren’t willing to own, e.g. anger, sadness, envy, vulnerability. Reactive irritability and anger is a key indicator that our shadow is activated...a nerve has been touched!

But we can also bury other aspects in our Shadow, qualities that are usually seen as positive such as our personal power and our charisma, our inner light. Robert A Johnson, the Jungian Psychoanalyst, explains why integrating our shadow enables us to accept and love our real self and, as a consequence, release our full creativity and healthy power:

‘To honor and accept one’s own shadow…is whole-making and the most important experience of a lifetime. Some of the pure gold of our personality is relegated to the shadow…Curiously, people resist the noble aspects of their shadow more strenuously than they hide the dark sides. It is more disrupting to find that you have a profound nobility of character than to find out you are a bum. The gold is related to our higher calling, and this can be hard to accept at certain stages of life. Ignoring the gold can be as damaging as ignoring the dark side of the psyche, and some people may suffer a severe shock or illness before they learn how to let the gold out.’ Owning Your Own Shadow: Understanding the Dark Side of the Psyche.

In essence, we cannot fully embrace our brightest light unless we know and embrace our own dark, our Shadow. Embracing does not mean simple collusion. There is rich, fecund darkness and there is bad darkness which has a very different energy. It is tight and rigid, it strangleholds growth and it is always the container for the abuse of power: the abusers holding sway through control and secrets. Everything in the dark behind closed doors. They do not want their shadow to be brought into the light!

So, this is the psychological meaning of the dragon. Now, what about Sue’s compelling statement: ‘Your role, like mine, is to slay other people’s dragons. And, because this is our lifelong identity, we can get hooked into slaying the dragon for others.’

If we do not become the Guardian of our own dragon, it will not disappear. It will grow fiercer either by unleashing its wounded fury onto others or by burying even deeper and manifesting in eating disorders, depression, self-loathing etc. Either way we fall into a victim mindset, feeling powerless and blaming everyone else. And it is in this helpless, infantile mindset we surreptitiously hunt for someone to come and save us…ironically from ourselves.

Who doesn’t want a Knight to swoop in and rescue us…sometimes it sucks being the grown-up! And there are times when we feel very vulnerable and need a lot of support. But it is very dangerous to be locked in this victim role because it comes at a great price, psychologically known as making the ‘Devil’s Bargain’ and the fee is to relinquish our power, ultimately our freedom, and to be caged in arrested development.

Those of us who are hooked in the role of the Knight, i.e. the ‘rescuer’, have been trained from birth to rescue others, our unconscious and primal sense of survival depending on slaying the Dragon usually of one or both ‘victim mindset’ parents, i.e. if I don’t make that person feel good about themselves, that person I most depend on to be fed and looked after, I will die.

As a very young girl, I learned my role was to anticipate and give to others what they needed, even before they consciously knew it themselves. At its best this is called ‘Advanced Empathy’ and it is core to intuitive intelligence: Steve Jobs made billions of dollars on the back of this.

It is also the essence of kindness and compassion. I am deeply thankful I have this attribute of advanced empathy, but I’ve learned there is a shadow side to it. When it comes from a ‘good girl’ dutiful place, this ‘kindness’ is not clean: it is conditional and controlling and can often be a canny deflection/distraction from looking after our own emotional, physical and psychological needs, i.e. the ‘Do-gooder syndrome’. I know when I go into overdrive in my concern for others…my stress default is still to rescue...there’s something in myself I’m not attending to.

And I also learned it doesn’t work. That whatever I did it to try and slay/heal someone else’s dragon for them, try and make them feel good about themselves, it would never work if they were stuck in a victim mindset and not willing to help/change themselves. It’s the crucial law of change: we may want to change but we have to commit, take action and see it through for it to happen. Others can help and support, but no-one can do it for us however much we roar, wail or guilt-trip!

It was my psychotherapeutic training many years ago that was the beginning of challenging the ‘rescuer’ in me. I entered it wanting to heal/save the world, and, like many healers, I had learned to ignore my own needs and well-being, seeing any focus on me as selfish and irrelevant. To my astonishment, I was told my own healing and self-care were an ethical requirement enabling me to be ‘cleanly’ present for my clients and that I would be of no help to others until I began to heal myself and integrate self-care into my daily, lifelong practice. I now teach this to leaders: key to great leadership is making the right decisions and we cannot do this if we are overstressed, exhausted or miserable.

Rescuers can very easily fall into being victims: it is a very fine line. Our task in becoming psychologically healthy and empowered adults is to learn to rescue ourselves: to be our own Knight, whatever our gender/sex, swooping in to rescue our inner princess: it’s the beautiful marriage and integration of our Anima/Animus, our Yin/Yang.

And what about our dragon? As the brilliant mythologist, Joseph Campbell stated: ‘The cave you fear to enter holds the treasure you seek.’ Our dragon is waiting for us in that cave we most fear and s/he is the source of our inner truth and power. Instead of slaying that extraordinary creature, how about we become its Guardian, championing its alchemical transformation and becoming the person we are really supposed to be?

Hannah Elizabeth Greenwood