A couple of weeks ago, for the Aquarian Full Moon, I wrote about dreams and their ability to throw back the psychic curtain to reveal the hidden machinery of psychological complexes. These patterns are slippery. Without dream breadcrumbs, they can be maddeningly hard to track, given that they’re, you know, unconscious.
Later that afternoon, I had an irritating-ass phone call with a healthcare provider that lit up every. single. button. on one of my own complexes.
And now I can write about it. Thanks, life!
I won’t torture you with a blow-by-blow of the call, but here’s the gist: I needed help, the tone I got was curt and dismissive, and then I was the one using The Tone, and when I got off the phone I felt the quease of shame. (Yes, I realize “quease” isn’t a word. It is now.)
I hung up and began pacing and muttering, arguing with the air. (Glad I work from home.) Now, if I were arguing with the healthcare provider that would make some kind of sense, right? I’m replaying the moment, finally getting to “say my piece.” A redo.
But that’s not what my psyche was doing.
Instead, it was arguing my case like a lawyer to, first, another doctor (as in, not even the person on the call) and then to a crowd of randos, an amorphous blob of “public opinion.”
Hmm…
So, I pulled out my journal and let ‘er rip.
At first, I filled the page with bullet points of blame, cataloguing, in excruciating detail, what the other person had done wrong and why they sucked.
But a little voice within gently suggested that this was actually making me feel more agitated, not less. More shameful, more constricted.
I paused, and that little voice asked the million-dollar question:
What are you feeling right now?
I feel like the other person is an asshole.
Try again.
I feel like…
I feel…
I feel afraid.
I feel afraid that I’ve done something horrible and everyone else knows and if I don’t present my case they’ll punish me and leave.
There. That right there. That’s one of my complexes.
I’ve written, numerous times, about the structure of complexes, how, at their center, there’s an archetypal image, and this image attracts life detritus into its orbit. When inner or outer experience matches something in the complex’s little solar system, the complex is activated—or “constellated,” to use a Jungian term.
At the center of my complex, if I had to guess, is a Parental Judge—the archetypal image of the all-knowing, all-deciding Parent. And the life detritus orbiting this image?
There’s a particular tone of voice: measured and tight, hinting at the impending eruption.
There’s a facial expression, too: tension in the jaw, upper lip peeled back, just enough to reveal teeth, slightly on edge.
It comes with a narrowing of the eyes: scornfully cataloguing, disgusted.
And there’s an energy: a coiled knowing that the silence is temporary, calculated.
Each element carries the same silent promise—the verdict is coming, and it will not be in your favor.
When that healthcare provider adopted The Tone, it activated decades of history (generations, really—I’ve seen my parent and my grandparents do this), loading a ten-minute call with an incalculable weight, far too much to carry.
Hop into my time machine…
This complex was formed when my parent experienced my needs as not only inconvenient or tiring (which, hey, parents are human and kids’ needs, I’m sure, can be hella exhausting at times!), but wrong.
And what I experienced in that dynamic was quicksand panic. I tried to express what I was feeling, what I needed, but better, more clearly, more persuasively, for real this time. But the eyes would narrow further, the jaw would twitch with tension.
I must be saying it wrong, better, try harder, say it louder, maybe—no, the eyes are narrowing even more—use different words, sound more serious, don’t get so emotional, stay calm, no, be less calm, that will drive the point home…
This is what’s so curious about complexes, about their formation and their expression.
When that quicksand panic gets triggered (because I feel like my feelings and needs are being dismissed), I will often adopt my parent’s narrow-eyed, teeth-set tone and expression. Underneath is a fear that, if I don’t, the person dismissing my needs will never take me seriously, they’ll continue to dismiss with gleeful abandon.
The complex doesn’t simply record my “side” of the interaction—the quicksand panic—it imprints the interaction as a whole.
Complexes are formed in response to trauma, a word that has been overused to the point of definitional smushiness. Trauma occurs when we experience something that overwhelms our ability to process or cope in the moment. It’s simply too much for the nervous system to handle all at once—“too big” for the resources we have right then.
And bigness is relative. It depends on our maturity, skills, the relationship in which it happens, and countless other factors. What registers as too big for one might barely cause a blip for another.
So, my psyche captured this “too big” moment (really, a series of moments) in a complex, and I now have a record of an interaction that, to put it simply, doesn’t work. Meaning, it doesn’t bring about the desired outcome.
My recent phone call is a perfect example. No matter how hard I used The Tone, that didn’t compel the other person to honor my needs. In fact—and this is what happens 99.9% of the time when a complex is activated—it probably helped bring about the precise opposite.
The more I used that stank-ass Tone, the less the person was interested in hearing and honoring my needs. They just wanted to get off the phone, and perhaps they actively wanted to obstruct me because I was acting like an a-hole.
Instead of getting a redo, I replayed the same non-working dynamic I experienced with my parent a billion times over. And I reactivated the shame of that original encounter, which shut down my ability to process.
One person feels threatened* by the other’s feelings and needs, so they adopt the protective Tone. The other person panics and starts throwing The Tone right back, and both people walk away feeling unheard, shameful, and alone.
* With the healthcare provider—and I’m just speculating here—they probably didn’t feel threatened by my needs. Maybe they were tired or hangry or I was the thirtieth call they’d fielded that day. This is an important point: a complex frequently gets activated even when the present-day situation has little to do with the original trauma. There’s simply enough of an echo to get the ball rolling.
Said another way: a complex imprints a set of rules on the psyche. When it’s activated, we’re limited to seeing the world according to those rules, and we respond to the world in kind, regardless of our best intentions.
These unbending rules are why complexes are associated with repetitive, frustrating situations, and a sense that life is happening to us. We aren’t aware of our (sometimes sizable) contribution to the situation, and thus we’re powerless to change it.
It’s not me! That healthcare provider was just being a jerk.
And hey, sometimes the other person is being a jerk.
And.
And even if “they started it,” what our complexes bring to the table often ensures things only get worse.
What might have happened if I’d chosen not to throw back The Tone?
I don’t know. ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ The other person could still have behaved in a turdly fashion. Shit happens; people have bad days.
But I bet I would have felt differently when I got off the phone.
That’s the value—the power—of learning to recognize our complexes: choice.
With every ounce of awareness, we open up avenues, boulevards, interstates of possibility. Life feels less like it’s happening to us, because we can see the invisible threads holding a moment in place—and notice our own fingers in the weave.
If the tapestry isn’t to our liking, we can choose a different pattern. And sure, it takes time. You can’t do a life’s worth of weaving overnight. But what’s also true—at least in my experience—is that just because it took 30 years to weave a life-blanket doesn’t mean it’ll take 30 years to unravel it.
Picking out stitches is always faster than making them. So don’t despair.
It starts with noticing. Paying attention to what lights up your complexes. Is it a tone? A particular expression? A familiar dynamic, like someone brushing off your needs?
Start mapping your own buttons. The more glimpses you catch of their inner workings, the more choice you’ll have when life—inevitably—taps them. (Or sprawls across the entire control panel like a cat settling in for a nice, long nap.)
Happy New Moon!
P.S. Thanks to everyone who took my Dreams + Psychic Cartography poll! There’s a lot of interest in learning how to use dreams to map the psychic terrain that your ego habitually avoids, so I’ll be working on that course in the weeks to come.
I’m moving at a snail’s pace these days, with pretty much everything except my romance writing (which is volcanic), so in the meantime—if you’re new to dream interpretation or it routinely feels confusing AF—check out Enchantment Lab.
Of all the reams I’ve written about dreams, the Lab’s dreamwork module is hands-down one of my favorites (it includes a ritual + guided meditation to remember your dreams by evoking Mnemosyne!). Plus, I tie it all in with spellcasting…because that’s what I do with everything.
P.P.S. I’m reading Rilke’s Letters to a Young Poet, and last night I came across a passage that perfectly encapsulates my aim with the dream course. Can’t wait to share that, and more, with you.
