Afflictions, we all have them.
We are each born carrying both the brilliance and the burden of our psychic unfolding. We aren’t warned that our individuation will have moments of soul-crushing torment or suffering.
Life shapes us, and psychological and emotional wounds are the evidence of this. Our most intimate relationships, connections, friendships, and familial relations are the forms that give rise to our most difficult challenges.
It is through the tension of these interactions that our greatest growth occurs as the psyche leads us through ordeals. The responsibility remains on us to be with the tension, not escape, not bypass, and not remove ourselves before the alchemical process has concluded.
Afflictions are the invisible ghosts that show us how to get to the wound.
More than a symptom or a disorder, afflictions are a psychic disruption, an emotional disturbance. They are inner ruptures, the wound that draws our attention inward, in hopes we will begin to listen to the deeper musings within the psyche.
Afflictions do not let us off the hook, yet we treat them like a scarlet letter. Branded by moments that forever leave a mark, the sting is felt each time we venture too closely to the place where the old wound began.
This is an invitation through an initiation.
We are familiar with afflictions such as anxiety, depression, addiction, intrusive thoughts, or persistent patterns of suffering. But these symptoms are not the affliction itself but its language, the way the unconscious attempts to communicate its distress.
Let’s explore this mythically through the label of madness and the dangerous assumptions we project upon it.
I don’t trust a woman who has never had a wild, feral, unhinged, and rage-filled outburst when she’s had enough.
Like really, truly enough. She comes undone, and the people around her don’t know what to do with her.
They call her crazy, but let me tell you something… she’s the one carrying the darkness that they have refused to see.
So she rants and raves; her hands violently cutting through the air. The torment hangs on her face, her skin reflects the silent burden of being one who feels too deeply. She no longer recognizes herself.