Wholeness and the Myth of PerfectionA LIVE, INTERACTIVE, VIRTUAL Workshop
for Mental Health Clinicians and Laypeople Presented by Andrea Mathews, LPC, NCC
Providing 4 NBCC Approved Contact HoursRegister at friendsofjungsouth.org
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Carl Jung tells us, in Modern Man in Search of a Soul, that the beginning of the cure for the patient (or client) occurs when he encounters something strange arising from his own psyche to face him, something which cannot be understood as his ego or his identity and, therefore, cannot be controlled (p. 248). This will prove to be his first encounter with the Self.
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Perfectionism runs rampant through our society, and many suffer its confounding damage to life and self. We are caught in its inhumane prison, both in its persistent demand that we perform perfectly and its insistence that we are not good enough if we don’t.
This is dangerous business for the psyche, which longs for any modicum of a sense of self. In fact, from a Transpersonal perspective, perfectionism is a state of nonbeing.
Wholeness is not a state of perfection. Jung taught that when we strive for perfection, we must experience and integrate perfection's unconscious opposite—imperfection—in order to reach wholeness. We tend to think of attaining a state of wholeness as perfection, because we believe that wholeness is an ultimate state of arrival.
Society and religion teach that this unconscious opposition is evidence of our lack, evidence that we are not good people. The resulting shame reveals the shadow of perfectionism.
If wholeness is not a state of ultimate arrival, what is it?
This workshop will explore and offer to clinicians, their clients/patients, and to lay people a process through perfectionism toward wholeness.
OBJECTIVES
Upon successful completion of this workshop, participants will be able to:
This is dangerous business for the psyche, which longs for any modicum of a sense of self. In fact, from a Transpersonal perspective, perfectionism is a state of nonbeing.
Wholeness is not a state of perfection. Jung taught that when we strive for perfection, we must experience and integrate perfection's unconscious opposite—imperfection—in order to reach wholeness. We tend to think of attaining a state of wholeness as perfection, because we believe that wholeness is an ultimate state of arrival.
Society and religion teach that this unconscious opposition is evidence of our lack, evidence that we are not good people. The resulting shame reveals the shadow of perfectionism.
If wholeness is not a state of ultimate arrival, what is it?
This workshop will explore and offer to clinicians, their clients/patients, and to lay people a process through perfectionism toward wholeness.
OBJECTIVES
Upon successful completion of this workshop, participants will be able to:
- Explain how we have attached perfectionism to identity as a sense of self.
- Explain perfectionism as certainty.
- Explain some transcendental, religious and Jungian concepts regarding the duality between good and evil.
- Explain how shame might be considered to be the shadow of perfectionism.
- Define wholeness from Jungian and Transpersonal perspectives.
- Learn how self-guidance and making friends with difficult emotions leads toward wholeness.
- Learn constructive ways to transform practice into process.
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Andrea Mathews, LPC, NCC has been approved by NBCC as an Approved Continuing Education Provider, ACEP No. 6031. Programs that do not qualify for NBCC credit are clearly identified. Andrea Mathews, LPC, NCC, is solely responsible for all aspects of the program.
Andrea Mathews, LPC, NCC is also an approved provider for the Alabama Board of Examiners in Social Work, #0528. |