FACING REJECTION

This Jungian Life Podcast

Joseph Lee, Deborah Stewart, Lisa Marchiano

Jungian, Mental Health, Health & Fitness, Psychology, Dreams, Jung, Relationships, Selfhelp, Society & Culture, Psychoanalysis

4.8 • 1.7K Ratings

🗓️ 13 February 2025

⏱️ 68 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Learn to Interpret Dreams with Us! https://tinyurl.com/TJLdreamschool

Facing Rejection forces us to confront what we fear losing—belonging, recognition, identity. Rejection alters how we see ourselves, engage with others, and interpret the world. It shapes unconscious complexes, creates projections, and influences attachment. It appears in myths where exiled figures return transformed, in dreams where locked doors symbolize what we refuse to see, and in defenses against further pain. Healing from rejection requires engaging with its effects, not avoiding them. Some of us externalize rejection, which becomes resentment, further isolating us. Others internalize it as self-doubt, creating cycles of withdrawal and hiding. Some break the pattern, using rejection as a catalyst for self-development, learning to integrate what was once denied. Rejection strips away illusions, forces an encounter with shadow, and demands a new understanding of self-worth. It is present in villains seeking revenge, heroes growing through exile, and those transforming suffering into insight. Growth is not in avoiding rejection but facing its effects without retreating into bitterness or fear. In today’s episode, we explore how rejection influences Psyche, how myths encode its lessons, how shadow work leads to integration, and how individuation turns rejection into wisdom.

PREPARE TO DISCOVER what rejection reveals about the forces that shape our experiences, how rejection creates opportunities for transformation, which unconscious patterns emerge when rejection is internalized, whether rejection leads to individuation, why rejection is necessary to reclaim unconscious material …AND SO MUCH MORE.

Here’s a copy of the dream we analyzed: https://thisjungianlife.com/facing-rejection

The hosts of This Jungian Life published their first book together! Check out DREAM WISE: UNLOCKING THE MEANING OF YOUR DREAMS: https://a.co/d/6SORo25

LOOK & GROW

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to this Jungian life.
0:04.2	Three good friends and Jungian analysts, Lisa Marchiano, Deborah Stewart, and Joseph Lee,
0:09.7	invite you to join them for an intimate and honest conversation that brings a psychological perspective to important issues of the day.
0:19.4	I'm Lisa Marchiano, and I'm a Jungian analyst in Philadelphia. I'm Joseph Lee,
0:24.9	and I'm a Jungian analyst in Virginia Beach, Virginia. I'm Deborah Stewart, a Jungian analyst,
0:31.1	and Cape Cod.
0:47.9	Thank you. Well, I think most of our listeners know that you can support us on Patreon.
0:50.3	It helps us keep the lights on.
0:57.1	And one of the benefits of being a Patreon supporter is that you get to help us pick new episodes. So today we're going to be talking about rejection. And this is an episode that was
1:03.8	picked by our Patreon supporter community. If you would like to help us pick future episodes,
1:09.9	consider supporting us on Patreon. And you can find that on our website.
1:14.7	So when we came up with this topic and realized it was the one that was chosen, we were all surprised that we'd never done it before.
1:21.9	It's such a salient topic to many people's lives.
1:25.9	It happens in all kinds of ways, and it has a particular
1:29.1	significance, I think, in Jungian psychology. So we're going to be circumambulating rejection.
1:36.3	It strikes me that the idea of rejection is really at the foundation of our Western cultural mythology.
1:46.7	In the myth of Genesis, Adam and Eve, are having a great time with God, everything's smooth,
1:55.0	everything's easy.
1:56.5	They eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, and then God rejects them.
2:03.2	It says, no way you guys are out of here, throwing them out of the house.
2:08.6	You're going to earn your bread by the sweatier brow and have your children in pain
2:14.1	and all these other realities are foisted upon.
	...

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