A psychic archetype represents a core energy expression that we believe defines our psychological and spiritual journey, in this, past and future lives. Although we may engage in different forms of life, such as soldier or doctor, we are one enduring archetype, which could be the Warrior or the Healer.
This article explores the psychic archetype of the Counselor.
One archetype, many guises
History is full of warrior priests and soldier healers (medics). Teachers can be athletes and athletes can be teachers. We can wear many guises over the course of our lives, but we usually operate from a single psychic archetype.
Sometimes necessity and circumstances can force us into a guise that is far removed from our spiritual purpose, it will seem. If we look closely enough at our actions under any circumstance, we will be able to see the consistent psychic imprint of our representation.
I have a varied work history including construction, website design/management, teaching (college English), and now spiritual consulting. With each iteration of my work opportunities, I repeatedly found myself in the same role… as a spiritual and emotional advisor to those around me.
The teacher
I once thought my archetype was the Teacher. I started teaching while working on my master’s degree in English in 1991. From 1992 to 2010, I was a lecturer at a university for more than a decade and a half. I loved teaching. However, when I look at the interactions I had with students, my most common and repetitive role was as an advisor.
The Counselor person archetype truly loves listening to others, assessing their struggles, and providing guidance through those struggles to a healthier and happier place in life. Counseling is an aspect of every archetype. Fathers and mothers counsel their children, Warriors advise others on how to deal with the emotional impact of combat, but the Counselor is the archetype with the gift of taking people from a state of struggle or mental illness to a state of struggle. state satisfaction and health.
Each archetype travels through lifetimes gaining experience within and beyond its ideal representation to enjoy and understand the full range of human experience, while learning lessons related to completing his or her work. We learn lessons through support and resistance. Someone learns the many facets of freedom by being very free in one life and extremely limited in another.
The ideal society (utopian vision)
It is really not difficult to imagine an ideal society in which everyone discovers his or her psychic or spiritual archetype and is given a way to express that archetype through work and interactions with the other archetypes in the world. Creating such a world would require a wholesale and comprehensive acceptance of the balance between science and spirituality, between creativity and necessity, and between compassion and integrity.
Reality is an ebb and flow of balance, imbalance and rebalancing, and that is where all souls learn lessons not found in utopian visions or in the spirit realm. We choose to be here, and psychic or spiritual archetypes indicate that we choose a singular type of role so that we can experience true mastery.
Are you a consultant?
Each archetype has definable and distinguishable properties.
Attracted to suffering, confusion and loss
Counseling is about helping others succeed and heal, about being able to recognize how to sympathize and empathize with others while seeing and communicating how the other person can overcome tragedy or reach a higher level of success. The counselor’s true gift is his or her ability to move others toward what they need for improvement in a way that allows the person to be authentic and confident. A drug addict enters a program and becomes addicted to heroin. By the time they leave the program, with the help of counselors, they are drug-free and can stay drug-free.
There are many different archetypes that can play the role of counselor, but the counselor will help people get to the core of their problem and their identity. Transformative moments in counseling occur when the person is able to change themselves or truly accept the change in their life. The man or woman who is perpetually in a negative relationship seeks a counselor, listens, does the work, and breaks the cycle of bad partners, putting them through a process of change that they ultimately know they cannot achieve alone.
A desire to serve others and the community
The Counselor plays a vital role in the survival and improvement of communities, society and humanity. They love and need to move people from states of self-destruction or self-doubt to states of positive regard and confidence. They want to see the joy one feels when one realizes oneself worthy of joy or success in life. The Counselor is as much a pillar of human society as the Mother and the Father, especially because they work outside the family dynamic.
Counselors are at their most powerful when the person being guided wants to transform. As the saying goes, you can lead a horse to water, but you can’t make him drink. This is not to say that counselors do not encounter clients or patients who resist counseling, but that counseling work is optimal when the client/patient and the counselor are working together toward the same goal.
Naturally sensitive to others
Counselors will naturally score high on any scale of emotional sensitivity. They can feel what others feel and put themselves in the mindset and emotional turmoil of the other person’s struggle. And their clients/patients will in turn feel this connection. It is this connection that gives the Counselor the power to advise effectively.
More often than not, the best counselors will have actual experience with the problem, which increases their ability to empathize with someone seeking their counsel. It is not a requirement to be successful as a counselor, but it often helps to strengthen the connection so that the client/patient can ‘hear’ the counselor. This level of empathy is crucial if the client/patient wants to resist the counseling because it is mandatory for some reason.
His leaders and companions
Results are important to the Counselor archetype; they feel fulfilled when a client/patient ‘gets healthy’. They know and feel successful when their client/patient can continue without them and have the knowledge and willingness to seek future guidance if necessary. In their highest form they can be understood as a necessary partner and ‘helping hand’ in times of crisis.
The Counselors show others that there is a way to find the success they want, overcome crushing grief and break negative patterns. The act of counseling is fundamental to helping the Counselor archetype understand their place in the scheme of the community of archetypes.
