How can we stop leaving our hearts behind closed doors?

Reflections after therapy sessions with younger clients.

A Jungian perspective on the impact of emotions expressed on social media and communication networks on the activation of complexes and trauma in the human psyche. A topic has emerged about microtraumas caused by group interactions, which are increasingly being discussed in therapy. One of these is the feeling of humiliation experienced by people for whom emotional signs are very important. According to Jung’s typology, the feeling function will be either dominant or secondary, and mutual emotions mean more to these people than words. For example, when a person feels they belong to a group – school, university, workplace, interest club, friends – they seek relationships and acceptance. Therefore, they will definitely feel ignored if, in a WhatsApp group or other communication app group, among colleagues, or in everyday interactions, they do not receive the same response that is observed among other colleagues. It will hurt him and he will be upset if his messages are not responded to in the same way as others. Other people will certainly find this insignificant, but for someone who has already experienced rejection in their family, for example, it can easily bring back emotions they have experienced in their family. Nowadays, in my opinion, these emoticons have also become a weapon of manipulation, because they can be used to express joy, love, ignore, punish, and do everything that is done in families. This is especially true when these emotional symbols are used as a form of punishment, for example, by ignoring a specific person in lists or not giving them any emotional symbols at all, etc. In Jungian psychology, such social exclusion activates ancient archetypal energies — the Inner Child or Orphan archetype. Of course, these archetypal images are almost as old as humanity itself and do not exist on the ego level. They certainly do not know what WhatsApp is, but they know what it means to be expelled from the tribe — in the past, it meant death. Therefore, the feeling of rejection can trigger absolutely anyone. But especially if a person has felt rejected in their childhood family. They have experienced punishment through silence and indifference where there should have been explanation, conversation, love, and acceptance. People who have experienced trauma — especially those who have experienced emotional rejection or criticism from people who are important to them — parents, grandparents, brothers and sisters — have a deep need to be accepted. They become very sensitive (in therapy, we say that these people have antennas that are good at reading the room) to other people’s moods and needs, and subconsciously they adapt to them, even at the expense of their own needs, in order to be loved.

When a person has been condemned for expressing the truth or criticizing authority figures such as parents in their childhood family or while growing up in a significant group, they learn to feel guilty for simply existing, and this trauma is reenacted every time they are criticized for their thoughts. he learns to feel guilty for existing, and this trauma is reactivated every time he is criticized for his thoughts and opinions. He tries to smooth things over with humble gestures, gifts, he will try to please and satisfy others, and, in line with the theme of our article, he will like other people’s comments, even if they do not like his, and then he feels both sad and heartbroken. And the person never stops hoping that his submissiveness will make him loved again. It becomes an endless cycle of sadness. I visualize a person knocking with their heart as a gift to another behind a closed door, and when it doesn’t open, they feel even more insignificant and, unfortunately, the trauma acquired in childhood is reinforced, gaining a new microtrauma on top of it. In Jung’s view, the collective—the group—can be both a healing force through support and acceptance, and a shadow carrier through rejection and exclusion. Every group, like every partnership, has some of these dynamics.

Groups with strong personalities have a strongly expressed unconscious shadow side, where important issues are not discussed and it is taboo to talk about unpleasant things, just as in destructive families, where no one talks about what is important, and then the group, like a family, punishes those who speak the truth, most often by expulsion. The aim is to