So what’s the deal Pete? Why Jungian Life Coaching? What even is that?

Great question, I’m glad you asked! I feel like the best way for me to answer that is to start by sharing an experience I had in the early summer of 2024. Buckle in for a little story… My partner Erika (I call her Hazel) and I had been camping at a site along the Wolf River in Northeast Wisconsin and had decided to go for a little hike along the river. It had been a rainy few weeks, so the water was rushing along at a good clip. We noticed a few people in 2-man rafts floating down the river and I recalled having done that myself a few times over the years. I had never felt the floats in this area were particularly dangerous, but the current flows quickly when the river is higher (like it was this day), and with all the rocks it can make for a more spirited trip than one might find during a drier period.

So we continued walking up the river, enjoying the scenery, laughing as we’d hear the commotion from these people enjoying their own adventures. Right around the time we were getting ready to turn around and head back, the shouting got a bit more frenetic when Hazel noticed a rafter who had fallen out of the raft being carried downstream in the current. As we began to investigate, it looked as though a family of four had been navigating the river, a young boy with his mom in one raft, and a young girl with her dad in another. Well, the boy and mom were the ones who had fallen in and now being carried swiftly away, while the raft and paddles headed toward shore near us. 

The boy had drifted a bit downstream and managed a decent hold on some rocks, while the mom had gone much further - the dad and daughter having paddled over to where she was. It didn’t seem as though there was any immediate danger requiring us to get involved, but the boy started to panic and when he saw that I was nearby he hollered, “Mister! Please save me! I’m going to die!” I knew he wasn’t going to die, yet I also knew what it felt like when I was a younger version of myself and separated from friends or family and feeling alone and vulnerable. He was alone, scared and a bit in shock.

Pete Marcks

Hazel and I made our way from the trail path over to a place along the shore where we could get some access to the riverbank. In as calm a voice as I could manage, I urged him to try to relax a bit and breathe, as he had a good grip and wasn’t going anywhere. I stripped down a bit and made my way from the bank along the slick rocks out toward the middle, while Hazel went down shore a bit further to make sure the rest of the family was ok. When I finally reached him, I stuck my hand out and he grabbed on tightly. He was still quite shaken, but we got back to shore and I put my jacket around him as he started to catch his breath and get his bearings a bit. To make a long story shorter, the family was reunited, and they were able to continue after a short rest. We said our pleasantries and followed them along the trail for a while to make sure things were back on track.

The reason that story stands out to me isn’t because that boy thought I was saving his life. It was because I was able to stand along the bank, see that there was no real danger, and offer a helping hand to this person who was struggling in the tumultuous current. See, I had been caught in the current of life for a good portion of my life – trying to figure out how to fit in at school, how to become this person my parents were hoping would have a better life than them in some way, how to navigate the turbulence of becoming a husband, homeowner, raising and providing for a family, holding down a corporate career, continuing education and everything else we think we have to do in order to live what we feel society would view as a successful life.

The stress I felt at times was intense, and I experienced anxiety and depression along the way as well as some hypertension (high blood pressure). I had reached out to a few counselors and even tried a little cognitive behavior therapy (CBT) to figure out why my life felt like such a battle. I thought I was doing everything society was telling me to do, yet there I was now, a divorced dad starting all over. What was the point of all of this? It was time for me to start asking some deep questions about myself – how did I get here, is there something wrong with me, who even am I, and what do I do now? Since nobody was seemingly able to answer these questions for me, I had to become a person who could find the answers myself – and to do that, I had to start reading and talking with people who were also seeking. That might be exactly the reason you are here reading this now.

The books were keys which opened a lock in the door of my mind. There were so many good ones, but the one that really shook up my snow globe was The Untethered Soul, by Michael Singer. He posed a question which sent me careening down this seeking path – If the voice you hear inside your head is you, then who is doing the listening? It was that jolt – this notion that there is a witness self which is the real me (us) – sitting inside this body, using the body to interact with this world around us. That led me to further study the concept of non-duality, and eventually this fella, Carl Jung, just kept popping up all over the place. If you’ve already been exploring spirituality, The Upanishads, maybe yoga and other ancient eastern wisdom, I would hazard to guess you’ve seen his name before.

Here I was, a man who recently turned 50, an atheist who long ago distanced myself from the historical abuses wrought on the world in the name of religions, who relied on logic and science my entire life, now dipping my toes into a world of peace signs and hippy-dippy people talking about gurus and spirituality. Yet Carl Jung was a scientist (actually a psychologist and psychiatrist) who studied with Sigmund Freud! Here it was, a connection point where real science met this nebulous world of existentialism. As I continued to dig deeper, the internet led me to the Creative Mind Jungian Life Coach training. The coaching and intensive self-inquiry helped me learn the set of tools Jung developed to aid in the process of individuation – the journey toward becoming a whole and integrated self. I must emphasize here that individuation is not exactly a destination, but more a continual path of self-discovery. Part of the reason Jungian coaching is so valuable is that the process requires a person to make the unconscious conscious, and if it isn’t clear to you yet, (as it wasn’t for me in the early stages either) a person can’t readily interact with their own unconscious because, duh, it’s your unconscious! 

The work of individuation incorporates tools such as Shadow Work, Active Imagination, Visualization, Dream Interpretation, working with Complexes and Archetypes. As your coach, I will hold a safe container within which you will feel free to explore and examine your psyche, begin to see the unconscious drivers of your patterns and behaviors, reflect upon your past and eventually begin to understand how you can unlock your true potential to live a more authentic, fulfilled and meaningful life. In essence, Jung's perspective suggests that instead of viewing individuals as broken and needing to be fixed, the focus should be on self-acceptance and integrating all parts of the self – both the perceived "good" and "bad". 

This river story is so important to me because it represents an analogy for my coaching vision. In going through the coaching myself, I realized how caught up in the current (life) I really was. Through examination and introspection, I’m understanding now how I created the circumstances of my life as I started to wade in and often stepped further out into the water without really understanding why, until I got swept up by the current. I recognized that I had to battle and flail to finally get up onto the shore again and the relative comfort of the riverbank. Now that I’m here with all these tools and a deeper understanding of myself, I can again offer my hand to people who are looking for their own way out of that river. Coaching offers me the ability to exist in a space where I can feel that fulfillment of helping others out of that river and onto a path in which they can freely explore what a meaningful life could look like for them. You’ve made it this far, you’re here now, and I offer you my hand. You are worth the investment!

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