Meeting Your Anima or Animus

Part Four of the Coaching Client Series

Once you've cultivated a practice of recalling your projections and recognizing your Shadow material coming up in your relationship, once you have a non-attachment practice, and once you've done emotional integration work, you're ready to begin building a deeper relationship with each other and within yourselves.

This deeper relationship brings in the concepts of the Anima and Animus. These are how Jung described the "Inner Other," an unconscious aspect of ourselves that helps our psyche individuate. The way we relate to our Anima or Animus directly impacts our romantic relationship. When we have a good relationship with our Inner Other, we're creative, connected, and energized. If our relationship to the Inner Other is repressed or distorted by projection (including Golden Shadow), that will show up as conflict and disconnection.

Read on to learn more about how we work with these important concepts!

The History of Masculine and Feminine Energies

The principle of masculine/feminine balance is ancient. The Yin/Yang of the Chinese Taoist religion symbolizes the necessary balance between polarities, including masculinity and femininity. It's important to note that this balance is not achieved through relationships, but within oneself: we want to achieve an inner balance of masculine and feminine energies, whatever our gender expression.

Carl Jung's research revealed to him the presence of an Inner Other - an aspect of the psyche that is a polar opposite to us. In a male, it is referred to as the Anima, his inner woman, and in a female, it is referred to as her Animus, her inner man. In Jung's time, heterosexuality and being cisgendered were considered the norm and anything that deviated was seen as mental illness. Post-Jungians have many different ideas about the Anima and Animus, but all agree that it is being in relationship with our Inner Other that leads to our most creative, fulfilling life.

(Here's a larger reference of work by Jungian analysts about transgendered and non-binary folks and their experience with Anima and Animus.)

While our Anima or Animus is deeply individual to each of us, it is also what's known as an archetype: a larger symbolic representation of a necessary energy. Like with our parents, we have a deeply individual experience of "mother" and "father," but these are also archetypes, a symbolic energy that encapsulates more than our personal experience. For example, even if we didn't have a nurturing mother to learn caring or emotional attunement from, we might be able to behave in a nurturing way because we have access to the full archetype of The Great Mother.

The Masculine & Feminine In Relationships

Our first experience of masculine and feminine energies happens with our early caregivers. Even if we were raised by a single parent or had same-sex parents, our experience of females and males in our lives colors our interpretation of our Inner Other. If a woman has a critical father, she may experience her Inner Other as attacking and dangerous. If a man has an emotionally distant mother, he may experience his Inner Other as distant and cold.

This will show up in dreams and in waking life. Our romantic attraction patterns are unconsciously dictated by our Anima or Animus. In building a relationship with our Inner Other, we can see dates and our partner for who they really are, not through the distorted lens of our Anima or Animus projection. This frees us to love them more deeply and fully.

Defining Masculinity and Femininity

Masculinity:

• Active, penetrating, reaching

• Spirit, animation, empowerment

• Action, will, the conscious mind

Femininity:

• Receptive, containing, holding

• Soul, nurturing, relatedness

• Rest, stillness, the unconscious

Immediately we might notice that the description of masculinity is describing the Western ideal of the ambitious professional, whether they identify as male or female. This is the reach of the Animus, and there's nothing inherently wrong with it. Problems stem from being out of balance with the Anima, which most of us in the Western world will recognize as:

• cycles of overworking and burnout,

• anxiety, sleeplessness,

• devaluing our emotional life,

• intellectualizing and rationalizing instead of confronting reality, and

• taking responsibility for things that aren't ours to own.

If this describes you, you might be Animus-driven and in need of developing your relationship with the feminine.

On the other hand, if you're someone who is attracted to men and/or in a romantic relationship with a man, you'll want to do Animus work once you've built the skill of recognizing your projections.

How This Improves Relationships

Working on our relationship with our Inner Other leads to our greatest creativity and connectedness. By now, you've seen how calling back your Shadow projections on your partner places the power back in your hands: you no longer need them to be a certain way for the ego to feel safe. You just are safe.

The next level is when we learn to call back our Anima/Animus projections on our partner: whether that's an idealized distortion of who our partner should be for us, or a Shadow distortion. This comes up especially in romantic relationships because our Inner Other is what leads us to our deepest spiritual power, and falling in love can feel that way. This is why "you complete me" gets said between partners.

This is the idealized projection that happens in the Honeymoon Phase. As we grow in intimacy and triggers start to occur, the Shadow side of our Anima or Animus starts to present in our partner. This gets mixed in with our Mother and Father complexes, and now our presumed perfect partner has fallen from their pedestal - and it's not their fault, because they can never live up to our Inner Other.

The relationship we crave on the outside is one we can really only have on the inside. Our romantic partner can't be everything for us, even if they are amazing! Our relationship with ourselves and with our partner improves because we're no longer holding them to a standard of perfection or projecting our distortions onto them.

Ready to Work with Your Anima & Animus?

1. Begin to notice how the opposite sex appears in your dreams. People we are attracted to, in a relationship with, or feel intrigued by in our dreams may be Inner Other figures.
   

2. Notice your partner's appearance in your dreams. Are they a supportive or nightmare figure? These may be pointing to Shadow distortions on your Anima or Animus.
   

3. Perform the meditations assigned. Working regularly with these is a huge breakthrough step for clients. Enjoy the process!