Halloween is my favorite holiday. I love dressing up in costume and seeing how everyone else dresses up. What is it about this activity that we find so enticing? I realize that as children, the main draw was going from house-to-house to get free candy. But now, as adults, that cannot be it! After all, with cash in my pocket and keys to the car, I could conceivably drive to the nearest CVS and buy a bag of the sugary stuff for myself! No, that’s not it.
I’ve given this a lot of thought. After about the fifth year of dressing up like one queen or another, my best friend noticed. She remarked, “Of course you’re going to dress as a Queen again! What else?” I honestly hadn’t been aware that I kept gravitating toward elaborate queen costumes from various countries and times in history. In retrospect, I had been going through a particularly difficult time in life where I definitely wasn’t feeling my Inner Queen. I was overworking, in a difficult relationship, rearing three kids and struggling financially. Halloween represented the one day a year when I could get on top of my game!
What about you? Do you have a go-to costume that has special meaning to you? Think about it.
In my career, I’ve spent a great deal of time and energy becoming a Certified Imago Relationship Therapist. Imago, developed by Harville Hendrix and Helen LaKelly Hunt, is a great theory and method of understanding and improving who we are, as individuals, and in relationships.
In Imago theory, we posit that we come into the world as perfect, complete, vibrating balls of energy. If we receive messages from our caretakers which encourage our thinking, feeling, sensing, moving, being, then we remain relatively whole. If, however, our early messages are repressive (stay still, don’t cry, you’re not smart enough, I wish you’d been a boy, you were an accident, etc.), then certain parts of our wholeness are either shut down or exaggerated. We make these adaptations to our personalities in order to survive the family of origin. These lost parts are called the denied self, the lost self, the disowned self, or the shadow in Jungian terms.
In a recent training on Character Growth, the workshop leaders asked us to come to the workshop as our Lost Selves. One woman who had been sexually molested as a child came dressed as a beautiful, sexy, powerful woman after years of having shut down and hidden her femininity in order to stay safe. One man came as a daredevil after a lifetime of “playing it safe” . I dressed as a goofy, silly, outrageous girl in response to parental messages about the importance of behaving within acceptable guidelines. Get the picture?
So, back to Halloween. Is it possible that we love Halloween because it offers us the possibility and the freedom to play with our Lost Selves; to dig deep into ourselves and bring out that missing part? Or, maybe, costumes just help us to express something about ourselves that we want to bring forward and celebrate.
For me, dressing as a Queen was a way to bring forward a part of myself that my day-to-day life had buried. I invite you to think back on your choice of costumes, this year and in years past. Perhaps, in your choice of playful disguises there is a kernel of information to help you see what you may have lost along the way. It’s never too late to grow into your perfect, complete wholeness or to live your most fully expressed self!
Since my Dressing as a Queen days, I have married a beautiful man with whom I feel safe, cared for and appreciated. I have better boundaries at work, a good work/life balance, and my three children have launched into adulthood. I no longer struggle with too little time, energy or money. This year, I will not feel the need to dress as a Queen, although I might choose to. I think I might actually try dressing as a silly, goofy, outrageous girl complete with pigtails and socks that don’t match!
How about you? I would love to see some photos of what you choose. Have fun with your costume and enjoy the candy, too!
If you want or need some help in exploring these or any other personal or relational issues, give me a call.
