“What are you asking or expecting someone else to do for you that you need to be doing for yourself?”

Dr. James Hollis, a Jungian therapist and author, asks the question, “What are you asking or expecting someone else to do for you that you need to be doing for yourself?” There is a ‘child complex’ in everyone who wants others to take care of them, for example, “Daddy, make the bad person go away.” Or “Mommy, kiss it and make it well.” That magical child is alive in each of us and if we are not careful still sends us messages. Its adult messages may not be in such child like language because it uses more adult language such as, “God will heal me” which motivates me to put off seeing a physician. Or “I don’t need to financially plan for the future because the government will take care of me when I retire.” “I want a job in which someone else makes the hard decisions.” My father would occasionally say of someone who seem to always have something wrong or at least a good excuse, “Son, I think that person makes good use of his ________.” When I sometimes ask Hollis’ question in my therapy practice, clients usually seem stunned by the question, as if they wouldn’t do that, but then upon reflection they often bring in a list, with which ‘growing up’ or reconciliation as maturing and healing may begin. “What are you asking or expecting someone else to do for you that you need to be doing for yourself?”