Have you ever just been walking around going about your everyday life, when all of a sudden, you imagine yourself in the same environment, but facing a different situation? Your mind comes up with this image and you do not know where it comes from. I’ve learned from class that this is the unconscious and conscious working together. One of my experiences is when I use staircases in buildings. When I walk through staircases with closed doors at each level of the building, my heart starts pounding and I get an image in my head of reaching the next level and not being able to open the door because it is locked. This has not always happened. It only started happening near my last couple of years of high school.
Whether I am with others or by myself walking through these types of staircases, when I get the image in my head, I am always alone. I would be calmly walking towards the door in front of me and when I reach the door, it would always be locked. My heart rate increases as I reach the door and when it doesn’t open, I start panicking and not knowing what to do to get out. I would run back to the previous level to open that door, but it is also locked. Usually by the time I reach the door in reality, I am banging on the closed door in my mind. The whole time I am walking up the stairs in reality, my heart is racing and the only thing I see is the closed door in front of me. When I reach the door, it always opens because that’s how staircase doors are supposed to be, but in my mind, I always get scared that it won’t open.
When this first started happening, I didn’t really notice and I didn’t wonder why, but after a few months, I thought about it and I had thought I found the reason why it was happening. When I was a little girl, I was in a building with my mom. We had to go down a level on the building and we took the stairs. When we got to the level, the door was locked. We went back up to the floor we were on, but that door was locked too. I remember being so scared that we would be trapped there, but my mom knocked on the door and someone on the other side opened it. Originally, I thought this was the reason for my sudden reaction to these kinds of staircases and didn’t worry about it. However, reading Man and His Symbols by Carl Jung and learning about it in class, I’ve begun to think about it more.
Doing a bit of research, staircases usually mean a journey or path in life that you are about to take or have taken and locked doors usually means something blocking that journey or path. As I mentioned before, this reaction started happening around my last couple of years of high school, which are the years where I had to start thinking about my future and what I wanted to do with it. I was unsure about my whole future and I was scared that everyone else would move on in their lives, but I would still be in the same spot, watching them as they planned and lived their lives. I was scared of being left behind and not knowing what to do with my future, but nowadays, I don’t think it happens as much or if it does, I don’t notice it anymore.
No matter how the scene plays out in my mind, in reality, I know I’ll be able to open that door and if I wasn’t able to someone will be there to help me along the way.
I think that your interpretation of the locked doors is accurate. You did well on dissecting the emotion and image and because you were able to identify your anxiety it helped you overcome that intense feeling. I would extend to you some advice about how to manage your circumstance but by what I read from your blog you seem to have solved the issue yourself which I admire. You were able to come to terms with your situation and you came out on top. You seem like a strong person and that you have a good understanding about yourself and that is key to developing a better understanding of how to work through life's tough patches. I admire your persistence.
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