We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Melissa Kim Corter a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Melissa Kim, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Can you recount a time when the advice you provided to a client was really spot on? (Please note this response is for education/entertainment purposes only and shouldn’t be construed as advice for the reader)

My work is a bit unconventional therefore I often find myself offering a perspective that tends to be outside of the norm. I once had a client who was struggling to quit smoking. She felt enormous guilt and shame about her bad habit and yet no amount of fact or detail on the health risks of smoking could shift the underlying reasons for why she could not break the habit. In fact more information only compounded the shame she felt. As a depth psychologist I strive to see through a symptom into the hidden symbol and metaphor. My time training with a Shamanic elder in the desert of Arizona taught me how to ‘see through’ the literal into the metaphorical, and this is where we are usually caught in a complex or hidden narrative. The hidden narrative for this client was the connection to her loved ones (her deceased mother and grandmother both smoked), as a small child she remembered listening to the laughter of her elders and the smoke that filled the space around them. It has a magical quality that drew her in. Once my client saw this, she was able to recreate this sense of connection using a burn bowl. and herbs that had significance for her. She spent time each day intentionally with them through a ritual of using her burn bowl and writing messages to them on slips of paper. As she burned the papers, she imagined the smoke carrying her messages to them across the veil. It gave her peace and became something she looked forward to each evening and morning. She stopped smoking within three weeks.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

I was a highly empathic and intuitive child, fascinated with other people’s basements. Dark, unexplored spaces enthralled me, and I had an insatiable curiosity towards the hidden dimensions of the mind. I would wander the woods flipping over stones, captivated by the feeling of excitement and anxiety as I waited to see what was ‘under there’. Decades later, this is the same curiosity that guides me through the darkest parts of the human psyche. My work sometimes makes people uncomfortable, it requires exploring the hidden, dark elements that many fear. While they turn away, I become more curious and carefully and consciously walk toward the matters that create discomfort. For over 20 years, I have mentored countless people through the dark night of the soul, helped them process murder and death, addiction and compulsion, and analyzed their dreams and nightmares.

My writing and teaching now revolve around psychologically, metaphorically, and energetically gathering and retrieving the parts of us that have been scattered throughout time due to impactful moments. Some aspects of us are frozen in time, in psychology we call this arrested development. There may be an age we are ‘stuck’ at. With a shamanic sensibility, we may refer to this as soul loss, and in some moments we may experience this as cognitive dissonance, a part of us does not align with a deeper truth. Overall there may be a sense of incongruence when we encounter these disparate parts. The majority of my time is spent helping people assimilate aspects of their shadow, aka shadow work. I use creative and intense forms such as film, fairytales, and forensics to help my clients and students work toward healing psychic fragmentation. I have a Master’s degree in Depth Psychology with an emphasis on Jungian Archetypal studies and I am pursuing a Ph.D. at Pacifica Graduate Institute. My dissertation is on the human shadow and psychopathy.
 

Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?

I had to unlearn the programming that was forcing me to feel shame and guilt for my deeply feeling and sensitive nature. I ‘knew things’ before they would happen and was drawn to all that was hidden. Sometimes I would unknowingly expose something that wasn’t meant to be shared, not because I was trying to be hurtful or tell a secret, yet I had a gift that involved exposing and transmuting shadow. It took years to unwind the belief that I was a tattletale or bad friend. I didn’t understand the nature of secrets. I could not fathom holing onto something painful instead of transmuting the energy and lifting the burden from the heart. Now, I know why I have a gift of holding darkness, it is not to amplify or glorify it, it is to help others unburden their hearts.

We’d love to hear a story of resilience from your journey.

I grew up observing patterns of narcissism and psychopathy, some close to home, others at a distance. It was traumatic and painful never to know who to trust or what part of your life would become the gossip and fodder for these disturbed individuals. The sensitive ones like myself are often scapegoats that take on the brunt of drama. It took me decades to heal the distorted lens I lived life through; this is why I am passionate about working with the human shadow and psychopathy. The wounds are not visible and it can feel as if you are living under a spell, and in a way, I was, I was in a dissociated and disempowered state. Instead of questioning the others, I questioned myself. I see this a lot in the clients and students I work with. The intuitive and compassionate ones must learn they are here to break the spell; to release the projections of those who deny their disparate shadow aspects and cast them on the deeply feeling and sensitive ones. They are scapegoats, the ones who shoulder the unconscious burdens.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.melissacorter.com
• Instagram: https:// https://www.instagram.com/melissakimcorter/
• Facebook: https:// https://www.facebook.com/melissakcorter/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/melissa-kim-corter-7bb661199/
• Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/c/MelissaKimCorter

Image Credits

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