Psychic Archetypes: The Counselor

A psychic archetype represents a core energy expression that we feel defines our psychological and spiritual journey, in this, previous, and future lifetimes.  While we may engage in various forms of life practice, like being a soldier or a doctor, we are one enduring archetype, which could be the Warrior or the Healer.

This article will explore the psychic archetype of the Counselor.

• Psychic Reading 101

One Archetype, Many Guises

History is replete with warrior priests and soldier healers (medics).  Educators can be athletes and athletes can be educators.  We can wear many guises over the course of our lifetimes, but we most often operate from a single psychic archetype.

Sometimes necessity and circumstance can force us into a guise that is far away from our spiritual purpose, or so it will seem.  If we look closely enough at our actions within any circumstance, we will be able to see the consistent psychic imprint of our representation.

I have a varied work history, which includes construction, website design/management, teaching (college English), and now spiritual advising.  Through each iteration of my work opportunities, I found myself in the same role repeatedly … as a spiritual and emotional advisor to the people around me.

The Teacher

At one time I would have thought my archetype was the Teacher.  I started teaching while I was working on my Master’s in English in 1991.  I would spend more than a decade and a half as a college instructor, from 1992 to 2010.  I loved teaching.  However, if I look at the interactions I had with students, my most common and repeating role was that of the Counselor.

A Counselor archetype individual truly and deeply loves listening to others, assessing their struggles, and offering guidance through those struggles to a healthier and happier place in life.  Counseling is an aspect of every archetype, Fathers and Mothers counsel their children, Warriors counsel others on how to handle the emotional impact of combat, but the Counselor is the archetype with the gift for moving people from a state of struggle or mental illness into a state satisfaction and health.

Each archetype travels through lifetimes to gather experience inside and outside its ideal representation to enjoy and understand the full range of human experience while learning lessons associated with completing his or her work.  We learn lessons through support and resistance.  A person learns the many facets of freedom by being very free in one lifetime and extremely restricted in another lifetime.

• Psychic Archetypes: The Teacher

The Ideal Society (Utopian Vision)

It really is not hard to imagine an ideal society in which each person discovers their psychic or spiritual archetype and is given a way to express that archetype through work and interactions with the other archetypes in the world.  Bringing such a world into existence would require a large-scale and comprehensive acceptance of balance between science and spirituality, between creativity and necessity, and between compassion and integrity.

Reality is an ebb and flow of balance, imbalance, and re-balancing, which is where all the souls learn lessons that cannot be found in utopian visions or the spirit realm.  We choose to be here, and psychic or spiritual archetypes indicate that we choose a singular type of role so we can experience true mastership.

Are You a Counselor?

Each archetype has definable and distinguishable traits.

Drawn to Suffering, Confusion, and Loss

Counseling is about helping others succeed and heal, about being able to recognize sympathize and empathize with others while being able to see and communicate how the other person can get through a tragedy or rise to higher levels of success.  The counselor’s true gift is his or her ability to move others towards what they need for improvement in a way that empowers the person to be authentic and self-confident.  A drug addict comes into a program and is addicted to heroin.  By the time they leave the program, with the help of counselors, they are drug-free and can stay drug-free.

Many different archetypes can play the role of a counselor, but the Counselor will help people at the core of their problem and their identity.  Transformative moments in counseling occur when the person can change themselves or truly accept change in their lives.  The man or woman constantly in negative relationships seeks a counselor, listens, does the work, and stops the cycle of bad partners, working through a process of change they finally knew they could not accomplish alone.

• Psychic Archetypes: The Father

A Desire to Serve Others and Community

The Counselor has a crucial role in the survival and betterment of communities, society, and humanity.  They love to and must move people from states of self-destruction or self-doubt to states of positive regard and confidence.  They want to see the joy one feels when a person comes to realize they are worthy of joy or success in life.  The Counselor is as much a pillar of human society as the Mother and the Father, especially since they work outside the family dynamic.

Counselors are at their most powerful when the counseled wants to transform.  As the saying goes, you can lead a horse to water, but you cannot make him drink.  This is not to say that Counselors do not encounter clients or patients that resist counseling, but that counseling work happens optimally when the client/patient and counselor work mutually towards the same goal.

Naturally Sensitive to Others

Counselors will naturally rank highly on any scale of emotional sensitivity.  They can feel what others feel and place themselves in the mindset and emotional upheaval of the other person’s struggle.  And their clients/patients will feel this connection in return.  It is this connection that gives the Counselor the power to counsel effectively.

More often than not, the best counselors will have actual experience with the problem, enhancing their ability to empathize with someone seeking their counsel.  It is not a requirement to be successful as a counselor, but it often helps strengthen the connection so that the client/patient can “hear” the counselor.  This level of empathy is crucial if the client/patient wants to resist the counseling because it is mandatory for some reason.

• Psychic Archetypes: The Mother

Are Leaders and Companions

Outcomes matter to the Counselor archetype; they feel fulfilled when a client/patient “gets healthy”.  They know and feel successful when their client/patient can move on without them and have the knowledge and willingness to seek out future counseling if needed.  In their highest manifestation, they can be understood as a necessary partner and “helping hand” in times of crisis. 

The Counselors show others there is a way to find the success they want, overcome crushing grief, and break negative patterns.  The act of counseling is fundamental to helping the Counselor archetype understand their place in the scheme of the community of archetypes.