Why Am I Like This? Author, Consulting Psychological Astrologer Judy Balan in Conversation.
Equal parts astrology, Jungian psychology, mythology and memoir. The book. Why am I like this? Authored by Judy Balan, is a thoughtful, in depth beginner's guide to psychological astrology. Judy Balan is an author consulting psychological astrologer with a postgraduate diploma in Jungian studies. She's also published six novels, including the best selling two Fates - the Story of My Divorce, and she's currently based out of Chennai
Judy Balan
@judybalan · 3:09
But then it got to a point where I just wanted to write. I was so exhausted from all this striving and trying every approach under the sun to get going, so I just sort of gave up surrender to the process and became more receptive to whatever it was that wanted to be written. And then it wrote itself. I'm not even a private person, but I was shocked by some of the things that came out of the memoir
Judy Balan
@judybalan · 4:55
So I got interested in Jungian psychology, which I started pursuing more seriously later on through my study of Liz Green's work. That's psychological astrology in a nutshell. So we basically look at the natal chart itself, which is basically the snapshot of the sky for the specific moment of your birth from the location of your birth. And it's sort of like we look at that as a map of the psyche, a map of potentialities more than like sort of faith set in stone
Judy Balan
@judybalan · 2:33
Why am I not being trained on just navigating life as a human before being sent out in the world? And why is this not the first thing you learn in school? That was just sort of mind boggling to me. So stumbling into this was actually the culmination of lifelong search for an explanation, or like an instruction manual, if you will, on how to be human, and more specifically, how to be me, and also how to understand other people as individuals
Thank you so much for that, Judy. Very, very interesting. While we've known all along that humor is our best medicine, there are times when what we really feel like doing is just crying our eyes out. Your book touches upon comedy as healing and humor as a coping mechanism to deflect feelings, create emotional distancing, and diffusing anger. Could you perhaps elaborate on this idea?
Judy Balan
@judybalan · 4:57
So what happened to me, and I suspect to a lot of people, is that I latched on to the humor to now start avoiding all suffering and all the intolerable feelings altogether. So I would make fun of myself or my experiences or anything that life threw at me even before I was ready to laugh at it. So it's like I just short circuit the process in the hope of avoiding the pain
Um, this brings me to my last question. Your book talks about the Natal chart as a map of the psyche and its value, as the dynamic diagram of the personality and potentialities within a person. How does this fit into the whole nature versus nurture paradigm? I'd really love to have your take on this
Judy Balan
@judybalan · 4:55
And that is really the place where we can understand how these principles, these archetypal principles or patterns, these energy fields or whatever you want to call them, how they operate, right? So we're really looking at a spectrum. We're looking at a whole range of expressions that every archetype has, just like the gods and goddesses of myth
Judy Balan
@judybalan · 4:55
Whereas if I have a sibling who doesn't have this particular who is not as related to this side of the psyche, but is more towards being structured and organized and disciplined himself, then this father is going to be a positive figure for him, right? Like he is going to see him through a more positive, through a kinder lens, and he's going to internalize the father in a more or integrate this figure in a more positive way
Judy Balan
@judybalan · 4:57
This is just how I see him, this is how I experience him, this is how I speak to him. And I'm going to respond in a particular way when he asks me to do something. And this creates the friction and what is this going to do? It's going to make this father become even more controlling, right? Like with this child
Swell Team
@Swell · 0:15
Judy Balan
@judybalan · 4:55
So this just becomes a cycle and a pattern and it's repeated until we start to take notice and we start to do the work. But now take the same example to a situation where a child is growing up in a very abusive family. Like objectively, this child is being just nobody's there. Let's say the mother is not present or she is mentally unstable or she is an addict, or the father is violent or whatever
Judy Balan
@judybalan · 5:00
And so the process then the work involves making that conscious, making that narrative conscious through therapeutic work and then sort of integrating this other side. Now, where astrology comes in is that it is a symbolic portrayal. So when you look at the natal chart, you have this immediate tool, this immediate access to the archetypal nature of the individual, right? So it's kind of like an MRI of the psyche, but we have to be very careful that it's dealing with potentialities
Judy Balan
@judybalan · 2:40
And also understanding your particular struggles and conflicts and challenges in the light of what is unconscious in you, which is why you are repeatedly meeting that in the outside world. So everything in your life, whether that is inner or outer, is all part of it all originates in the unconscious, it all originates in your own psyche. And your chart is just like a really great tool to help understand what that is, to really name it. But you can't really use just astrology to actually do that
