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“The Four Archetypes of Survival: Child, Victim, Prostitute, Saboteur”
The Child: Guardian of Innocence
As the guardian of your innocence, the Child helps heal, repair, and put a stop to the inner-directed abuse of the Wounded Child. If you are consumed with the Wounded, Neglected, Abandoned, or Orphan Child’s psyche, you need to identify – or initiate – a new relationship or creative enterprise that makes you appreciate your life. Ask your Child what it needs in order to heal or feel nurtured or cared for. The Child often inspires you to act outside restrictive boundaries or to explore an adventure without the burdensome weights of the adult mind. Indulge some of these inspirations as a means of making contact with your inner Child. Don’t become overattached to the wound, however; don’t overindulge the Child so that it becomes an inner brat. But give it the support it needs to grow up.
The Victim: Guardian of Self-Esteem
The core issue of the Victim is whether it’s worth giving up your own sense of empowerment to avoid taking responsibility for your independence…The primary objective of the Victim archetype is to develop self-esteem and personal power…To help direct your responses to all of your experiences and relationships, say “I am committed to my own empowerment. What choice can I make here that will serve my own empowerment?” Name the problem or threat you need to overcome and the power that you need to possess in order to do so. Keep your eye on the truth that everything and everyone in your life is there by Contract to assist in your spiritual maturation.
The Prostitute: Guardian of Faith
The majority of Prostitutes that I have met and continue to meet are men and women who are either in bad marriages or in miserable jobs…Every time you take one step on your path of personal empowerment, you will meet someone who will want to buy a piece of your soul to render you less powerful and themselves more powerful…A woman named Belinda told me, “I am one of those millions of people who thought of a prostitute as someone selling sex. Never did I think that I could apply that title to myself. But I’m noticing that even when asked an opinion at lunch about anything from someone’s new shoes to a different office policy, I run it by my ‘What’s this gonna cost me?’ screen. If I think an opinion is going to cost me in terms of popularity or office politics, I pass. I often say things that earn me points, even when I don’t believe a word of them.”
The Saboteur: Guardian of Choice
The Saboteur archetype may be the one most intimately connected to your ability to survive in the physical world. Fears of being without the basic needs in life – from food to home to a social and personal network – often provide this archetype with the power to haunt you. You can silence the Saboteur with acts of courage and by following your intuition. It serves you brilliantly as a gut instinct that directs you to take action based on hunches rather than on rational thought. To learn to experience that voice, you must respond to it. Only through response can you manifest the courage to expand your creative environment. Start with small choices, which may be life-transforming acts of will disguised as harmless impulses.
The core issue for the Saboteur is fear of inviting change into your life, change that requires responding in a positive way to opportunities to shape and deepen your spirit. Yet it is impossible to stop this process of change. Deep in your tissue, you know that having power and using it necessitates change.
-- Caroline Myss, Sacred Contracts
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