This is Why You’re Not Ready to Meet Your Archetypes

Working with your personal archetypes is still largely an underground experience. One reason for this is that Archetypal Intelligence (AQ) has the potential to change almost everything.

AQ can work its genius in seconds, sometimes in minutes, usually within weeks. Even though developing archetypal awareness of just one archetype can spark a life-changing epiphany, working with archetypes is less about speed and more about readiness. AQ delivers anything from singular to multiple epiphanies. AQ lifts self-awareness and shifts your perspective. I can only conclude that most people need to be ready and willing to concede to the promptings of their soul. Meanwhile, their personal archetypes behave in ways that don’t reflect their true nature and so a crisis or several tend to follow. 

Archetypes have a transformative effect on self-awareness and perspective. The speed of this shift from instant insights to gradual realisations is in contrast with our expectations of immediate gratification. Meaningful change occurs when we are ready to align with our soul, which is our true nature. Until then, personal archetypes tend to manifest in ways that distort our true nature, leading to inner conflict or external crises.

Gail Goodwin 2025

A personal or spiritual crisis is the most common reason why people turn to working with their personal archetypes. A crisis can take the form of betrayal, death, terminal illness, grief, unfinished business, financial ruin. You get the idea. 

But. 

Why not put yourself on the front foot? Why wait for a disaster to happen when you can look for clues beforehand, then take action?

Some subtle signs and clues you may be ready, or called to begin working with your personal archetypes are:

1. You keep repeating the same patterns in your relationships, career, or you self-sabotage despite your efforts to change.
2. You feel stuck between worlds of identities. You’re no longer who you were, but not yet who you’re becoming, of which you’re also not at all certain. 
3. You’re drawn to the symbolic nature of dreams, myths, stories, chakras, tarot, numerology, astrology. Or you’re fascinated by psychic powers, or characters that seem to mirror you.¹
4. Your inner life is louder than usual. You recognise a persistent inner voice, or a number of them. Or you sense different, often conflicting parts of your personality, where you find yourself saying things like, “one part of me wants this, but another part of me wants that”. Or “one side of me says yes, but another says no”. Or you’re experiencing a deepening sense restlessness, or a spiritual hunger you can’t ignore.
5. You feel like you’re playing someone else’s role, or quoting someone else’s script, or living someone else’s story even though life is successful on the outside. But you’re feeling disconnected to it or conflicted inside.
6. You sense a deeper urge or purpose but can’t name it or identify it, like something inside is trying to emerge or take shape or lead you into the unknown without a map or compass. 
7. You feel like you’re performing and not being yourself. You’re exhausted by constantly donning and doffing masks, playing random roles, and feeling trapped by duties, obligations and expectations. You feel scattered in all directions. 
8. You can’t shake a particular fear, craving, or reaction. Something inside feels bigger than it ought to be.
9. You feel pulled between opposites. Think: interdependence vs independence, independence vs connection through wounds, control vs surrender, or duty vs desire. 
10. You’ve outgrown personal development tools. At some point affirmations, implementing plans and goal-setting no longer satisfy you or work effectively, if at all, no matter what you do.  
11. You’re craving self-understanding at a deeper level, not just what you do but who you are.
12. You sense that your life has chapters and something new is beginning but you don’t yet have the language for it or the tools to take charge of it.
13. You’re trapped in a pattern of behaviour that no longer serves you.
14. You’re stuck in a creative block and can’t seem to make progress. 

These clues are invitations. Each one is a whisper from one of your archetypes asking to be seen, named, and their wisdom integrated. The highest potential in each of your personal archetypes is there to guide you. When will you be ready? 

I’ve listed a few options that might assist you to answer this question. For people to be ready to meet their personal archetypes, several inner and outer conditions need to be cultivated or apparent. Disasters and crises aside, here are some typical conditions:

We need to be willing to loosen the grip on purely logical frameworks and allow deeper realities to surface. Meeting our archetypes isn’t just an intellectual, personality exercise for the ego. It’s a soul encounter, a meet-and-greet our personal archetypes, which is just the beginning of a lifelong relationship with each one. Loosening our grip releases the need to control growth and instead, receive it and respond to it. Obstacles to this are gently moved to the side when we learn to enter the sanctuary of our soul, step into the energy of our Sacred Self and function from there.

We need to be prepared to shift from speed to depth. Although an archetypal insight can arrive in seconds, which appeals to the ego, but the soul does not operate on the same timeline as the ego. We need to slow down enough to notice patterns, feel or sense our inner stirrings, and of course, self-reflect. Archetype Work is soul work, and the soul requires depth over immediacy.

We need to be willingness to answer the call of our soul. Archetypes demand us to evolve, to face our shadows: to own up to our good, bad and ugly sides, and to embody presence of heart and mind. We tend to resist this because it means taking a step back from the busyness and hustle, to venture into our inner world, to meet our archetypes, and concede to the promptings of our soul. Without that willingness, instead of empowering us, our archetypes remain distorted or underdeveloped, which leads us to act out in ways that cause us to ask, “was that really me?” 

We need a sense of emotional maturity. Most of my long-term clients return cyclically because they’ve matured through life’s phases and trust the process. This kind of work requires a trusting relationship with your Self, which is sacred and an experienced guide. Typically, a few cycles of personal growth occur before people are ready to go deeper.

An introduction to the concept of Archetypal Intelligence (AQ) is essential. Because Archetypal Intelligence (AQ) is a term I’ve coined it’s not yet widely recognised. People need language, like AQ that captures the concept of archetypal awareness, that archetypes indicate more than your personality, they describe the Typology of the Soul. They need models like the chakra system and the Archetypal Wheel of Life for the mind to understand the concepts of soul and their authentic, Sacred Self. They need experiential moments of awakening to recognise that archetypes are not theoretical: that archetypes are a part of their inner life. With each post, my invitations aim to help people begin to recognise, feel or sense this.

To meet your personal archetypes, you need to be willing to slow down, temporarily suspend ego control, and respond to your soul’s deeper invitations. My Archetypal Work isn’t just another tool. It’s a threshold.

For me, preparing people to work with their personal archetypes means inviting them inward, teaching in small steps that take them into the sanctuary of their soul, then going deeper into the core of their soul to connect with the energy of their Sacred Self. As they learn to function from there, they develop a sense of empowerment from the inside out rather than the outside in. It’s a quiet movement, but when the seed is ready, it knows how to grow. There’s no going backwards. 

What I’m suggesting is that once the power of an archetype has been revealed, you can’t ignore it. The power contained in every archetype has far-reaching consequences, for better or worse. This is why the first task is to identify the scope of an archetype’s potential. It’s why we need to deconstruct each one in equal measure. It’s how and why mental contrasting works so well. It names, captures and contains the destructive and constructive elements of an archetype.

My Body Soul Spirit Archetype Work is largely informed by the work pioneered by Caroline Myss and her work with archetypes and the chakra system. This is closely followed by the work of Carl Jung (archetypes), Anodea Judith (chakras), Julia Cameron (The Artist’s Way), and Hal and Sidra Stone (Voice Dialogue).

Gail Goodwin

“The genie is out of the bottle” is how I describe the moment someone becomes aware of both types of power in one of their personal archetypes. By both types of power, I mean distorted or empowered, destructive or constructive, developed or undeveloped, mature or immature. Once aware, you can no longer say you don’t know. No more pretending. No more excuses. 

However, at the same time, you will experience more self-awareness, more personal agency, more self-assurance, more self-worth, more transparency, authenticity and empowerment 

A recent client discovered that the undeveloped side of her Inner Warrior archetype had been quietly influencing her all along. This influence included her drive to stand up for others, her unwillingness to back down, and her ongoing fatigue from always being the strong one. Once she saw this clearly, she couldn’t ignore it. The genie was out of the bottle. For good. 

After shining a light on the immature side of her Inner Warrior, she couldn’t go back to blindly self-sacrificing or pretending she wasn’t exhausted. She had to reckon with this part of herself by negotiating with her Inner Victim so she could flex her personal boundaries as required, and to redefine her strengths, or risk burnout.

Once you’re aware of an archetype’s influence: its patterns, power, impact, and how it draws other archetypes into play, there is only one way to go. Forward. When you uncover the hidden influence of an archetype, and recognise how it shapes your behaviour, you’re less likely to return to old patterns. Instead, you have the opportunity to use your archetypes limitations when they arise, as a reminder to pause, so you can consciously engage with the highest potential of the archetype. In this way, learning and applying Archetypal Intelligence transforms your personal, professional and spiritual life.

I consider the work with our personal archetypes as one invisible way we’re able to contribute to the evolution of consciousness within the collective soul. 

1. A word of caution concerning characters that seem to mirror you. It’s usually here that vulnerable people are easily led by conspiracy theories, which in itself eventually brings on a personal, professional or spiritual crisis.  ↩︎