Inner Demons, The Shadow, and Integration

Inner Demons, The Shadow, and Integration — there’s the stuff we know about ourselves, the stuff we resist, and the stuff we stuff, — our Shadow. Working with all of it, non-judgementally, is key for becoming whole.

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I received a note:

This is what I want to learn how to do this sum­mer:
To believe in myself… no mat­ter what.
To find that calm, cen­tered place in myself that will always be there, no mat­ter what I do, how I per­form, behave, etc. I’ve found it some­times, but don’t know how to hold on to it when things get tough. Only have it when things are easy, and I need more resilience than that.
I need to find it, and stay there… I need to know I’m still here.
It’s time.

Here’s another:

I am try­ing to fig­ure out who I am, and what I am, and what I want, and I keep revert­ing back to the same per­son that I was, and act the same way and then I get upset. It is ridicu­lous real­ly. If it does­n’t work then why do I keep doing it? I keep ask­ing myself.

Our Inner Experience

When we’re feel­ing down on our­selves, we fail to notice that the thing
we are “on about” has a mes­sage we need to hear.

I write a lot about inter­nal states, usu­al­ly in ref­er­ence to ener­gy mov­ing in the body. 

The feel­ing is com­mon to all of us. Some choose to feel it, some choose to mag­ni­fy it, some choose to use it, and some block them­selves from it. 

The oth­er side of this coin is what I call our inter­nal theatre. 

This is the dialogue we have with ourselves, and is closely connected to the feelings and emotions we generate as we “play around” inside.

What we do is this: we pro­mote the aspects of our inte­ri­or the­atre that we judge to be “good,” and repress what we judge to be “bad.” We also repress the mate­r­i­al that we were taught to repress — and that stuff is so deeply hid­den that we may only notice symp­toms of it… the shad­ow, not the substance.

Carl Jung used the term “Shadow” to define the material that has been repressed

We all pos­sess a full range of pret­ty much every­thing: skills, tal­ents, emo­tions, thoughts, desires. It’s all in there. 

To use an anal­o­gy, the stuff we play with reg­u­lar­ly is fore­ground, the stuff we try to avoid is back­ground, and the stuff we refuse to explore or even acknowl­edge is Shadow.

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Here’s a hint: it’s not the stuffed material that’s dangerous — it’s the difficulty we make for ourselves in accessing it and deciding how to use it.

The sec­ond note I quot­ed, above, describes a com­mon pen­du­lum motion - she explores some back­ground mate­r­i­al, and then los­es her grip on the “new approach,” and finds her­self back in the “known behav­iour” — even thought she des­per­ate­ly wants to shift her behaviour!

• Jung dif­fered from Freud in his belief that the uncon­scious, shad­ow mate­r­i­al is acces­si­ble – through ther­a­py, through dreams, etc. 
• For Freud, the mate­r­i­al was locked away from con­scious­ness, yet affect­ed our day-to-day liv­ing through how we resist­ed deal­ing with it.

Jung also looked at the presence of the anima (yin energy) and animus (yang energy.)

He thought that ani­mus was the male ener­gy a female might repress, and then project out­ward on men. 

She then ends up look­ing for her own mas­cu­line ener­gy in men. And vice versa. 

This fits with yin / yang the­o­ry, which posits both ener­gies in both sex­es, and sug­gests that the two need to be in balance. 

The hid­den ener­gy, left un-inte­grat­ed, “acts up” — if we try to bal­ance our­selves by hook­ing up with some­one out­side our­selves, the bal­ance is fur­ther eroded.

I’ve writ­ten about this in my book, Find Your Per­fect Partner.

Through steady work and reflec­tion, you iden­ti­fy the char­ac­ter­is­tics of the per­son you are look­ing for (mak­ing it eas­i­er to find him / her.) 

More impor­tant­ly, you dis­cov­er that the per­son you are describ­ing is the per­son you want to be. You dis­cov­er “what’s miss­ing in you,” and can then nour­ish, imple­ment, and enact your miss­ing ani­ma / animus. 

The “fix”, you see, is always inter­nal integration.

Demons in the House

From any per­spec­tive, and cer­tain­ly from a yin / yang one, every state of being is bal­anced by its oppo­site. When we are in a state of joy, sad­ness or despair has sim­ply gone back­ground. When we are excit­ed, bore­dom is just around the corner.

Most West­ern­ers believe that the job of liv­ing is to root out the “bad” feel­ings and expe­ri­ences, and focus on the “pos­i­tive” ones. They then beat up on them­selves for not being able to pull this one off. 

And of course they can’t. There is no such thing as a one-sided coin. This is what the per­son from the first quote, above, is set­ting as a goal — being present and stay­ing cen­tered, no mat­ter what (feel­ing, state, expe­ri­ence) she is deal­ing with.

The Demons are the elements of our selves that we hotly deny possessing.

We are all of what we feel, think, plan, and do. 

Notice the word,“ALL.” When I get angry, for exam­ple, or sad, (more like­ly for me) that’s me, feel­ing cold, tight, and shut down. That’s me, stomp­ing off, hit­ting a mat­tress, or curl­ing up in a ball. That’s me, think­ing that the world is com­ing to an end, that no one loves me, that I NEVER accom­plish any­thing worthwhile.

It’s me, giving in to my demons (as opposed to dancing with them…)

Now, I was well-trained. My mom was an expert fin­ger point­er, and I learned at her feet. (No, I’m not moth­er bash­ing. We learn from our par­ents, who learned from their par­ents… that’s just “the facts.”) 

So, my ini­tial reac­tion is to want to cast blame. “If only they under­stood me…” “If only things were dif­fer­ent…” “If only they’d stick around so I could fix them…” Exter­nals to blame, ever present exter­nals, and there­fore I’m off the hook for my own mess.

The attendant feelings of overwhelm are strong. But I can always choose to dance!

What I’ve learned, per­haps all I’ve learned, is to sit down with my demons (who appear quite child-like and inof­fen­sive when I refuse to bite on their dra­ma…) stay put, and bring my atten­tion to being present. And I see that I am whole, and what’s going on “in there” is me, is mine.

I stop blaming, and start being self-compassionate. By being open (and empty) hearted.

Which is exact­ly what I’d do for some­one else who was sad, or mad, or “in the stew.” I’d plant my butt, make eye con­tact, and hand out Kleenex. Not fix, not avoid, not blame, but lis­ten and stay present.

The demons we face are as much “us” as the stuff about ourselves that we value.

So, it seems to me, the “cure,” such as it is, is to value the dark side as much as the light. (Yin / Yang originally meant “dark side / light side of the mountain”)

To accept that there are two sides to every­thing, includ­ing our thoughts, feel­ings, desires, and actions. Learn­ing this is the begin­ning of wisdom. 

When I stop fight­ing against myself, I can be with myself, and from there, more past the “heart of dark­ness,” with­out judge­ment, to the heart of empti­ness and freedom.

Our quotes, above, speak of this.

Repeating non-functional behaviour is normal, and non-productive.

We do it because chang­ing behav­iours requires tack­ling our demons. Sit­ting with them, accept­ing them, and then choos­ing anoth­er way of being.

Becoming “comfortable” in (familiar with, non-resistant to) our dark pool is essential.

Not to stay there, but to be able to vis­it with­out try­ing to escape. I say to clients: “Any fool can get this stuff when noth­ing is wrong.” The key explo­ration hap­pens when things, or we, go off the rails.

We fear our darker natures because the dark side is linked to non being — to our sense of death, and the futility and uncontrollable-ness of life.

And yet, stomp­ing our feet and scream­ing, “It’s not fair! I don’t like this part of life!” changes noth­ing. And we end up with sore feet.

Going one step deeper, the Shadow material is simply “stuffed stuff.”

We know it’s there, because it push­es against our edges, and wants us to find it. It pops up in dreams, in slips of the tongue (Freudi­an slips) and in how we react when “pressed.”

What we’re looking to be is honest with ourselves.

If we are will­ing to explore the dark cor­ners, we’ll dis­cov­er incred­i­ble strength. We’ll find the areas of our selves that we have long denied. 

Noth­ing says I have to enact these frag­ments — my angry, sar­cas­tic side gets no air time direct­ed at oth­ers. I do, how­ev­er, “let it out” when express­ing anger through pound­ing my mat­tress. That anger, phys­i­cal­ized, can keep me safe in “dark alleys.”

It’s not bad or wrong; it’s just a part of me with selec­tive usefulness.

Other aspects of the Shadow seem useless

Many peo­ple (me too) have had bouts of sad­ness, melan­choly, depres­sion. These aspects seem unnec­es­sary in the extreme. And yet… much can be learned by accept­ing that sad­ness is as much a part of each one of us as is hap­pi­ness. It’s a felt sense, has no mean­ing, and must be borne, walked with, and let go of.

The “problem” is not the pain of sadness. It’s our tendency to grab on, cling madly, and whine about it.

Pain pass­es, if we deal with it authen­ti­cal­ly and deeply. It’s when we just “lie there,” cov­ers over our head, that such things go on and on.

One client recent­ly told me she was so depressed she, “could­n’t, would­n’t get out of bed.” She then said, “… and then I had to get up and go to work, so I did.” Her sto­ry: could­n’t do it for her­self, could do it for work. So, I ask you, could she get out of bed?????

Hmm.

This week, see what aspects of your self you are push­ing away, deny­ing, resist­ing, and see if you can walk a few steps with it, to see what it has to say. Most­ly, notice the fear­ful voic­es are try­ing to look after you, but are doing so inappropriately.

We can make friends with all aspects of our­selves, and then, from this place of nei­ther cling­ing nor push­ing away, make a clear, next choice from a place of own­ing — from a place of integration.

Let me know how this goes for you!

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