One of the prevailing attitudes toward becoming a better version of ourselves that I see frequently involves attempting to cut parts of ourselves out, getting control of them, or silencing them in some way. We may know intellectually that shadow work is about integrating difficult aspects of ourselves, yet sometimes we bring them out of the shadows only to exile them again in the name of our spiritual evolution. It’s at times more tempting to believe that only vile things lurk in the shadows of our unconscious than it is to sit with and receive them.
This attitude and approach tend to cement inner conflict into place. It’s not likely that we can get our difficult and entrenched voices to soften to us when we’re not willing to soften to them. It is very normal to want to meet fire with fire and harsh judgment in equal measure. We may not even recognize in the throes of a pattern that we are in a pattern and that some of our strongest impulses are actually the agendas of a voice and not the seasoned response of our innate wisdom.
What if it could be less difficult and more enriching? What if it could even be easier?
There are many ways of approaching our lesser known aspects that tend to operate out of view, sometimes keeping us stuck or tripping us up, often in the name of protecting a soft spot. Some are beautiful frameworks and invitations for bringing these hidden elements into the light of our awareness. On the other end of the continuum are methods that are a little more, shall we say, provoking and might trigger impulses to shine a harsh light in the darkened recesses of our psyche to root out what must be the cause of difficult patterns.
If you’ve followed me for any length of time you likely already have a sense that I find the former to be more fruitful, not to mention generally more pleasant. Take a moment, if you like, and feel for the contrast between the following two scenarios.
In the first, you’ve been hard at work managing all the details of life, it’s late, but you know that there are things about your personality that trip you up, so you hunker down with good intentions and a meditation or journal to shine a bright light inward hoping to get down to business and make quick progress through the muck. You have a list of traits that need to be corrected as well as lists of activities to do and to avoid that helps you know when you’re off track. These sessions with yourself help you remember how you don’t want to be.
Or, you might fall asleep and wake slightly horrified and deflated by your lack of discipline and dedication.
In the second scenario, it’s the first warm day in a while and you meander outside just as the sun comes out from behind a cloud. Feeling its warmth on your skin, you might be tempted to raise your face to it, eyes closed, drinking it in. You can feel something stirring within. It might be relief followed by a sigh, or a sense of spaciousness, or you might even feel grief rise for all that you’ve been holding on to.
In the first scenario, vigilance is key and sets the tone. It is a harsh taskmaster often installed by fear and exhaustion from a time before we might even remember. It keeps us in our minds.
It is a voice within that tells us in order to get anywhere, whether that’s up the corporate ladder or further along the enlightenment path, that we have to suffer. It has to be hard for it to count. Our belief that we are inadequate or somehow deficient instructs us that the only way out of pain is through pain, endlessly. How else will we have earned it? The rich irony here is that we will often move mountains of pain, carrying them on our backs, to avoid sitting with the tender voice who experienced the pain in the first place. Because we fear we might crack permanently, collapsing into our own sinkholes, or find that we really are as monstrous as we fear, and that there is no redemption.
If we’re fortunate, the pain of moving mountains becomes too great and we surrender into a new way of relating to it and our many selves. We set down arms and find a new application for discipline, using it to bring ourselves back to ourselves again and again with love, devotion, and a measured response to whatever is moving through our inner landscape.
In the second scenario, the sun is our own gentle awareness inviting conflicting parts to the peace table, to rest into being heard, seen, and felt. We meet them in and through experience, anchored in the body in the here and now. The monsters we’ve reviled begin to reveal themselves and we have the opportunity to meet them with care and dignity, discovering that they not only have wisdom to share but that vast stores of energy are available to us when we aren’t so busy keeping them at bay.
One of my favorite ways of doing shadow work is to establish a solid sense of an inner observer and from there hold two seemingly opposing thoughts, emotions, or values while giving them voice. We become the fulcrum on which these disparate energies are hung and the tension between them held. Internally we are presented with the possibility to feel these states. At first it can feel uncomfortable or even frightening, and so we move lightly and with intention in the space between them. As we practice holding these parts of ourselves, this inner conflict, we develop more spaciousness in our felt sense and in the way we perceive and process our experiences. We build a bridge from the tight spaces we’ve been in, through somatic inquiry and movement, to a new possibility.
It is our body that allows us to feel for and see how to progress the completion of interrupted cycles, the ones that have our insides locked in a tight range of motion in the absence of resolution. This is where we learn to hold ourselves steady while turning on the soft light of our awareness and letting inner vision adjust to see what’s beyond our normal view.
This is where lead turns to gold and monsters become allies.
If this approach speaks to you and you’d like a companion on the journey, I’d be honored and delighted to hold this sacred space for you, walk along side you, and assist you in integrating and healing with your beautiful monsters. You can reach me through this site or on social media.
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Lineage + Influence: If this way of approaching inner work sounds familiar, my early training included Voice Dialogue, created in the early 1970s by Hal and Sidra Stone and was lightly influenced by Internal Family Systems developed in the 1990s by Richard Schwartz as well as Parts Psychology as presented by Jay Noricks. This work took on new meaning for me when I began to incorporate somatic practices as a means of relating to my own cast of characters, giving them a sense of belonging, expression, and agency within the process. My personal movement practice and how I work with clients has been informed by Mary Starks Whitehouse’s Authentic Movement, originating in the 1950s as movement in depth, Biodynamic Breathwork and Trauma Release System, as well as Somatic Experiencing techniques.
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