Note: This article is written for people with an intense shadow work practice; however, it is NOT appropriate for those who are currently in survival or coping part of their journey.
If you’re anything like me, you love diving deep, exploring the reasons for your own and others’ behavior, thought-processes and emotions. You most likely spend large amount of time analyzing group dynamics. You are fearless when it comes to depths of negative emotions. You do a lot of processes to reveal the subconscious. Like, all the time. Yeah, true, at times it is super difficult, and you just want to feel normal, to rest and to let it all go. But it calls you back. Admit it, you enjoy it, you love it. There’s a challenge in it and the reward is ever so sweet. You get to heal. You get to heal others. And somehow it’s easier to do than anything else other people do as part of their everyday.
There was a point when I realized that if someone asked me, what it is that’s most fun for me, I’d say shadow work. That made me think. What is my definition of fun then? It’s not the feeling state of happy, joyful, light-hearted.. Instead it’s feelings like I’ve become more aware, found more meaning, done something useful. I’m not saying these are worthless goals. They are not. But I want fun to mean the other stuff too. Sure, it makes perfect sense, if your trauma-induced symptoms in one form or another are so overwhelming, that you just cannot but focus completely on processing to keep above the water. But once you are above the water, shadow work can become like an addiction or an obsession. It’s never enough. I’m never enough. The world is never enough. And the light is so trifle next to the dark..
That’s the problem. There is an association of there being less meaning or depth in optimism, like it’s somehow naïve, shallow or less spiritual than holding space for pain. Notice that even if you are a trauma survivor and completely accustomed to negative feeling states, the positive feeling states also hold a lot of nuance that requires ‘holding space’. It’s not just small moments. It can be explored as consistently, as meaningfully, as the other side. The point is not to replace shadow work, but to balance it out.
Personally, I had no idea that I was getting lost in shadow work, I just didn’t see that I was missing out. In fact, I was getting so much positive feedback for doing in-depth processes on others, that it felt like that was the only direction for me. But I discovered, in another one of these shadow work processes..., that I have resistance to positive feelings. For the sake of this brief article, I’ll focus on positive feeling as an umbrella term – obviously there is a lot of variation there, with some positive feelings being more easily accessible than others. So yeah, it wasn’t that I didn’t have them, but it was genuinely difficult to maintain these feeling states. And this can happen in two ways to people. I’ll explain both.
When we cannot maintain, or truly own, positive feeling states, either there were negative consequences for showing positive feeling when you were growing up, so the positive feeling started to form an association with whatever negative feeling came up in response to the consequence. As a result of this conditioning experience, you now cannot separate the two. Remember, this happens by virtue of association, it’s not a decision you made and it did not happen with your awareness. Now, when both come up, you don’t feel that good. You don’t actually experience the pure form of whatever positive feeling (or all of them) has the association. The second way that it can happen is when you grew up in circumstances where there rarely was any occasion where you’d feel positive, so it served too big a contrast. If you had a bit of the positive feeling and knew that after this everything bad would feel way worse, for way longer than this small experience of good feeling – at one point it’s not even worth it to go there. The disappointment, depression and the void after was that much worse and felt that much more real.
A big part of growing into harmony with the feel-good states is in differentiating between fake positivity and genuine positivity. You want to allow and expand the latter. Understandably, no one gets anything from suppressing their negative emotions with fake smiles or lying about their state, which feels totally self-invalidating. That being said, you’ve got to also make space for the part of the feeling spectrum that holds these lighter feelings. It’s like becoming open and curious about positive feeling states and specifically how they express in your body. Become fully present and start small. The beautiful breakfast you can make for yourself. Enjoying the flavors, colors, smells.. Observing, noticing. The moment someone is looking in your eyes and focusing on you with care. You can receive it only if you fully take it in. Appreciate it.
We are here to experience everything. So much of our time growing up we could not choose our environment, people, what we do, how we feel. When you’ve done a lot of shadow work, at one point you start to see just how much you are able to hold anything, but also to choose anything. You could do anything with your focus, move through anything. I really feel that in this present time, we need to choose to focus on empowerment. Coming out from the conditioning. Can I allow myself to feel good? To seek it out? Indeed, what is good for me? It’s also about realizing that the shadow can be there at the same time and it’s okay, cause you’re not avoiding or suppressing it. You're just widening your perspective of reality even further.
To feel the rush of life and connection, your energy needs to be open and flowing. And allowing the full spectrum of emotions, including the depth of satisfaction, joy, pleasure, lightness - is truly an optimal and most meaningful way of living.
- Maarja Lall
