Understanding Your Shadow
“How do I sustain this?”
That was a question posed by two clients last week. They are seeing great results. They are slowing down, feeling calmer, and more grounded in themselves. They feel balanced and capable. It's a sign they have experienced a significant shift in the way they are engaging with life and with themselves. But there is an underlying concern - what if I slip back, what if I forget, how do I sustain this feeling?
The timing of their question was poignant for me. I was in a bit of a funk last week. I don't know why, but I felt flat. I carried on about my work, I was still enjoying life, playing Pickleball, hanging out with friends, and exercising. I know it's not my circumstances creating the funk, so I don't get too swept up in it. For the most part, I carry on, because the funk doesn't get to dictate what I do or don't do.
But I was curious if there was something else I was not seeing or appreciating about how to best relate to those lows, those moments of feeling a little below the clouds.
I met with my coach on Tuesday and mentioned this to her.
“How do I relate to this low mood?” I asked. “It feels passive to just be with it, to allow it to be here. And it also feels unproductive. Yet I don't really know what to do about it.”
“Why do you think it's here, what do you think it means?" She asked.
"I don't know. But I know creating a story about that won't help". I replied.
I used to look for reasons why I was feeling low. I would look at my interactions with others and my circumstances. When I was in my old job, it was very easy to point the finger at work and find an excuse there.
But I didn't want to do that. Because I know it has nothing to do with my circumstances, that's a red herring.
During the session, she invited me to connect with the experience, the physical experience of the funk. To describe it. I felt a deep sadness rise up. I was surprised by the emotion, the tears. It felt familiar. As we continued to explore, I started to feel frustrated, and impatient. The heater in my office bangs and clicks and vibrates, and I was getting annoyed with it. I gave it a kick.
I felt resistant to going deeper, but I knew there was something I wasn't seeing that could be helpful.
And that's when I realized. The impatience. The frustration. The sadness. Those were familiar emotions, they reminded me of my younger self. Age seventeen.
I was a mess back then. Full of emotion. Experiencing challenges I wasn't equipped to deal with. I cried a lot. I felt desperate and insecure. Angry. I wanted love and attention, I wanted someone to show me some understanding. To acknowledge what I had been through and was still going through.
But people didn't have time or the patience for it. They were annoyed with me, “It's just Melanie acting up again”. It was attention-seeking behavior. It felt wrong to express my emotions and so I tried my best to contain them, but that left me feeling resentful, and frustrated. I didn't know what to do with this ball of energy inside of me. It felt unresolved.
In the end, I bottled it up and tried my best to move on.
But it would come back of course. All the time. When I had too much to drink, these displays of anger and aggression would seep out of me. If something went wrong, I flew off the handle, unable to contain my rage at why "nothing ever worked out." "Why can't something be easy for a change."
I didn't know what to do with it. So I ignored it. I felt the shame and embarrassment of my behavior, these uncontrolled outbursts. I remember the horrible feeling of waking up the morning after and wondering what the hell I had said, who I had offended. It was a shameful experience, but I swept it under the carpet and did my best to carry on.
Me age 18 with my grandmother, Ida.
It Never Goes Away, or Does It….
I realized on Tuesday that my funk was that energy returning, knocking on my door, wanting my attention. It's dissipated now. It's not loud and emotional and angry. It's not volatile. It's subtle. Nuanced. Quiet. It hangs in the shadows of my mind, waiting for me to notice it's there.
And then another realization. I was treating that shadow self the same way as I was treated at that age. I didn't have time for it. I was annoyed with it being there. Impatient. I haven't acknowledged it or understood it. I was ignoring that part of me.
There is something very intuitive about a powerful coaching session, the unraveling, the way things show up and evolve. My coach, Dorothy, invited me to talk to that part of me. To ask her what she wanted me to know.
And so I welcomed 17-year-old Melanie into the home of my mind. We sat together. I listened. It was quite simple really. She wanted to be acknowledged. To be understood. She wanted compassion and acceptance. She wanted someone to care about her, and how she was doing.
It was powerful to have that discussion. I felt something shift for me after the session. A release and yet at the same time, an embrace. I felt lighter.
I left the coaching session with an agreement. To create a relationship with my shadow self. To ask it what it needs from me, and what I need from it.
How Do You Sustain a Good Feeling?
At the time, my response to my client was to write a letter to her future self, to describe what it is she has learned, what she has realized, that has created this feeling she is in right now. What would you want your future self to know and remember?
Her answers were quite inspiring to me:
Remember it’s a fleeting experience, it will pass.
Things happen when they are supposed to happen.
You will see how all this is connected, how the line from this experience will lead to something else, and to trust the process while you are in the middle of it.
I will get through it. I have been here before.
Ask for help if it makes sense to.
It probably doesn’t matter anyway.
The next time a client asks this question of me, I would also add this. Our low moods, our stresses, and frustrations - are not something to be avoided. That 'negative' energy is wanting our attention. It has a message in it. It's tempting to want to avoid your shadow experience, but what does it want you to know? There are gifts in all of our experiences if we know where to look for them.
An Exercise
Phil Stutz guides Jonah Hill to do this in the Netflix documentary, Stutz, and you can follow the same prompts, which I am sharing a link to here:
https://www.netflix.com/tudum/videos/the-shadow-tools
Here are the questions Stutz suggests Jonah ask of his shadow:
How do you feel about me?
How did it feel to be denied or avoided?
What do you want me to know?
Handwriting your answers to the questions Stutz poses will bring the most benefit to this exercise. I encourage you to listen to that part of you, to see what it wants from you, and to consider how you might incorporate your shadow into your life.
We are so often quick to resist our negative emotions, to dismiss them, to brush things under the carpet, but in doing so, we assign more power to that energy and we keep it locked inside.
There is something powerful about accepting and embracing all the varying parts of yourself. I think that might be the key to finding peace and overcoming those very deep insecurities and fears. By facing them.
If you haven't seen the Stutz documentary on Netflix, I highly recommend it.
If you found this helpful, drop me a line and let me know what you thought, what resonated if anything. melanie@therestorativecoach.com
Additional Exploration
In Michael Singer’s book, The Untethered Soul he talks about remaining open-hearted when this old energy comes back, to not resist it, but to allow it to be there. In doing so, you give the energy a chance to release. I love the analogy he uses in his book, whereby we create all these walls in our mind, we close the shutters on life, and we live in a small and contained way, life limited only by the beliefs we create. Relating to yourself differently, with more awareness and understanding, breaks down those imaginary walls of your mind and allows you to find freedom beyond your limitations.
Tara Brach, a Buddhist and meditation teacher, talks about a tool called RAIN (Recognize, Allow, Investigate, and Nurture). She directs you to allow whatever experience is here. She often refers to the negative energy as Mara. Invite Mara in for tea, what does she want you to know and understand?
