You Need Your Shadow to be Whole
Illustration: julenochek / Adobe Stock
Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.
–Carl Jung
Do you ever find yourself stuck in life? Maybe a bit overwhelmed by the challenges life has thrown at you? Perhaps you feel momentarily paralyzed by your life choices. Or maybe you feel you are not as productive as you think you should be. The recriminations of our work-obsessed society resound loudly in our collective subconscious, accusing those who are stuck of being lazy.
While I do believe that laziness does exist, contrary to the author of the provocatively titled Laziness Does Not Exist, I embrace the author’s challenge to our societal notion that we are only as valuable as our latest accomplishments. In reality, what is perceived as laziness is often the result of someone simply being stuck.
Enter Britt Frank. She just might change the whole way you think about being stuck. In the The Science of Stuck, Frank offers “both evidence-based and anecdotal practices, academic research and personal stories” to create one of the most helpful and enjoyable resources I have found on mental health. Addressed with humanity, humor, and a healthy dose of direct talk, Ms. Frank counsels us that we are not lazy or crazy just because we find ourselves stuck. Instead, she reframes such impasses as our minds in an overprotective mode. I found this to be rather liberating. Instead of trying to medicate away anxiety as a disease, Frank encourages us to face unpleasant feelings—and embrace them!
Frank’s chapter on Shadow Intelligence spoke most directly to me. For years now, I have been fond of quoting the founder of analytical psychology, Carl Jung, who said, “Your shadow is 90% gold!” To mine that treasure, we first need to accept that our shadow is part of us. Our shadows have incredible power to create or to destroy. That can be terrifying. Frank provides examples from popular culture—Walter White from Breaking Bad and Bruce Wayne from Batman—to demonstrate just how much power is unleashed, for good or evil, when we embody our shadow self.
Quoting from Oli Anderson’s Shadow Life, she writes: “Your shadow is all the things, positive and negative, that you’ve denied about yourself and hidden beneath the surface of the mask that you forgot you’re wearing.” If you have yet to embrace your shadow, or even meet it, Frank’s chapter is a good place to start. She offers multiple tools for developing our Shadow Intelligence. Essentially, we must learn to self-parent. Drawn from Internal Family Systems Theory, self-parenting occurs when we compassionately parent the parts of ourselves that have been ignored, shamed, or simply left in the shadows of our psyche.
Being a compassionate self-parent to our shadow self is well worth embracing. Frank concludes with wisdom from the poet John O’Donohue: “Each inner demon holds a precious blessing that will heal and free you. To receive this gift, you have to put aside your fear and take the risk of loss and change that every inner encounter offers.” Accepting the gifts of our shadow self may just be the best way to get unstuck!
BONUS RESOURCE: Those in a rut might also enjoy another favorite, Rewire.
The Science of Stuck by Britt Frank, LSCSW (TarcherPerigree, 2023)