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Working with the Shadow

In 2021, as we were still in the thrall of the Covid pandemic, I wrote a blog entitled ‘Tender Territory’.   

Its contents still very much resonate with me. Over the past few years I have been delving deeper into the tender territory of working with the Shadow, offering workshops to practitioners interested in exploring how the shadow may manifest, and ways in which to work creatively with our own tender spots, and those of our clients.

If anything, forming a relationship with the Shadow is more important now than ever. It’s becoming frighteningly counterculture to look within and recognise the capacity we all have to harm and to project our very human distress and fear on to others, diminishing our capacity to live and work together in some kind of harmony.  The Reith lectures 2024 explored this territory very well.

Politically as with so much else, everything is shifting.  Borders and lines both physical and metaphorical, outer and inner, are being held and drawn more tightly as the reality of dwindling resources clash with competing ideologies and threats to our very survival become more and more real. We can, and do, feel powerless, or maybe power-full, and find ways of reassuring ourselves that all that really bad stuff happens out there, is someone else’s fault and isn’t much to do with us. We don’t necessarily see the connection with our everyday ways of being and what’s unfolding in our near and far world. 

Perhaps the real intent of the development of our human potential has always been to recognise ourselves as part of a wider, larger system. To recognise, that all change starts by paying attention to what is within our biggest sphere of influence (ourselves) without becoming overwhelmed by the enormity of what work is needed on ‘the whole’.  We cannot change the world, but what we do and how we do it has an impact.  In small ways, that leak into bigger ways, an ever-increasing wave of greater significance.   

Working with the Shadow is a vast territory and what’s alive in the undergrowth of our psyches will depend on the messages and beliefs we’ve taken on about what’s acceptable, welcomed and expected of us as human beings, and what’s not.  And this is what makes it tender and tricky territory to navigate. What we deem unacceptable may hold the potential for something wonderful and life enhancing. Or it may express itself in truly horrific and amoral ways.

Take for instance the messages I’ve absorbed that I am a smart arse, but not that clever, and nobody really wants to hear what I’ve got to say. (Messages from parents, my experience at school, wider societal norms or the mysterious collective unconscious?)  When my ‘I’m a smart arse’ button is pushed it stimulates a deep sense of shame and can play havoc with my confidence, limit the risks I take to do what I enjoy and stops me from being more prominent in some situations. It’s fair to say that I can find people who I perceive as being clever or ‘showing off’ a huge annoyance and can punish, diminish and or distance myself from them accordingly. I’ve had some disturbed nights and withdrawn from significant relationships as a result of this one!    

But I do know that unchecked and unrecognised for what it is, given a different set of life circumstances, this kind of shame-shadow has within it the capacity for brutal rage and destruction, directed inwardly – or out towards those around me.    

Having made friends with this aspect of my shadow self, it has become less powerful and restrictive over time, although it still has the capacity to unexpectedly floor me at times. I have accepted how it has served me well – in considering the validity of what I’m saying, not talking too much when listening is called for and in developing my ability to ‘read the room’. I have had to stay in relationship with this shadow dynamic, to bring it into the light and give it airtime if I am to reap its benefits rather than its limitations.   

I give this rather personal example because this is the real stuff of everyday Shadow work. Its not necessarily about my capacity to enter into an evil state of mind, which I acknowledge, (please listen to the Reith lectures!) but rather an example of the ever-present dance between the light and shade of our humanness. The less attention we give to those shady aspects of ourselves that we deem unacceptable, the denser and stronger – and more damaging – they can become.  

If we are seeking to foster a better day to day experience and by extension a better world, we need to increase our capacity for everyday acts of care and kindness alongside acknowledging our capacity for everyday acts of harm and violence towards ourselves and others. Words and deeds. In whatever context we find ourselves. In our homes and in our workplaces our unacknowledged shame, fear, guilt, resentment (other emotions are available!)  holds the potential to diminish and deplete both our vitality and our relationships – but also offers the potential of transformation.

You might like to listen to our podcast on Working with the Shadow, HERE which is a conversation between myself and Glyn Fussell:

Marion Ragaliauskas