Romancing the Shadow

Romancing the Shadow

INTRODUCTION TO SHADOW-WORK

Perhaps all the dragons of our lives are princesses who are only waiting to see us once beautiful and brave. Perhaps everything terrible is in its deepest being something helpless that wants help from us. —Rainer Maria Rilke

In Oscar Wilde’s only novel, The Picture of Dorian Gray, the central character, Dorian, a beautiful, vain young man in nineteenth-century England, sees a painting of himself that is startlingly handsome and without a blemish. Suddenly, he desires to remain youthful and perfect forever, with no sign of aging or imperfection. To this end, he makes a pact with the devil: All signs of his aging and degeneration, even evidence of his greed and cruelty, would from then on appear on the painting rather than on his own face. And the painting gets hidden away, never to be seen by anyone. But from time to time the young man’s curiosity gnaws at him. He cautiously pulls the picture out of the darkness and takes a quick glance, only to see the youthful face growing more and more hideous.

Each of us is like Dorian Gray. We seek to present a beautiful, innocent face to the world; a kind, courteous demeanor; a youthful, intelligent image. And so, unknowingly but inevitably, we push away those qualities that do not fit the image, that do not enhance our self-esteem and make us stand proud but, instead, bring us shame and make us feel small. We shove into the dark cavern of the unconscious those feelings that make us uneasy—hatred, rage, jealousy, greed, competition, lust, shame—and those behaviors that are deemed wrong by the culture—addiction, laziness, aggression, dependency—thereby creating what could be called shadow content. Like Dorian’s painting, these qualities ultimately take on a life of their own, forming an invisible twin that lives just behind our life, or just beside it, but as distinct from the one we know as a stranger.

This stranger, known in psychology as the shadow, is us, yet is not us. Hidden from our awareness, the shadow is not a part of our conscious self-image. So it seems to appear abruptly, out of nowhere, in a range of behaviors from off-color jokes to devastating abuses. When it emerges, it feels like an unwanted visitor, leaving us ashamed, even mortified. For instance, when a man who views himself as a responsible husband and provider is suddenly taken over by a dream of freedom and independence, his shadow is speaking. When a woman with a health-conscious lifestyle craves ice cream and feels compelled to binge in the dark of night, her shadow is acting out. When a normally kind mother belittles her child, her shadow is showing. When a pious priest sneaks off to find a prostitute in a back alley, his shadow is erupting.

In each of these instances, the individual’s persona, the mask shown to the world, is split off from the shadow, the face hidden from the world. The deeper this rift and the more unconscious the shadow, the more we experience it as a stranger, an Other, an alien invader. Therefore, we cannot face it in ourselves or tolerate it in others. Whether this invasion takes the form of such self-destructive behaviors as addiction • eating disorders • depression • anxiety disorders • psychosomatic disorders • severe guilt or shame • or whether it takes the form of such destructive behaviors toward others as verbal abuse • physical abuse • sexual abuse • marital affairs • lying • envy • blaming • stealing • or betrayal, it brings pain and crisis in its wake. It introduces us to the Other, the one within who feels as if it cannot be tamed, who seems as if it cannot be controlled. It shakes us out of complacency, making us feel unacceptable, anxious, irritable, disgusted, outraged at ourselves.

A woman may shake her head and say to herself, “I can’t believe that I had unprotected sex with that man. I wasn’t myself last night.” Or a man may hang his head and say, “I was drunk. It was the wine that made me say those mean things. It will never happen again.” But the meeting with the shadow has occurred. Meeting the shadow in ourselves is disquieting because it tears holes in our masks. It causes us to act irrationally and feel ashamed, embarrassed, unacceptable, regretful—and to quickly deny responsibility for what we said or did.

THE CHALLENGE OF ROMANCING THE SHADOW

Denial is entrenched because the shadow does not want to come out of its hiding place. Its nature is to hide, to remain outside of awareness. So the shadow acts out indirectly, concealed in a sour mood or sarcastic remark. Or it sneaks out compulsively, camouflaged in an addictive behavior. Therefore, we need to learn how to catch a glimpse of it when it appears. We need to sharpen our senses to be awake enough when it erupts. Then we can learn to romance it, to coax it out, to seduce it into awareness. Like a coy lover, it will recede once more behind the curtain. And again, with patience, we can invite it out to dance. This slow process of bringing the shadow to consciousness, forgetting, and recognizing it again is the nature of shadow-work. Eventually, we can learn to create an ongoing conscious relationship to it, thereby reducing its power to unconsciously sabotage us.

Romancing the shadow is subversive: The culture teaches us to be extroverted, quick, ambitious, productive. Workaholism is lauded; contemplation is shunned. But shadow-work is slow, cautious; it moves like an animal in the night. It moves us against the collective mandate to think positively, be productive, focus outwardly, and protect our image.

The shadow is a demanding taskmaster: It requires endless patience, keen instinct, fine discrimination, the compassion of a Buddha. It requires one eye to be turned out toward the world of light, while the other eye is turned in toward the world of darkness.

To live with shadow awareness is to turn away from the peaks toward the valleys, away from the heights and the rarified air, toward the depths and the dark and the dense. It is to turn toward the unpleasant thoughts, hidden fantasies, marginal feelings that are so taboo. To live with shadow awareness is to move our eyes from up to down, to relinquish the clarity of blue-sky thinking for the uncertain murkiness of a foggy morning.

As psychotherapists, we have helped hundreds of clients catch a glimpse of their elusive shadows. Seeing it—meeting the shadow—is the important first step. Learning to live with it—romancing the shadow—is a lifelong challenge. But the rewards are profound: Shadow-work enables us to alter our self-sabotaging behavior so that we can achieve a more self-directed life. It expands our awareness to include a wider range of who we are so that we can attain more complete self-knowledge and eventually feel more genuine self-acceptance. It permits us to defuse the negative emotions that taint our loving relationships so that we can create a more authentic intimacy. And it opens the storehouse of creativity in which our talents remain hidden and out of reach. In each of these ways, shadow-work permits us to find gold in the dark side.

In this book we offer the fundamental skills of shadow-work that are needed to move from meeting the shadow to romancing the shadow as a way of life. Romancing the shadow means reading the messages encoded in the events of our daily lives in such a way that we gain consciousness, substance, soul. Romancing the shadow means meeting the shadow for a private rendezvous; eventually, it means taking it seriously enough to learn to embrace it in a long-term relationship.

Of course, some people find this shift distasteful, even abhorrent. Why not simply behave properly, they ask, shape our attitudes, cut and trim our feelings so that they fit moral, ethical, god-given outlines? Then white is white and black is black, and the struggle with grays can end.

The mind is dangerous, they say, like a tiger in a cage. Open the door and it will think cruel, inhuman thoughts. The body is wild, they say, like some unruly beast. Let it run loose and it will do terrible, perverted, aggressive things.