Michael Jackson wasn’t lying when he sang about change happening from within. Many of us are doing inner work to innerstand ourselves. All this digging, diving, realizing… is uncomfortable AF work. As the great, Carl Jung, who is widely renowned for his analytical psychology shadow work once said, “There is no coming to consciousness without pain”.
The good news is there is a point where you’ve had so many dark nights of the soul and a substantial amount of shadow work, and it comes down to one of those days where you know you’re feeling down or triggered, but the efforts of rewiring and deprogramming of these voices in your head that once screamed “you’re not worthy/enough” … is finally showing progress.
I love sharing this paradigm with my clients as we are working through kicking habits such as smoking nicotine and emotional eating —
There is not such thing as failure, only feedback!
When attempting to shed light on our darkness, there is a technique within cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT) that utilizes the “catch it, check it, change it” thought process. The idea behind this spinning mind remedy is to catch your monkey/spinning mind thoughts, check those thoughts, and change them into thoughts that serve you.
“I used to reward myself with food. Now I understand I’ve been needing attention or connection. For now, I adopted a dog and noticed I’m eating less,” said a client.
“I’ve realized I have emotions I’ve ignored and am learning how to sit with them”, said another.
“I looked in the mirror and wanted to cry from feeling overwhelm and loss, but I knew I was going to be okay”, said my favorite client of the day.
Shadow work is not for everybody. It comes in waves. You have to be ready. With reference to this year’s pandemic and civil unrest under this administration, it’s obvious 2020 has activated the volume of participants in engaging in the work. The world is going through an inadvertent (or is it) dark nights of the soul. And some need guidance sorting through the skeletons in their closet. The demand for more mental health services indicates that there is a massive shift in terms of the mental health stigma, and allowing us to step into a paradigm of forgiveness, self-acceptance, and thus true self-love. Not easy but we’re all worth it.
