Understanding the shadow

Romaine Brooks, Self-Portrait, 1923

As coaches and facilitators, how can we use the Jungian concept of the shadow to help clients move past their blocks, blind spots, and triggers thus coming into an experience of greater authenticity and self?

Its helpful to imagine the shadow not as a person or a bad and creepy figure...but as a place in the psyche where we push all of the undesirable traits that we want to keep far away from our conscious mind. For the most part, we are all made of the same stuff and capable of the same actions, both good and bad. Based on societal norms, family dynamics and personal beliefs, we push what we consider undesirable, bad, and shameful thoughts, impulses, and qualities into the shadow area of our psyches.

Because these qualities and ideas are in the shadow, we can't "see" them. We don't consciously believe that we are capable of being like the qualities in our shadow. We deny that we could ever be "like that."

Integrating our shadow aspects into our consciousness is a deeply rewarding introspective process that gives us access to all of who we are. This is important for both coach and client. For example, for many people, especially women, aggression is a shadow quality. Being aggressive in word or deed is viewed in a negative light by many people.

In many cultures, being an "aggressive woman" is not desirable. However, aggression is a universal human trait and more importantly, it is universally present in the natural world. Its ok to be gentle, to be passive, to be still. But there always comes a time and place when aggression is not only desirable but necessary for survival. We all need to have access to the aggressive part of our psyche--the part that can yell and punch and spit and kick. We can't do that without integrating the shadow aspect of aggression.

When you integrate the parts of yourself that are in shadow, you begin to have access to a much wider range of talents, experiences, beliefs and behaviors. Some of them are unsavory and that's ok. Because those aspects make up your self. Your whole self. Your authentic and whole self.

In the Authentic Wholeness Coach Training Certification program, I teach coaches and group facilitators about the qualities we most often put into shadow, how to recognize shadow aspects in yourself as coach, how to help clients identify what qualities are in shadow for them, and how to work with shadow aspects to bring them fully into consciousness so that clients have access to all of who they are and all they can do.

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The Fear of Oneself by Sharon Olds

As we get near the house, taking off our gloves, the air forming a fine casing of

ice around each hand,

you say you believe I would hold up under torture

for the sake of our children. You say you think I have

courage. I lean against the door and weep,

the tears freezing on my cheeks with brittle

clicking sounds.

I think of the women standing naked

on the frozen river, the guards pouring

buckets of water over their bodies till they

glisten like trees in an ice storm.

I have never thought I could take it, not even

for the children. It is all I have wanted to do,

to stand between them and pain. But I come from a

long line

of women

who put themselves

first. I lean against the huge dark

cold door, my face glittering with

glare ice like a dangerous road,

and think about hot pokers, and goads,

and the skin of my children, the delicate, tight,

thin, top layer of it

covering their whole bodies, softly

glimmering.