Very few of us - perhaps none - go through our early years without encountering events where we felt the need to protect ourselves from other people, our environment, and our emotions. Our brains have evolved the ability to remember that protection and make it automatic in the future. This comes in handy when we have future encounters with bears or wasps or angry people (or some combination of those), but it can also hinder our ability to make decisions and be in control of our behavior. Our protective responses are often invisible to us and we can become governed by the very things that were meant to help us. We have work to do to free ourselves.
Shadow Work
A few years back I read ‘Dark Side of the Light Chasers’ by Debbie Ford. Without knowing it this type of ‘Shadow Work’ was my introduction to the studies of Carl Jung. Shadow work derives from Jungian psychology in which “shadow” is generally defined as the self's emotional blind spot, projected. It was the first time I was able to form a language and understanding around the different instances of ‘Brad’ floating around in my head, each with its own emotional response vying for attention.
Therapy wasn’t a public part of the world I grew up in. I have Minette (and lots of growing up) to thank for getting me there. I was skeptical reading Dark Side: it sounded childish at best to close my eyes and envision different versions of myself on a bus, even more so to try and hear them and soothe them. I begrudgingly shut my eyes to work on it and lo and behold there they were: The Clown, a happy, laughing, and flighty performer; Teenage James Dean in a Canadian tuxedo, snarky, surly, and withdrawn; The Slob in the Basement, friendly, relaxed, snacking and watching TV. (Strangely, there is a door from the school bus to the basement.) There are surely more in there but those were the ones that came forward.
For awhile I took the time to periodically check in with them and make sure their needs were being met. I describe this as an eyes-closed active visioning, with asking and listening, focusing on whether everything was OK and being supportive to their concerns. I think the key to the process is in non-judgmental allowing: allowing my brain to envision the characters, allowing their messages to be heard. This is part of the work to reduce our mind’s need to project those protective responses onto our current situation. Making a habit of that checkin would have served me well on path out of the Great Stuckedness towards actual freedom.
Two recent reads on completely separate subjects - Britt Frank’s dive into the psychology of “The Science of Stuck” and the fantastic writer’s guide “On Writing Well” by William Zinsser - gave me a fresh perspective on my shadow work.
Both books advise us on the importance of knowing ourselves and connecting to our emotions. Zinsser describes the “personal transaction at the heart of good non-fiction writing”: the reader gives their attention in exchange for the writer’s emotional connection to the subject. When we don’t write as ourselves the result is a dry textbook. In “The Science of Stuck” we see that without embracing our emotions and their sources we will never be able to truly enjoy our lives.
Dark Side and these recent reads join a litany of other sources of wisdom pointing me in the right direction. Brené Brown talks about shedding our armor. Richard Schwartz shows how our internal “parts” are simply trying to protect us. In “Procrastination: What It Is, Why It's a Problem, and What You Can Do About It”, we see that the source of procrastination is emotional dysregulation from those same protective parts.
Building Shadow Intelligence
In “The Science of Stuck” the author uses the term “SQ” or “Shadow Intelligence”. Along with IQ (Intelligence Quotient) most are familiar with EQ (Emotional Intelligence). SQ is how well we know our shadows. She presents the following equation1:
IQ + EQ + SQ = success and the freedom to enjoy it
People high in SQ know their shadows inside out. The higher your SQ, the more capacity you have to accept your imperfections and to enjoy your successes.
— Britt Frank, “The Science of Stuck”
Our inability to identify, understand, live with, and process the signals we get from the multitude of characters inside of us limits our beliefs. Our shadows make decisions for us. We continue to self-defeat, projecting emotional responses onto what would be otherwise simple decisions and actions. We are not free to enjoy our successes. It’s living life on hard-mode.
I think a lot about my personal patterns and behaviors around stimulus and response. Viktor Frankl said that in the space between stimulus and response “lies our freedom and power to choose our responses”. Rebuilding this connection between my success and my understanding of self showed another layer beneath Frankl’s quote. Without knowing myself - and all of my selves - I will continue to find that post-stimulus freedom of choice to be fleeting at best.
Courtney Dauwalter is an example of someone who understands herself deeply when she is racing. Courtney routinely wins 100-mile ultramarathons in the mountains and she is intimately familiar with her body and mind trying to be protective.
“So don't be frightened, dear friend, if a sadness confronts you larger than any you have ever known, casting its shadow over all you do. You must think that something is happening within you, and remember that life has not forgotten you; it holds you in its hand and will not let you fall. Why would you want to exclude from your life any uneasiness, any pain, any depression, since you don't know what work they are accomplishing within you?”
― Rainer Maria Rilke, Letters to a Young Poet
Our parts - the people on the bus - remember past trauma. They will do anything to protect us from a stimulus that looks remotely like the thing that hurt them. I’ve spent many years ignoring or sublimating those parts of myself with little success. The experts are quite clear on the importance of acceptance and self-compassion towards our shadow. It’s not a weakness to have inner toddler/child/teenager/younger adult versions of ourselves that need a voice. When we don’t do the work to integrate those parts we are simply slaves to their protective responses, and that’s no way to spend a lifetime.
I argue that there should always be a 4th here - PQ or Physical Intelligence. “Physical Intelligence (PQ) is the ability to intuitively understand the body, be comfortable with it, read its sensory signals, know how to engage muscles, effortlessly maintain good posture and learn new movement skills.” Although the discussion is about psychological matters we can hardly talk about integrating our whole selves and leave out our bodies. There’s a fantastic New Yorker article related to this and interoception.