This resonates deeply. The way you write about darkness not as pathology but as contact — as the place where honesty, intimacy, and humanity live — feels so grounding. I recognised myself in your resistance to the polished answer, and in the quiet longing to be met in what’s real rather than what’s presentable.
I was especially struck by how clearly you name our collective fear of shadow — the rush to fix, brighten, reframe, or outrun what is hard. Your framing of winter, pause, and darkness as necessary rather than defective feels both compassionate and quietly radical in a culture that prizes perpetual light.
The part about shadow being made in relationship — learned early, shaped by what was or wasn’t safe to show — landed strongly. It holds so much tenderness without collapsing into blame, and it explains so much of what later shows up as disconnection, anger, or numbness.
Reading this also helped me articulate something about my own process. For me, writing has become one of the ways I stay with the work of therapy — a place where I can sit with what’s difficult, let it be seen, and make sense of it without needing to resolve it too quickly. Each piece feels like an act of integration rather than explanation.
Thank you for naming this work so clearly — not as dwelling in darkness, but as the path back to wholeness, aliveness, and real connection. This feels like something worth returning to.
Thank you so much, Nat, for your detailed and thoughtful reflections. I’m so glad to hear it resonated in that way, and that writing has offered you a space to explore these threads further. Writing is often that place for me too, it offers a space where I can witness myself and reflect on my own experiences with some care and spaciousness ❤
Thankyou for this insightful reflection on embracing our shadow side. An essential process in the journey to becoming a therapist.
For me the biggest challenge in my career as a Clinical Psychologist has been helping a small group of complex clients face and own the darkness within.
I do love the way that EMDR provides a safe vehicle to transport a client through the darkest moments (often of trauma )in their life. This process has been transformative and life giving for many. It allows one to look darkness in the eye, embrace it and “dissolve” its power.
However there are those clients who “leak” and rather than embrace and fully process the dark side of themselves, use their energy to blame and judge others.
They find themselves caught up in an endless viscious cycle of “other destruction” which ultimately leads to self destruction and alienation.
They can achieve moments of insight and become “meta” to the darkness but are then swiftly sucked back into the void.
These for me are the most challenging of clients and continue to be as I have become the target of their inner turmoil and rage, their darkness projected outwards.
I would be very interested in how you navigate these situations and stay with the client?
I have found myself having to withdraw for self preservation.
Yes, I also love EMDR for its power to 'dissolve' these parts when we face into them.
You raise an important question, around people who resist owning their darker parts and instead project them outward. I think there are no easy answers. In an ideal world, therapy provides the gentle container in which those parts can be reflected back and gradually integrated. In reality, it has its limits. I have also had to withdraw from the work at times for self-preservation, when someone is not ready or not able to own what belongs to them. The simple reality is, we cannot help everyone, and there's a ridiculous expectation that we should be able to. Knowing and honouring our limits feels very important in this work.
I love this, the darker side. I just wrote a poem, Guesthouse Gone Wrong about cancer paralyzing me from waist down and the doctor telling me about a medicine that turns my pee to formaldehyde, part of my healing a year later. I am walking, just slower. I am reading, much deeper. Thank you, Vicki
The words shadow work make me cringe these days as a therapist, but this was a wonderful piece. I, too, share a propensity for the fallow, deep dark depths. Small talk sometimes makes me want to avoid an event completely.
I have also been reframing things less as a psychology burden to overcome and more as what my soul has come to learn this time. This helps me understand myself not as a problem to be fixed but a soul to understand as it experiences life in this body, this time. What a wild ride it is.
Thanks Julie. Yes, I love that framing - what my soul has come to learn this time. It resonates deeply for me too. And yes, I agree, the phrase shadow work has become a little tired and cliched at this point 😄
Vicki - I am wired the same way. I have such an aversion to the folks who meet another’s darkness or pain with a bright sized response. It feels so dismissive to me yet I know most of the time that person has the best of intentions. And as you point out, that is how we’ve been groomed by society. Run from the dark - push past it.
I think the best we can do for each other is witness the hurt not try to placate, distract or eradicate. It’s not asking to be fixed, just felt.
Thank you for writing this essay. Your words always click right into place for me. 🙏🏼
Beautiful. I relate to this so much, and it reminds me of this passage I came across in my studies today:
“I think the night is loving and warm, like a blanket. It’s so safe at night, I can take my masks off and nobody can see the real me, just resting, just being me. I don’t understand why the light is always thought to be good, and the dark bad. The dark protects me when I go out – I can go anywhere (as long as there are no street lights) and no-one can see me. And then there’s the beauty of the moon, and Orion the protector, with his dog, and Leo about to leap, and Jupiter like a hole punched right through the sky, and all the others.”
- Bolton, Gillie, et al., 1999, p. 43, in The Therapeutic Potential of Creativing Writing: Writing Myself
I think I’ve been attracted to darkness because that’s where you find the most beauty.
I'll party with you anytime. You are clearly my people (and I don't say this lightly). Love your writing (which I also don't say lightly). One of the few things I take the time to read when it hits the in-box.
My favorite kind of weather is atmospheric in nature - the stormy, thundering, pouring and foggy days. Those are the kinds of days that light me up! Thank you for sharing! XO
I love this so much, Vicki. Since childhood, I’ve felt and been drawn towards a sort of grief, melancholy, and longing that doesn’t always have a clear “reason” behind it. I imagine it’s connected not just to me, but to my ancestry. And when I hear Irish poets speak, I’ve often experienced relief in their normalization of what I feel deep in my bones. I experience joy, too - so it’s not that I’m wallowing in darkness. But the connection between love and grief is so clear and present, and I find it so beautiful and human.
I love that about Buddhism - learning to hold all our mental states in loving awareness - allowing the energy without rejecting or solidifying. Tibetan Buddhism has many different practices and rituals for working with the energy of emotions.
Loved this piece. I feel this, and it makes me think we’re tuned to similar frequencies. One thing I’ve been thinking about lately is whether this “shadow” is actually something personal at all. What if it lives between us, shaped by family, culture, and all the ways we learned to belong? The ache you describe feels less like a personal darkness and more like inherited patterns of survival to me. I’m still exploring this and would love to know how that idea sits with you
Thank you, Carl, for your thoughtful response. I think you’re naming something important there. It doesn’t all belong to us, and there’s relief in recognising it as a shared human experience. You’re reminding me of Jung talking about shadow and the collective unconscious.
Not so much Jung for me. What feels clear to me is that we inherit patterns, learn patterns in relationship, and add our own through life. What gets called “shadow” is simply how that history lives on in the body. It feels very everyday and human to me. Curious how that lands for you
You're so right, I think in our current society darkness has almost become a taboo. Something we don't talk about, to be covered up with lightness. But it's part of our normal human lives and we can't have one without the other. It's much healthier actually facing it rather than covering it up.
There's often much more useful information in the shadow side than the side of ourselves that we find acceptable. It's something I e written about too, as am I integrated shadow side can cause endless problems.
If I was at that party, I'd be sitting next to you Vicki, and we could talk about all this stuff! 😂
This resonates deeply. The way you write about darkness not as pathology but as contact — as the place where honesty, intimacy, and humanity live — feels so grounding. I recognised myself in your resistance to the polished answer, and in the quiet longing to be met in what’s real rather than what’s presentable.
I was especially struck by how clearly you name our collective fear of shadow — the rush to fix, brighten, reframe, or outrun what is hard. Your framing of winter, pause, and darkness as necessary rather than defective feels both compassionate and quietly radical in a culture that prizes perpetual light.
The part about shadow being made in relationship — learned early, shaped by what was or wasn’t safe to show — landed strongly. It holds so much tenderness without collapsing into blame, and it explains so much of what later shows up as disconnection, anger, or numbness.
Reading this also helped me articulate something about my own process. For me, writing has become one of the ways I stay with the work of therapy — a place where I can sit with what’s difficult, let it be seen, and make sense of it without needing to resolve it too quickly. Each piece feels like an act of integration rather than explanation.
Thank you for naming this work so clearly — not as dwelling in darkness, but as the path back to wholeness, aliveness, and real connection. This feels like something worth returning to.
Thank you so much, Nat, for your detailed and thoughtful reflections. I’m so glad to hear it resonated in that way, and that writing has offered you a space to explore these threads further. Writing is often that place for me too, it offers a space where I can witness myself and reflect on my own experiences with some care and spaciousness ❤
Thankyou for this insightful reflection on embracing our shadow side. An essential process in the journey to becoming a therapist.
For me the biggest challenge in my career as a Clinical Psychologist has been helping a small group of complex clients face and own the darkness within.
I do love the way that EMDR provides a safe vehicle to transport a client through the darkest moments (often of trauma )in their life. This process has been transformative and life giving for many. It allows one to look darkness in the eye, embrace it and “dissolve” its power.
However there are those clients who “leak” and rather than embrace and fully process the dark side of themselves, use their energy to blame and judge others.
They find themselves caught up in an endless viscious cycle of “other destruction” which ultimately leads to self destruction and alienation.
They can achieve moments of insight and become “meta” to the darkness but are then swiftly sucked back into the void.
These for me are the most challenging of clients and continue to be as I have become the target of their inner turmoil and rage, their darkness projected outwards.
I would be very interested in how you navigate these situations and stay with the client?
I have found myself having to withdraw for self preservation.
Thanks for sharing those reflections, Linda.
Yes, I also love EMDR for its power to 'dissolve' these parts when we face into them.
You raise an important question, around people who resist owning their darker parts and instead project them outward. I think there are no easy answers. In an ideal world, therapy provides the gentle container in which those parts can be reflected back and gradually integrated. In reality, it has its limits. I have also had to withdraw from the work at times for self-preservation, when someone is not ready or not able to own what belongs to them. The simple reality is, we cannot help everyone, and there's a ridiculous expectation that we should be able to. Knowing and honouring our limits feels very important in this work.
I love this, the darker side. I just wrote a poem, Guesthouse Gone Wrong about cancer paralyzing me from waist down and the doctor telling me about a medicine that turns my pee to formaldehyde, part of my healing a year later. I am walking, just slower. I am reading, much deeper. Thank you, Vicki
Oh wow Emily, that sounds like quite a deep journey into the shadow you have been on. I'm so glad to hear you are starting to re-emerge ❤️
The words shadow work make me cringe these days as a therapist, but this was a wonderful piece. I, too, share a propensity for the fallow, deep dark depths. Small talk sometimes makes me want to avoid an event completely.
I have also been reframing things less as a psychology burden to overcome and more as what my soul has come to learn this time. This helps me understand myself not as a problem to be fixed but a soul to understand as it experiences life in this body, this time. What a wild ride it is.
Thanks Julie. Yes, I love that framing - what my soul has come to learn this time. It resonates deeply for me too. And yes, I agree, the phrase shadow work has become a little tired and cliched at this point 😄
Vicki - I am wired the same way. I have such an aversion to the folks who meet another’s darkness or pain with a bright sized response. It feels so dismissive to me yet I know most of the time that person has the best of intentions. And as you point out, that is how we’ve been groomed by society. Run from the dark - push past it.
I think the best we can do for each other is witness the hurt not try to placate, distract or eradicate. It’s not asking to be fixed, just felt.
Thank you for writing this essay. Your words always click right into place for me. 🙏🏼
Thank you Allison, that's lovely to hear, and I recognise you as a kindred spirit here ❤
Beautiful. I relate to this so much, and it reminds me of this passage I came across in my studies today:
“I think the night is loving and warm, like a blanket. It’s so safe at night, I can take my masks off and nobody can see the real me, just resting, just being me. I don’t understand why the light is always thought to be good, and the dark bad. The dark protects me when I go out – I can go anywhere (as long as there are no street lights) and no-one can see me. And then there’s the beauty of the moon, and Orion the protector, with his dog, and Leo about to leap, and Jupiter like a hole punched right through the sky, and all the others.”
- Bolton, Gillie, et al., 1999, p. 43, in The Therapeutic Potential of Creativing Writing: Writing Myself
I think I’ve been attracted to darkness because that’s where you find the most beauty.
Oh, I love that passage Kim, thank you for sharing it. Yay for the lovers of darkness…. kindred spirits 🖤
I'll party with you anytime. You are clearly my people (and I don't say this lightly). Love your writing (which I also don't say lightly). One of the few things I take the time to read when it hits the in-box.
Thanks for your kind words, that is so lovely to hear Amy ❤
This is wonderful!
My favorite kind of weather is atmospheric in nature - the stormy, thundering, pouring and foggy days. Those are the kinds of days that light me up! Thank you for sharing! XO
There is so much beauty in those days, Danielle 🖤
There is indeed! It is a treasure trove of beauty and a great reminder that beauty is in the eye of the beholder. XO
I love this so much, Vicki. Since childhood, I’ve felt and been drawn towards a sort of grief, melancholy, and longing that doesn’t always have a clear “reason” behind it. I imagine it’s connected not just to me, but to my ancestry. And when I hear Irish poets speak, I’ve often experienced relief in their normalization of what I feel deep in my bones. I experience joy, too - so it’s not that I’m wallowing in darkness. But the connection between love and grief is so clear and present, and I find it so beautiful and human.
Beautifully put, Dana, and I have always felt you as a kindred spirit here 💙 I believe we carry much of the unprocessed grief of our ancestors.
I think we are afraid to honestly see, feel these difficult things.
Absolutely Catherine. The aversion is so strong it can border on a phobia at times!
I love that about Buddhism - learning to hold all our mental states in loving awareness - allowing the energy without rejecting or solidifying. Tibetan Buddhism has many different practices and rituals for working with the energy of emotions.
Yes absolutely. I have really valued the Buddhist teachings about resistance and clinging being the source of our suffering ❤
Loved this piece. I feel this, and it makes me think we’re tuned to similar frequencies. One thing I’ve been thinking about lately is whether this “shadow” is actually something personal at all. What if it lives between us, shaped by family, culture, and all the ways we learned to belong? The ache you describe feels less like a personal darkness and more like inherited patterns of survival to me. I’m still exploring this and would love to know how that idea sits with you
Thank you, Carl, for your thoughtful response. I think you’re naming something important there. It doesn’t all belong to us, and there’s relief in recognising it as a shared human experience. You’re reminding me of Jung talking about shadow and the collective unconscious.
Not so much Jung for me. What feels clear to me is that we inherit patterns, learn patterns in relationship, and add our own through life. What gets called “shadow” is simply how that history lives on in the body. It feels very everyday and human to me. Curious how that lands for you
‘What gets called “shadow” is simply how that history lives on in the body’ - nicely put 😊
There’s a lot of truth here. Avoiding the shadow costs more than facing it.
Thank you for getting it, Denise ❤️
For me, the gift of facing my shame is vulnerability. Vulnerability leads to more connection. Connection to abundance.
Absolutely. This is the beauty in it 😊
You're so right, I think in our current society darkness has almost become a taboo. Something we don't talk about, to be covered up with lightness. But it's part of our normal human lives and we can't have one without the other. It's much healthier actually facing it rather than covering it up.
Absolutely. Thanks for getting it, Sophie 😊
There's often much more useful information in the shadow side than the side of ourselves that we find acceptable. It's something I e written about too, as am I integrated shadow side can cause endless problems.
If I was at that party, I'd be sitting next to you Vicki, and we could talk about all this stuff! 😂
So nice to know there'd be other people in my corner, Kate. I'm sure we'd have a lot of interesting stuff to chat about 😊