What lurks in the Shadow?

[reeay]

Yep I have found when I'am exploring a part of my shadow it is easy to get caught up in the moment and create negative connotations in my brain about actions and events around me while experiencing the negative thought and emotional patterns.

Unfortunately I found out that keeping disciplined positive coping strategies is essential to travelling through the shadow consciously before it was to late. The vampire analogy of negative energy you find is quite spot on, very important to use the positive strategies to keep conscious through the experience otherwise I find negative aspects of self hide just under consciousness so even though you rationally know what's going on you find yourself slipping unconsciously back into the patterns your trying to accept and release.

Conscious disciplined positive coping strategies that you get a sense of love out of it vital. Particularly the part about love. Just because the strategy is positive doesn't mean certain people will get the sense of love out of it, it's an extremely individual process and I find a mixture of well known strategies plus unique personal strategies is the best mixture for success.

Have you done much clinical type psychology Rie? As in have you held therapy with someone? I would guess the personal spin is the hardest part, something empirical evidence cannot help with yet. How to cater to the unique individual and how to relevantly help them.

Yeah I do purely clinical type psychology doing therapy work with people... and have gone thru intensive therapy myself. My knowledge is not just from a textbook but mostly from practice/training/experience, if that is what you were curious about.

One of the key component to doing deep, deep work is to have sufficient 'ego strength' to cope with emotional distress & challenges. Ego-strength is different from strength of will or engaging in activities to self-sooth, but having internal support/strength & having ability to endure anxiety, fear, pain, & other emotional distress. For example, ego strength could be a more mature, forgiving, open aspect of self who is able to take perspective and sooth distress. When there is insufficient ego-strength, and faced with highly emotionally charged situation, it's possible for people to completely shut-down emotionally or even dissociate, in more severe cases.

Building ego-strength comes with what we call 'maturity' and of course healing process... it's building the foundations to be able to get out in the world and live fully. Self-acceptance, forgiveness... the basics. With basics, we may increase our distress threshold, thus we may go deeper to find out things about self that we want to deny or reject completely.