I learned about shadows one day when, with two children under the age of three, I finally lost control and found myself on all fours on the floor. I flailed arms and legs, beating the floor, crying, "I can't cope anymore. I just cannot cope". Thinking I desperately needed help, I quickly searched a mental telephone book, and called my high school best friend, now a psychologist. She listened with absolute unconditional acceptance, and then told me gently that, as a parent herself, she fully understood where I was coming from. She also told me that we all had a shadow we had to learn to live with - and perhaps my temper was mine.
It is important for any counselor that his client first faces his or her shadow. A shadow can be some behavior we wish to change - smoking (see
http://www.winternet.com/~terrym/quitsmo... ) or controlling anger (see
http://www.locateadoc.com ). It may be something we have done in our past, or something we had nothing to do with, but that we are convinced would ruin our lives if others were to hear of it. Of course, the trouble with shadows is that we cannot rid ourselves of them. No matter what we do, when the sun comes out, there it will be - stalking, and waiting to make a statement. Of course, it is as difficult to rid oneself of one's metaphorical shadow as the physical one. So, what is important, instead, is to learn to live beside it.
It is one of those strange paradoxes that once one accepts there is a problem, and explores this to the full, that it is far more easily controlled. Alcoholic's Anonymous is a case in point. An alcoholic cannot be cured, but he can cure himself. Only if he admits he has a problem. Nightmares work in the same way. Rather than try to brush them aside or ignore them, face them. Explore them. Allow them to happen, and to try to find out what the subconscious is trying to say.
Of course, not all shadows are behavioral. Sometimes one honestly feels that no-one will like us or understand us anymore if they just knew about...well, whatever it is. I had a friend, who, because of circumstance had had to leave school early. She had made money the only way she knew how - by dancing cabaret. Now, she hesitated to tell this to any of her boyfriends, just in case they would drop her because of her past. However she needed to realize that a love relationship involves giving up all of yourself. By holding back something of herself, she was sabotaging the possibility of something she really craved. In addition, if someone who loved her was not able to accept all of her - everything that had made her as she was, then perhaps he was not the right man to spend the rest of her life with her.
