The Psych Ward: The Shadow

[DrYouth]

Have you seen the movie "Babadook?"


https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/the_babadook/

"Six years after the violent death of her husband, Amelia (Essie Davis) is at a loss. She struggles to discipline her 'out of control' 6 year-old, Samuel (Noah Wiseman), a son she finds impossible to love. Samuel's dreams are plagued by a monster he believes is coming to kill them both. When a disturbing storybook called 'The Babadook' turns up at their house, Samuel is convinced that the Babadook is the creature he's been dreaming about. His hallucinations spiral out of control, he becomes more unpredictable and violent. Amelia, genuinely frightened by her son's behaviour, is forced to medicate him. But when Amelia begins to see glimpses of a sinister presence all around her, it slowly dawns on her that the thing Samuel has been warning her about may be real. (C) IFC

You're damn right The Shadow is real... and not to be messed with.
You can't medicate it out of existence.

[Haumana]

You're damn right The Shadow is real... and not to be messed with.
You can't medicate it out of existence.

Huh? The whole idea was that one needs to become friends with their Babadook. Denying or ignoring it was what gave it its power.

[DrYouth]

I was simply responding to this part of the quote.

But when Amelia begins to see glimpses of a sinister presence all around her, it slowly dawns on her that the thing Samuel has been warning her about may be real. (C) IFC

It sounds like a good movie that directly addresses a manifestation of the shadow.
I haven't watched it.

[Haumana]

I was simply responding to this part of the quote.

But when Amelia begins to see glimpses of a sinister presence all around her, it slowly dawns on her that the thing Samuel has been warning her about may be real. (C) IFC

It sounds like a good movie that directly addresses a manifestation of the shadow.
I haven't watched it.

Gotcha. My mistake. It was a pretty good story based on Jung's principles.

http://screenprism.com/insights/article ... e-babadook

The Jungian shadow aspect correlates with the Babadook’s catchphrase of “Let me in.” It’s the shadow aspect’s way of coercing Amelia’s conscious mind to accept the darkness it harbors.

[GloryofGreece]

To Jung were your fears like let say the fact that I'm terrified of death... and even more of losing my consciousness, or ability to live my life with agency, considered my "shadow" then?

[Speaker to Animals]

To Jung were your fears like let say the fact that I'm terrified of death... and even more of losing my consciousness, or ability to live my life with agency, considered my "shadow" then?

He just means that it's all the things you repressed.

[Speaker to Animals]

We pretend as thought cogitating thoughts and desires is similar to eating food. When we eat something that we find rancid or distasteful, we spit it out. When we spit it out, we expel it from our bodies and our persons. But you cannot really do that with cogitation. When you repress a thought or desire, it doesn't get expelled but, rather, gets banished to your unconscious. The shadow is just a personification of all the shit you repressed.


So instead of repressing things, try to process them rationally and deal with it. Otherwise you will get a powerful shadow over time and you will have to integrate that monster later on -- or so Jung writes.

I am unsure how accurate he was about it, but I have noticed the same effect. NOTHING really goes away. You are better off just processing it. For the same reason, I think you ought never seek out horrific images or anything like that because it's going to be lodged in your psyche for all time. Don't look for beheading videos online, or gratuitous violence, or anything like that, because you have to integrate it.

[DrYouth]

To Jung were your fears like let say the fact that I'm terrified of death... and even more of losing my consciousness, or ability to live my life with agency, considered my "shadow" then?

Let me take a crack at this...

At any time in our life we may be in a situation where an important need is not being met and we are in a crisis...
This is most likely to happen in early infancy or childhood when we are more fragile and vulnerable, but it can happen at any time, say in wartime.
Say our need for oxygen in a near drowning, or our need for food because our parents neglected us,
or our need for safety if we witnessed violence or were seriously mistreated... or our need for human contact if we were an infant left in hospital with no caregiver....
None of this is forgotten. We may consciously forget it... but our organism holds onto it...

The survival impulses that were thwarted then form the shadow.

We carry this record with us unconsciously.
In the future when we are somehow threatened... the survival responses that were not able to manifest at the time... manifest in the present.
We may imagine ourselves screaming at someone, or hitting them... and know this is not the right response... but feel the impulse to do so anyways.
We may feel the impulse to gamble, or have sex or steal... filling an unmet need from the past, in the present... sometimes over and over, despite some part of us that knows this isn't a good idea.
We may scream and yell.... or we may cry out in distress, or we may lash out... and feel somehow we weren't ourselves.
The shadow seems out of proportion to the situation to an outsider, or to ourselves when we look back on it...
We can experience this dark force within us in a nightmare or lurking just ready to take over.

So your fears of having your agency thwarted may be a shadow defence of your agency... from some point in the past where it was thwarted... perhaps coinciding with an event where you lost consciousness, and came close to death.

[GloryofGreece]

I had an electrical arrhythmia called SVT as a preteen to young adult. It was fairly dangerous and could have resulted in death or at least a pacemaker. Fortunately after the third ablation surgery it was finally corrected. I was 20. Then pretty much arrhythmia free for years with some innocuous PAC/PVC beats 6 years later that went away and again 3 years after that. Fast forward to 36 and I had an episode of Atrial Fibrillation for the first time in my life and had to go to the hospital. They used electrocardioversion and it corrected me to a normal regular rhythm. I was put on beta blocker for two month as a precaution and thankfully nothing happened again and here we are 10 months later.

My doctors and online research have all pretty much said that it could come back, could become a regular issue or even permanent etc. It also could possibly never come back, or come back 10 years from now, or less etc. I've have health anxiety obviously. It comes in waves and lately its been worse.
I'm trying to learn as much as I can about prevention (not a lot I can do). Don't drink, smoke, get fat, stay hydrated, and stress reduction. Stress is the real thing I'm working on (love life, work, family, my health etc.) and trying to eliminate most unhealthy foods and take liquid ionic magnesium daily to all reduce the chance of it reoccurring. Anyhow, its been a long way coming and there's other mental health issues besides the above but I was trying to explain my fears more than anything. B/c negative emotion wise "fear" governs me more than anger or shame.

[DrYouth]

Sure fear is often part of the shadow...
Fear can drive all kinds of behaviour... avoidance, control, resistance...
When it is in charge we are in the grips of the shadow.

But struggling with it merely exhausts us.
It is accepting that we are afraid that is the key to integrating the shadow.
Telling ourselves that we shouldn't be afraid is useless...
It is when we accept that we are afraid and recognize it as a force for self preservation that we can engage with it constructively and allow it the space and information it needs to pass through our system...

Hiding and denying our fear makes it stronger...