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Feature Story
Exploring Our Shadow with Debbie Ford
by Sydney L. Murray
I have been entranced with Jungian psychology for years and have explored many different archetypes of my own psyche. The hardest ones I’ve had to face are those darker elements of myself that I don’t want others to know about. Speaking with Debbie Ford was an inspiration to fully actualize those parts of myself that I once wanted to hide. I find her teachings to be helpful to me and I hope that after you read this conversation, they will become meaningful to you as well. If you do one thing for yourself this month, I ask that you look deep into your life and find those shadow aspects of yourself that once confronted, just might open you up to all of your magnificence and brilliance. It is more important now than ever.
VM: What is our shadow?
DF: Our shadow is all of the parts of ourselves that we hide or reject out of fear, shame, guilt, or even ignorance. Our shadow is not only our stark qualities, such as our discontented self, our angry self, our cheap self, or our mean self, but our shadow is also our greatness, our beauty, our brilliance, or our success.
If you ask anyone who has created an amazing work of art, they will usually tell you that it came out of their discontent, their need for change, or some deep emotion that was trying to get out of them that they had to express. I remember someone asking Deepak (Chopra) where he gets his inspiration from when he was on book 20 and he responded, “My discontent.” As for myself, why do I keep writing? Why do I keep creating? Why am I working on a film based upon the shadow? It’s all out of my need to express these dark emotions and whatever is hidden inside. If the shadow is used correctly, we can use it to push us out of the self that we are today, so that we can step into the next greatest version of who we can be.
VM: In what ways does our shadow manifest in our lives?
DF: Well I think one of the most common ways is addiction. I believe that there wouldn’t be any addiction if everybody tended to his or her shadow. At the core of addiction is a level of self-hate, a level of disconnection with the higher self. Maybe it comes out as sex addiction, drug addiction, alcoholism, over-spending or even not caring for yourself. There are hard addictions and soft addictions, like watching TV when you could be finishing a project. We have all of these new addictions that we don’t even talk about. For example, we are obsessed with celebrities. There are so many brilliant people who spend hours a day feeding celebrity addictions that will get them nowhere.
We can’t contain the powerful energy of the shadow. So it has to wreak havoc on our lives. Our resignation is just part of the shadow. Mediocrity is part of suppression, repression, and what I call the Beach Ball Effect: when we are trying to manage all of our inner beach balls, those parts of ourselves that we are trying to keep under the water of our consciousness that we just keep shutting down and finding ways to play it safe. Unattended they pop up to the surface.
VM: What can we do to combat our shadow issues?
DF: It is so interesting you used the word combat, because that is what people try to do with their shadow. There is this internal war going on between the ego and the greater self. The shadow is all part of the wounded ego; it is not part of the healthy ego and we try to combat it by finding ways we think we can manage it. But the Aha moment comes when we realize that what the shadow needs is our love. What the shadow needs is for us to see not just the darkness it can hold, but also the greatness of what it is trying to teach us. What is the gift? What is the wisdom that are we meant to learn from this situation, or this quality? Once we receive the brilliance of the shadow, it becomes an integrated and vital part of us.
The questions I always ask is “You got it—how are you going to love it? How are you going to appreciate it? What good can come of it?” [Carl] Jung has said that our creativity gets birthed out of our shadow. Who knew that what was hidden in the shadow was a gift?
Think about some of the greatest songs that have ever been written. They are songs of heartache and pain. But out of that pain comes this amazing expression and I believe that to be true for each of us.
Bad things happen to everybody and we have to stop pretending that this is not true. Even giant spiritual leaders have bad things happen to them. I was telling this to Rabbi Ezagui and he said, “You know God loves you when a lot of bad things happen to you. When we are faced with challenges, we tap into the greatest resource, the greatest power that is within ourselves.”
The shadow saved my life. I love how Jung said, “One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious.”
I believe you and I are birthing something into the world with this question. This conversation right here could change everyone’s life because what they are doing is trying to combat the shadow. Ultimately we need to ask, “How can we befriend the shadow by finding the gift? What is the gold in that darkness; what is the wisdom in these wounds?”
VM: What inspired you on this path to explore the shadow in your life?
DF: Pain and desperation inspired me to look deeply. I did visualizations and affirmation tapes, repeating, “I am loved, I am kind, I am successful.” And I would wake up angry and pissed off. I thought there was something I was missing and I would get down on my hands and knees everyday and pray, “Show me what I am missing. What do I need to learn? Why doesn’t this work for me?”
I remember one day when I went to a seminar and stood up in front of a small group of 20 people. We had to talk about what we were committed to in the world. I was talking about bringing self-esteem to the school system when from the back of the room a woman said, “You’re a bitch.” And I thought, I know that—how does she? I was shocked, embarrassed and so humiliated. Then she said, “Tell me something good about being a bitch.” I replied, “There is nothing good. There are only the times I have hurt people and the relationships I’ve lost. I hate this part of me.” I was ready to burst into tears. She responded, “Let me ask you something. If you were remodeling a house and you were $20,000 over budget and five weeks late, might it help to be a little bitchy?” She knew I was in the middle of a remodel and when the contractor hadn’t finished the job, I got in his face and he finished the job. When I was in retail, I would get damaged merchandise and she asked, “Is there ever a time when they don’t take it back? Did it help to be a little bit of a bitch to get them to take it back?” All of a sudden, I saw that this part of myself came bearing gifts. It wasn’t about getting rid of these parts of me; it was about how I could use them. There is that old expression, “Either you are going to use it, or it is going to use you.”
Anything we don’t embrace about ourselves gets to use us. We are designed perfectly as a microcosm of a macrocosm. We have every piece of the whole inside ourselves, so our question is not “how are we going to suppress them or numb them, but how are we going to love, or at least have respect for each and every quality we possess?” That moment changed my life.
VM: How can I create a better relationship between the dark and light elements of my psyche?
DF: That is what I talk about in my book Why Good People Do Bad Things; it’s about the internal war. To bring the light to the darkness, we must first admit to the shadow. What do you hate about yourself? This is the first list to make. The second list to make is what you hate about other people. People can’t see their shadows because they are projecting and transferring them onto other people. So when I have people in the shadow process, I have them write down the three people they like the least and then find the three qualities that they don’t like about them. We look at those and then we start the process of bringing light to the dark by looking to see what would be good about those qualities.
The problem is they are birthed out of shame and to find something good out of what you are most ashamed of is not an easy task. It’s not a task of the intellect. That’s why most people think they know about their shadow, but knowing is a booby prize in my work because the shift has to happen from the head to the heart. We have to really see the gift; we have to really look at it and maybe even interview people and ask, “What would be good about this quality if I were using it in a positive way?”
Every morning I get up and either write, teach or lecture because I am so angry. There are kids in the world who don’t have access to this information; there are parents and teachers who don’t know about this shadow work. That not knowing [about the shadow] is causing wars and insanity in our society that we see everyday. One in six kids is being molested. Until this changes, I won’t stop doing what I do. When I hold my anger as the beautiful gift that it is—my inspiration—then my anger doesn’t have to come out in a weird way. It doesn’t have to come out toward someone else or at myself. Whenever we disown those parts of ourselves, we have to put on masks and create a new persona to try and cover them up. I talk about these masks in my book. We have to put on the People Pleaser, the Victim, the Know it All Intellect, the Bully, or the Savior to cover up because we feel so embarrassed about who we are. But those things that give us embarrassment are things that can actually give us our power back. As the universe would have it so perfectly, it brings light to the dark.
VM: How do you connect the intellect to your heart? Is it though forgiveness?
DF: I teach people a process called Psychosynthesis, which was created by Roberto Assagioli, MD. It has people go inside to find and really be able to see these parts of themselves—not as themselves but as an expression. You can find the stupid self, or the lazy self and you can imagine what that would look like other than yourself. And then you dialogue with them and ask them “Why do I have you? What is the gift that you bring? What would be available to me if I integrated you? What’s good about you? What is the lesson I need to learn here?” Ultimately, because I am a coach, I would ask, “What action can I take to make you an integrative part of me?”
We do have the answers within. We are such a mind-based and intellectually obsessed culture because it is too painful to go inside. And once we make peace with the shadow, it’s no longer painful. You are who you are. You see your gifts; you see your darkness as your gift and not something that is against yourself. Even if you are pretending you don’t have any darkness, we all have it. I have worked with some of the greatest teachers of our time. It doesn’t matter who I work with, whether they are celebrities or producers. We see in politics what the shadow can do. Look at John Edwards, Elliot Spitzer, Richard Nixon or Bill Clinton. You look at these people and ask, “What were they thinking?” They weren’t. Their shadow took over and their beach ball popped up.
VM: What are our shadow issues as a country?
DF: Self-loathing and greed. I call them the signposts for disaster. No matter who we are, we are trying to fill the hungry ghost inside. How can I get more money, more attention, more love? How can I get more success? How can I get more votes? How can I get more, more and more? We are trying to fill the hole that only God, Spirit or the Divine—whatever you want to call it—can fill. It is an inner resource; a power greater than ourselves that we are designed to connect and live in partnership with. The ego cuts us off from that connection. With all of this talk about getting rid of the ego—only the ego would think that. God created us like this. There is so muchconfusion and that is why I wrote Why Good People Do Bad Things.
VM: So why do good people do bad things?
DF: Because they have a shadow! There would be no shadow without shame, guilt and fear. If someone says, “You’re stupid,” or “Uncle Jake is an idiot,” we decide that these are bad qualities. And then we feel ashamed. Humans would rather feel any emotion but shame. The voice of shame is very loud in our culture. We hide our shame by putting on these personas as we put on our arrogant suit and dress up every day pretending we are something more than what we are. It’s the beach ball popping up again.
That suppression of the shadow takes a lot of energy. It’s so powerful and it’s going to come out. I believe that it comes out to help us, because we are here on this earth to deliver our own unique gifts. We are here to become more than we are right now.
VM: Do you have hope for the world?
DF: I do. I have hope for us because we are in the middle of some of the biggest shadows we have ever seen. For those of us that want to be conscious and want to make the world a better place, we’re going to be dealing not just with the collective shadow but with the individual shadow as well. We’re going to have to come together outside of our egos to heal the issues of the world and I believe we will do it. I think that you and I having this conversation is an act of God.
