Let's start with a quick re-cap of everything I've learned over the past 6 months: Jungian Psychology surmises that there are two distinct realms of being: the Conscious Ego (which situates you and your safety in the world) and the Unconscious Self (your core existence which contains that which you have dropped from consciousness due to lack of necessity or by rejection - either from you or from the culture).
In the Unconscious lives multiple archetypes of Self that are pretty revealing of our true character, including The Shadow: qualities of oneself that have been rejected from conscious expression. Our mighty lil' egos try their mightiest to keep the Shadow qualities at bay, barring them from Consciousness and thus recognition. However, those aspects of the Shadow are, indeed, aspects of Self, so you bet your ass that if they aren't allowed to be showcased on your main stage, they'll blow up the sidewall through an aside of destructivity. In their showtime, they project themselves onto others, and suddenly a world filled with beautiful, complex people becomes a world of Demons. Not given a proper avenue of expression, your Shadow finds ways of projection: to see what you hate most about yourself in others in order to keep you from recognizing its own existence within you.
All of this leads up to the introduction of my Gremlin: the destructive aspect of my Psyche. My Gremlin is kept at bay by my pride. This Gremlin holds on to her childhood pain like a blankie. She sucks on the nipple of sexual validation like a binky, and wears her Eating Disorder like the Halloween costume she refuses to take off. Ever. My Gremlin is the infantile part of my Psyche that doesn't want to assume responsibility, but would rather have the ego-stroke of thinness and pretty privilege as her lifeline. Recently, my Gremlin has discovered she has spent her early adulthood digging herself and pretty big, comfy hole to roll around in her own misery. She spends her days starving and over-analyzing food, understanding that nourishment is a bodily requirement, but can't seem to help using her mental powers to hit herself in her head with the hammer of 'Nutrition Facts.' This Gremlin feels threatened by any living, breathing thing around her, and associates her own home with turmoil. She turns on her most beloved partner, expecting him to save her from her own misery. She hates people and any sound they may make, assuming they are out to get her. You remember what happens when you ASS U ME, right? She claws and slashes her nails of destruction across anything of substance that comes into her path, because that is where she is safest: with nothing to lose. Where life isn't "too good." Where the indolence of inertia thinks for her.
"The problem [with the Destructive aspect of the Shadow] is that rather than empowering the light of the young feminine forces of the psyche, [it is] instead filled with hatred and desires to kill the lights of the psyche... Yet this fact is one of the central truths... all women must acknowledge - that both within and without, there is a force which will act in opposition to the instincts of the natural Self, and that that malignant force is what it is. Though we might have mercy upon it, our first actions must be to recognize it, and protect ourselves from its devastations, and ultimately to deprive it of its murderous energy.
All creatures must learn that there exist predators. Without this knowing, a woman will be unable to negotiate safely within her own forest without being devoured. To understand the predator is to become a mature animal who is not vulnerable out of naivety, inexperience, or foolishness."
My Great Internal Mother has evicted the Gremlin from the Driver's Seat recently. She's had enough of this petty, victimized, self-centered affect that is both selfish and self-sabotaging; ironically. My Great Internal Mother knows that in order to forge ahead in adulthood, I must assume responsibility rather than run from authority and cringe before the collective, fearing to be seen or heard. She knows that in order to live a life of value, she must greet her own life with Compassion before she can show it to the world around her. She knows that peace is cultivated from within - especially in times without. Knowing all this does not mean she has been able to apply all of this, given that the Gremlin has taken up permanent residence in my Psyche, she has pulled out all the stops: she has exercised it, she has read to it, she has painted it, she has drawn it, she has spent time with it, but that bastard Gremlin continuously meets her with nothing but a train of Destruction, along with Shame and Projection, with Resistance leading the way. She was defeated time and time again. My Great Internal Mother knew she needed help to excavate this destructive landscape, to wipe the slate clean, to find her bones of foundation and build herself anew.
"Here we are again ... at the archetypal bone woman's cave. Here we have the remnants of what once was the full woman. However unlike the cyclical life and death aspects of the Wild Woman archetype who takes the life that is ready to die, incubates it, and hurls it back into the world again, [the Destructive aspect of the Psyche] only kills and dismantles a woman until she is nothing but bones. [It] leaves her no beauty, no love, no self, and therefore no ability to act in her own behalf. To remedy this, we as woman must look to the killing thing that has gained hold of us, see the result of its grisly work, register it all consciously, and retain it in consciousness, and then act in our, not its, behalf."
This help comes in the from of Prozac. Within 20 minutes of waving the White Flag of Surrender, the dark sheet of despair was lifted and my True Self was gleaming underneath. With big eyes, she sat with her knees hugged to her chest, patiently waiting for her time to shine. Through this excavation of the Soul, I made room for her Center Stage. She bowed reverently, thanking me for my work. Unlike the Gremlin, she is soft and supple, flamboyant and lively, patient and loving. No matter what. She is me and I am her. She is so grateful for a second chance. My Great Inspiratrice Dr. Clarissa Pinkola Estes defines the state I am in quite eloquently:
"This explosive psychological 'sneaking' occurs when a woman suppresses large parts of self into the shadows of the psyche. In the view of analytical psychology, the repression of both negative and positive instincts, urges, and feelings into the unconscious causes them to inhabit a shadow realm. While the ego and superego attempt to continue to censor the shadow impulses, the very pressure that repression causes is rather like a bubble in a sidewalk of a tire. Eventually, as the tire revolves and heats up, the pressure behind the bubble intensifies, causing it to explode outward, releasing all the inner content.
The shadow acts similarly. That is why ... a normally sweet person is capable of throwing a fit, temporarily acting like a Roman candle gone berserk. We find that by opening the door to the shadow realm a little, and letting out various elements a few at a time, relating to them, finding use for them, negoiating, we can reduce being surprised by shadow seal attacks and unexpected explosions.
Though the values may change from culture to culture, thereby positing different 'negatives' and 'positives' in the shadow, typical impulses that are considered negative and therefore relegated to the shadowlands are those that encourage a person to steal, cheat, murder, act excessively in various ways, and so forth in that vein. The negative shadow aspects tend to be oddly exciting and yet entropic in nature, stealing balance and equanimity of mood and life from individuals, relationships, and larger groups.
The shadow, however, can contain the divine, the luscious, beautiful, and powerful aspects of personhood. For women especially, the shadow almost always contains very fine aspects of being that are forbidden or given little support by her culture. At the bottom of the well in the psyches of too many women lies the visionary creator, the astute truth-teller, the far-seer, the one who can speak well of herself without denigration, who can face herself without cringing, who works to perfect her craft. The positive impulses in the shadow for women in our culture most often revolve around permission for the creation of a handmade life.
These discarded, devalued, and 'unacceptable' aspects of soul and self do not just lie there in the dark, but rather conspire about how and when they shall make a break for freedom. They burble down there in the unconscious, they seethe, they boil, till one day, no matter how well the lid over them is sealed, they explode outward and upward in an unchanneled torrent and with a will of their own...
To detour off this polarized path, a woman has to surrender the pretense. Sneaking a counterfeit soul-life never works. It always blows out the sidewall when you're least expecting it. Then it's misery all around. It's better to get up, stand up, no matter how homemade your platform, and live the most you can, the best you can, and forgo the sneaking of counterfeits. Hold out for what has real meaning and health for you."
Oh boy, lemme tell you, my Shadow has exploded all over the walls of myself, my home, and the ones I love the most. And my Great Internal Mother tried her mightiest to scrub it all clean, constructing a creative space in which it could live-rather than a destructive one-but alas, was clutching her pride so tight, she almost squeezed herself dry of circulation. She needed to call in the forklift, acknowledging that she needed help. The courage it takes to ask for help seems unsurmountable, but when done, excavates the Gremlin from front and center, scooping him out of his hole of despair and into a corner of healing. It is very important to keep the Destructive Gremlin at bay, however, not necessarily in a constrictive asylum, rather, in a "decent place with trees and sky and proper nourishment, and perhaps music to soothe, but not banished to a back ward in the psyche to be tortured and reviled."
What did all of this look like in reality? It looked like picking at food, keeping with the least caloric options, only to feel half-full... half-alive. It looked like working out vigorously because it was excitingly encouraged by the culture. After all, community is a human-need. But I did not achieve it authentically, rather, through the easiest, most accessible manner to a young woman who enjoys the connection with and validation. of those she cherishes. That was my fake soul-life. Unfortunately, even while inside that community I so desperately craved, I would scheme of ways for more. The gym folk and I were on a hike, and I was about to curtail it from the group to go up and down a hill I had obsessively hiked all summer ... because our hike wasn't "challenging enough". Thank Goddess James asked me to stay back. The explosion of my real soul surfaced with the ones I love the most ... my Auntie, Uncle, and James. But mostly with James. I would wake up in the morning with one objective: poop. Drink apple cider vinegar, coffee, go on a walk, anything it would take to empty myself. Because being full of food might as well have been equivalent to hanging a sign saying "INVALID" over my back. When it came time to meal-sharing, there was no such thing as enjoying it together. I demanded him to not look at me... to not make eye-contact... to not make sounds while eating. Because it might remind me of how good it actually felt to eat. Because I was ravenous and my instincts would demand that I get while the getting was good - to eat voraciously in anticipation of the upcoming forced famine. No, I must maintain this Persona of a young, fit girl who doesn't think about food or indulgence or selfishness or pettiness. Only working out, animals, and others. Right? The irony of it all is that holding up the Persona and disengaging from life was achieving EXACTLY WHAT I THOUGHT I WAS AVOIDING: thinking (no, obsessing) about food, indulgence, selfishness, and pettiness. It takes a lot of energy to constantly "make sure" X, Y, and Z are in place. I'd do anything to escape that mental prison. The association with this Persona became an addiction. Dr. Pinkola Estes states: "People who are grabbed and taken away by the [addiction] always initially feel that whatever substance it is that they are addicted to is a tremendous savior in one sense or another. Sometimes it gives a sense of fantastic power, or a false sense that they have the energy to stay awake all night, create until dawn, go without eating. Or perhaps it allows them to sleep without fearing demons, or calms their nerves, or helps them to not care so deeply about all the things they care so deeply about, or maybe it helps them not want to love and be loved anymore. However, in the end, it only creates ... a blurred background whirling by so fast that no real life is truly being lived...
This is the hard part; this is where the [addiction has] to be cut off. It hurts to cut oneself away from an addiction to self-destruction. Nobody knows why. You'd think a captured person would be relived to have turned this corner. You'd think they would feel saved in the nick of time. You'd think they would rejoice. But no, instead they go into a funk, they hear teeth gnashing, and discover they're the ones making that noise. They feel they are bleeding somehow, even though there is no blood. Yet, it is this pain, this severing, this 'not having a foot to stand on,' so to speak, this no home to go back to, that is exactly what is needed to start over, to start fresh, to go back to the handmade life, the one careful and mindfully crafted by us every day."
So I did. I quit my job with a boss that gave me the sexual validation I thought I needed to exist. I quit my eating disorder. I asked for help in my most desperate moment. Gathering up the courage to face the power the Destructive part of my psyche was the initiatory step; I then contemplated the amount of daily damage done and negotiated the longevity of my strength. Just how long could I continue to break-down each and every day, screaming at the one I loved the most, pacing the floor, impulsively walking whenever food was around? Just how long could I let the fear of being seen, being loved, being vulnerable run my day? What could I do to strengthen my ability to tame my Gremlin - that which keeps me from my values, those I love, and any sort of productivity?
It came to me in the car, after screaming yet again about something unnecessarily petty in the face of the one I love while smacking myself in the face, vigorously and unwittingly: Ask for help. I. need. help.
So I asked for it. And the veil has lifted.
"Yes there is pain in being severed from the [addiction]. But being cut away from the addiction all at once is our only hope. It is a severing that is filled with absolute blessing. The feet will grow back, we will find our way, we will recover, we will run and jump and skip again some day. By then our handmade life will be ready. We'll slip into it and marvel that we could be so lucky to have another chance."
Here I am. So lucky to have another chance.
SIDENOTE: I've also learned about the Externalization of Power. Within killing the force of Destruction, a woman must hone their own power to do so. This means not letting external sources (people, systems, drugs -helpful and unhelpful ones) define your progress for you. Placing the responsibility of maintaining your well-being onto these sources strips you of your very own decision-making. Your power doesn't lay in what the result of taming your Gremlin might be, rather it lies in the very act of taming it. Asserting yourself to regain your psychic livelihood is, in and of itself, your power.
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