Shadow Work on the Black Moon Lilith Rising Podcast
Recently, I was able to join my friend Adama on her podcast, The Black Moon Lilith Rising Podcast. In our episode we were able to talk about shadow work and how Jung unifies the worlds of psychology, spirituality and astrology. I had a lot of fun in this episode and hope that you enjoy listening!Listen to the episode at the link below:
https://www.lilithastrology.com/podcasts/black-moon-lilith-rising/episodes/2147824170
You can also learn more about Lilith Astrology and Adama's work at LilithAstrology.com and on Instagram @lilithastrology.
Why I'm Writing a Book About Shadow Work
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I'll admit that even in the field of psychology shadow work isn't exactly a mainstream idea, so then why write about it? I think the key to better mental health, both within an individual and in the larger collective society, is about making the unconscious conscious.
What is shadow work?
In essence, making the unconscious conscious is at the root of shadow work. The shadow, as conceived by Carl Jung, represents the often hidden (and almost always undesired) parts of ourselves that we regularly have a hard time accessing. As we go about our daily lives, tending to our regular tasks, we all carry with us a shadow self.
Within in this shadow self are our deepest motivations, our hidden gifts, and our most profound traumas. If we work to cast a light on this shadow self, we can work towards true acknowledgement...and hopefully acceptance. Shadow work gives us a pathway towards this integration, ensuring that we learn to live alongside our shadow selves with a greater sense of awareness. With that awareness comes greater sense of personal ease and peace, as well as diminished likelihood that shadow self will run amok, working behind the scenes as it complicates our relationships, career and mental health.
Is the world changing...or are we, the people, changing?
In the past few years, we've seen a huge cultural shift in how greater society and politics shape our lives. This is true for the United States, but you may have noticed that white supremacy and white nationalism are up all around the world.
More broadly, there is an increase in violent rhetoric online and it's hard to escape the depth of pain that we're all experiencing on a day to day basis. It's clear to me that struggles for power, deep-seated feelings of envy and hatred, as well as self-loathing are more present than they have been in the past couple of decades.
As a therapist, and a healer, I believe this marks a cultural shift. There is an incredible amount of pain and grief in the world that we live in. I spend most of my days helping clients sift through that pain and make their way to fuller lives whether we're exploring career changes or relationship concerns. The context in which we live is challenging for many of us.
On top of that, the pandemic seems to have presented a reckoning for so many people. Some people began to realize just how unsatisfied they are with their lives. Others find it hard to be swayed by divisive beliefs on the corners of the internet.
As a young child, I was a fan of Greek mythology and it's almost as if Pandora opened the box herself in the past few years. Now, we're faced with an insurmountable amount of grief and loss collectively, all while navigating the challenges in our own personal corners of the world.
Eyes wide open
There is no doubt in my mind that the past few years have opened us all up in ways that we didn't anticipate. As all those darker sides of humanity (bigotry, violence, selfishness, etc.) find more ways to rear their ugly heads, I can't help but wonder how much better, or healthier, we could all be if we spent more time understanding ourselves in much deeper ways.
How might we be able to feel better, feel more connected, and more secure if we found ways to really BE with ourselves and accept ourselves...even the darker parts, more fully? How could the world look different if we all did our part to understand our rich, internal lives, so we didn't leak on others, or feel the impulse to project onto others our deepest insecurities and fears?
This is why I think shadow work is so important right now.
Healing comes through integration
While I don't claim to have all the answers (in fact, I think any wise person knows that they, in fact, know very little) I know through simple observation that as a collective, things really need to change in order for our world to sustain itself. Before we can really learn to take care of society's most vulnerable, before we can build families with a legacy of fulfillment and kindness we all have to do our part - our own internal work - to be the best versions of ourselves that we can be in this moment.
If you know that you are doing that - that you are embodying this best version of yourself right now, then I wholeheartedly commend you. As the world continues to spin, let us all make a concerted effort to create a world where we feel at peace internally - and have no problems in extending that peace outward. I think we desperately need it.
The Hidden Danger in Your Social Media Feeds
Social media is a part of everyday life for many of us. We view curated stories from friends, celebrities and brands that are of interest. We keep in contact with people who mean a lot to us, or once did, in a world where many of us end up relocating from our hometowns in search of new adventures and opportunities.
These reasons make sites like Facebook, Twitter and Instagram a huge positive in our lives, but there could be a hidden danger to your mental health lurking everyday in your social media feeds. This danger is vicarious traumatization. In the past, this has been a particular concern for mental health providers, but is a phenomenon that anyone may experience.
We haven't been prepared to understand the implications of social media. Experiencing vicarious trauma (sometimes out of our own immediate control) is a risk we take when we engage in social media regularly these days. Open any feed and you will readily see photos, images or videos of violence and injury. You’ll also hear stories of suicide or recovery from mental health or addiction issues. While the latter stories help us authentically connect in ways that we haven’t before, all of this exposure can also negatively impact our mental health.
The idea of social media negatively impacting our mental health isn’t new, but few have talked about the impact of indirect experiencing, or vicarious trauma, intentionally. To better understand what vicarious trauma is, it’s important to take a look at a basic description of Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD).
PTSD is a mental health condition characterized by a cluster of responses (or symptoms) after experiencing a traumatic event. These indicators may manifest as:
- Intrusive thoughts or memories of the event(s)
- Physical reactions to cues reminding you of the event(s) ranging from discomfort to dissociation and even re-experiencing traumatic event(s) in the present
- Intense and significant responses to being exposed to triggers (such as sights, images, videos, sounds, smells, etc.) that remind you of said event(s)
- Thoughts of self-blame, guilt or hopelessness
- Feelings of sadness, fear, guilt, anxiety, etc. and greater difficulty experiencing positive feelings such as happiness, peace, joy, etc.
All of these symptoms must have been experienced in the context of some traumatic event(s). In the past, this only included events like war or sexual assault, but the criteria for PTSD has become broader over time. Now, the diagnostic criteria indicates it is possible to experience PTSD even if you did not directly experience or live the triggering event yourself. Fear or threat of seriously bodily injury to someone you know also qualifies as an activating event. That means that you could potentially also experience PTSD if you knew a friend or loved one experienced terrible events.
What does that have to do with social media?
Consider that you’re a Black mother. Routinely you log on to Facebook and encounter racist rhetoric or see yet another video of police abuse of power resulting in the death of a young Black person. How might you feel to see these videos over and over again? How might that impact your ability to see the world as a safe space for your child(ren)? How might that impact your mood and ways you navigate different spaces with your child(ren)?
Now imagine you’re a trans woman of color and you predominantly have found social safety and security online. Almost every week not only do you encounter transphobic rhetoric in comment sections of posts and articles, but you also cross news story after news story of yet another young trans woman of color dying at the hands of someone else. How would that make you feel?
You may end up feeling pretty unsafe walking in the world. You might become less prone to interact and trust others. You might wish that you were someone else. You might wish that the identities of your loved ones weren’t reflected in these kinds of horrific stories. You might feel hopeless and powerless. Everyday, on every social feed, you’re reminded of how your life is viewed as less than. You question the validity of your worth in the world. You wonder if anyone would care if that happened to you or your loved one.
You might hide. As that mother, you might wake up in the middle of the night in terror that your young son is out late. As a trans person, you may not perform gender in the way you might ideally for fear of bodily injury or worse.
There are many people with a whole host of different identities that may be reflected in the stories you see and read in social media. And the reality is, if you’re on these sites multiple times per day, you’re consistently faced with images of people who look like you experiencing violence, at worst, and sometimes snarky comments and/or personal attacks.
How do we navigate this confusing world of endless connectivity?
The answer may not be to disconnect from social media completely. After all, if you disconnect you will miss out on the positivity and connectedness you experience from your online communities. Taking time be more intentional and mindful about your use, as opposed to following each impulse to check your feeds, could be a wise way to manage your connectivity and moderate your exposure to traumatizing material.
The next time you log on, ask yourself, "What am I hoping to gain right now?" One simple question might drastically change your relationship to social media and how you use it. Until then, happy scrolling.
Lady Gaga Opens Up About Living with PTSD
Performer Lady Gaga recently opened up about living with Posttraumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). The condition affects about 8 million US adults each year (US Department of Veteran Affairs). Lady Gaga recently penned an open letter for her Born This Way Foundation that I am sharing here in its entirety to help those who may be living with PTSD.
She writes:
"I have wrestled for some time about when, how and if I should reveal my diagnosis of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD). After five years of searching for the answers to my chronic pain and the change I have felt in my brain, I am finally well enough to tell you. There is a lot of shame attached to mental illness, but it’s important that you know that there is hope and a chance for recovery.It is a daily effort for me, even during this album cycle, to regulate my nervous system so that I don’t panic over circumstances that to many would seem like normal life situations. Examples are leaving the house or being touched by strangers who simply want to share their enthusiasm for my music.
I also struggle with triggers from the memories I carry from my feelings of past years on tour when my needs and requests for balance were being ignored. I was overworked and not taken seriously when I shared my pain and concern that something was wrong. I ultimately ended up injured on the Born This Way Ball. That moment and the memory of it has changed my life forever. The experience of performing night after night in mental and physical pain ingrained in me a trauma that I relive when I see or hear things that remind me of those days.
I also experience something called dissociation which means that my mind doesn’t want to relive the pain so “I look off and I stare” in a glazed over state. As my doctors have taught me, I cannot express my feelings because my pre-frontal cortex (the part of the brain that controls logical, orderly thought) is overridden by the amygdala (which stores emotional memory) and sends me into a fight or flight response. My body is in one place and my mind in another. It’s like the panic accelerator in my mind gets stuck and I am paralyzed with fear.
When this happens I can’t talk. When this happens repeatedly, it makes me have a common PTSD reaction which is that I feel depressed and unable to function like I used to. It’s harder to do my job. It’s harder to do simple things like take a shower. Everything has become harder. Additionally, when I am unable to regulate my anxiety, it can result in somatization, which is pain in the body caused by an inability to express my emotional pain in words.
But I am a strong and powerful woman who is aware of the love I have around me from my team, my family and friends, my doctors and from my incredible fans who I know will never give up on me. I will never give up on my dreams of art and music. I am continuing to learn how to transcend this because I know I can. If you relate to what I am sharing, please know that you can too.
Traditionally, many associate PTSD as a condition faced by brave men and women that serve countries all over the world. While this is true, I seek to raise awareness that this mental illness affects all kinds of people, including our youth. I pledge not only to help our youth not feel ashamed of their own conditions, but also to lend support to those servicemen and women who suffer from PTSD. No one’s invisible pain should go unnoticed.
I am doing various modalities of psychotherapy and am on medicine prescribed by my psychiatrist. However, I believe that the most inexpensive and perhaps the best medicine in the world is words. Kind words…positive words…words that help people who feel ashamed of an invisible illness to overcome their shame and feel free. This is how I and we can begin to heal. I am starting today, because secrets keep you sick. And I don’t want to keep this secret anymore.
A note from my psychologist, Dr. Nancy: ‘If you think you might have PTSD, please seek professional help. There is so much hope for recovery. Many people think that the event that stimulated PTSD needs to be the focus. Yet often, people will experience the same event and have completely different reactions to it. It is my opinion that trauma occurs in an environment where your feelings and emotional experience are not valued, heard and understood. The specific event is not the cause of traumatic experience. This lack of a “relational home” for feelings is the true cause of traumatic experience.
Finding support is key.
Click here or visit the National Institute for Mental Health for more information on PTSD in all its forms and where to find help. If you are in crisis now, call the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline at 1-800-273-TALK (1-800-273-8225)."
A Discussion on Trauma with Dr. Jamie Marich
Today I'm excited to share with you a video of a TedX Talk with Dr. Jamie Marich, a mental health professional and humanitarian who I've had the pleasure of meeting in person at a training in the city back in 2014.This talk encompasses so much of what Dr. Marich is about: her centeredness and being grounded in not just the jargon of mental health but the need to be human as we interact with each other's hurts, and not just as professionals but as people. One quote from Dr. Marich that really stuck out to me so clearly embodies this and her overall philosophy. Marich shares the following:
"This world is full of hurt people with unhealed emotional wounding. When these wounds remain unaddressed, we play through the game of life in various degrees of an injured state or we run the risk of pervasively harming other people by bleeding all over them, metaphorically speaking."
Check out the powerful and enlightening full TedX Talk below: