Parents’ Haunting Shadows

“Both repression of the knowledge of the Shadow, and identification with the Shadow, are attempts to escape the tension of the opposites within ourselves, attempts to ‘lose the bonds’ that hold together within us a light and dark side. The motive , of course, is to escape the pain of the problem, but if escaping the pain leads to psychological disaster, carrying the pain may give the possibility of wholeness.” John A. Sanford, “Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde”

“I would do anything for my child!” parents declare, hands over their hearts, eyes brimming with tears.

Beyond the emotion, there are very few statements that leave no room for doubt – and this is one of them.

“Would you confront your personal shadow?”

“What is that?”

Say that the shadow is our dark, hidden part, and some parents will turn away with a condescending ‘don’t-tell-me-how-to-raise-my-child’ grin or a self-assured ‘my-love-and-devotion-are-enough’ look.

In contrast, some parents will pause and say: “Tell me more about this shadow.”

I wish I could say that shadow work is merely unpleasant and uncomfortable. Truth be told, it can be disorienting, unsettling, raw and painful.

It is an intense process by all accounts – we come to know the Mr. Hyde within us.

Who is this Mr. Hyde?

Just as he stands as Dr. Jekyll’s abominable, disgusting alter ego in Stevenson’s novella, he becomes, as Connie Zweig and Jeremiah Abrams suggest, the embodiment of our “rage, jealousy, shame, lying, resentment, lust, greed, suicidal and murderous tendencies.” All these disowned emotions and rejected traits lie camouflaged “just beneath the surface, masked by our more proper selves.”

The shadow is hard to face, Zweig and Abrams explain, because “it is dangerous, disorderly, and forever in hiding, as if the light of consciousness would steal its very life.”

However, the courage to engage in shadow work is the best gift we can offer ourselves and our children.

To see why, let’s think of a mother who loves her children deeply, and is fully committed to them but, whether partly aware of it or not at all, she carries within her a quiet animosity toward motherhood.

She resents devoting most, if not all, of her time and energy to her children who will one day leave home and may not appreciate her fully. She resents sacrificing what she truly enjoys (dancing, reading, hiking, writing, painting and whatnot) on the altar of motherhood. She resents postponing the business she could flourish in because her children aren’t eighteen yet, and they still need her.

Her resentment doesn’t come alone – it triggers an equally abhorrent sense of guilt and shame which she might compensate for by harbouring a hidden contempt for mothers who don’t seem to do their best like her.

All these feelings, which are personally and socially unacceptable, are often repressed from awareness, but they generate a profound, relentless tension within her.

If the mother doesn’t face her shadow, what may happen?

Firstly, although her children can’t understand why, they will sense they are a burden to their mother, which will make them feel guilty and cause them to restrain themselves. Also, if the children feel loved only conditionally, they will try to earn their mother’s love by being perfect, which almost inevitably leads to a sense of failure. Not in the least, the mother’s unpredictable emotions may force the children to be constantly on high alert for her emotional signals.

Essentially, what children may unconsciously learn is that love is resentment, obligation, hardship and endurance.

It is therefore vital for parents to become aware of their shadow, and to accept that experiencing different emotional states toward their child is inevitable. According to John A. Sanford, what parents need to do is to carry the tension between opposites, not to escape it:

“Under the duress of family life people are certain to experience divisions within themselves. Love for a child may be contradicted by at least a momentary hatred; a sincere desire to do the best for the child may be contradicted by powerful feelings of anger or rejection. In this way we exprience what divided people we are and this self-confrontation generates psychological consciousness.”

Parents’ refusal to own and integrate their shadow may have disastrous consequences on the children, as Carl G. Jung pointed out.

The well-known psychologist told A.I. Allensby about a remarkable Quaker that he had met: a man who couldn’t imagine ever having done anything wrong in his entire life.

Sadly, when his children grew up, his son turned to theft and his daughter to prostitution.

“Because the father would not take on his shadow,” Jung explained, “his children were compelled to live out the dark side which he ignored.”

Meeting our shadow doesn’t mean fighting or controlling it, but having a constant, conscious relationship with it. We need to expand our sense of self, as Zweig and Abrahams put it, “by balancing the one-sidedness of our conscious attitudes with our unconscious depths.”

Within each of us lives a Dr. Jekyll and a Mr. Hyde.

It is only when we accept ourselves and our children as whole beings – made of both light and shadow – that we truly start showing our love for them.

Resources:

Connie Zweig and Jeremiah Abrams, Meeting the Shadow. The Hidden Power of the Dark Side of Human Nature

John A. Stanford, “Parenting and Your Child’s Shadow” in Meeting the Shadow. The Hidden Power of the Dark Side of Human Nature