Parents’ Haunting Shadows

“A moment before I had been safe of all men’s respect, wealthy, beloved—the cloth laying for me in the dining-room at home; and now I was the common quarry of mankind, hunted, houseless, a known murderer, thrall to the gallows,” R.L. Stevenson, Strange Case of 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.

Of course, it is an intense process – 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 resentment 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, knitting, gardening, writing, hiking, painting) on the altar of motherhood. She resents postponing the business she could flourish in because her children are not yet 18 and they still need her.

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

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

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

Firstly, although the children don’t understand why, they cannot help but sense that they are a burden to their mother, making them feel guilty and causing 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 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.

Unfortunately, parents’ refusal to own and integrate their shadow may have disastrous consequences on the children, argued Carl Jung.

The famous 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,” said Jung, “his children were compelled to live out the dark side which he ignored.”

Meeting our shadow is crucial. The aim is not to fight it, but to have a constant 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.”

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

The best lesson we can teach our beloved children is that we accept ourselves and them as whole – made of both light and shadow.

Resources:

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