Romancing the Shadow

by Connie Zweig

  For example, Gloria disclosed that ever since she was a young girl she often felt envied by other girls and later by women. “They envied my independence, or my family’s closeness, or my career success, or my intelligence. But it always made me a little uncomfortable, as if they wanted something from me, as if they felt inferior to me somehow.” And in that moment, Gloria stopped and, taking in a breath, looked at her therapist and said, “Oh, I guess I secretly felt superior to them, too. Ail the way back to my sister, I unconsciously held the superior position—maybe that’s why people felt inferior and envied me all this time.”

  To break this lifelong pattern and open up the possibility of more equality in her relationships, Gloria does not need to give up her self-esteem; however, she may discover that her feelings of superiority mask their opposite: feelings of inferiority, which have been carried by her sister. Similarly, her defenses against her own depression have permitted her to live a life with less suffering; her sister, though, may know a depth of feeling she can only imagine. By uncovering her own feelings of inferiority and depression, Gloria can discover her separate self beyond the split attributes with her sister. In this way, she will be more free to explore into her sister’s territory, thereby ending their lifelong turf war.

  By acknowledging in herself those qualities that she disowned and projected onto the Other, by doing shadow-work with the internal image of her sister as a character at the table, she can enrich her own self-image, as well as feel more compassion for her actual sister, perhaps one day cultivating a more authentic relationship with her. Gloria’s ticket to individuation can be found in her lost, rejected traits. Her shadow sister, then, may be her redeemer.

  How is the pie of family shadow split among your siblings? Does a sibling carry a quality that might enrich your own treasury?

  In the end, siblings are part of our fates; we are part of theirs. Some of us spend all our lives standing in each other’s shadows; others discover there a beloved friend.

  SEXUAL SHADOWS: INCEST AND INITIATION

  Family members carry divine or archetypal energies for one another. The child is always the Divine Child; the mother, the Great Mother or Queen; the father the Great Father or King. For this reason, parent-child incest is more than a personal betrayal; for the child, it’s an encounter with the dark side of a god. Thus an abusive mother as goddess of creation becomes goddess of destruction, dancing like Kali on the corpses of the dead. Or she transforms into Medusa, whose stare petrifies her child into stony silence. In the same way, the father as lord of the house becomes Lord of Darkness, taking on the face of Hades, who steals the young Persephone away from her mother and penetrates her in the obscurity of the underworld.

  With incest, a timeless taboo that lives in the collective body of humanity is broken. With incest, a household is cursed with a psychic affliction. With incest, a child’s natural erotic warmth and authentic openness turn cold and hidden as shame, like the original fig leaf, covers over a naked vulnerability.

  Although the act is sexual, some of its consequences are deeply spiritual. When a parent sexually violates the trust of a child, the young one’s spiritual wholeness is violated. Betrayed, robbed of innocence by those who should be the protectors of her innocence, the child responds unexpectedly: with self-blame. Because a child is dependent on the adult for its very life, the shadow makes a U-turn, transforming the offending adult into a good parent and the victim into a bad child. In psychology, this internal act has come to be known as identification with the aggressor. The child’s soul is so vulnerable that it must protect the parent as the wrongdoer, thereby taking on the blame. To her, she is not simply engaging in bad behavior, she is badness itself. This is the root of the intense feelings of shame and contamination that are epidemic among survivors of abuse, ingrained at the level of identity. And this is the root of their ongoing mistrust of others and their lack of faith in life itself. Finally, in this internalized parent, the family pattern is carried on.

  If the family’s religious orientation reinforces the offending parent’s rule as divine law, then the child’s obedience is sanctioned by higher powers. If the parent denies the behavioral reality, then the child is confronted with an untenable situation, a Faustian bargain: to deny his or her own bodily experience. At the soul level, this calls for the survivor’s sacrificial death: the surrender of identity, the loss of will, the end of reality testing.

  Tragically, experts estimate that today a shockingly high percentage of girls and boys are molested. As more and more adults have recalled episodes of childhood abuse in therapy, the validity of their memories has been called into question and dubbed “the false memory syndrome.” For us, the actual reality of these incidents is less significant than the reality of the psyche: If a boy was not sexually molested but has a felt sense of intrusion, he may have been emotionally molested. Either way, his soul was violated and cries out for healing. If he does not receive it, he may identify with being a victim and, in turn, become a victimizer of the next generation, spreading the wound like a virus. In this way, the shadow of the victim/perpetrator returns to the scene of the crime, re-creating the past in the innocent young ones.

  As the cycle of abuse recurs again and again, the child tells herself: “This is really happening,” creating a character at the table. Another part of her responds, “It can’t be happening,” creating another character. Eventually, her memory gives up, banishing the event and its attendant feelings into the shadow. It cannot retain the truth and allow her to survive. The defenses of repression, dissociation, and denial are at work.

  We suggest that these same defense mechanisms that arise in the survivor are at work in the perpetrator and may be reinforced by alcohol. With these reinforcements, the perpetrator can banish the event into the shadow, perhaps becoming rigid and moralistic to defend against it, and thus creating a rigid family persona. If the perpetrator recalls the event, he may feel mortified, frightened of his sexuality, and suffer from compulsive urges to act out. His guilt and regret become self-hatred, perhaps turning into depression or cruelty to himself or others.

  Without minimizing the crippling effects of this trauma, we would like to suggest that incest, as the most heinous violation, can also be an initiation into shadow. For many survivors today, its discovery is the first step in the long journey toward redemption. It evokes the poignant question: How can one best live, like the Fisher King in the grail myth, with an open, unhealing wound?

  This has been the journey for our clients Trudy and Sheila—to establish an honest, living relationship with their molestation and to understand what it requires of them. Trudy, a highly competent executive secretary with an infectious laugh, told her story. Her father died when she was nine. She remembers longing for him, like a prince who would return to rescue her. But the next year, her mother married Joe, a physician, so the young girl turned to him as her new father with hope and trust. But Trudy’s trust was betrayed when, two years later, Joe began to enter her room late at night and molest her. She began to dread going to sleep; she would hear the squeak of the door and jump in alarm. During the day, she would suffer panic attacks; at night, she would suffer nightmares.

  Trudy recalls being terrified of saying no to Joe. She was afraid that he would leave her two younger sisters, her mother, and herself, as her dad had done. So, in her version of the Faustian bargain, she became their protector, a child-wife who pleased him to make him stay.

  Trudy’s stepfather swore her to secrecy with a threat of violence. And she held the secret for five years. But with puberty an additional conflict arose within her: Trudy began to be flooded with feelings of arousal against her will. She fantasized about Joe and, at the same time, felt disgusted with herself. When she started to enjoy the sex, she also started to feel a secret competition with her mother for Joe’s affections. At the same time, she felt tormented with terrible guilt because she began to believe that it was her fault that Joe turned to her rather than to her mother. S
he began to feel that if he were not aroused, he might go away. If she did not wear attractive clothes, he might lose interest. Like Persephone, Trudy had been pulled down into Hades, her innocence lost, her childhood never to return. And her rage, which would be directed against men, banished into shadow.

  When Trudy turned fifteen, she began to stay away from home for longer and longer periods, discovering a budding identity outside of her family. She became infatuated with a girl her own age who returned her feelings and respected her sexual limits, so that she could give and receive affection without concomitant feelings of hatred. Soon, she told her stepfather that she would call the police if he ever entered her room at night again. The molestation stopped—and so did Trudy’s interest in men. She turned to women for a safer experience of sexuality, especially gentle women with whom she could be the aggressor and act out the powerful role.

  At thirty, Trudy met Malcolm, a younger and rather innocent man who had not yet established a career. When he wished to begin dating her, she felt frightened and uncertain. Respecting her limits, Malcolm proposed a friendship instead. After spending time together for about a year, slowly and tentatively, they fell in love and eventually married.

  During this time, with the support of her husband and therapist, Trudy allowed herself to feel her buried rage at her stepfather, Joe, and to confront him with her memories. He admitted the full truth, disclosing that Trudy’s mother had withheld sex from him all those years. Trudy had to face yet another harsh reality: her mother’s collusion.

  Doing the difficult steps of shadow-work, Trudy separated out the characters at the table: “the whore” (character 1) was the adolescent girl who felt aroused by her stepfather’s touch, becoming a seductress and enjoying her power over the older man. When “the whore” took over, Trudy felt dirty and ashamed (character 2), but this character seemed safer than feeling vulnerable and receptive. So she became more tough and bossy (character 3), using her power shield to protect her wounded soul, which then became a pattern in her marriage as well. As she made these distinctions and learned to witness the characters, she slowly began to feel less defended and more vulnerable with Malcolm.

  As the emotional intimacy of their marriage deepened, however, Malcolm felt threatened. He began to make excuses about avoiding intimacy and rejecting Trudy’s sexual advances. A few months later, he began to sense memories of his own molestation by his father. He was not certain if these memories were real or imagined. But he realized that he was becoming controlled and rigid around sexuality when Trudy initiated it, and he did not know why.

  When Malcolm confessed his memories to Trudy, she was stunned. But this was not the final blow. Three months after Malcolm’s discovery, his father was caught molesting a young niece. With the help of her therapist, Trudy reported the incidences to the Department of Social Services and, in shock and retribution for telling the family secret, the family began to shun her. No one wanted to believe this horrific tale. DSS sent a Catholic caseworker to interview Malcolm’s dad, a practicing Catholic. The caseworker believed that he had repented—and DSS dropped the case, leaving the young niece in harm’s way.

  In facing her feelings of rage and helplessness, Trudy told her therapist, “It feels like a never-ending story. The theme of abuse haunts me wherever I go.” But it did not end there. Malcolm got a job assignment in Trudy’s hometown. Moving back, they brought her secret home with them. “It’s as if my presence is a constant reminder of the abuse to everyone,” she said with finality.

  Trudy continues to feel pain and sadness about what happened to her, but she no longer suffers from denial or shame. She carries her wound openly, honoring herself and her healing process. She tells her own truth in her adult relationships with her stepfather and her husband, and she has keen antennae for those who have lost their authenticity and live in denial. She continues to reclaim her rage from the shadow and, with it, she has uncovered her capacity to be vulnerable.

  Another client’s story portrays the long-term effects of trauma and their relation to shadow-work. Sheila, twenty-five, who works at a local bookstore, sits in an oversized T-shirt and sweatpants in the therapy session sobbing, holding her head in her hands, her long blond hair falling over her face. “Last night I felt so crazy, I couldn’t sleep. I felt small and dirty, so I stayed up cleaning the house, just scrubbing walls and floors and sinks. It’s filthy, I couldn’t get it clean. I thought I was losing my mind.”

  Sheila had been looking at childhood photos of her brother, her sister, and herself when she recalled, for the thousandth time, a painful act of betrayal that changed her life when she was eight years old: Her father, as usual, was away on a drinking binge. Her mother was preoccupied in the other room. A male neighbor, age eighteen or twenty years, stood in the bedroom with his pants down, forcing Sheila’s ten-year-old brother to perform sexual acts. Then the neighbor picked up Sheila and placed her on the big bed. The neighbor told her brother to get on top of her or he would tell everyone what they had done a moment before. She felt small and helpless, petrified with fear, pinned down under her brother’s body. Then she felt a terrible piercing pain, and she cried softly to herself.

  Sheila told her therapist that the images would not stop coming. They filled her mind so that she couldn’t think about anything else. “I just feel wrong,” she said. “I feel dirty, ugly, and polluted. I can never get rid of it.” Like the scarlet letter “A” for adultery, Sheila wears her identity as a victim of childhood sexual abuse. She feels ugly, although she’s quite attractive. She feels false, a phony, although she comes across as natural and sincere. She feels distrusting of others, although she trusted the therapist quickly. And she deeply distrusts herself, remaining frightened of her own impulses and desires.

  Sheila continued her story. Later that night she lay in bed with her live-in boyfriend, Teddy. When he began to kiss her, she felt swept away, flooded by archetypal content. “I left my body. Some part of me didn’t want to be there, didn’t want to be touched or feel turned on. I mean, if I had stayed present I would have felt outraged at him. And it’s not his fault.”

  Blessed by Mnemosyne, goddess of memory, Sheila first remembered her molestation in a dream when she was sixteen. At that time she asked her mother and sister about the event, triggering memories in her sister and corroboration from her mom. Sheila felt that she had uncovered a dirty secret that had been buried under her other issues, much like the fairy-tale pea under the princess’s mattresses: her dislike of her own body, her discomfort with sex, her tendency to space out and lose track of time, and her fear of her brother, now an active alcoholic like their father.

  When Sheila’s therapist took a summer vacation break, the young woman felt abandoned and alone. She was caring for her young nephew when her mind filled with intrusive thoughts: She imagined herself molesting the innocent young boy. “Dark shadows crossed my mind, taking me over until I lost myself and imagined doing bad things to him. My mind got worked up, with the gears spinning but not engaged. My heart was pounding. I kept wishing these thoughts would go away, but they wouldn’t. I was horrified, completely ashamed of myself.”

  Sheila called this part of herself “the dark side.” The therapist asked her to identify the sensations she feels in her body when the “dark side” appears. Then she can become aware of it, slow down, and do her breathing exercise so that it doesn’t overtake her. Then Sheila began to hold a dialogue with that part of herself that might hurt a child, robbing him of his innocence. It told her in a cold, uncaring voice: “I want to do to him what was done to me.” Sheila’s brother had overpowered her, leaving her feeling like a helpless victim. Now, some part of her wanted to identify with the aggressor and take the power back by becoming an aggressor against her nephew, attempting to vanquish the victim.

  Then another character at the table spoke up, her “protector.” “This part protects me from the dark side, but it goes too far—it doesn’t let me trust myself about anything at all.” Again
, Sheila identified the sensations and thoughts associated with this character.

  When these two characters show up and Sheila unknowingly identifies with them, her adult ego gets paralyzed. “I get lost because I think they are me. They just take over, and I don’t know how I think or feel. So I feel crazy.”

  Sheila came to understand that her fundamental unconscious feeling about herself—she is bad—was influencing her to commit an act that would prove her right, that would justify her sense of badness. The shadow may lead us to act in a way that evokes a particular character to help us get in touch with deeper feelings about ourselves. When we identify with the character, we lose control and unconsciously make choices that may be destructive. But when we uncover this feeling consciously, we may be able to avoid having to act it out unconsciously. And by centering on the breath and reconnecting with the authentic Self, we can disconnect from the complex, become more aware of repressed shadow influences, and discover our freedom of choice again.

  Doing ongoing shadow-work, Sheila struggled for several years with her self-hatred, her feelings of contamination, and her efforts toward spiritual perfectionism. But as she witnessed the dark side character and experienced that it was not her, she slowly gained a deeper self-acceptance and self-trust.

  If you believe that you were molested, how does the victim or bad child character at the table influence your adult life? Who does it blame and who does it protect? What does it need for healing at the level of soul?

  Like sexuality, family money may also carry the projection of family soul and become tainted with shadow.

  MONEY SHADOWS: INHERITANCE, SELF-WORTH, AND GREEDINESS