People look to many different things to bring them joy – money, status, a beautiful place to live, the perfect partner, children, friends…. However, many of us also have a sense that it is a person’s way of being – who or how they are – that has a greater influence on their happiness than the people or things around them. Many of us strive to find this joy within ourselves, and we equally hope that those we love will experience this kind of joy – and we want to support them in finding it for themselves.
But how do we find this?
Being positive about ourselves and our lives sounds like a logical starting point for working towards joy, and is encouraged by many different ideologies and schools of thought – surely choosing to think positive thoughts will bring us closer to joy… isn’t it?
This article discusses why this isn’t necessarily the case, and how positivity can actually move us further away from experiencing the deep and lasting joy for which we are searching.
Joy
A core belief that I hold when working with the shadow is that true joy comes from knowing, accepting, loving and blessing all parts of ourselves. This means knowing and accepting the parts of us that are in deep grief, or filled with rage, frightened, hesitant, hateful or full of shame or guilt. It means welcoming these parts of ourselves into our sacred realm, tenderly caring for them, and listening to their needs and the powerful emotions that they carry. As we come to know and accept more and more of ourselves, we find we are more able to sit back, relaxed in our own skin, knowing there is nothing in us that we fear, nothing we need to hide. Sitting in this place colours all our life experiences. It gives us a deep confidence, whatever is happening around us, and allows joy to arise even in the midst of life’s most difficult challenges. We lead ourselves through life from a foundation of joy. Throughout our life we can find joy bubbling up from this place in us, unforced and unbidden. When it comes, there is no reaching, no trying; joy simply flows.
Positivity
On the other hand a rigid insistence on positivity at all times, constantly striving for only the ‘positive’, requires a denial or repression of the ‘negative’ ‘unwanted’ aspects of ourselves – a pushing away or hiding of these unwelcome parts. This can be in complete opposition to the process of self-acceptance described above. Other people can unwittingly encourage this in us by espousing certain oversimplified spiritual beliefs and practices, as well as through platitudes and well-known phrases such as:
Can’t you just be happy? No one likes someone who’s angry all the time. You create more of what you focus on. What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger. It’s all happening for a reason. Time heals. If you can’t think of anything nice to say, don’t say anything at all. Cheer up – it might never happen. There’s no point in being sad. You look much prettier when you smile. Man up. Boys don’t cry. You have to be strong. I’m sure he/she loves you really. Can’t you just be more flexible? Just go with the flow. It will all look better in the morning. Life doesn’t give you things you can’t handle. You’ve been through worse. Think about it from his/her point of view. I can’t believe they really meant to do that. That’s not a very constructive thing to say. You have to forgive or it will eat you up. You’re the only person who suffers if you hold on to this anger. You’re being very negative. Negative emotions give you cancer.
On top of the pain you are already experiencing, you are now experiencing the pain of not being allowed to be yourself. Of being told your feelings are inappropriate, invalid. You now carry the shame of being ‘wrong’ somehow in the way you are dealing with your upset, and the guilt of upsetting others with your ‘negative’, ‘unhelpful’ responses.
However, the people who make these comments aren’t intending to be cruel. They are simply sharing their own manual for living life. They have no experience of emotions being helpful in any way. They just don’t see the point in them. The problem here is that the value of emotions isn’t something that can be explained intellectually – it has to be experienced. The invitation ‘Why not just be happy?’ is hard to argue with – it certainly sounds like a very good idea! Why would you take the risk of experiencing these painful emotions if you have no prior experience of what is to be gained by allowing them?
Yet unfortunately, these phrases that sound so benign, even caring, are subtly (or not so subtly) asking the person to move away from what they are feeling in that moment and suggesting that it is not ok or welcome for them to be experiencing this. How can we possibly feel joy if we are getting the message that parts of us are unacceptable and we have to keep them hidden? We are being told to hide our distress away, and in doing so, we lose the opportunity of ever finding the comfort and support which could bring us relief. Resigning ourselves to this can create inner despair and hopelessness. Relentless positivity requires a deadness to our true selves, a repression of the emotions that are our very life force. Our smile – although beautiful- will have a hollowness behind it, and we will regularly need to find a place to hide, since being around others in this way is exhausting and impossible to sustain. Behind this lovely smile, which others may enjoy and encourage, an ugly battle is going on, where parts of us are being banished, gagged, strangled and silenced. This is very painful for our true self. A dream that many people have described having is one where they become aware they have killed someone, and they are trying to hide the body. One interpretation of such a dream is that we have killed a part of ourselves and we are trying to keep it hidden. In our waking life, we may develop the sense of wearing a mask and yet not really understand where this feeling comes from, as hiding our true selves has become second nature and we are no longer consciously aware we are doing it.
An insistence on positivity comes from a place of fear
It is important to recognise here that relentless positivity comes from a place of fear – fear of powerful emotions and the energy they contain. There can, of course, be validity in this fear – emotions can certainly be overwhelming, even damaging if they are not held and met effectively. However, the insistence on positivity needs to be recognised for what it is – a negative response to intense emotions, driven by fear. It is a running away from what is true and alive because it threatens to overwhelm us, and there is no one around us who can help us to contain it. It is a coping strategy for dealing with aspects of ourselves that we believe are not loved or welcome. It is a contorted, desperate straining for the light because we do not know how to be with the darkness.
The challenges and gifts in accepting ourselves
It takes a brave parent to raise a child and to welcome all their emotions. It takes a brave person to be in a relationship where all emotions are welcome. Yet the riches of such a way of life are profound, and the vitality and joy that naturally flow from this far outshine the fragile ‘light’ of positivity and the brittle, unsustainable nature of such an outlook.
If you try, yet struggle, to be positive in your life, it may be that this way of handling emotions was a coping mechanism that served you well as you were growing up, or got you through a particularly challenging time in your life, but perhaps now you are outgrowing it. When you reach a point where life is safe enough, you may wish to weigh up the risks of exploring these ‘negative’ sides of yourself, and to see if you want to take the challenge of exploring these hidden thoughts and feelings. This opens up the possibility of discovering the joy that can be released along with the grief and the pain.
The fact that joy comes from accepting the ‘negative’ parts of ourselves is one of the many paradoxes that we work with in shadow work. This is why arguments such as ‘You create what more of what you focus on’ along with other statements listed above, whilst having some validity in some situations, simply don’t express the complex way in which human beings work.
Being with the ‘negative’ feelings in others
In shadow work, we believe that the Heart Centred Leader part within us is where this self-love lies. If we do not love ourselves, we cannot possibly fully love another. Not because we do not want to, but because it is impossible to offer someone something that we are not capable of giving to ourselves. If we cannot accept our own places of shame/weakness/anger/ hatred/grief/fear, we cannot accept these in another. And if we don’t accept these parts of someone else, then we are not fully loving them. Our love is conditional and shallow, and the other person will sense our judgement and feel pain at having these parts of themselves denied.
We can sometimes push others’ feelings away totally instinctively without realising we’re doing it, or it may be because we just don’t know what else to say. Sometimes we simply can’t bear to sit and witness someone else’s pain, and we may find ourselves offering them one of the platitudes above in the hope that we can move swiftly away from such difficult thoughts and feelings. If you’d like to try a different way of being with people who are experiencing ‘negative’ emotions, one place to start is simply to show that you are comfortable with the place they are in and willing to allow it. If someone is telling you about something painful that’s going on, you can try simply saying, ‘That sounds really upsetting.’ Or ‘I can see why that would make you really angry.’ Or ‘I’m so sorry that happened.’ or ‘You really can’t see any good in life at the moment, can you?’ Try to show them as best you can that you get what they’re experiencing in this moment, and you have no need for them to be feeling anything different. It is tremendously powerful just to let another person know you are willing to be with their ‘negative’ emotions. That you don’t fear these and don’t feel the need to push them away. But of course, the most important place to start practicing this acceptance and allowing is with yourself – and this is the biggest challenge of all – and for most of us a life long journey.
Marianne Hill is the founder and director of Healing The Shadow, and author of Healing the Shadow - Deep Process Psychotherapy.
This article was first posted on Marianne’s blog, Exploring the Shadow.