Episode 256 (Transcript): Shadow Work | A Conversation with Jana Spangler
Episode Transcript
Many thanks to listener Kim Kershaw for her work in transcribing this episode!
This episode can be found on any podcast app or can be listened to here on our website as well. All the notes and resources we cited in the episode are found at this link as well:
JS: And befriending our inner critic because we’ve built up such a shadow that every way that we naturally are is not okay. We’re supposed to fit this mold. And so it’s reclaiming parts of - That we’ve had to repress and push down for acceptability. So it’s bringing those up and looking at them and having a lot of that self-forgiveness you know, that Maya Angelou talks about. That when we know better, we do better and have lots of grace for yourself for doing what you did when you did it.
SH: Hello, I’m Susan Hinkley.
CW: And I am Cynthia Winward.
SH: And this is At Last she Said It. We are women of faith discussing complicated things and the title of today’s episode is Shadow Work, A conversation with Jana Spangler. Hello Jana.
JS: Hello ladies.
CW: Welcome!
SH: We are thrilled to have you back on the podcast. Our listeners might remember that we’ve had you on before. I’m gonna give a quick rundown of those episodes right now so that people can go back and find them when they hear this amazing conversation and want so much more from you, which is sure to happen. So we had you on Episode 184: Am I Allowed to Change. On episode 135 we talked about religious trauma and then the original on episode 69, we introduced the Enneagram in an episode called “But She’s Got A Great Personality” and I will link to all of those in the show notes.
JS: Awesome. Well, thank you for having me back. I love conversation with you two.
CW: Ahh. Same.
SH: Is there anything that you’d like to give the listeners by way of introduction of yourself? Maybe just something you haven’t said before or maybe just the same things you’ve always said before?
JS: Well, sure. Well, I’ll just start with people who don’t know me. I am an integral professional coach who specializes in faith transition and relationship, and I’ve been working in that field for over nine years now. I work with Symmetry Counseling and I just am passionate about wellness and helping people through things. I’m the epitome of the wounded healer. I’m, if you know that archetype I fall into it well. These days I’m just really passionate about healthy dialogue. I’m passionate about ways that we can understand each other better without perpetuating all of the yucky stuff we see going on in the public sphere around religion and politics and everything else. I just think the world’s really in need of it, so.
CW: You’re really good at that.
JS: Thank you. I try. But other than that, I’m a mom of three emerging adults. Can’t believe it. My baby’s about to graduate from high school.
SH: Oh.
JS: Like, I don’t know how I got here. But that’s me.
SH: I think Cynthia and I can both relate to that feeling. We’ve been there.
JS: Yeah.
CW: Sometimes I feel like an emerging adult. What’s going on there? That’s another conversation.
SH: You need to schedule a conversation with Jana about that Cynthia.
SH: Laughter
CW: Laughter
JS: Laughter
CW: Yes. Yes. Yes. Oh goodness.
SH: Well, that gives our listeners a great intro as to why we’re having this conversation with you. And today, Cynthia’s gonna lead us through the discussion. So I’m just gonna turn it over to Cynthia.
CW: Well, we wanted to have a conversation about shadow work today. I feel like it’s something we hear a lot about in this space. I might have some theories, maybe we’ll get into why, like, why do I hear about this so much now? Part of me wonders, is this just synonymous with the phrase inner work? Is it different? So, I don’t know, Jana, could you kind of give us a quick primer on what is our shadow? Maybe we might need some examples for those of us who are slower, not naming names. Maybe myself. Yeah, take that where you wanna go.
JS: Okay. Yeah. It can be a kind of a difficult concept to get our brains around. I know it was for me, like I, the first time I was introduced to it years ago I thought, okay, there’s something really interesting here, but I don’t really understand how this works in my life. And probably that’s because the shadow is largely hidden from us in our psyche. So. Carl Jung was the first to name it shadow. And it wasn’t his original concept. You know, psychologists and people who are thinking about the way the brain works have been naming these things for a long time. But Carl Jung talked about the shadow as the parts of ourselves that are repressed, that our ego selves aren’t aware of. Our more rational, conscious brain isn’t aware that we hold these traits. And at some point along the way, we learned that maybe these traits weren’t great, and so we kind of pushed them down because if we display them, then we might be rejected, or we might be judged, or we might, you know. We might go against all the things that our ego wants for us, which are mostly good things. Not all good things, but mostly good things that our ego wants for us.
[00:05:00] So when you ask, is it synonymous with inner work I would say that it is one part of inner work. Inner work can be a lot of things. Like inner work is really kind of just understanding ourselves. It can be parts of self-improvement. It can just be self-understanding and shadow work is one facet of it. One way in.
CW: Okay. I have a question about like, when you think of like a physical shadow, like if I’m standing, facing the sun, it’s behind me. So is that part of it? Is it’s behind us so we don’t see it?
JS: Yeah.
CW: Like, like blind spots or,
JS: Yeah.
CW: I don’t know. I’m just trying to wrap my head around how they came up with that particular word?
JS: That term? Yeah. Iit is typically largely hidden from us, depending on how much inner work we’ve done. Right? Sometimes the shadow that’s part of our inner work can be bringing the shadow into the light and understanding what’s moving us. But the shadow is largely, well, it’s pretty much all unconscious until we pull it out. So it’s things that we’ve learned. I mean, if we think of it from a neuroscientific standpoint, that part of our brain was quite literally forming before the part of our brain that lays down memory.
CW; Mmmm.
JS: It’s an earlier part of our system, an earlier part of our brain. So it’s more tied to the amygdala. The parts, you know - We talked about this a little bit when we talked about trauma, but it’s, that’s our fight or flight system.
SH: Right.
JS: And that’s more where the shadow lives. And the ego’s job is to protect us. The ego wants us to be right, superior, separate, well thought of. You know. We have a lot of needs that ego has, and so the ego really likes to hide the shadow from us and likes to pretend it doesn’t exist.
CW: Tricky. Tricky. Yes.
SH: Am I right in thinking that the reason it’s valuable to kind of pull these things out and look at them and understand them is that some of these shadow things are in there driving our behaviors, but we just don’t know it. And so it helps us get to what’s the thing behind the thing sometimes in the responses that we’re having and the patterns in our lives.
JS: Yes, absolutely. And the shadow and the ego both can work in these functions. The ego is kind of the thing more on the prefrontal cortex that’s kind of talking to our shadow and kind of the mediator between the shadow.
And then like our conscious brain and how we move through the world. So, so yeah. If we have not examined our shadow, if we don’t know what’s going on with that, it is going to, it’s the thing that triggers us. It’s the thing that sends out a signal that says, Uhoh, this is a trait that we don’t want to deal with. The ego says, we really don’t want that to be part of us.
CW; Okay
JS: So it leads us to do things like judge other people. It leads us to try to hide parts of ourselves. Our ego wants us to be part of the group. It wants belonging. But it functions better at just helping us fit in than it does belonging. Even though what it really wants is belonging.
CW: Interesting.
SH: Hmmm
JS: Because what we don’t know is that if we are constantly rejecting our shadow, because we’re assuming everyone else is going to, it’s really hard to find belonging.
SH: Okay.
JS: It actually works against us.
CW: Wow. Okay. I didn’t realize it was tangled up with belonging as well. That makes sense.
SH: That’s the lie down part for me right there. We’ve hit it already.
(Laughter)
SH: That explains everything. Thank you,Jana.
JS: Yeah. I mean, the human soul wants belonging, but the ego really doesn’t know how to give it to us. It really just kind of helps us fit in. It helps us show up and be acceptable.
CW: Oh gosh…
JS: And it thinks that hiding the shadow is gonna be the thing that’s gonna do it.
SH: Right.
JS: So the benefit in doing shadow work, part of it is, that when we bring it out with people who are safe to do that with, if we do it with people who are not safe, it’ll send it running right back to where it came from.You know, shame is a big function here of how we keep the shadow down. Right. But if I can let my shadow out in front of a safe person and they accept it, that helps me accept it. It helps me have fewer things I’m trying to run from in my life,
SH: Right.
JS: It helps me accept myself, it helps build my self-worth, and it helps me actually achieve the belonging that makes us really feel whole and feel like we can heal. It’s when we’re seen in our shadow, it’s when we integrate that. So Carl Jung would say, we do the shadow work so we can integrate it. So we can stop running from it. It takes us an enormous amount of energy to keep that shadow hidden and we don’t even recognize we’re doing it.
CW: Can you gimme an example of what you’re talking about when you say like, sometimes if we show our shadow to someone who’s [00:10:00] unsafe, that makes it worse? But a safe person. Could love us even though
JS: Yeah.
CW: So that we have that belonging. Can you gimme an example?
JS: Sure. I can give you a million examples. Well, I’ll give one for my own life. Right. So, I didn’t realize I was a kid growing up with undiagnosed ADHD,, like so many of us these days you know. So keeping things clean was so hard for me as a kid. And it was something that I was fighting with my mother about all the time. All the time. And it, and I grew up feeling a lot of shame around the fact that I couldn’t keep order in things. Right? So when anyone would walk into my house and notice something, most people are too nice to do it, but family members, you know, or a mother without a filter, a mother without a filter might walk in and say, wow, it looks like a tornado went off in here.
SH: Right,
JS: Right? I would immediately just feel absolute shame. Because a good person is not supposed to be like that. A good functional, mature human being is not supposed to have a messy kitchen.
CW: Gotcha.
JS: Yeah. I’m not supposed to have dishes in the sink ever. You know, like I, I grew up with those messages.
SH: I feel like as you’re introducing this concept, I feel like there are things about being a woman in our church that create this sort of perfect or imperfect, worst possible environment for dealing with some of this stuff.
CW: Yeah.
SH: I mean, everything in my life as a Mormon has made me want to hide all the parts that I think I should not bring to church with me. So it’s like my church did not help me in this area.
JS: We kind of specialize in this.
SH:Yeah.
(Laughter)
JS: We specialize in building a really big shadow, which creates a really big inner critic.
SH: Yeah.
JS: And we also, we kind of specialize in shielding ego, where the maybe not great parts of ego can run free.
SH: Mmm
CW: Wow!
JS: And it’s really unfortunate because I think church has such a - and religion - it has such potential to bring people together and to have us connect and serve each other in really beautiful ways and to, you know, build moral character in so many things.
CW: Yeah.
SH: Right
JS: And it can be a place where we absolutely can come. And if you have the right kind of problem, the acceptable kind of problem.
SH: Right.
CW: The acceptable ones.
JS: You can really get support and empathy and, you know, it’s so beautiful. But there, there is this shadow part of things that partially is created by patriarchy. It’s partially just created by the way that we conceptualize sin and being a good person. And unfortunately, Christianity has kind of vilified human beings. Like our true nature is somehow
SH: Right.
JS: awful and vile and, you know, we have to be saved from it. Unfortunately that just is a recipe for a massive shadow and a lot of difficulty building self-worth. And in women, really building ego. If it’s a patriarchal system.
CW: Yeah
SH: Maybe a real, a built in hurdle, really to belonging for a lot of people. I mean, when I hear you describe that then I’m thinking, well, there might well be a belonging crisis actually.
JS: Absolutely!
SH: in our church.
JS: I think there absolutely is a belonging crisis because we really don’t wanna show our shadow.
SH: Yeah.
JS: Yeah. It’s not okay to.
CW: Susan, can I ask you a question? You said that this is something that really resonates with you because you felt like you had to hide a lot of parts of yourself, like you couldn’t show up.
SH: Right.
CW: with those parts. I mean, can you give a specific like, I’m thinking of if there’s an LDS woman who’s really ambitious and we just had an episode with Katie Ludlow Rich, right? Where she told the example of Laurel Thatcher Ulrich when she like submitted a paper for publishing or something, and then they came back with like some edits, but they were really excited, they wanted to publish it and Laurel was like; “ I remember being really disappointed because I realized how ambitious I was in that moment.” And that was kind of not okay. So I’m thinking of that one example of like someone showing, a woman showing up with ambition at church and it’s like, no, you should be perfectly happy with just these things. Like, is that what you’re talking about, Susan? Or other characteristics, personality traits that you had that you were like, I have to keep this hidden.
SH: Oh yeah. Personality traits for sure! For sure. I mean, I was a young feminist. I was a child feminist coming up in the church.
CW: Yes. You were.
SH: I was a raving Democrat and always had. , I mean, there are all these things about me that are like, that feel like very natural wired in kind of traits that I have that are not part of the LDS ideal for women. I mean, they’re just not
JS: A hundred percent.
SH: I [00:15:00] wanted nothing more than to have a career and not start having kids till I was 35. This is, this was baked into my bones of who I was. So like showing up at Young Women’s with that basket of goals that’s not really something… Somehow I couldn’t connect the dots between those things and the reactions that I had and the way, the ways I internalized shame about myself, right, in my church life. And so I always felt defective in my church life. It was as soon as Jana said, you know, a mom who walks in and says, it looks like a tornado went through and she feels this deeply internalized shame about adult women don’t have messy kitchens like this. That was my whole life at church.
CW: Wow.
SH: But I haven’t ever really done the work to untangle and connect those dots of why I responded and reacted in those ways and always have, I have not licked this stuff yet. I mean, it’s getting better, but I would not say that I feel what I would call true belonging, really as a Latter Day Saint.
JS: Yeah. We have such a long list of shoulds, right?
CW: Right.
JS: And those shoulds speak to, we think, deep character traits. You know, we think that it’s a flaw. So I have a character flaw if I’m like this. And so this kind of gets to, there are different parts of shadow and different people have named this, you know, in different ways. But you are speaking to part of the shadow that some of these traits are not necessarily universally bad shameful traits.
CW: Right.
SH: Right.
JS: Being assertive can be very helpful, right?
SH: Right
JS: But it’s part of the, it can be a large part of a shadow for an LDS woman. Like I think a lot of LDS women can relate to that, right? And there are a bunch of these, like, decisiveness, ambition, self-advocacy, directness,
SH: Yeah.
JS: intellect even. There are a lot of these things that the ideal woman is not supposed to have right? I’ve been watching Mad Men for the first time.
SH: Oh.
CW: Wow
JS: and I’m just like, holy cow. You know, like, this is my dad’s generation of people. Like, you know, when he was that age and I’m starting to see all of that. Why I have internalized so much of this.
SH: Right, right.
JS: You know? This is the way society used to talk about this. That’s what formed me right?
SH: And I mean, not even that long ago.
JS: Yeah
SH: So it helps you understand our church culture now, right?
JS: Right.
SH: Look at the men who are in charge. These are those men. These are those men.
JS: Exactly.
SH: And so it explains everything really.
JS: It means a lot.
SH: I often wonder how. I mean, I can only think of it personally, but like how my shadow might look different if I had not grown up in the church.
CW: Yes!
SH: Like I think something’s developed kind of as a result of the culture that I was steeping in that maybe wouldn’t have been problematic but became problematic as a result of that.
JS: Absolutely. And there would’ve been other ones that you were free to express that would’ve been unacceptable somewhere else.
SH:Sure. Sure. It would’ve been something else. Right.
JS: We always kind of tend to think, ugh, you know, because this is part of uncovering the shadow, it’s part of uncovering our internal life, which we tend to do in second half of life, or when we’ve started to complicate our original narratives or whatever. That’s when this kind of, this stuff, we start thinking about it and as it comes up, it is a natural thing to start looking at how, what formed me and kind of, it brings up some of our repressed anger or repressed sadness over, you know, this is the way it could have been or should have been, or whatever. There’s a complicated grief when we start doing inner work.
SH: Yeah.
CW: Yes.
JS: It’s not an easy thing to do. It’s not like we, oh look, that’s part of my shadow. Amazing. I’m free.
(Laughter)
JS: No, it’s like, it’s a process full of grief and regret and pain and that part of us doesn’t wanna be seen. It is wired into our warning system and our bodies, like it’s gonna spike our cortisol to start talking about our actual shadow and bringing it out in front of other people. We, there are real psychological and physiological reasons why it’s kept hidden, right?
SH: But I think it can be really healing actually. To identify these things. Because like in my own case, like as Cynthia asked, would be some examples for me, because I never felt belonging. I made decisions that I thought would ensure belonging. I thought, oh, I’m gonna get married young. I’m gonna have babies immediately. I’m gonna not have a career. I’m gonna do all these things and I will overcome this defective feeling that I have, but I never did. And so now looking back, I can start to say, okay, it wouldn’t have mattered. What you did, Susan. You didn’t understand the programs that were running in the background. And so, I mean, that is you’re right. Regret and it, that’s tragedy. That’s high tragedy. But also there’s power and there’s healing in being able to see it for what it is and understand what my experience has [00:20:00] been and why.
JS: 100%. And it’s freeing in so many ways. Like if we - one of the big jobs of the second half of life is autonomy.
It’s really pulling ourselves forward. And that is a really hard thing for women who have not built a strong ego and who have this massive, massive shadow and inner critic going on. It’s difficult work, but it is so freeing to be able to bring ourselves forward. And another thing that it does, one of, one of the functions of this golden shadow is when, you know, maybe we have, maybe we don’t, maybe we’ve just never developed it or maybe we have a natural talent for assertiveness or directness or some of these things. If we can’t safely show them and we’ve repressed them for whatever reason, we tend to idolize. Idealization becomes a thing. So we tend to idolize leaders. Other people in our lives who have those traits that we cannot express. So this is one of the functions and the ways that we give our authority away. It’s not just that someone came along and told us that they were the authority, it’s that if we cannot have those traits, we can be really drawn in by people who do.
SH: Mmm.
CW: Wow!
JS: It’s one of the ways we give ourselves away, and it’s one of the reasons why, I don’t know. I imagine you two had this experience as well, but as I was growing up in the church, I really felt that church leaders could do no wrong. I really felt that everything they did exemplified exactly what I was supposed to be. There’s actually a deep psychological thing that is creating that in us, where it’s actually painful to start to see humanity in our leaders. Leaders are always gonna fail us.
SH: Right.
JS: And it’s actually always super painful when they do.
SH: Mmm. Mhmm. Sure.
CW: Sure. What’s that phrase? Like, never meet your heroes or something like that.
JS: They’re a mess behind the scenes because sometimes the greater the gift, the greater the shadow behind it.
CW: Sure.
JS: Out running our shadows creates our greatest, our gifts, our traits.
SH: Sure. Sure.
JS: You know, we talked about this in the Enneagram, it’s why I like Enneagram. It’s kind of formed around that, you know?
CW: Oh, that makes sense.
JS: Enneagram is a great thing to point to. Oh, these are some of my personality traits. What is the shadow that got me there?
SH: Right, right.
JS: It’ll point to it.
CW: So what is shadow work? If someone is hearing this for the first time and they’re thinking, yes, I would like to overcome some of these things, I have no idea how to figure out what my shadow is, what they are. What do you say to that?
JS: Yeah. It takes a lot of work. It takes a lot of insight and it takes time and we’re never done.
CW: That makes sense. Yeah.
JS: Yeah. I don’t know that there’s any way, in fact I’ve heard some people say that as we gain new … If we’re working on shadow work and we pull one out and we look at it and we gain a new way of being in the world, that itself creates a new shadow.
SH: That was my next question actually.
JS: Yeah.
CW: Whaaat?
JS: Yeah. Like, I don’t think we’re ever free of it. You know, it’s almost like there’s opposition in all things.
CW: Where have we heard that?
(Laughter)
JS: We’ve heard it somewhere, but it’s almost like there’s some truth to that
SH: Uhhuh.
JS: I see this so much in my couple’s work. When people come into my office and they’re having disagreements, the things that are creating pain for us, it’s often the parts of our shadow that are getting poked by our people and nothing is gonna do that like relationship. I think shadow work is really, really hard to do in isolation. It’s easiest to see it in the way that we interact with people in relationships in our lives.
SH: Sure. Sure. Yeah.
CW: I totally agree with that.
JS: We often go into relationship and marriage hoping it’s the thing that’s gonna complete us and make our lives wonderful.
SH: Right. Right.
JS: And now someone’s gonna just be there for me all the time and can there be elements of that? Sure. And also, it is also going to be your biggest shadow trigger and so that’s gonna be painful. It’s also going to be an opportunity if we embrace it. Like I can either let this thing take me down this moment, or I can use it as an opportunity for insight and to grow.
CW: So I have a really, I wanna say embarrassing, but I’m giving grace to myself for my former self. But I remember 15 or so years ago when I would see women out in public who were definitely not wearing garments. I can think of a specific situation. I’m atCostco. It’s like three o’clock in the afternoon. I would drop my kids off at piano and Costco was across the street. So I would always be there like Mondays at three o’clock. And I remember running into a woman [00:25:00] in my ward and she’s wearing leggings and a tank top or whatever. And I remember having this reaction being a little bit like “Well!”. And then I stopped and I was like, “Okay. Where is this coming from? Why the blankety blank would I care what a woman? Why would I care?”. And so I was trying to get really curious. And so as I started asking myself these questions, it was like, okay, my strong propensity for rule keeping. And even more important than that was I felt like she was enjoying something and getting away with it without being punished.
JS: Yep. That is classic shadow.
CW: See, but it was, I did not like seeing that in myself, but I was like, you know what triggered it was this was a woman I loved and admired. So I’m like, how can I love someone and admire them and at the same time have this reaction like - “Well!” And I sat there and just started taking it apart and I go, oh, there’s this part of me that feels like when someone is getting away with something. I have a lot of feelings about that. And part of it was probably jealousy. ‘Cause I’m, look at how amazing she looks in her cute outfit and I’m sitting here struggling every day to wear my garments and her life seems just as great as mine. So then it was, do you know what I’m saying, Jana?
JS: Yes. Absolutely.
CW: So then it just kind of started absolutely snowballing. And I try to give myself grace for who I was before, because of course now I run into a woman like that and I’m like “ High five!” (Laughter) “ You do you!”
SH: This totally makes sense to me though, Cynthia, because you were the rule keeper, like your whole life.
CW: Yeah!
SH: You define yourself as, or describe yourself as a rule keeper. So Of course, there’s this other side of that.
JS: Yeah.
SH: So it seems to me like what you’re describing.
JS: Absolutely. So the ego, one of the things that the ego really wants is safety. And so one of the ways that we can learn, our personality learns, to gain safety is rule keeping. Right? It can be something early on that you saw someone breaking a rule and or you broke a rule and you were shamed for it. Or you saw the shame that was brought on others, or you saw actual danger that happened to them from breaking the rule and your whole psyche said, well, that is not a good thing and I need to be a rule follower, right? So once you start to - When all of this is hidden. When we’re not doing our inner work, what would happen is we would see the person without the garments, we would judge them, feel good about ourselves and move on, because our ego really lends itself to us versus them. I am safe. I’m doing it right.
CW: Yeah.
SH: Right. Right.
JS: So I’m gonna judge them and I need to move on. It’s the start of inner work when you start going “What is happening”?
CW: Yeah.
JS: And usually we’re invited into that by some sort of cognitive dissonance. If we see somebody that we already don’t really like not wearing their garments in that situation, then we’re gonna be like “ Yeah. Figures”.
But it’s when we come across that in someone we admire, now that starts us questioning what’s going on.
SH: Right?
JS: It’s not as easy to just idealize this thing. This is like the whole basis of purity culture, right? We all wanna keep ourselves pure and right and on the right side. This is one of the reasons I say ego runs amuck in churches.
SH: Yeah.
(Laughter)
CW: It’s pandemonium!
JS: And we don’t talk about it. I mean, we do, we give some lip service to like, we shouldn’t judge and blah, blah, blah. But man, it feels so good to judge because our ego is just feeling so wonderful about it. You know? So it’s not until that it gets more complicated as we get older because life gets more complicated. We’re faced with more reality. We’re faced with that cognitive dissonance. We know what cognitive dissonance can lead to in our circles. I mean it, that’s what can bring on the faith crisis and questioning all kinds of things. And honestly, going through a faith crisis is pulling the top off of Pandora’s box, of all of that shadow that’s been lingering there for so long.
CW: Wow! I have never thought of it that way before.
JS: Yeah. It’s the thing that starts us questioning what is going on. Once we’re allowed to do that, we’re on our way.
SH: Wow.
JS: And I think that there’s a lot of deconstruction going on in the world. There’s a lot of deconstruction of systems. There’s a lot of deconstruction of religion. There’s a lot of deconstruction of all kinds of ideas.
I think to some extent every generation does that with what they’re handed, but we’re going through a particularly big time of deconstruction and I think
CW: That makes sense.
JS: And I think that’s why you’re hearing shadow work. It’s kind of hit the zeitgeist.
CW: Okay.
JS: Oh. This is actually something, not only is it like, “Hey, I wanna engage shadow work”. At some point you don’t have a choice. You’re just in the depths because you’re being drowned by your shadow.
CW: The wheels are turning.
JS: Yeah. At some point we kind of have to do it. We’re forced to do it in order [00:30:00] to be well.
CW: In order to be well. Yeah.
JS: We can’t run from that reality forever
CW: If people are listening and they’re hearing, okay, so you said earlier, Jana, shadow work is done in relationship, right? it’s not done in isolation.
JS: It’s not done in isolation.
CW: Is that something like, like if a spouse or a roommate says, “You always seem to react this way” Is that a clue? Like, I guess I’m asking for a friend.
SH: I was gonna say, asking for a friend, right.
(Laughter)
CW: Asking for a friend. Like when certain family members will hold up a mirror to me, I’ve been trying to take that lately as a clue. And saying, okay. There’s something here. And so I’m - I guess that’s my question. Is that the first little baby step in shadow work? As we see how our family members, friends, roommates, whoever are reacting to us and we go “ Oh. There’s a common thread running through this. “
JS: That is one way in for sure. This gets really, really complicated, really fast, and this is why shadow work is so hard, because it is really hard to separate what is my stuff and what is someone else’s stuff.
SH: Ah, sure.
CW: Oh.
JS: How am I projecting my shadow onto somebody else? How are they projecting their shadow onto me? What part of this is me? What part of this is not me? And this is particularly difficult in enmeshed systems. And guess what is one giant collective shadow of patriarchy?
(Laughter)
SH: Ding, ding, ding, ding.
CW: Yes
JS: We’re highly enmeshed and this is why this is so hard. And so it really is helpful to engage, you know, coaches, therapists, people, spiritual directors, people who understand this territory of shadow.
CW: Okay. Okay.
JS: Because trying to just do it on our own, we can do it. And you can do it better if you get an idea with some examples from your own life moving in a particular direction, you know, you can get some momentum. And there are ways to do it by yourself. One of the resources I like is the website thework.com. It’s Byron Katie’s work.
SH: Oh, right.
JS: And she has a worksheet, a 1, 2, 3 worksheet. I mean, this is like, we love a checklist, right? Ladies? We’d love a way to do step one, step two.
CW: Yes, we do.
JS: She has some tools to do that. She’s not the only one. There, there are other people. There are shadow work workbooks out there and so you can kind of work through some of this kind of stuff. But the biggest way in is to get in touch with our own physiology, which is why tsomatic work is becoming such a big thing in therapeutic spaces and coaching spaces and trauma spaces. Because the body does keep the score. The body is also the antenna to the shadow. It’s unconscious, but we can feel the effects of it. So it’s when we feel triggered, it’s learning what our body feels like when we feel shame. It’s learning what our body feels like when we feel judgment or, you know, something yucky. All of that doesn’t feel good in our bodies. The neurotransmitters that are firing. Are not pleasant ones. Judgment does not bring out the dopamine. Well, sometimes it can. It doesn’t bring out the oxytocin.
SH: Okay. Yes.
JS: It doesn’t bring out the connection. Right?
SH: Yeah. Yeah.
JS: So it’s starting to map what’s going on in myself and recognizing that there’s some sort of interplay of shadow going on. And if I’m being triggered, it really is because of a lot of what I’ve gone through. This is where it gets sticky. If someone is mean, we feel like, well, they’re the problem. They were mean. What we don’t recognize is that it’s gonna land to different degrees in different people.
CW: Sure.
JS: You know, like one of the, one of the fights I’ve been having for - how long have I been married - 27 years, so like 28 years.
SH: Not to put too fine a point on it
JS: with my husband. Like it’s just naturally how the two of us show up is that I am very direct. And that often lands to his ear as criticism or just being too forceful. And we’ve been having this fight over, you’re doing it wrong. You’re too direct, you’re too, you know, reading things in you just, what’s wrong with you? You’re too sensitive. And look at that shadow work going on. A man who’s too sensitive and a woman who is too direct. Like,come on.
CW: Oooo.
SH: Uhhuh.
JS: You know, it’s just ripe with shame.
SH: Yeah,
JS: Right? So my husband would be like, well, no one would like to hear that. And I believed that for so long. And then I realized, you know what, if you line up a hundred people, there might be a good solid 15, 20 people that are gonna be ecstatic at my directness.
CW: Yeah.
JS: You know?
CW: Good point.
JS: Yes. Is that hard in my relationship? Yes. Do I need to take that into consideration? [00:35:00] Of course. If I wanna get along with my person here. And so there’s work to do with that about how is this coming out and how am I using it wisely and compassionately in my life? You know, how do I use my gifts so that I’m not wreaking havoc in, in my world? But the real healing in our marriage has started to come, as we say, actually, maybe you’re not too anything. And maybe I’m not to anything. We just, this is the way we’re coming together. Isn’t that interesting? What does that mean? How does that inform us about how we wanna be together? That forever, it was just the biggest fight that we would be fighting for hours and bringing up all the examples from our history of how the other had wronged us,
SH: Right. (Laughter)
JS: And done it wrong and convincing. So this is a clear pointer in a relationship. If I’m trying to convince, you know, my spouse is saying, but that’s not what I meant, and I’m trying to tell them that it’s exactly what they meant and bringing out 50 examples of how I know that. I can be sure that I’m projecting my shadow on that person.
CW: So then I have a question about your example because
JS: Yeah.
CW: being direct
JS: Yep.
CW: Is not necessarily a shadow. Right?
JS: Not necessarily, it can be in a person and for a lot of women it is.
CW: Okay.
JS: But no, it’s not necessarily a shadow.
CW: Right? Because like you were saying, a hundred people could show up and 15 of them will be like, I love it that Jana just tells me exactly the way it is, a hundred percent what she needs or whatever.
JS: It’s only a shadow if I’m ashamed of it,
CW: Ahh.
JS: It’s only a shadow if I’m ashamed of it and I’ve pushed it down. And when it’s hurting my spouse, you can bet that I’m feeling shame over that and I’m kind of thinking like “ Ooh, that’s probably not a good trait that I have”. And then I get a lot of messages from my world that tell me that being direct is, you know, that’s not really good. That’s not what a good person does. And look, it hurt somebody. And shame sits in when it’s like, well, this is what I kind of naturally am, so I must be wrong.
CW: Right?
JS: There goes my self-worth.
CW: That’s good. Thank you.
JS: That’s how shadow can lead to, you know, a terrible self-worth if we don’t examine it. And I’m getting better at this ‘cause I, this is one of the piece of my shadow I have taken out and it’s why I can talk about it. It’s why I can even say this out loud, that I’m too direct with my husband. There would’ve been a time 15 years ago that if someone had said that I would be in tears and running to lick my wounds that someone else might have seen that. I mean, to be totally honest, I’ve lost friendships over that.
CW: Wow.
JS: Because I couldn’t face it, I couldn’t face my shadow and I couldn’t face that someone else saw it in me. But it’s not until I’ve kind of owned that, and this is the magic. When we can own our shadow, it can lead us to more accountability. Accountability is really important in relationship, right?
CW: Yeah,
JS: But it’s really hard. If I’m feeling shame, there’s a difference between me coming to my husband and being like,” I’m the worst”. “I’m just so terrible for being direct and I should never be that way” and beat myself up and, you know, I’m so, so, so, so sorry. It’s like an apology that’s groveling. There’s a big difference between that and - “Wow. I was direct again. I know that’s a part of me, and I know that’s a part that’s hard for you.” “ Tell me how that’s affecting you.”
Like, I can take more accountability when I can work through the shame and I’m not feeling shameful about it anymore. I’m showing up - not in this like, “Oh my gosh. I’m the worst. Please, please, please be okay with me.” It’s a - “Yeah. I can see how this is our dynamic”. Now I can actually lean in with more compassion because my defensiveness isn’t trying to make me okay.
SH: Right
JS: It’s when I know that I can be direct and, okay, I can be worthy and direct. Now I can show up and really say, “Tell me how this is affecting you”. And “Can you have grace for me? Because you know, this is just who I am.” Too often in relationship we’re just trying to change the other person. He just wanted me to show up as less direct, and I just wanted him to show up in a different space where it didn’t hurt him.
SH: Right.
JS: Guess what? That’s not who either of us are. We came by our shadows honestly. We came by our shadows, honestly. So we just have to be able to see it and say “Yeah. You know, this is what it is, and I can see how it’s affecting you.” And then when I can have that kind of compassion, it helps him to say - Yeah. You know what, you’re not wrong for being direct either.
I know this is who you are and I have some work to do too.” Right?
CW: Well that sounds like a perfect world, right? Like, you’re showing u and he’s showing up and
JS: Let me just say, first of all, this is one tiny moment of a giant, you know, relationship full of all kinds of challenges. So let’s not pretend, you know, like I said, shadow work is unending. This is just one little example that I’ve been fairly functional on. I have 10 million other things that I’m not,
CW: But I love this example.
JS: But I will say that the way we show up in a relationship, we always think that we need both [00:40:00] people to improve a relationship. We need both of them showing up and doing all of their inner.
CW: That was my point. Yeah,
JS: Esther Perel said this recently, it was on a podcast I heard with Trevor Noah. It was a really great discussion.
CW: Oh, I love that episode. That was good.
JS: Wasn’t it great?
CW: Yeah.
JS: And she gave this framing, and I think it’s a really great framing, which is there’s me, there’s my partner, and then there’s this third entity that is the relationship.
It’s the way that we relate with each other. We don’t actually know this other person. We know the parts of them that they’ve put into the relationship and how we’re reacting to it. And vice versa.
SH: Right
JS: So, if one person starts changing the things they’re putting in, you’re gonna get different reactions. Whether your spouse is doing work or not. And I will just tell you, I’m the inner work junkie. My husband is not.
SH: Okay.
JS: He’ll, I’ll say, Hey, this is a good book. And he might read it and he, you know, it might take him a year. And by then we’re like, you know … And, our relationship is very different because of what we’re putting in. And our reactions are different because I’m not triggering his shadow as much.
SH: All right. Have I got this right that it’s not necessarily about changing the way you are. There’s nothing inherently wrong with your directness. That you needed to get rid of your directness, but it’s more changing how you are with your directness. Like how you bring that to a relationship and how
JS: Correct
SH: you’re mindful of the way it functions and those kinds of things.
JS: Correct. It’s allowing self-awareness. Okay. For appropriateness of directness. There are some
SH: Okay.
JS: situations that really call for directness. And it’s really appreciated and it’s a skill that is really great for that situation. For others, it’s not so much.
SH: Right.
JS: I was really hurt by my mom’s directness. Which is probably why that became a big job for me as well.
SH: Interesting. Yes. Uhhuh. Sure. That makes sense.
JS: And in order to own that in myself, I have to own a lot of pain and I have to think about a lot of pain that I experienced growing up. Like quite literally, our psyche is built to have us not have to deal with our shadows. It’s painful to do so.
CW: Well it protects us, like you said, that’s it’s job.
JS: It protects us.
JS: And on the other side of it, there is a freedom. I don’t have to feel that shame now when people notice I’m direct.
SH: Right, right.
JS: And yeah, there are probably ways where it doesn’t serve us, but I don’t have to be like - “Oh my gosh, I’m the worst. I can be like - “Oh yeah, that probably wasn’t great in that situation.”
SH: I can see why that didn’t work. Yeah.
JS: “I can see why that didn’t land. Let’s try this differently”. Like it’s actually a way toward greater humility, greater accountability, greater Christian values. And this is one of the things that drives me crazy right now in the public sphere is that there’s this whole group of influencers and people who are against the empowerment of women. You know, it’s the trad wife thing versus
CW: Yep. Yep.
JS: You know, women who are trying to own some of this and do their shadow work and reclaim some of their golden shadow and do all of this stuff. And what no one is really seeing or talking about is that actually that self-empowerment leads us not to an over inflated ego.
It leads us to a steady ego that can work with our shadow in a healthier way and leads us actually toward Christian values not away from them. I’m more humble when I do my shadow work and when I own my authenticity. I have greater access to love and compassion actually for myself, for the other. I have more grace for my humanity because I’m not making some ideal in my head that someone has it all figured out and they’re perfect. The ego loves perfection, but it builds this giant shadow that then just can take us down. And if you don’t have a firm enough ego to really negotiate with the shadow, this is what leads to a lot of women feeling really disempowered, not knowing themselves. And we can really struggle with self-worth and with that recipe.
CW: Okay. And then that’s my kind of specific question. I know we touched earlier about the gender component here for women, particularly LDS women.
JS: Yep. Yes.
CW: Is if someone doesn’t have a really strong sense of self
JS: Yeah.
CW: Or ego or whatever, you can correct the wording that I’m using here. Because I’ve been kind of wanting to have this conversation with you, Jana, for a couple of years, but then part of me was like, wait, won’t this just seem like women kicking women when they’re already down? They’re all, they’re already going through this like edgy space where they’re trying to listen to themselves a lot more.
JS: Yeah.
CW: Trust that I am good and I can listen to myself and then we’re gonna come along and say - “Here’s your shadow. Here are the things you need to change”. I don’t know, just, do you see what I’m trying to say?
JS: I do,
CW: It feels [00:45:00] particularly ouchie for women who maybe for the first time in their life are trying to build themselves up.
JS: What we have to recognize is that the building yourself up is the shadow work. So, you know, so there’s a golden shadow. And then there’s, you know, the shadow shadow. When you typically hear men talk about this, when you hear Jung talk about this, when you know, they’re trying to break down the ego. A lot of gurus are trying to help people, help men break down their ego,
SH: Right?
JS: And there’s some of that work. I’ve benefited from some of that work. But it’s very difficult to do if we don’t first have… With women we’ve gotta be very, very, very compassionate. So the way it might look different for women is reclaiming parts of our golden shadow.
It might be like allowing ourselves to reclaim some of this autonomy. Understand what we want and what we need and what we like. You know, reclaiming some of this directness or ambition or self-advocacy. Rreclaiming some boundaries for ourselves. That actually is shadow work because those are parts we have repressed because it wasn’t okay for us to show up with those things.
SH: Right, right.
CW: Love it! Okay. So are those characteristics you just named that’s what you would call golden shadow?
JS: Yeah, that’s a sample. That’s a sample that often shows up in patriarchy.
CW: Yeah.
SH: Okay.
JS: That’s kind of a sample. I mean, there are unending traits that we could talk about in all of this space. it’s not a finite list, but it’s a sampling. But that would be part of, for women, some of the work that we’ve gotta do and befriending our inner critic. Because we’ve built up such a shadow that every way that we naturally are is not okay. We’re supposed to fit this mold. And so it’s reclaiming parts that we’ve had to repress and push down for acceptability. So it’s bringing those up and looking at them and having a lot of that self-forgiveness. You know. That Maya Angelou talks about. That when we know better, we do better and have lots of grace for yourself, for doing what you did when you did it. It takes a lot of that kind of work. So self-compassion work alongside it. I wouldn’t do it without self-compassion work. And starting to frame your inner critic as not an enemy, but as a protector. You know, something that was trying to keep you acceptable.
CW: I like that.
JS: And learning to have dialogue with that. You know, this is why journaling can be a good thing. It uses a lot of different parts of your brain that can be helpful to try to, you know, really examine what’s going on. And then. It’s always helpful if we… That kind of bringing it out is part of the work, and then finding little practices and ways to baby step into reclaiming yourself can help make it more permanent in our nervous system so that we can - if we’ve been wired to feel shame around something, if we actually start doing the opposite, if I start allowing myself to be proud of my directness in certain areas and I baby step my way into that and reclaim that piece of myself and my dignity. As I’m using, as I’m exhibiting that trait, that is what starts to rewire us out away from shame. And I will just say in these couple of little examples - of course I’m bringing my best examples you know - like “I’ve arrived” I haven’t arrived.
CW: As you should,
JS: But honestly it doesn’t trigger me anymore when my mother walks in and says “This place looks like a tornado.” I look around and say “Sure does”. Because it does.
CW: Interesting.
JS: I just don’t place the value on it anymore. Do you know what I mean?
SH: Right. Right.
JS: Where it used to send me straight up a wall and I can still see it in my husband because he hasn’t worked through that.He doesn’t like it that my mom notices those things.
SH: Right. Right.
SH: So I came to this conversation sort of thinking that things that were in the shadow had a negative connotation. But now listening to you speak, I’m thinking it’s not necessarily that those traits were negative, it’s that it was the repression of them and refusal to deal with them that actually was working against me.
JS: A hundred percent.
SH: Okay.
JS: And I would also say that most traits, the vast majority of traits are not inherently good or bad.
SH: Okay.
JS: We look at them that way.
CW: Shocker.
JS: Right? We look at them that way because of our shadow.
SH: Right. Right. Okay.
JS: This is where we also like - “Oh, what are the Christian virtues? That’s what we’re working toward” Instead of saying “Well, depending on how we will, that can be a shadow too”. You know, it’s not just inherently good.
SH: Right. And it totally makes sense to me actually, if I’m trying to become a whole person, which wholeness is sort of one of the things that I’ve been working really, really hard at. That is NEVER gonna happen [00:50:00] without being able to integrate all of it.
JS: That’s right. And start to notice how some of the traits maybe that we look at and we go like, “Oh that’s bad. That’s dangerous. That’s weak. That’s, you know, that’s just not good”. Start to think about all the ways that it could serve us. I remember the first time I did this kind of work, I did it with neediness because I thought about people around me who showed neediness.
Well, as I did this work, I started to realize that, you know, it’s no mystery where this comes from. You know, I think about one of the family stories that gets told over and over and over and over. You know, I was the youngest, I had three older siblings that were like 10 to 13 years older than me. And they all are like, it was so cute and so funny. Your very first word was “self” Because I wanted to do everything by myself because I wouldn’t let people tie my shoes even though I didn’t have that skill yet. Or, you know, I just grab everything. “Self, self, self”. . And that was the story that was told. It was cute, it was funny, but it was also kind of like a badge of honor. Because my family really valued independence. Do it by yourself. Like, pull yourself up by your bootstraps. This made me so ready for a lot of what came from my church culture as well. I had a lot of independence. That was a badge of honor. And so what would happen is when I saw someone who was needy,
SH: Yeah.
JS: I would, I had so much judgment and oh my gosh, I would never, ever want to be that. And I had to sit down and recognize, well, when have I been needy myself? And what good trait, what is good about being needy?
Well, guess what? This is, this was a shadow because it was wounding. I guarantee. I guarentee I had needs as a child and was made to feel shameful. No one had time.
SH: Right.
JS: No one had time for me. And I grew up feeling like a bother also.
CW: Yeah.
JS: So my good trait of independence, it was a good trait and it served me. And it was also a really bad trait because it made it harder for me to ask for help. It’s been harder … Because that’s an act of shame because it’s coming from, that’s coming from my shadow. So as I’ve been working on that, I’m still working on it. Here’s one that’s a work in progress. I still struggle with my own neediness and the neediness of others. That was the one that was laid in really strongly, really early.
CW: That makes sense.
JS: So I still get caught.
SH: Yeah.
JS: And I’ve had to really go to what happened to you, not, what’s wrong with you. And I have to think that over and over again when I’m thinking about myself and others in that space.
CW: That reminds me of I was doing a little bit of research in preparation for this episode, and I listened to an episode of Soul Boom specifically called Shadow Work in the title. And it was actually like this very young woman, like 26 years old. I forgot her name at the moment. And she wrote a book about shadow work, self-published it, sold like a million copies. Anyway, it was really fascinating. On one side it was fascinating because I thought this was something like older, mature adults do, and yet we’re seeing like in Gen Z, like this is something that they’re actually really interested in as well. But the part that makes me bring this up is in the episode, Rainn Wilson said something about the shadow about like it’s the puppet strings pulling you that you, that are invisible, that you just don’t even see.
And so when you’re talking about in your childhood, Jana, this neediness. Like, to me that sounds like what he’s taught. The puppet strings of this is what formed you early on and it’s just ongoing work for you now.
JS: A hundred percent. And just recognizing it doesn’t fix it. Right. Like I have to remind myself. I do. I get triggered and I’m like, I have to remind myself why is neediness good? Why is it good? It’s good because it connects us to one another. If no one ever needed each other, this would be a very lonely existence.
SH: Right.
JS: And I don’t need to do everything by myself and I actually can be vulnerable and lean on each other.
I mean, vulnerability our ego needs really, really try to shore us up against vulnerability. Our psyche, and our survival instincts, in many ways, they’re strong. They can be overpowering. And it’s like the puppet string. We don’t ask for them to show up when they show up and they can be overwhelming. And when they are moving us away from wholeness, health and, you know, good relationship and good community, this is where just the shadow shows up all over the place. And you know what, there’s just so much shadow. And if we’re talking about it in the context of our church, we have not learned how to be okay with shadow institutionally.
SH: Yeah.
JS: Or individually. Institutionally, we [00:55:00] cannot handle any critiques
SH: Right.
JS: of what’s going on systemically or institutionally. It’s really hard for a lot of people and it creates so much pain and then that creates a lot of anger, right? And then we’re all fighting with each other over it. When you know the puppet strings are pulling on all of us, on all sides of that, right? The person who’s triggered by it, the person who wants to talk about it and say, “Wait! We gotta make things better!”. I mean, this is shadow work going on all sides, and we’re all just pouring our shadow out on each other in really destructive ways a lot of times.
SH: It makes me think of the thing that you were saying about Esther Perel. I mean, I guess because I’m thinking, well, that’s pretty helpless. I’ve wanted to have an episode about the church’s shadow side for a long time because I feel like
CW: Let’s do it!
JS: Let’s go!
SH: we’re all victims of it in that we’re operating within this system that has these huge things going on that are not our problem, right, and not ours to fix. But it makes me think about the Esther Perel example that you were using, because I suppose if we change the way we show up within that system, then I mean it will have an effect, at least of our experience of it. We’re not gonna change the institution, but maybe we can improve our side of it, our relationship to that massive shadow that threatens to destroy everyone and everything.
JS: Yes. And I would say part of the function of that would be not just to like “Oh, I’m okay with all of the things I’m doing terribly now”. It would take more of the form of “I have ways to be well when I notice that.
And I have really good boundaries and I know that I’m not relying on them to make me safe. That’s my job and I’m going to do that”. So when we bring the shadow out, it’s the thing that actually helps us have better boundaries and have better ways of interacting. There’s also massive power dynamics in the church.
SH; Right. Right. So we’re up against a lot of things.
JS: Not quite the same as an equal relationship, right?
SH: Right.
CW: No.
SH: But it makes me think that it’s not a recipe for developing healthy spirituality, I guess.
JS: Yep.
SH: On both sides. Both on the sides of the individual, that all, you know, that all of this has developed, and then the institution that refuses to recognize or deal with any of it. How can we grow healthy spiritually?
JS: My hot take is that our system, the way it currently is, and we’re not alone. I think this is a lot of churches, right? And in, in the west and the US, the way we do it. But my hot take is that we’re a lot better at developing a moral line than we are the spiritual line of development.
I think in a lot of ways we have stunted the interpersonal and the spiritual line of development,
CW: Yes!
JS: and until we bring the shadow out, until we are able to take personal accountability and institutional accountability, we are going to be stunted in this way.
SH: Hundred percent agree.
JS: If you are made to feel like, if you are made to feel like a heretic when you show up to church, that is not a recipe for your spiritual thriving.
SH: She said it.
CW: She said it.
JS: So I don’t think that any institution can be a force for real change until they learn to apologize and until they learn to own their shadow. And until they stop vilifying the people who have the guts to stand up and say “This hurts.”
CW: 100% Jana.
SH: And how hopeful are youn that that’s going to happen anytime soon?
JS: Let’s just say, I think that the way that our system works, it works against that.
SH: Yeah. Yeah. That’s well said. That’s well said.
CW: I remember years ago Dallin Oaks saying something about… Maybe some of you remembers the quote, like,”The church isn’t a democracy”. And I remember like, thinking about that now. I think, okay, that’s part of, like you said, Susan, how are, you know, what is the likelihood we’re ever going to get over this? And I think, well, a democracy would be more like we all have something to offer. But right now where we’re very much a hierarchy and I mean - I don’t know, there are probably other words to describe the type of organization we have. It’s always, they are right, we are wrong. So when Jana says, “Yeah. You can’t show up and be made to feel a heretic and have that be okay for you” because it’s the people at the top telling you that. Right? You start, we start using crazy phrases like, well, my inner knowing or this doesn’t feel good to my soul.
I mean, all of these things are pointing inward and our leaders are saying “That leads you astray. You need to listen to us.”
JS: Because they don’t understand the difference between selfishness and healthy self regard.
CW: Ooh. Say more about that.
JS: Well, healthy self regard is that thing that helps us move toward more [01:00:00] humility and understanding and compassion and all of the Christian traits that we’re trying to build. It’s not the same thing as selfishness. Selfishness is only about me and not thinking about other people. I guarantee that all of these women who have spent their entire lives serving other people to the point that they don’t even know what they like are not in a whole lot of danger of being so self-centered. Because that is also baked into our nervous system to automatically think of other people. Doing the work of including ourselves in the equation -
I mean. Can sometimes the pendulum swing a little far? Sure. But the pendulum’s been over there for a long time for men and we’re not complaining there. So, I don’t know. No one’s perfect at it, but I understand. I understand why a lot of people look at it and say, this is dangerous work.
CW: Yes!
JS: Autonomy can lead to some things. It’s dangerous work, and it does go hand in hand with faith crisis, and a lot of people do move away, and it’s such a complicated landscape. We all try to simplify it and blame it on one thing. We all wanna blame the influencer who’s helping people, you know, claim their power. No. There are a million things going on. We don’t have a way of helping people with their shadow work. We don’t have a way of helping people with their individual experience and, you know, spiritual, inner knowing and things that are coming up in a way that they can speak to it with dignity. We don’t have those safe spaces. I mean, I’ve said it before and I will continue to say it. I think one of the healthiest things the church could do is to provide a paid, trained spiritual director for every stake in the church.
SH: Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes.
JS: Someone who you could talk to that is not connected to the hierarchy, is not connected to your temple recommend, is not connected to your callings and your social standing, and that we could be honest with. We’ve gotta have ways of bringing, bringing the shadow out into like the light so that we can heal. If the gospel does have the ability to help us heal, but we get in its way. You’ve gotta be able to bring that shadow out if you’re gonna be whole and heal. So we’re missing a big piece of it.
SH: Well, and I feel like the organization gets in the way
JS: it does
SH: of people even being willing to do that work.
JS: Absolutely.
SH: because the work’s been vilified.
JS: Yes.
CW: Yes.
SH: To the point that, you know, people don’t really believe that’s their work to do. But you know, Cynthia and I say all the time we recognize that a lot of listeners who come into the At Last She Said It space are on a path that eventually takes them out of the church.
We have been watching this for six years, right? And so at first it was pretty disconcerting, really to us. Because that was not our intention, right? That’s not - We didn’t mean to be setting up hospice for people to leave the church or however it was functioning for women. We were delighted to provide a safe space, but it was, we wanted to provide a space for healing and really ideally, we hoped, I guess, that could happen within the church.
JS: Yeah.
SH: But it turns out just in our observation, that that is not the case for many women. So we tell each other all the time. Look, it’s not our job to keep people in the church. That is the church’s job to do that work.
JS: Yes.
SH: But I don’t know what to say to the church at this point when they’re not willing to do that work or they’re not. doing it.
JS: Yep.
SH: I don’t know from my perspective as the the evil podcaster or the person on social media or whatever it is. I don’t know what I’m supposed to do to compensate for the fact that the church refuses to do its part of the work.
JS: Yeah.
SH: on this.
JS: Well, there’s not. The truth is there’s nothing you can do because until the church decides that this is part of a mature, spiritual journey, and that individuated faith actually makes a stronger faith.
SH: Right.
CW: Yes!
JS: And that if we had a big enough tent to, you know, to nurture that, people wouldn’t leave. People don’t want to leave.
SH: They don’t want to leave.
JS: I work with people all the time in this. They don’t want to leave. The vast majority of people fight and fight and fight to have a way to stay and,
SH: Right.
CW: Yes. Yes. Yes.
JS: If we’re not willing to embrace that. If we’re not willing to have some sort of mechanisms to recognize the need for all of this and stop scapegoating and vilifying people who go against the norm, this is what we’re left with. And so then it just becomes a very individual choice of a person of where you can be well.
And there are a lot of people who can be well inside the church, and there are a lot of people who cannot. And there is no moral superiority one way or the other. But we all try to make it one way is the morally superior way to be [01:05:00]
SH: Right.
CW: Yeah.
SH: And that’s probably a shadow.
JS: It’s one hundred percent a shadow. It’s a shadow manifestation.
SH: Bam. We come full circle.
JS: And we come full circle.
CW: We sure have.
JS: That darn ego gets in the way and makes us wanna be part of the group that’s right. And doing it right and doing it well. And where did we learn that?
SH: Right.
CW: Gee, where did we learn that?
JS: Wherever did we learn that? Turns out we take our shadow and our ego with us when we go out of the church. Yes,
SH: Yes we do.
CW: That’s true.
JS: I can be as, I can be as critical of that group as I can, the ones who stay and vice versa. I’m an equal opportunity critiquer, and I can make anyone mad on either side.
SH: Yeah, we know how that is.
CW: That’s why I love you, Jana, for reals, because I just think that is such a tension. That’s a hard, that’s a hard line that you walk there. And we know a little bit about something about that. Okay. Jana, we just have a couple minutes left. I can’t thank you enough for this conversation. It has really just barely scratched the surface, so we’ll probably have a part two and a three. We will see. But first of all, as we close out is there anything you wanna say about resources, books, articles to read? What would you like to say about that for listeners who you have wet their whistle and they’re like,”Tell me more”.
JS: Yeah, so there are lots of ways into this. I have found for myself that when I start reading books about shadow I, there, I haven’t found one that I just really loved and that has worked for me. Although I am a fan of Connie’s Weg and she’s got some good shadow books out there. I’m reading one of them that I think, it’s a more advanced thing and very specific, but I think that some of the best shadow work is really done either in group work or in couples work or, you know, with somebody.
That’s how I’ve learned about all of this. It’s just been in my practice and in listening to people talk about it. Because the territory, it really is a very thick, nebulous thing to try to get your brain around how all of this works. So, I would just say dive in where, you know, if it’s podcasts and other things, you know, the one you mentioned Cynthia. But just searching for it and following what catches your interest because there’s more and more on it out there. In fact, it’s one of the things that gives me some hope when I hear that there are 26 year olds writing books about this. You know? Yeah. This is how development gets accelerated from generation to generation.You know, they’re growing up in this moment of all of us talking about it. Amazing! Like, let’s break those suckers down in your twenties. Instead of trying to do the work in my fifties, right?
CW: Right.
JS: Starting the work in my fifties. Anyway, I wish I had some really great concrete resources for you, but most of mine has been done more in action, so,
SH: Okay.
CW: That’s good. Well, thank you so much, Jana, for showing up for being vulnerable as well and sharing your own personal stories. I find that most helpful actually when there’s a bit of an illustration for it. So we can’t thank you enough and we want to talk about this again. Thank you.
JS: You’re very welcome.
SH: Another great personal therapy session on the podcast for me. So thank you. (Laughter) Let’s do it again soon.
JS: Yes, please.
Voicemail 1: Hi Susan and Cynthia. I just wanted to share an experience I had recently. I was asked to give a talk in church and I spoke on the parable of the 10 Virgins. I was really inspired by your episode where you have the dance with scripture and I talked a lot about our kind of hyper focus on earning love and maybe just a different perspective of Christ being able to provide the light for all of us. And after I spoke, I, you know, tried to infuse as much freshness into a parable that we hear the same meaning from and the gentleman after me took examples from my talk and clearly had not listened to what I said and said, yep, we need to go to the temple and read our scriptures and do all the things so that we can earn our spot at the feast so that our lamps are lit and ready to go. And and then after that, the bishopric member cut the closing hymn and said, also spoke on it and said, “Yep. We can’t earn God’s love, but we do need to work to be worthy of it.” , which seemed like a bit of a paradox. So anyway, just wanted to share that. I thought it was a frustrating experience that anything that I said was immediately amended by you know, the people who had asked me to speak. And I even had a woman come up to me afterward and say,” Yeah. That was really frustrating that they were negating what you said”. So at least someone acknowledged that my message had been a little bit different. But anyway. [01:10:00]
Voicemail 2: This is Heather Ruth Pack With Times of Faith studying the parable of the lost sheep has changed how I think about sin. I learned that for the first few centuries of Christianity, the cross wasn’t the symbol early Christians used. It was of Jesus carrying a sheep on his shoulders. Those two images evoke different emotions in me. The cross makes me think of sin as doing something bad that causes Jesus to suffer and die for me, which brings shame and guilt.
But when I imagine Jesus carrying a lost sheep, I think of sin as just being lost and in need of care. It makes me feel a longing. Yet it’s also reassuring knowing someone is coming to find me. I no longer see sin as a debt so great that I can’t repay. Rather, sin is a burden that can be lifted. My shame is now replaced with comfort.
My prayers have changed for me saying, “I’m so sorry. I screwed up. Please forgive me”. To “ I am lost. Please come find me”.
CW: Don’t forget, we have a website atlastshesaidit.org. That’s where you can find all of our content. You can contact our team, send us a voicemail, find transcripts, buy our book, subscribe to our substack, or make a tax deductible donation. Paid subscribers get extra stuff including access to our community chats, and also Zoom events with us. Remember, your support keeps the podcast ad free. Thanks for listening.