You Are allowed to Contain Both Light and Dark

What if growth is not about removing the parts of yourself you dislike, but understanding why they are there and learning how to hold them alongside the parts you already like and deem acceptable? What if I told you this is what makes you fully you, and is what makes life feel rich and your human experience have depth? It’s beautiful and not something to fight, but something to be aware of and accept.

So to get really into it, do you find yourself feeling at times too much or not enough? Do you feel ashamed of some sides of yourself and frustrated that they even exist? In Jungian psychology, the shadow refers to parts of ourselves that we push out of conscious awareness because they feel unacceptable or inconsistent with the person we think we “should” be.

I wanted to note that shadows will be different for different people; it’s not universal and you can identify your own. For example, personally jealousy hardly affects me. If someone is somewhere I want to be in life, I just feel good for them. I don’t feel life’s a competition. But for someone else, if you feel envy in this way, don’t blame yourself. Try and identify what it is telling you. Maybe it is showing you something you want for yourself.

I’m not going to reveal all the parts of me I deem inconvenient, messy or less acceptable. But I will share some for context that you may or may not relate to. I’ve definitely had people describe me in ways like gentle, even like an angel, and caring, and this side is real. But it led me to feel frustrated at being boxed into a label that felt convenient to others, while I was suppressing the sides I thought would make me vulnerable or judged if I showed them. There was a fear that I’d be left alone if people saw the full me. Ironically, the full me sometimes came out in a far more intense way through suppressing it.

So I hid frustration, sadness, the fear that no one would want to see those parts of me, and wanting closeness and space at the same time, to name a few shadows. But it felt hollow and not true to me to not accept these contradictions in myself and recognise there are reasons why I am the way I am. And this applies to you too.

Sometimes these rejected parts show up in much smaller, more ordinary ways.

To illustrate this literally so you have a picture in your mind, I have to admit I’m sitting here writing this at lunchtime and I haven’t even got ready yet. And as a perfectionist (albeit a slightly chaotic one), a part of me is mad at myself for this, but another part is more accepting of it than I might have been in the past.

Doing things in a slightly random way is something that frustrated me about myself in the past. I tried to reject it and ended up exhausted. I may be the person sitting in their pyjamas at 1pm, but I’m also writing something I deem valuable. That also doesn’t mean this is always me, or that I couldn’t get up at 6am tomorrow and have a more ‘normal’ day, because I can and it’s my choice.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s good to have a routine and good habits. That’s the aim. But if I don’t manage it one day, what’s the point in beating myself up over it? There’s always next time. And maybe if I’d had that perfect start to the day, I wouldn’t have felt inspired to write this. Who knows.

Another thing I sometimes judge about myself is being sensitive. I’ve worried about whether I have that trait too much and I’ve even been criticised for it.

Recently my pet died unexpectedly while I was travelling. I got the news when I was at the top of a skyscraper, of all places. The view was beautiful, but after hearing I’d lost the little creature who had been such a source of comfort to me, it became ugly. All I could do was take in the view without really seeing it and cry my eyes out. Part of me was judging myself in that moment: I’m crying in front of a bunch of strangers and this makes me feel vulnerable.

But there’s a flip side to this. If I wasn’t sensitive and didn’t care so much, maybe I wouldn’t be the person I am, someone who cares deeply about others but also experiences the world in its full beauty. The sadness, the joy, all heightened.

Even in moments where you feel you could have done things differently, there can still be something to learn. If someone annoyed you and you reacted strongly, maybe that doesn’t simply tell you that you’re difficult. Maybe something didn’t feel right for you and there was a part of you trying to stand up for yourself. That’s useful information.

I’ve also found myself drawn to this quality when I’ve seen it reflected in other people.

An encounter that stayed with me was meeting someone who, to me, reflected this. We even talked about how they had embraced both their light and dark side. On the one hand, they had genuine emotional intelligence, an openness I’ve hardly seen in anyone else, and an energy about them that felt like they wanted to experience life to its fullest. And yet they had made some dark choices, and perhaps society would say they had ‘gone down the wrong path’ to cope.

And yet they seemed to see themselves clearly and accept this about themselves. I see this as strength, even if they didn’t see themselves that way. It takes strength to continue and not let your past define you. Interestingly, this person made me feel very seen.

For me, the point of accepting these sides of ourselves isn’t to let them take over.

The healthier idea isn’t to express or be ruled by every dark impulse. It’s to notice it, understand what it may be telling you, not immediately suppress it, sit with it, and then choose how to respond. That tends to give you more control, not less.

For example, if I’m feeling longing, something I have felt and judged, instead of telling myself I shouldn’t feel that way, that it’s silly, and feeling ashamed of it, I can ask what the feeling is and why it is there. Maybe it comes from a need for closeness from someone, and it’s ok to want that. The feeling is telling you something important about your needs and desires.

One way I’ve accepted the complexity of having different sides and complex emotions at the same time is through listening to music.

One song is ‘Come Back to Earth’ by Mac Miller and the lyric “I just need a way out of my head.” For me, this captures the feeling of being overwhelmed by your inner world without neatly resolving it. There’s the feeling of drowning in your life, but also relief at recognising and expressing it. What I love about the song is the honesty and rawness, but also its tenderness and vulnerability.

Another is Mac Miller’s ‘Self Care’, which is about withdrawing inwards, acknowledging difficulty and taking responsibility for yourself without pretending it’s all fine.

Another artist is Lana Del Rey, and a specific song that fits this is ‘Mariners Apartment Complex’, which is about being misread as fragile: “you took my sadness out of context” and “they mistook my kindness for weakness.” She refuses to reduce herself to other people’s interpretation.

She presents herself as someone who can contain sadness and darkness while still being grounded, loving and capable of guiding someone else. The lyric “the darkness, the deepness” particularly resonates with me. These qualities don’t cancel out the light in someone; they add to someone’s identity and wholeness, “all the things that make me who I am.” It isn’t about eliminating the more difficult qualities, but making room for contradictions and wholeness rather than self-editing. So I want to say thank you to the musicians who’ve helped me feel understood in this way.

Another way I’ve found helpful, and you may too, to embrace, learn about and identify your shadows is through journalling. This can help with noticing the parts of yourself you used to judge or suppress. Although I use and have created a guided journal, stream-of-consciousness writing has really helped me with this too. Just having a brain dump of everything I’m thinking and feeling, and then exploring anything I want to write more about. The voice notes app on your phone could also work for this if you don’t like writing.

Creative expression can also be a good outlet, art, writing or whatever it is for you, because it gives those shadow aspects somewhere to go without having to act on them literally. It can turn something uncomfortable into something meaningful and give you a space to express the things you can’t say out loud day to day.

I wanted to close this by saying, because sometimes I need to hear this too: you are worthy as you are. If you want to improve and change, you can, but that’s up to you. You are unique. There is only one you, and that is incredible. The combination of all your traits makes you, you, and that’s something you deserve to appreciate.