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.

Do you ever 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’m not going to reveal all the parts of me I deem inconvenient, messy or less acceptable. But I will share some for context. 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.

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, a part of me is annoyed 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.

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, accepting these sides of myself isn’t about letting them take over. It’s about noticing them rather than immediately pushing them away.

If I’m feeling longing, something I have felt and judged, instead of telling myself I shouldn’t feel that way or that it’s silly, I can ask why it is there. Maybe it comes from wanting closeness from someone, and maybe it’s okay to want that. There is something freeing about allowing the feeling to exist before deciding what to do with it.

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.

Journalling has helped me too. Although I use and have created a guided journal, stream-of-consciousness writing has been particularly useful. Sometimes I just brain dump everything I’m thinking and feeling and then notice what I want to explore further.

Creative expression does something similar for me. Writing, music, art, whatever form it takes, can give the parts of us that are harder to express somewhere to exist. Something uncomfortable can become something meaningful.

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. The combination of all your traits makes you, you, and that’s something you deserve to appreciate.