Mostly we just want to feel good. This usually involves an effort to get away from our darkness - get away from our insecurity, our depression, our anxiety, our anger, our feelings of abandonment, engulfment, hopelessness, or helplessness. That makes sense, no one likes those feelings. How we get away from them tends to be the problem. The usual suspects come to mind: drugs (prescription and recreational), sex, food, alcohol, mindless entertainment, the internet, blaming or attacking others, even physical violence. These things put us on an endless, neurotic loop. The pain never gets resolved. It just gets repressed into the unconscious and builds up.
Psychology tends to favor more feminine methods of feeling better: inner child work, self-compassion, unconditional positive regard, “taking care of ourselves”, art therapy, mindfulness, cognitive reframing / insight oriented therapy, etc. All of these are excellent for mental health and yet there is a darker side to healing that doesn’t look so pretty.
This side has a more masculine, dark approach. It might be something like Primal Therapy (popularly known as Primal Scream Therapy) - which ushers the patient through old trauma (that can often be pre-verbal) and accesses parts of the primal / feeling brain to then emote and even scream - allowing the release of long held pain, abreactive work - pounding an empty chair while processing repressed trauma, psychodrama - safely enacting past childhood abuse issues in an effort to heal, EMDR (Eye Movement Desensitization and Reprocessing) - often used to process trapped pain that has resulted in PTSD (post traumatic stress disorder) - war veterans are often candidates for EMDR.
When terror is addressed too intellectually, medicated for years, or handled too gently, it can sometimes fall short of the deep seated healing that needs to take place. If I needed to rage and roll around on the ground as a child but was shut down by the attending adults, I might need to do some rolling around as an adult to get those stuck feelings out and empathized with. I once worked at a recovery center that allowed the clients to smash old dishes while they screamed out their frustrations. Many clients expressed a new found energy for living after releasing the trapped energy of repressed anger they never allowed themselves to feel.
When boys are encouraged to be “good boys,” they often miss a crucial developmental stage where they can safely experience their dark sides: rebel, dye their hair, go on camping excursions, do a sweat lodge in which they go into a dark hut and sweat - sing - and yell under intense heat, box, do martial arts, chop wood, hunt, or play an electric guitar (maybe get into heavy metal - punk rock - rap, etc.). Boys are traditionally fascinated with monster movies, dinosaurs, toy guns, war games, and other subjects as a way of expressing their darkness. Sanitizing their childhood with soft activities can be problematic when they encounter the dark side of life as adults. They might need a “sharper mental sword” to get through a graduate program, a break up, or financial challenges when they reach adulthood.
Girls, especially those from poor families, can still be enculturated into passivity by encouraging them to focus on playing with dolls, learning to cook, clean, and attract boys, and eventually “find a husband to take care of me,” etc. A popular book, Clan of the Cave Bear, became a bestseller telling the story of Ayla, a woman in a cave tribe, who dared learn to hunt and make her own way. She was rejected by the tribe yet came into her full powers as a woman. Today women are still paid less than men, largely objectified, and told in many ways to be subservient to men. The Women’s March, the Me Too movement, etc., embody reclaiming the intensity and sharpness that women have been dulled too from patriarchal systems.
When we don’t get experiences with the nurturing dark we are often more at risk for the destructive dark behaviors: violence, control, manipulating, force, criminal activities, etc. Gang members are in the grips of trying to self-empower through the destructive dark energies (which will never result in self-empowerment in a legitimate way) largely because no one showed them ways of being loved in the nurturing dark.
The nurturing dark elements are part of your life. A place of intensity and aliveness that is reflected in actions that might not look so “nice” to others. Do you have a fascination with Native American sweat lodges but have never done one? Are you a frustrated female boxer? Have you had a chance to scream and writhe about unprocessed pain with someone to act as a witness and say, “Its ok, I’m here and I accept you just as you are.” Are you feeling dull, unmotivated, stagnated? You might need to find help in letting you see the light in the darkness.
Click below to see Dr. Arthur Janov describe Primal Therapy: