Speaker 1: I'm not talking about pedophiles, That's not what I'm talking about,
Speaker 1: or stereo murderers, you know, that's not what I'm talking about.
Speaker 1: I'm talking about kind of everyday outbursts or you know,
Speaker 1: experiences of a part of us that we feel we
Speaker 1: can't tame, we can't control. Hello, and welcome to the
Speaker 1: Psychology Podcast Today. We welcome to the show the Shadow
Speaker 1: Expert Doctor Connie is a Wig. Connie is a retired therapist, writer,
Speaker 1: climate reality leader, and citizens climate lobbyist. She's the co
Speaker 1: author of Meeting the Shadow, Romancing the Shadow, and Meeting
Speaker 1: the Shadow of Spirituality. Her latest book is called The
Speaker 1: Inner Work of Age, Shifting From Role to Soul, which
Speaker 1: has won both the twenty twenty one American Book Fest
Speaker 1: Award and the twenty twenty one Best Indie Book Award
Speaker 1: for Best Inspirational Nonfiction. In this episode, I talk to
Speaker 1: doctor Connie is a Wig about embracing the shadow. We
Speaker 1: often associate the shadow with negativity, but it's not necessarily
Speaker 1: bad or sinister. The shadow is actually just composed of
Speaker 1: repressed feelings and messages in our unconscious which can erupt
Speaker 1: out of control. According to doctor Zuwig, we must develop
Speaker 1: a conscious relationship with our shadow by doing inner work,
Speaker 1: especially as we age. As we near the end of
Speaker 1: our lives, it's crucial that we conduct a life review
Speaker 1: to help us repair emotionally and spiritually. It was a
Speaker 1: real honor chatting with doctor Connie Zewig because I have
Speaker 1: long been fascinating with notions of the shadow, and I've
Speaker 1: been a big fan of shadow work and what it
Speaker 1: can really do to help people bring to the surface
Speaker 1: things that they really have not accepted about themselves. As
Speaker 1: Carl Rogers says, it's only when you accept yourself then
Speaker 1: you can change. I also resonate with her work a
Speaker 1: lot because I'm really into the notion of the diamonic.
Speaker 1: It's not the demonic, but the daemonic, which is the
Speaker 1: notion that role may talked about a lot. You know.
Speaker 1: The dimonic is whatever is within us that has the
Speaker 1: power to overtake the whole person. It can be used
Speaker 1: for destructive purposes or creative purposes. Doctor's a Wig has
Speaker 1: really influenced me a lot in many ways, and I
Speaker 1: found this chapter so inspiring and informative, and I know
Speaker 1: you will too, So without further ado, I bring you
Speaker 1: Doctor Connie is a wig. Hi, Connie, thank you so
Speaker 1: much for chatting me today. I've been a big fan
Speaker 1: of a lot of your work, and your book on
Speaker 1: the Hidden Power of the Dark Side of human Nature
Speaker 1: has been a perennial resource for me in my work
Speaker 1: and my attempts to revive humanistic psychology. Oh beautiful, can
Speaker 1: we start off with you telling our audience a little
Speaker 1: bit more about how you got into shadow work and
Speaker 1: why that interested you in the first place. I began
Speaker 1: meditation when I was nineteen, and I really went for spirituality.
Speaker 1: That was what my life was about in my twenties,
Speaker 1: and there was an experience that I had with my
Speaker 1: meditation community that was very heartbreaking and disillusioning, the hipocrisy
Speaker 1: that I encountered, and it kind of pierced the veil
Speaker 1: of the all good, all light, all positivity paradigm and
Speaker 1: I had been. I started to read young because it
Speaker 1: was hard to find psychology that included spirituality. But I
Speaker 1: was kind of already psychologically oriented because my parents brought
Speaker 1: me up going to therapy. So I started reading young,
Speaker 1: and then I went into Jungian analysis, and my first
Speaker 1: analyst really initiated me into the shadow in my dreams,
Speaker 1: and that kind of stimulated my motivation to go back
Speaker 1: to graduate school and get my doctorate in death psychology. So,
Speaker 1: you know, there was a whole sort of series of steps.
Speaker 1: At that time I was working in the publishing industry.
Speaker 1: There was Meeting the Shadow as you know, as a collection,
Speaker 1: and there was a whole series of those anthologies that
Speaker 1: I love to the publishing house. Yeah, and so then
Speaker 1: it kind of struck a chord and it sold so
Speaker 1: well that I realized people wanted to know about the Shadow.
Speaker 1: So after receiving my PhD a couple decades later, I
Speaker 1: wrote Romancing the Shadow with a colleague, which is more
Speaker 1: about the method of shadow work that we developed to
Speaker 1: extend Jung's work, which really focused on meeting the shadow
Speaker 1: in dreams and an active imagination or create creative fantasy work.
Speaker 1: So we really cultivated this way of identifying when the
Speaker 1: shadow erupts and then building a conscious relationship with it.
Speaker 1: And so Romancing the Shadow then has focused more on
Speaker 1: sort of everyday life and how to have that connection
Speaker 1: to your unconscious, primarily in relationships. You know, you keep
Speaker 1: on having the same fight over and over again, or
Speaker 1: you keep on choosing the same partner over and over again.
Speaker 1: That was in my forties. And then I wrote Meeting
Speaker 1: the Shadow of Spirituality, which will be revised and republished
Speaker 1: next spring. And then I wrote a novel about Rumy.
Speaker 1: And then, you know, I was in my late sixties
Speaker 1: thinking about retirement from clinical work and starting to feel
Speaker 1: disoriented like most people, do you know who am I
Speaker 1: if I'm not doctor Connie the Shadow Expert? And it
Speaker 1: kind of really sent me into this whole world of
Speaker 1: conscious aging and the discovery that there were absolutely no
Speaker 1: books about the unconscious and the agent process. There are
Speaker 1: a couple of them now, but at that time there
Speaker 1: was nothing for people like me. So I said to
Speaker 1: my but, oh my god, I have to write another book. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: And so that's how that happened. Yeah, The Inner Work
Speaker 1: of Age Shifting from Role to Soul is the title
Speaker 1: of the book. For our listeners, Before we do a
Speaker 1: deep dive into that book, this is such a great
Speaker 1: opportunity for you to introduce to many of our listeners
Speaker 1: the just what is depth psychology? What is the shadow?
Speaker 1: What do we mean by these terms? You know, in
Speaker 1: the early days of psychology, little more than one hundred
Speaker 1: years ago, Freud kind of took the first moon trip
Speaker 1: into the unconscious, and Young explored the unconscious as his
Speaker 1: Freud kind of mentored Young Carl Jung and Jung kind
Speaker 1: of eventually broke away from Freud, and one of the
Speaker 1: differences between them was how they viewed the unconscious, and
Speaker 1: Jung said, it wasn't only about our negative emotions and
Speaker 1: dark impulses. It was about anything at all that was repressed.
Speaker 1: So our creativity could be repressed in the shadow, Our
Speaker 1: dreams and aspirations could be repressed into the personal unconscious.
Speaker 1: The shadow is was Yung's name for the personal unconscious.
Speaker 1: There are layers of the unconscious, so we're not talking
Speaker 1: about the collective unconscious. We're talking about just the personal
Speaker 1: unconscious in each individual. And so depth psychology refers to
Speaker 1: the field of psychology that emphasizes and includes unconscious process
Speaker 1: and most of psychology no longer, does you know, most
Speaker 1: of psychology is now they call it evidence based. It's
Speaker 1: now based on brain and neuroscience, cognitive behavioral stuff. It's
Speaker 1: like another field. It's just very different from death psychology. Yeah,
Speaker 1: very different, very different. Yeah. Can we elaborate the connection
Speaker 1: between the phrase that you hear a lot the dark
Speaker 1: side and the shadow, because if I'm correct, if I
Speaker 1: understand this correctly, the shadow is not necessarily the dark
Speaker 1: side of human nature. Right, it's a much broader collection
Speaker 1: of unconscious processes, according to Young. Right. And also, you
Speaker 1: can have conscious dark side that isn't the shadow. Right.
Speaker 1: You can have your dark side express that isn't part
Speaker 1: of your shadow. Right. Are these things true? Well, it's
Speaker 1: a little slippery. We have associations with the word dark,
Speaker 1: which also carries certain racist tones. Oh that's interesting. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I've had African American people say that to me. The
Speaker 1: terminology for dark side came up because it's not in
Speaker 1: the light of awareness, not that it's dark negative, right,
Speaker 1: but that it's a blind spot. Well, it doesn't live
Speaker 1: in the light of awareness or consciousness. It's unconscious. So
Speaker 1: it's dark in relation to a wareareness not dark in
Speaker 1: relation to negativity? Now, some content, some shadow content, is
Speaker 1: dark in relation to the or negative in relation to
Speaker 1: the ego. So when you're growing up, if your father
Speaker 1: says to you, don't be sad, that's woosy and weak.
Speaker 1: I don't want to ever see you cry, then that
Speaker 1: whole set of feelings gets repressed into your personal unconscious
Speaker 1: or your shadow, and as you live through life, and
Speaker 1: all those feelings of sorrow, grief, vulnerability are forbidden to you,
Speaker 1: are not allowed to be lived out. Then we could
Speaker 1: say that they're darker negative in relation to your ego,
Speaker 1: because your ego is telling you not to be sad. Right,
Speaker 1: They're not darker negative in relation to somebody who grows
Speaker 1: up differently and is a allowed to express sadness. And
Speaker 1: that's part of what happens when people find a partner
Speaker 1: and mate, is that their shadow material doesn't match. It's
Speaker 1: not compatible. Wow, if you grow up with the message,
Speaker 1: don't get angry. I can't tolerate it. You know, your
Speaker 1: mother says, I can't handle that anger. Settle down, you know,
Speaker 1: be quiet, go to your room. Then all of that
Speaker 1: anger gets buried in the shadow. And what happens when
Speaker 1: you meet someone who does something that makes you authentically angry,
Speaker 1: I mean it deserves an angry response. Well, it's forbidden
Speaker 1: to you, and so you go into terrible internal conflict,
Speaker 1: you know, and you go into conflict with the other person.
Speaker 1: And sometimes what happens then is the material erupts from
Speaker 1: the shadow out of your control. So you know, in
Speaker 1: my practice, I had a lot of people who were ragers,
Speaker 1: and they were ragers because they had no conscious relationship
Speaker 1: to their authentic anger, and so it just came up
Speaker 1: out of their control, out of the control of their ego.
Speaker 1: Does that clarify a bit? Oh, you have no idea
Speaker 1: how much that clarified. So interesting. We got to bring
Speaker 1: this stuff back into mainstream psychology. Yeah, but you're right.
Speaker 1: I mean I spent my whole dissertation, my whole PhD
Speaker 1: was on unconscious processes and its relationship to intelligence, but
Speaker 1: the focus was really on like information processing and implicit
Speaker 1: learning and of statistical patterns. I mean that's different than
Speaker 1: like what you're talking about in the unconscious. So I
Speaker 1: hear you, and I think it's really really profound stuff.
Speaker 1: And also just clarifying for our audience that what the
Speaker 1: dark side means in this framework is not necessarily negative.
Speaker 1: Is just a wow. I mean that's really mind blowing.
Speaker 1: Really mind we're evil. It's not easy evil. Yeah. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm not talking about pedophiles, That's not what I'm talking about,
Speaker 1: or stereo murderers. You know, that's not what I'm talking about.
Speaker 1: I'm talking about kind of every day outbursts or you know,
Speaker 1: experiences of a part of us that we feel we
Speaker 1: can't tame, we can't control. It could show up in addictions,
Speaker 1: It could show up in mood and mood disorders. You know,
Speaker 1: someone is depressed and can't figure it out and can't
Speaker 1: get over it and doesn't know why, because there's a
Speaker 1: lot of material that's repressed that wasn't forbiddens, that wasn't
Speaker 1: allowed self expression. Is meditation a good vehicle for confronting
Speaker 1: the shadow, bringing it into the light. You know, for
Speaker 1: as long as I've taught shadow work, I've taught it
Speaker 1: in conjunction with meditation, and people always ask me why
Speaker 1: that is so. For me, in order to be able
Speaker 1: to really encounter those parts of ourselves that are most
Speaker 1: scary and difficult and challenging, we need to have a
Speaker 1: place to center ourselves. We need to have a way
Speaker 1: to quiet ourselves, quiet the mind, especially calm the nervous system,
Speaker 1: and then learn how to watch when the shadow comes up. So,
Speaker 1: if you really learn how to meditate and find that
Speaker 1: refuge inside yourself of silence, then when a very difficult
Speaker 1: thought comes up, or a really difficult feelings comes up,
Speaker 1: you can go to that center inside yourself and contemplate
Speaker 1: it and uncover its roots and do shadow work. But
Speaker 1: if you don't have that, if you're lost inside the
Speaker 1: noise in your mind, it's much harder to do. And
Speaker 1: that's where most people live. Most people live inside the noise. Well, okay,
Speaker 1: so we can say into your latest work and it's
Speaker 1: connection to some of the ideas we're talking about. So
Speaker 1: what is the phrase inner ageist? Like, what does that mean?
Speaker 1: And how does that affect our health? The way that
Speaker 1: I teach shadow work is, you know, there's all this
Speaker 1: shadow content we were just talking about, all the material
Speaker 1: that's been buried. It's hard, it's amorphous, and so it's
Speaker 1: hard to get a grasp of it. So what I
Speaker 1: do is I help people, or teach people in the
Speaker 1: books how to personify a shadow character, how to identify
Speaker 1: repeating internal dialogue, repeating feelings, and repeating sensations, and then
Speaker 1: turn that into a shadow character, a figure in your
Speaker 1: unconscious that you can begin to make a conscious relationship with.
Speaker 1: Let's say it's the food eat or the abandoned child,
Speaker 1: or the angry boy, whatever it is. Right now, you've
Speaker 1: got something you can work with. So in my life
Speaker 1: latest work, I discovered, first in myself and then in
Speaker 1: my research that we live in a kind of a
Speaker 1: sea of agism in our culture. You know, youth is
Speaker 1: good and old is bad, independent is good, and dependent
Speaker 1: is bad. Strong is good, weak is bad. You're talking
Speaker 1: about American culture, yes, in western, post industrial white European culture.
Speaker 1: In that sea of agism which we see in the movies,
Speaker 1: we hear in our families. I mean, my father used
Speaker 1: to make comments. Even with relatives and with TV shows
Speaker 1: and everything, we internalize that ageist message that young is
Speaker 1: good and old is bad. Well, what happens as we
Speaker 1: age through the lifespan, We're still carrying that unconscious message
Speaker 1: inside of us, unknowingly. So then all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: I have seventy three years of life experience. If I
Speaker 1: hadn't really worked with that, I'd be going, oh my god,
Speaker 1: I'm old. I don't you know, myrinkles, my body changes,
Speaker 1: my this, my that. And what ends up happening is
Speaker 1: that we then project that agism against ourselves. And I
Speaker 1: had so many people in my practice who were feeling
Speaker 1: self hate because their bodies were changing, or their energy
Speaker 1: level was changing, their productivity was going down, their hair
Speaker 1: was turning gray, whatever it was, they had such negative
Speaker 1: feelings about it, about their own aging. So I found
Speaker 1: the research of Becca Levy at Yale University. She spent
Speaker 1: her whole career studying the impact of internalized AI agism
Speaker 1: on our health interesting and what she yeah, and what
Speaker 1: she found is that what I call the innerageous, this
Speaker 1: is a shadow character that I call the inner ageist,
Speaker 1: which is epidemic in our culture men and women. And
Speaker 1: what she found is that that unconscious internalized agism affects
Speaker 1: our heart rate, affects our memories, affects our moods our
Speaker 1: emotional health, affects our cognitive health, even affects our longevity.
Speaker 1: And when I saw that, it just blew my mind.
Speaker 1: I wrote a whole chapter about the innerageus because I
Speaker 1: realized that even though there's a campaign to end agism
Speaker 1: in the culture now, that that social activism is not
Speaker 1: enough because it's internal. It requires inner work to really
Speaker 1: uproot the inner ageist shadow character in us so that
Speaker 1: we can feel self acceptance and we can find the
Speaker 1: time to really self actualize at this stage of life. Well,
Speaker 1: you're not you're speaking my language. I'm all, that's self actualization. Yeah, yes,
Speaker 1: What are some of the major or some other shadows
Speaker 1: that you have seen happens to people as they get
Speaker 1: older that's specific to the aging process. There's a big
Speaker 1: one that happens with retirement. Because our culture is all
Speaker 1: about productivity. It's all about success. What did you do today?
Speaker 1: Or you go to a party, what do you do?
Speaker 1: And so we've unconsciously identified with what I call the doer.
Speaker 1: Some people call it the perfectionist, or the producer, or
Speaker 1: the dominator, the controller or the CEO, whatever it is,
Speaker 1: we call it. Our identity is about doing. And what
Speaker 1: then happens when the roles fall away with retirement? People
Speaker 1: are having Millions of baby boomers are having a terrible
Speaker 1: time with us, feeling disoriented and lost. Some are sort
Speaker 1: of taking up encore careers, starting new businesses. Some are
Speaker 1: turning to creative outlets, some are turning to political activism.
Speaker 1: But what I want to suggest is that there's something deeper,
Speaker 1: and that is that in all the spiritual traditions, we're
Speaker 1: taught that this stage of life is about spirituality. It's
Speaker 1: about contemplation, it's about turning within, and if we continue
Speaker 1: to maintain the doing level that we that we had
Speaker 1: at midlife. I call, you know, the heroic doing on
Speaker 1: the hero's journey. Then we don't really become an elder.
Speaker 1: We don't make a shift in identity, out of the
Speaker 1: doer into a more contemplative, more spiritual stage of life.
Speaker 1: And you know, the subtitle of my book I borrowed
Speaker 1: from Rondas. It's called shifting from role to soul. That
Speaker 1: was his term, and I just love it because people
Speaker 1: instantly identify with, Oh my god, that's what I need
Speaker 1: to do. I need to let go of my identity
Speaker 1: with my role, whether that's CEO or therapist, or teacher
Speaker 1: or nurse or mom, whatever it is, lawyer, writer, I
Speaker 1: need to let go of that identity and shift to
Speaker 1: who I really am, my spiritual nature that's beneath all
Speaker 1: the roles, behind all the roles. And so that was
Speaker 1: one of the intentions in my book was to teach
Speaker 1: people how to do that with practices and really deepen
Speaker 1: their experience of this stage of life. It doesn't mean
Speaker 1: that we stop doing. Many people want to, like, here
Speaker 1: I am with you. So many people want to continue
Speaker 1: to contribute, but we're not so identified with that. It's
Speaker 1: not about how much we do or don't do. It's
Speaker 1: more about the quality of awareness, the stage, the level
Speaker 1: of consciousness with which we do what we're doing in
Speaker 1: that stage of life. You strike me as a very
Speaker 1: spiritual person. Do you see yourself that way? Like you
Speaker 1: seem very intuitive to me. Well, you know, I've been
Speaker 1: practicing meditation for fifty three years now, not too shabby too.
Speaker 1: You know, in the Vedonta lineage had you know, several teachers,
Speaker 1: and my practice is my favorite time of the day.
Speaker 1: And it kind of goes without saying that. That's just
Speaker 1: essential to me. Do you mind telling me some of
Speaker 1: your major influences in the meditation world? I mean, some
Speaker 1: of my major influences are people like Sharon Salzburg, Sam Harris.
Speaker 1: I'm just curious sort of who who's who've influenced you? Yeah,
Speaker 1: I don't. You know. The reason I don't typically do
Speaker 1: that is because I don't want people to follow me.
Speaker 1: You know, it's really there's a chapter in the book.
Speaker 1: There's a chapter in the book about how to find
Speaker 1: a spiritual practice that fits you. Yeah, well, you know
Speaker 1: who you are now. So I'm not a Buddhist, but
Speaker 1: people who are listening may feel resonance with that tradition
Speaker 1: or with Judaism, or with Christianity or with whatever. So
Speaker 1: there are mystical streams in every tradition that you can
Speaker 1: find now that have practices, that have teachers and practices.
Speaker 1: It's I mean, there's just been this democratization of spiritual
Speaker 1: teachings and we're kind of blessed to be living at
Speaker 1: that particular time with that particular opportunity. So I think
Speaker 1: it's important for people to find their own way. That's
Speaker 1: the way of self actualization. Yeah, yeah, for sure. So
Speaker 1: is there a difference between being or becoming a senior
Speaker 1: and becoming an elder? Is there a difference in those concepts?
Speaker 1: For you? You know, we all become seniors with a
Speaker 1: Medicare birthday. I mean we kind of get this stamp
Speaker 1: of approval. Now you get Medicare. It's official. That is, Yeah,
Speaker 1: but that is not a statement about in at work
Speaker 1: or internal development or psychological growth. And we've all met
Speaker 1: people who are sixty five or seventy five or eighty
Speaker 1: five who are closed minded, rigid, regretful. That's not an elder, right,
Speaker 1: So for me, elder is a stage not an age.
Speaker 1: It's a stage of development. It's not chronological. I've met
Speaker 1: people who are elders at fifty, so it's not chronological.
Speaker 1: It's a quality of awareness that results from doing the
Speaker 1: inner work that I write about. So, for example, completing
Speaker 1: emotional unfinished business, Wow, how can you become an elder
Speaker 1: if you really haven't done that, if you still need
Speaker 1: to give forgiveness or receive forgiveness, if you feel regret
Speaker 1: about something, if you feel hurt and haven't really tried
Speaker 1: to heal it, or completing spiritual unfinished business like we
Speaker 1: were just talking about, or even doing a life review,
Speaker 1: which is such a beautiful practice, really reoriented me to
Speaker 1: this stage of life. So I go into great detail
Speaker 1: about how to look back over each decade and examine
Speaker 1: it what was lived out and what was unlived in
Speaker 1: the shadow. So you can discover your unlived life in
Speaker 1: the shadow, and then you can kind of choose whether
Speaker 1: there's something there that you want to express now. And
Speaker 1: it might be a feeling, it might be an aspiration,
Speaker 1: it might be a project, you know, could be all
Speaker 1: kinds of things. But unless we do this inner work,
Speaker 1: I think we don't really sit in the seed of
Speaker 1: the elder. You know, this isn't this is an archetype.
Speaker 1: The elder is an archetype that has a kind of
Speaker 1: nobility to it. And in indigenous cultures, elders are revered,
Speaker 1: they have a special place. But in our culture, which
Speaker 1: is you know, as I said, is so ageist, we
Speaker 1: never think about honoring elders, and we don't have a
Speaker 1: right of passage to become an elder. And that was
Speaker 1: one of the things that I really kept in mind
Speaker 1: as I was writing. I wanted the book to be
Speaker 1: a rite of passage to become an elder. So you
Speaker 1: go through the practices in every chapter, and by the
Speaker 1: end of the book, you're different, You're changed. And I've
Speaker 1: got about, oh more than forty groups of people now
Speaker 1: who have formed wisdom circles, which are like book clubs,
Speaker 1: and they're reading together and they're doing the practices together
Speaker 1: in the book, and they're telling me how they're changing,
Speaker 1: they're telling me about their discovery. So it's very gratifying.
Speaker 1: It's just been beautiful for me. Have you thought about
Speaker 1: teaching an online course? I am teaching so much. Tomorrow
Speaker 1: I have a workshop on life review, a two hour workshop.
Speaker 1: If anybody's interested in my online stuff, you can go
Speaker 1: to Cornie's wig dot com. The links are all there.
Speaker 1: I've got several really several individual workshops and several large
Speaker 1: events coming up. Well, okay, as you just mentioned that
Speaker 1: you're doing a two hour thing on a life review.
Speaker 1: What is the purpose of a life review? Can you
Speaker 1: talk a little bit more? Can we double click on
Speaker 1: what that means? The purpose of a life review is
Speaker 1: to really recall the key events and people and gains
Speaker 1: and losses, births and deaths, turning points that happened in
Speaker 1: your life, and then as a result of each one,
Speaker 1: to examine what didn't happen. So if one thing like
Speaker 1: so I mentioned to you that I started spirituality in
Speaker 1: my twenties and as a result of that, I didn't
Speaker 1: make other choices. I didn't build a career early, I
Speaker 1: didn't have kids early, right because I was doing that.
Speaker 1: And so in a life review you look at this
Speaker 1: was expressed, and so this was repressed, and you begin
Speaker 1: to see the relationship between your lived life and your
Speaker 1: unlived life. That's I mean. I'm terrified of like reaching
Speaker 1: an age where I do a life review and I
Speaker 1: like regret what I repressed. I mean, I'm scared of that.
Speaker 1: Let that fear of regret motivate you. Let it motivate
Speaker 1: you to live the life you want to be living. Now.
Speaker 1: I'm sure doing this podcast is part of it. It
Speaker 1: is definitely part of it. Yeah, so that at the
Speaker 1: end of your life you can say, you know, I
Speaker 1: can let go without regret. And I think in my
Speaker 1: stage of life it's crucial. I have a friend said
Speaker 1: to me recently in his seventies and he said, you know,
Speaker 1: if I don't write that novel now, I'm going to
Speaker 1: die with regret. And he's doing it. He's finally waited
Speaker 1: until his seventies and he's finally doing it. And so
Speaker 1: I think, you know what you just said. Can be
Speaker 1: a teacher, can be a motivator. And people have different
Speaker 1: dreams and different aspirations and different callings. But if you
Speaker 1: tune in to yourself and you really know what that is,
Speaker 1: it's important to follow it. And so when you do
Speaker 1: a life review, it's kind of like distilling the wisdom
Speaker 1: from the life you've lived and what you've learned and
Speaker 1: what you can contribute now. You know, like, for example,
Speaker 1: I really don't think anybody else could have written this
Speaker 1: book because I have this history of working with the
Speaker 1: shadow right and it led me and it led me
Speaker 1: to this moment to write about the shadow and age.
Speaker 1: But everybody's story has that unique quality. I mean, I've
Speaker 1: done Life of You with hundreds of people now and
Speaker 1: they all say, oh my god, Now I know what
Speaker 1: I can I know the gift that I can give. Now,
Speaker 1: what's the age range of people that you've worked with
Speaker 1: to do life review? What's the youngest that you'll go?
Speaker 1: You know, some people are doing it at midlife. But
Speaker 1: it's a different experience right at first, I do it.
Speaker 1: You can do it whenever you want, Scott. It's a
Speaker 1: different experience because you'll look at the first half of
Speaker 1: life and you won't have the shortened time horizon. So
Speaker 1: for me, you know, death is a teacher. My mortality
Speaker 1: is a teacher. And so part of the urgency that
Speaker 1: I feel is that I don't I might have ten years,
Speaker 1: I might have twenty years. I don't know, but that's
Speaker 1: a lot less than what I've lived. And so you
Speaker 1: do the life review in the context of awareness of mortality.
Speaker 1: It's a little bit different. Yeah, of course, now I
Speaker 1: hear you I'm really fascinated with this notion in your
Speaker 1: book of Emotional Repair. Can you talk a lot about
Speaker 1: what you mean by emotional repair and particularly in later life.
Speaker 1: For many people, emotional repair can follow a life review
Speaker 1: because you begin to see where your injuries happened on
Speaker 1: the timeline, who they happened with, whether they were traumas
Speaker 1: or betrayals or rejections, whatever they were, and then you
Speaker 1: can begin to see, Okay, what can I let go
Speaker 1: of now really deeply relief and what needs repair. So
Speaker 1: I had one woman say to me that she felt
Speaker 1: regret about how she treated her mother before her mother died,
Speaker 1: and she couldn't speak to her now, and so she
Speaker 1: wrote letters. She wrote a whole series of letters to
Speaker 1: her mother in order to do that repair, and she
Speaker 1: kept writing until the regret lifted. So that's an example
Speaker 1: of emotional repair. Some people can do that with you,
Speaker 1: face to face with people who were alive. For me,
Speaker 1: when my dad was in his eighties, he had stopped
Speaker 1: drinking and he was really an alcoholic when I was
Speaker 1: growing up. He was an angry guy a lot of
Speaker 1: the time, and it was traumatic for my mother and
Speaker 1: sister in me and when he was in his eighties.
Speaker 1: He was really mellow and we got to talk about
Speaker 1: all that, and over a series of conversations and lots
Speaker 1: of tears, we were able to understand each other more
Speaker 1: and forgive each other. So, you know, yeah, some people
Speaker 1: can do this with a therapist or a coach. They
Speaker 1: don't actually need the other person there. They can do it,
Speaker 1: you know. And some people can do this through journaling
Speaker 1: on their own. So there are all different kinds of
Speaker 1: ways of of you know, there are a lot of
Speaker 1: psychology books about this, because emotional repair is really about
Speaker 1: it's really about therapy. Do you see your your book
Speaker 1: is right there at the top of my bookshelf. Oh yeah,
Speaker 1: I can see the bottom. Ye. Yeah. These people, including yourself,
Speaker 1: are are my inspirations. I mean young of course, Joseph
Speaker 1: Campbell amazing Joseph Campbell's work. I mean, why is that
Speaker 1: not discustom more in modern day suffering, you know, and
Speaker 1: that kind of arc the role in name. Did you
Speaker 1: know Nathaniel Brandon at all? Did you ever meet him?
Speaker 1: I did? Wow, that's legendary who you met. I was
Speaker 1: in publishing, you know, when we published that book, when
Speaker 1: I was in the publishing house and we published Nathaniel. Yeah,
Speaker 1: I won't ask you for any juicy gossip, I promised.
Speaker 1: Let's say who else. Ernest Becker very much influenced me.
Speaker 1: So I'm just thinking if some people contributors here that
Speaker 1: have had a particularly profound influence on me, I wonder
Speaker 1: how much you've come across the ranks of Abraham Maslow
Speaker 1: and or has that influenced you at all, because that's
Speaker 1: his work has influenced me a lot well. In my
Speaker 1: early years in psychology, before I really moved toward young
Speaker 1: I was very much involved in humanistic and transpersonal psychology
Speaker 1: and always going to the conferences and reading the journals
Speaker 1: and all that stuff. So, you know, Maslow was an
Speaker 1: important teacher. He went to Essalyn in the sixties and
Speaker 1: really helped to launch that whole stream in the field
Speaker 1: of psychology, which unfortunately has kind of lost power now,
Speaker 1: as you know, because the AMA has taken over everything.
Speaker 1: And I wrote about that in the Age book as
Speaker 1: part of the context for my retirement, because I'm kind
Speaker 1: of really heartbroken about what's happened to the field. Can
Speaker 1: you elaborate a little bit who's taken over the psychiatrists now?
Speaker 1: Just dispense medication. Right, Oh, they don't do therapy. They're
Speaker 1: told what drugs to give and stuff, and the psychologists
Speaker 1: are now fighting to be able to give medication. And
Speaker 1: that there are no graduate schools anymore except for pacifica
Speaker 1: graduate institute in California that really teach s deef psychology.
Speaker 1: I mean, I don't know of any I'm there, may
Speaker 1: be say maybe Saybrook Institute is still there. Yeah, so
Speaker 1: we've sort of lost the war in terms of, you know,
Speaker 1: the field of psychology and is kind of shocking and disturbing,
Speaker 1: and I refuse to lose the war. My stepson, who's
Speaker 1: forty now, is a psychologist and he may as well
Speaker 1: be in a completely different field from me. I mean,
Speaker 1: he says shadow and he mocks me. He hears shadow
Speaker 1: and he like mocks me, laughs at me. You know,
Speaker 1: they have no frame for it. He just studied the brain.
Speaker 1: So yeah, so I'm glad that you're you know, it's
Speaker 1: a worthy battle to fight, but I think that the
Speaker 1: numbers are against us at this point. Well, this is
Speaker 1: how much of a legend you are. If you go
Speaker 1: and I'm not trying to boost your ego here, but
Speaker 1: if you go type in your name on Google. You know,
Speaker 1: like they have like they'll have people who are associated
Speaker 1: with you, but the kind of people associated with me
Speaker 1: are not these people James Hillman, Paul Couger, Carl Jung, Roomy,
Speaker 1: Roomy associated with you. So you're there, You're like there
Speaker 1: with like Carl Young and Rumy. Well, you know that's
Speaker 1: because I wrote a book about Rumy. I wrote a
Speaker 1: novel called A Moth to the Flame that's the story
Speaker 1: of Rumy's life. I think part of this stage of life,
Speaker 1: just developmentally, that stuff doesn't matter anymore. Scott. In my forties,
Speaker 1: if you had said that, I would have kind of
Speaker 1: gotten pumped up. It doesn't matter to me. Now. What
Speaker 1: really matters is that my work is reaching people. I'm feeling.
Speaker 1: I'm living in tremendous gratitude, you know, for the privilege.
Speaker 1: I have so much privilege as a white person with
Speaker 1: resources and a most incredible husband, and a really beautiful
Speaker 1: location and the luxury to be able to write and teach,
Speaker 1: and you know, so I'm just I live with I
Speaker 1: like to say I live with gratitude in one hand
Speaker 1: and grief in the other. I have a tremendous amount
Speaker 1: of grief for what's happening in the world every day.
Speaker 1: I feel just tremendous grief. But you know, like right
Speaker 1: now I want to go look at the prime of
Speaker 1: the outcome of the primaries. But you know, I've lived
Speaker 1: a beautiful life. So I'm just very grateful and you're
Speaker 1: still living. Yes, I'm still living. I have good health.
Speaker 1: I mean, there's so many things to be grateful for you.
Speaker 1: A couple people want to recommend you. I think you
Speaker 1: really resonate with their work. Christy Nelson was recently on
Speaker 1: my podcast talked about gratefulness and existential gratefulness, and she
Speaker 1: wrote a beautiful book about that. I love the worldview
Speaker 1: you have and the outlook you have kind of related
Speaker 1: to this a little bit. Can you talk about the
Speaker 1: difference between emotional repair and what you talk about what
Speaker 1: you refer to as spiritual repair. Some of us have
Speaker 1: found spiritual practices and spiritual teachers and communities and had
Speaker 1: a lot of gifts and blessings from them. Some of
Speaker 1: us have been wounded by them. There are a lot
Speaker 1: of abusive teachers, and there are a lot of dysfunctional communities.
Speaker 1: This could be a Catholic priest, this could be you know,
Speaker 1: a swami, This could be a roshi or a rabbi.
Speaker 1: I'm not specifying any kind of a lineature. But some
Speaker 1: of us have had traumatic experiences in a spiritual context
Speaker 1: and that needs healing, just like emotional trauma. And so,
Speaker 1: and that's part of kind of doing the life review,
Speaker 1: examining the practices we have or don't have now, rethinking
Speaker 1: intuiting the lineage or the organization that we want to
Speaker 1: affiliate with, and re examining our beliefs. You know, for
Speaker 1: many people, they don't believe what they believed thirty years ago,
Speaker 1: but it actually doesn't occur to them to explore that.
Speaker 1: It just kind of all happens unconsciously, right. And the
Speaker 1: other thing is images. So a lot of us have
Speaker 1: images of the divine images of God that we internalized
Speaker 1: in childhood. That white old man shaking his finger at us,
Speaker 1: you know, right right? Does that fit who you are
Speaker 1: now and the practices you do now? I mean, if
Speaker 1: you're a Buddhist meditation practitioner, does that image from your
Speaker 1: childhood fit? So? You know, spiritual repair is really about
Speaker 1: getting aligned and congruent from within at all these different
Speaker 1: levels of your spiritual life. With lots of different levels.
Speaker 1: Is a lot of that integration? Is it integration? You know,
Speaker 1: I'm not such a fan of that word. I worked
Speaker 1: with one man in his forties who was a mindfulness
Speaker 1: practitioner and believed in Buddhist concepts. But as we explored,
Speaker 1: what we discovered was he had that old man in
Speaker 1: the sky, angry God shaking a fist at him every
Speaker 1: time he had a sexual thought or a sexual fantasy. Wow, right,
Speaker 1: that he was going to go to hell because he
Speaker 1: was taught that in Catholic school. He didn't know that
Speaker 1: that was still running in him. He just thought he
Speaker 1: was a Buddhist, but that was actually influencing his relational life,
Speaker 1: his intimate life because he felt guilty and ashamed about
Speaker 1: his sexuality. So, you know, so I don't really look
Speaker 1: at it as integration. I look at it more as
Speaker 1: like uncovering and allowing these different parts to kind of
Speaker 1: go into the right place, the place where they belong
Speaker 1: in our psyches. Okay, right, I mean you mentioned Jim Hillman.
Speaker 1: He used to talk about the pluralistic psyche that we
Speaker 1: have many parts, and so all these parts kind of
Speaker 1: have a different place at the table, and they don't
Speaker 1: so much need to be integrated or blended or balanced.
Speaker 1: They need to have the right proportionality or position in
Speaker 1: the psyche for us to be really high functioning. Yes.
Speaker 1: So are you familiar with Jim Fadoman's work at all?
Speaker 1: He has a new book out called This Your Symphony
Speaker 1: of Selves, which I really like. Yes, Jim's a great guy.
Speaker 1: He's an elder. Yes, I agree. I agree, he's a
Speaker 1: friend of mine. He co authored that with Jordan Gruber,
Speaker 1: so I want to give Jordan credit as well. But yeah,
Speaker 1: it's a really good book. I recommend people read it.
Speaker 1: While we're on this theme of spiritual repair and growing,
Speaker 1: how do you see spirituality in later life as a
Speaker 1: different how's the flavor of a different than from earlier stages.
Speaker 1: That's a good question. You know, in India the stages
Speaker 1: of life are Brahmacharya, student, and then householder Vana Prasta,
Speaker 1: and then grandparent gri Hasta and then son yasen recluse.
Speaker 1: You release, you give away your possessions, you leave your
Speaker 1: home and you're free to wander and to focus on
Speaker 1: your spiritual practice. That's what that time of life is
Speaker 1: about in Christianity. You know, you go to a monastery, right,
Speaker 1: you become a monk, you go to a monastery, and
Speaker 1: some Christian lineages, So each tradition in Judaism, which is
Speaker 1: not a monastic tradition, there are times of life that
Speaker 1: are specifically for spiritual practice. So each of these traditions
Speaker 1: talks about later life grandparenting and post grandparenting as really
Speaker 1: about this shift from role to soul or these days
Speaker 1: what's being called non duality, awareness of non duality, that
Speaker 1: I and you are not separate, that I'm not separate
Speaker 1: from the rest of the living world, that I am
Speaker 1: not separate from anything. Nonduality is not two one oneness,
Speaker 1: and that this time of life is for finding that
Speaker 1: oneness and sitting in that oneness in preparation for death.
Speaker 1: And so the teaching is that if we die in
Speaker 1: a high level of awareness, we have a different experience.
Speaker 1: We can have a conscious death, a conscious dying process, right,
Speaker 1: And so yeah, I think you know. For me, I
Speaker 1: wrote about three portals of awareness. There's shadow awareness, the
Speaker 1: connection to the psyche. There's pure awareness, a connection to
Speaker 1: we could call it spirit, the trans personal center. And
Speaker 1: then there's mortality awareness really living with awareness, and those
Speaker 1: three qualities of awareness make us an elder, and so
Speaker 1: meditation for an elder needs to engage those qualities of awareness.
Speaker 1: From my point of view, taking and you know, all
Speaker 1: the perennial traditions teach this. This is not making it up.
Speaker 1: So this is what you mean by going from role
Speaker 1: to soul is these three portals of awareness can help
Speaker 1: you in that trend? Is that is that right? Is
Speaker 1: that a fair way of saying that? What I mean
Speaker 1: by role to soul is we shift our unconscious we
Speaker 1: you know the perennial question who am I? Right? Oh? Yeah?
Speaker 1: Who who am I? In fact, there's a there's a
Speaker 1: practice from Ramana Maharshi in India that's just sitting with
Speaker 1: who am I? For years and years and years? Okay,
Speaker 1: So we ask ourselves, who am I? When I'm no
Speaker 1: longer doctor Connie, when I'm no longer the shadow expert,
Speaker 1: when I'm no longer Neil's wife, when I'm no longer
Speaker 1: a writer? Who am I? And to take that identification,
Speaker 1: that sense of inness and move it into my spiritual nature,
Speaker 1: my deepest essence. And again, it's not about what we
Speaker 1: do or don't do. It's not about stopping doing it's
Speaker 1: about caring this quality of awareness. In my tradition, we
Speaker 1: say I am that, meaning I am consciousness, so living,
Speaker 1: I am that in whatever it is that I'm doing.
Speaker 1: I'm a soul on a journey, or i am spirit,
Speaker 1: or I am God. Whatever your language is for this,
Speaker 1: the language isn't. Don't get hung up on my language.
Speaker 1: Use your own, you know, the language that resonates with
Speaker 1: you. You You could say Buddhen nature. I am Buddhen nature.
Speaker 1: So if I'm teaching, or I'm with my grandkids or
Speaker 1: my husband, or I'm writing, i am Buddhen nature. I
Speaker 1: am Spirit. I'm not the doer. I'm not the one
Speaker 1: who's doing it all. It's not about my egos agenda anymore.
Speaker 1: It was in my forties when I wrote Romancing the Shadow.
Speaker 1: It's not about that. It's not about that anymore. Ye yeah, God, yeah,
Speaker 1: so interesting. Well, I don't know. I hope that at
Speaker 1: certain points of this interview today I triggered some of
Speaker 1: your earlier ego because you deserve it. I know, I
Speaker 1: appreciate all your humility, but I hope today you know
Speaker 1: I activated little least some of that forties energy, which
Speaker 1: has a time and place in our lives. Absolutely, I
Speaker 1: feel appreciated. Let's put it that way, Scott. Let's put
Speaker 1: it that way. I feel appreciated. Thank you so much
Speaker 1: for being on my podcast today and for the incredible
Speaker 1: work you've done and that you still will continue to do.
Speaker 1: And thank you for your efforts to maintain the soul
Speaker 1: of psychology really really really important. Try to put that
Speaker 1: in a verb of a book someday, Scott Grek Goffman's
Speaker 1: trying to keep the soul of psychology. Yes, definitely. Well,
Speaker 1: thank you so much. Thanks for listening to this episode
Speaker 1: of The Psychology Podcast. If you'd like to react in
Speaker 1: some way to something you heard, I encourage you to
Speaker 1: join in the discussion at thusycology podcast dot com. We're
Speaker 1: on our YouTube page, The Psychology Podcast. We also put
Speaker 1: some videos of some episodes on our YouTube page as well,
Speaker 1: so you'll want to check that out. Thanks for being
Speaker 1: such a great supporter of the show, and tune in
Speaker 1: next time for more on the mind, brain, behavior, and creativity.