Sometimes I get stuck in the darkness of life. I get captured by feeling blue, angry, uninspired, or frozen. You’d think that given my job and the amount of work that I’ve done on myself, I’d be free of these experiences. But I’m not. They still sneak up on me. Sometimes out of nowhere. Much much less than they used to, but still…
During the writing hiatus, I started doing the gratitude rants mentioned in the previous article. Those helped me a lot. But every now and then, they felt totally flat and forced.
On a whim I decided to indulge the darker parts of myself. I set a timer for five minutes while I was driving to work, but this time, instead of talking to myself about all the great things in life, I ranted about all of the stuff that I f***ing hate. This ranged from the deeply personal (relationships I struggled with) to the genuinely impersonal (the eight-step process to cancel a subscription) to the global (like the state of the world and environment) and everything in between.
It was raw and vulgar. I think the devil would be proud of me — and that all of my clients would fire me.
At first, I was embarrassed (which was a strange sensation given that I was totally alone in my car). But shortly after, I noticed something unexpected: I felt great. My body wasn’t holding nearly as much tension, the anger, resentment and blues were abating, and the darkness had a lighter grip.
Eventually, I realized that this makes sense. I was no longer using huge amounts of energy to suppress the dark parts of myself. Instead, I was dealing with them in a controlled way.
The dark parts of ourselves are uncomfortable, especially if we are trying to be good people. So we tend to suppress our darkness, which leads to it falling out of our awareness. This is bad. Denial doesn’t make anything go away. It just hides it from our awareness, where it’s liable to express itself outside of our control. This suppression is one of the reasons we explode at people we mean to be kind to, or why we feel depression and anxiety when everything appears to be going well.
Accepting who we really are, darkness and all, is a form of self-love.
When we deny parts of ourselves, we are very literally suggesting that we aren’t fully worthy of love or dignity. Embracing your darkness also makes you safer and more trustworthy. If you can embrace all of yourself, and know how to work with the darker parts, then they don’t risk injuring you or others.
Still, it’s easier said than done. When I’m struggling to allow the dark parts of myself, I come back to David Whyte’s commentary on anger. He writes,
“Stripped of physical imprisonment and violent reaction, anger is the purest form of care, the internal living flame of anger always illuminates what we belong to, what we wish to protect and what we are willing to hazard ourselves for.”
Ultimately, darkness emerges wherever there is a lack of love.
We fix this by loving ourselves (and the world) as we are, not as we wish we were.
Today, I use this five-minute practice (which I fondly call “Five Minutes of F*** This S***”) to help me process anger, the blues, and freezing up. It helps me navigate the tough spells of life. The periods where my mind latches onto the struggles of the world and won’t let go. While I do the gratitude practice on a habitual basis, I reserve Five Minutes of F*** This S*** for the times when I really need it.
Like the abundance practice, I also assign it to my clients. Those who do it report increased levels of emotional freedom, self-awareness, and a sense of lightness after the practice.
Here’s how to do it:
1. Set a timer for five minutes.
2. Blast Limp Bizkit’s “Break Stuff” and “Nookie” (this step is optional, but trust me, it will level up the experience).
3. Spend that time ranting to yourself (or God, the universe, your dog) about all the things in your life that you struggle with, hate, and resent.
4. Notice what happens inside your mind and your body as you consciously shift your attention to the darkness. You might notice your mind becoming intense, or your body feeling energized, powerful, and raw. Good. Stay with that feeling.
5. Once the timer goes off, let the practice go and move on with your day. It may help to take a few deep breaths to ground yourself.
If you do try this, please email me. I’d love to hear how it goes for you.
PS — For the psychology nerds: notice steps 4 and 5 in this practice. The part where we feel the darkness. This step is crucial. If all you do is ruminate or vent (the two most common approaches to working with anger), you’re likely to fall into a recursive pattern where you keep returning again and again to the same spot. In some instances, you may eventually get exhausted with yourself, and your mind will move on, but in most cases, this is just a clever form of suppression. The trick, as ever, is to shine a light on what’s really going on with you, and then to feel it. This is a form of self-love. It helps strengthen your capacity to process complicated emotions.
PPS — Of course, if you go through this exercise (or others like it) and you’re still experiencing symptoms of anger or darkness that won’t leave you, then there is most likely an underlying issue. In this case, please contact a mental healthcare provider to help you. You deserve that.