Join us as we discuss embracing our inner darkness; doing shadow work.
Join us as we discuss embracing our inner darkness; doing shadow work.
Hello, beautiful people. This is Candy.
Sandi:And I'm Sandi. Hello, hello.
Candy:Welcome to Episode 7, where we're going to talk about embracing the darkness. Now, we touched on this subject in Episode 6 just a little bit. And after we finished recording, Sandi and I talked outside a little bit and had a little bit of an epiphany. We'll talk about that later, but I am just starting. To learn about embracing my own darkness and what exactly that means. So I'm going to hand it over to Sandi and she can define for us what exactly that means to embrace our darkness.
Sandi:So in rather psychological terms, or more specifically psychoanalytical terms, and this will involve the work of Carl Jung to some degree, but I'm not going to get super technical, because there's a lot to it, and we only have limited time, but darkness is really the idea of, in my mind anyway, shadow work. So, everybody has a shadow, and it contains all of the things that we either cannot own about ourselves, because they're lurking sort of in the deep layers, the unconscious and the subconscious, and so it's sort of like we have the consciousness at the top level of the ocean, and then we have the subconscious, and then we have the unconsciousness, and a lot of dark shit flows around in there, so if you think of like, in the course of human life. What does it mean to have darkness in you? Darkness could be things like greed, jealousy, violence, needs that go unmet. In the context of shadow work, it's this idea that these are the things about ourselves that are true, yet we cannot own, and we do not admit to.
Candy:Okay, okay.
Sandi:So I think in terms of shame, things that people might feel embarrassed about. Right. Like if we talk about a simple thing, like there used to be this whole sort of stereotype about like women shouldn't fart.
Candy:Sorry, go on.
Sandi:So there's a whole stereotype about this, like women shouldn't fart, but we're human beings with the same digestive system and the same sort of, you know, colonic makeup, if you will, and gas is going to happen.
Candy:Right.
Sandi:What the statistic is like, people pass gas on a daily average of like 400 times a day or something ridiculous like that. Like we fart and we don't even know it, but then sometimes you're around people and I know I've experienced this as a woman where somebody who is sometimes the opposite gender who's like, Oh, women shouldn't fart. That's disgusting. You know, and you should, you know, not poop in public and you shouldn't do like, Oh, okay. So that's like this body shame, right? And the shame about this very basic, normal human bodily function. I know you didn't expect me to go here, but I went here because it's an easy thing for people to grasp onto.
Candy:Right.
Sandi:Right? The shame of, oh, yeah, ah, what happened? That's embarrassing for people, it's shameful for people, some people, but I think now in 2024, we should just be aware that everybody farts, everybody poops, and it's just a normal thing. And we should not have the shame and embarrassment about it. Because when we talk about it and we can laugh about it, we're literally bringing it up from the surface and acknowledging. Everybody farts, and it's, that's just an easy way to sort of describe working with, the things that we don't want to own about ourselves.
Candy:I like that a lot.
Sandi:So I knew you thought it was going to go really silly and you were like, what are you doing? And here we are, now we understand it. So shadow work is, is not literally just talking about farts and gas or poop or anything like that, but it is, it is dealing with the things in the unconscious or the subconscious that we would prefer other people not know about us.
Candy:Yes. Okay. I can get on board with that. I am. Processing what you're saying and applying it to my own experiences and realizing that I would not be able to be here and even talk about this and address it if I wasn't sober.
Sandi:Ah.
Candy:Because part of my addiction was to hide those dark things that I'm like, the embarrassment, the shame, the judgment, fear of judgment. From myself.
Sandi:Yep. But were you not afraid of judgment from other people if they knew the truth about how you were handling yourself behind the scenes?
Candy:To a certain degree, yes.
Sandi:Yeah. Interestingly enough, I think sometimes we go through cultural and collective things that encourage people to be more involved in externalizing their shadow. The term I like to use for that is projecting.
Candy:Okay.
Sandi:We did an exercise in grad school where my very CBT professor said to us, Okay, I want you to write down on a list of paper Think about a person. Have a person in mind that you don't like very well and that you don't have a lot of respect for.
Candy:Oh!
Sandi:And that, you know this exercise?
Candy:I...no, but I smell what you're cooking.
Sandi:So, mmm, smells juicy! And you write down all the terrible things that you thought about this person.
Candy:Oh, man.
Sandi:And then we did that, and we sat with it for a few minutes, and then she said, Well, now, I want you to turn this paper over. And I want you to think about how much of the thing that you wrote on the front side actually doesn't apply to the other person, but it applies to what you worry about within yourself.
Candy:Yes.
Sandi:And every one of us sat there and went fucking busted.
Candy:Yes. Yes. Oh my gosh.
Sandi:Yeah. What's going on? Tell me.
Candy:Well, I have discovered, uh, over the past several years of doing work on myself that every fucking time I have an issue with somebody and it has eaten my lunch, it's because I've got an issue surrounding that subject within myself.
Sandi:Yooo, that's correct.
Candy:Every time.
Sandi:Every single time.
Candy:100 percent there.
Sandi:Right, right.
Candy:Yeah.
Sandi:Right. So. And, and I'm going to say it's not true with every single person all the time, but I do think that it is worth checking into within yourself, and it takes us to be able to look inside ourselves with that internal mirror to say, is this thing that annoys me about this other person, or what they're doing, or how they're doing it, is that something that annoys me if I were to be doing it, and do I do that thing?
Candy:Right. I actually address this in my step work. Step four. What, and I, I labeled it something different than what they called it. And I, that column is dis ease. What is causing me dis ease?
Sandi:Yes.
Candy:A person, place, or thing. And I write that down. Then what is my part in it? Oh, goodness, was that enlightening?
Sandi:Yes.
Candy:Uh, yeah.
Sandi:That's the, what do you bring to the party question.
Candy:Yes.
Sandi:Right? And some people, they will rail and rail and rail about, oh, well this person is doing that, and this person is doing that, and this person is doing that. And sometimes I hear a lot of that in therapy. And then sometimes we often, if the person is ready, we have to turn that around and say, What's the common denominator here? It might be you. And, and I don't just do it because I'm trying to be mean.
Candy:Right.
Sandi:It's that spot of opening up the awareness of how are you projecting the thing that you don't like about yourself onto other people and now blaming it on them or shouldering it and making it their problem rather than dealing with yourself.
Candy:Right.
Sandi:And as humans, we all do it. It doesn't matter the most self aware people in the world. We'd like to think that therapists are some of them, but some, some of us, Struggle. And that's a very human thing, to struggle with self awareness. But being self aware when you're doing shadow work. being very intentional about it. That's where the gold is. That is where the thing is that you should look at the most. The thing that you're most abhorred by, the thing that you're most, eww, I don't want to look at that. If you dig underneath that, there's probably some learning that can happen. And oftentimes in that learning, we're taking the thing that's sort of lurking underneath the system and making it very conscious with this intention to say, I'm not going to judge myself for this thing anymore, I'm just going to accept it and sort of take a mindful approach of this is a part of who I am, but I'm not going to let it run me. And more often than not, in my experience of being a human and being a clinician, when we do that and we're intentional about it, we cause ourselves then less suffering. Because we're not filled with shame, we're not filled with embarrassment.
Candy:Right. We get to own our shit.
Sandi:Literally.
Candy:Yep.
Sandi:Right? I was going to go back to the fart example, but you like did it beautifully, so there we have that, right? I fart, I poop, everyone poops.
Candy:Right.
Sandi:You know, um, I can't remember, there's even a book about it. Everybody poops.
Candy:Yep.
Sandi:You know? And like, that's everybody. So, when it comes to, everybody has a little bit of piece of them that may be jealous at times, or maybe a little bit confused at times, or have ambiguous feelings. One of the things that I often think about is like, brain scans of different people. Right. We can see in brain scans, if people are exposed to certain stimuli, what type of brain they have and maybe make some assumptions and some assertions about what type of person they are in the world based on how their brain lights up. I often use, the example of going to a drag brunch. There's a certain type of brain that will say, Yeah, that sounds fantastic. I can't wait to go. I wonder what they'll have on the menu and what kind of eggs will be there. That's fantastic. When do we go? Another type of brain may say something like, I'm not going there. Their gay's gonna rub off on me. which sounds ridiculous,
Candy:Right.
Sandi:But it's been said. It's been inferred that we know that there are certain people who certain types of brains who see novelty as a threat and associate it with danger. So the parts of their brain that light up when we're doing these scans and showing them the stimuli, does not hit the same way that it hits in a different type of brain who may have more experience and it doesn't enter that sort of shadow realm.
Candy:Oh, that's interesting what you just said about associating novelty as a threat, which is, it's how I'm, I've been treating the darkness. We'll get into that later.
Sandi:Yeah.
Candy:But I can't even imagine, but you're right. You're right, like, my kid like behavior, wearing tutus and shit, like, there are people that will look at me and be like, what the fuck is wrong with, you know? And it's like, is it, what the fuck is wrong with me, or is it, you wish you could be open enough to do something like this? Right?
Sandi:Yes.
Candy:Right.
Sandi:Right.
Candy:And that, man, that takes a lot of, you know, Inner work and self awareness to realize that when people are behaving in that way and being judgmental that it's coming from that place.
Sandi:Right.
Candy:Man.
Sandi:Right. When I was much younger, I very much lived In a way that I stayed away from things that were new and novel. Like I said in the last episode, I didn't want to try new things. And now I'm like, I want to try all the fucking things!
Candy:Everything! Can I please have a vampire to become immortal so I can experience everything?
Sandi:Right, right. Oh, that's so funny because I've had that thought so many times in my life, it can't even count.
Candy:Dude, I fucking tweeted it. a while back. I'm like, looking for immortality. Please inquire within. Thank you very much. I mean, I might as well give it a shot.
Sandi:Sure. Sure. And for me, that's where like meditation and stuff comes in handy.
Candy:Oh yeah.
Sandi:Because I can go in my head and just be in those places and those spaces and be the thing and be the being of like, ah, I get to have all those experiences and then I have actual life that I can do things into, which is great. So as we sort of explore this, this unconscious and subconscious, and if we're going to do it in order back up, subconscious and then unconscious, there are ways to. internalize, take the internalization, and make it external. And I think that's where we talk about this idea of embracing the darkness. What do we do as humans to work that out? and restore, or, or resolve the conflict, rather, of the internal thing that's causing you this stress, the shame, the embarrassment, the anger, the frustration, the vitriol. What's going on in there, and how do we need to externalize that to resolve it and soothe ourselves without projecting it onto other people and either harming them emotionally, mentally, or physically?
Candy:Yes. We touched on this a little bit in the last episode when I was talking about, you know, writing about. When I'm feeling a particular way, I'm feeling this, ugh, this ick and I need to get it out. How do I project without causing harm to people while I use my fiction or I use a canvas or, you know, my, my frickin drawing pad? So we were talking outside, I had a realization about darkness and it's very similar to me when I decided how I was going to deal with my trauma and why I had waited so long. I've always been afraid of sinking into my own sadness. You know, I didn't like to feel too much because I'm like, there's so much sadness inside me. I am going to fucking drown in it and I'll die. I don't know what die. I don't know what I thought, but it was that fear of that. And as we were talking outside, it hit me. It occurred to me that I have the darkness in me, all the stuff that happened and all the resulting anger. It's this, this ember that will always burn in, you know, the center of me. And I'm always afraid that if I let it out and the oxygen hits it, it's going to consume me and I'm going to sink into the darkness.
Sandi:Yes.
Candy:And, um, Which is why, like, when I talked about in the last episode, it comes out in little bits and pieces here and there, but not fully. I don't bring it fully out into the light because it's gonna consume me. And I recognize now, in a healthy state and in a sober state, I wouldn't have been able to do this sober for myself. Sure. Because I, I lie to myself too much, you know? And when I'm on Substances, no matter what they are, and so now I can recognize that I can actually dip a toe into that darkness. I can fuckin dive headfirst into that and I know that I'll be okay.
Sandi:Yeah.
Candy:Because I have not only a good internal support system within myself and skills, on how to deal with the resulting emotions and feelings that come from that. But I also have an amazing fucking support system in the external world as well that I have fostered and built so that when I do fall, I know that they'll pick me up.
Sandi:Yeah. Yeah. Addiction itself lies to us.
Candy:Yes.
Sandi:About Oh, you're not that capable. You're not that smart. No one will accept you. No one will love you. Um, I spent the first several years of practice working straight with addictions and in the prison system with people who had committed felonies and learned so much from them about just being honest about what you've done, what's happened to you, and trying to work it out and in this cognitive, somatic, emotional, psychological way, all the ways, and how to, how to make it right how to not do the things that we felt we needed to do that were dysfunctional in nature and how to stop that.
Candy:Right.
Sandi:When I think about my own dysfunctional behaviors, when I was much younger, I had had a very difficult time with relationships and saying what I needed. and establishing for myself a set of boundaries. And I was rather unconscious to my needs of really being accepted, like truly, instead of just, Oh, well, you know, I like being with guys. was always sort of trying to be people pleasy with guys. Right. Gee, I wonder where that came from.
Candy:Hmm.
Sandi:I know, right? Because I was literally fucking groomed. Right. To be a pleaser of a man.
Candy:Right.
Sandi:Who had no business doing to me what he was doing. And so if we don't deal with our shadow, let's kind of go back to that, you know, how the darkness that lives within in each and every one of us, If we don't deal with that, we often project it outwards and harm other people. And like for my case, I have always been fascinated by people who do really terrible things and figuring out what is the crux of, and at the center of that for them. Why would they do such a thing?
Candy:Figuring out the why.
Sandi:Yes. And so it's been a, a balm and a, uh, A soothing thing to me across my lifespan to figure out why do people do what they do? And what do we need to do for those people? How do we need to help them figure out how to not do that to other people?
Candy:Right. Which goes into the prison system and how fucked up it is and using punitive measures rather than
Sandi:Yeah,
Candy:restorative.
Sandi:And yes, yeah. I mean, like when, when you work with felons and they sit there and tell you the awful things that they've done, you, you have to, as a clinician, sit there and, and treat them with unconditional positive regard.
Candy:Right.
Sandi:Because otherwise the work will go nowhere. And I was often that therapist who got to hear from people for the first time. Like they, they were like, I've never met a therapist who didn't judge me.
Candy:Wow.
Sandi:And that's heartbreaking.
Candy:Sad. Yeah.
Sandi:That's heartbreaking.
Candy:That is so sad to hear.
Sandi:Because those people are human too. And they ended up in those positions in prison, incarcerated for decades, sometimes years on end, or, you know, smattering, get out, go back in, get out, go back in.
Candy:Right.
Sandi:Because they didn't have anybody to teach them how to do it right. How to do life without harming yourself or harming other people.
Candy:Right.
Sandi:And that pain came from somewhere.
Candy:Right. Exactly. And being judged. This goes back to being judged.
Sandi:Right. Right.
Candy:You know? And then even further back, the people that are judging what these people are doing, what's their part in it?
Sandi:That's right. That's right. So I think when we think about shadow work, um, If we're not engaging in dealing with our shadow and coping with what does exist for every human and nearly every human experience, we run the risk of harming ourselves or other people in the process of not dealing with that content.
Candy:Right.
Sandi:And that's one of my roles as a clinician. It's one of my life roles, and it wasn't assigned to me necessarily, but I was like, this is what I'm going to set out to do. I'm going to set out to fix some stuff and to help people fix themselves so they don't have to suffer. And then it's like when we get, I mean, again, I'm primarily a trauma therapist, and when we think in terms of like generational trauma, like, you know, like there are situations all the time where, you know, Not currently now, but when I was in that, in that field in the prison system Where these guys are out beating the shit out of other people and robbing people and taking stuff from them You know, you give them one side eye look and they're up your ass and they're like, you know, and they've got all these charges of like, you know battery and assault Well, the reason they were doing that is because somebody did that to them, right?
Candy:Yeah It's the, it, it trickles down.
Sandi:That's right. So if we can, if we can stop that, um, in a generational way, in a cultural way, we can do so much better as a society.
Candy:I agree. And that's why I'm here too.
Sandi:That's right.
Candy:I'm not doing it the conventional going to school for therapy way, but by sharing my own experience and what I've studied.
Sandi:Right.
Candy:And having these conversations with you.
Sandi:Well, not everybody needs to be a therapist, and not everybody, quite frankly, wants to be a therapist. Like, if I had some life advice, I would tell you some things that maybe you wouldn't want to hear about therapists and the whole industry of like, how it's driven and all of those things. That's not what this is about. But there are there's dysfunction in every field, right? And, and there's, there are things that definitely need to be shifted and changed. and if I had my way, everyone would receive a hundred free gift certificates at the, at birth for free therapy across the lifespan.
Candy:Oh, that's a great idea.
Sandi:Therapy is not for broken people. Therapy is for people who have lived through shit and don't know how to get out of it and don't know how to cope without projecting it onto themselves or onto other people or harming themselves or others. So, I think that just making more awareness about trauma in a general way stalls people, it harms people, and then those people end up harming other people.
Candy:Yep.
Sandi:And that needs to stop.
Candy:I want to hear about, you mentioned, uh, because we like to bring in pop culture references in helping people to relate to the topics. And you brought up revenge. Horror.
Sandi:Yes.
Candy:I want to, I want to hear about that because you made me remember one of my favorite book series, and I'm going to talk about that when you're done.
Sandi:Okay. So I, when I was first finding horror movies, I found myself very often attracted to women who had been hurt or had things done to them against their will. And I was equally horrified, and yet fascinated, by seeing a female character Be hurt, be abused, be raped, and then turn it around and come back with a fuckin vengeance.
Candy:Yes.
Sandi:And the movie that comes to mind for me, which was totally inappropriate for my viewership at the age I was at, because I think this movie was 76, 78, somewhere in there, was the original I Spit on Your Grave. And essentially the storyline is, woman goes into the wilderness, she's alone, there are four men, I believe, They attack her and they all take turns raping her.
Candy:Mm hmm.
Sandi:So she is assaulted They leave her for dead. I think essentially it's been a decade or more since I've seen it I think I put it on like actually like three months ago and would just kind of fell asleep to it Like yeah, that's the comfort movie, right? Oh, I remember right cuz I know how it ends Yeah, great and part of my darkness it was really getting a charge out of the scene where she then goes back to each one of these men and Comes on to them And sort of plays like this coy, like, yeah, come on, come on, come on. And then she fucking picks him off one by one. And I remember being equally horrified at, I can't believe I'm watching this, but there was a part of my brain that was like, if you could do this to your teacher, He couldn't do it to anybody else, right? And I remember having that thought and then immediately tucking that thought back into the deep recesses of my brain and feeling shame and embarrassment. And like, Oh my God, if someone find out about this, like they would, I would go to jail and they would call the, I mean, it was just like big concepts for young brain. But because of what I was exposed to with that year of abuse or my teacher. And watching him not only abuse me, but all these other kids was like, this guy has to fucking die, like I want him dead and of course I would never do that in a million years in real life. But to have a film that showed a woman who had something horrible happen to her repeatedly from these four men who just decided on a whim, I'm going to, we're going to, we're going to hurt this woman in all the ways possible.
Candy:Right.
Sandi:And then she turns it around and comes back and says, Oh, guess what, fellas? I was delighted.
Candy:It is reclaiming her autonomy.
Sandi:Yes. Yes.
Candy:After having it stripped from her.
Sandi:Right. And there was a recent movie, one of the other ones that sticks out for me, is um, a movie literally called Revenge. And I caught it on Shudder, I think it's from like 2018 or 2019. And I've probably watched this movie I don't know, 12 times. I mean, it's ridiculous how many times I've seen this film. And it's essentially a woman who is the mistress of a man who they go out into the outback and, or some, it's, I think it's the outback, I think it's an Australian film, but don't quote me on that. And they go out and two of his friends come and they show up at the house to do hunting. Well, the boyfriend goes away for a little bit of time and one of the men who shows up says, Rapes her.
Candy:Mm hmm.
Sandi:And she freaks out and she is shuddering and the boyfriend comes back and he's married by the way with kids and all of that and So he comes back into the house and he finds her in the bed and she's shaking and shuddering She said I want to leave right now. I want to go home and he literally says to her something to the effect of oh Well, don't worry, baby I'll just put you up in a house in Canada and we'll just remove you from the situation and essentially pay you off
Candy:Oh gosh,
Sandi:and girlfriend was having none of that. Oh She was like, you call the fucking plane, you call the helicopter, and you get them right now here to pick me up. I am leaving the situation, like, how fucking dare you? And then he ends up smacking her in the face. And I was sitting there like, how fucking dare you? But let me see where this goes. And so, they, she runs. And she runs to a cliff. And he comes up and shoves her over the cliff. And she ends up impaled on a, on like this desiccated tree. And she's got this, this big branch sticking through her guts and her side. And she is bleeding. The way they film it is so crazy. It's out in the bright sunshine. She's in the middle of the fucking desert. There's nobody around. And she Gets her she has a lighter with her and she lights something on fire enough to light the branch on fire So that she falls off the branch Wow So she's running around in the desert and by this time he and the two men because they've all known what's up now They're all in on the gig and they're setting out to kill her and hunt her down
Candy:Uh huh,
Sandi:because they don't want her to tell and disrupt this boy this playboy guy's beautiful life, right? Right. And it's such a, it's such a contrast because in one parts of the film, he's talking to his wife and he's like, Oh yeah, that birthday party sounds lovely, honey. And dah, dah, dah, dah, dah. And he's just playing the perfect husband. Meanwhile, he's done this heinous fucking thing. Oh man. And so she's falls off the branch and they come to the cliff to go find her and they look down and she's not there. And just in time she gets off the branch and she backs herself up towards the cliff so they can't see her underneath.
Candy:Uh huh.
Sandi:And then she finds a cave. And she ended up with, I think it's either peyote or ayahuasca, ayahuasca. And she does the drugs in a cave. And then she finds a beer can with a phoenix on it. And she spreads it and puts it over her guts so her guts aren't spilling out and she stops bleeding.
Candy:Oh my gosh.
Sandi:And so now she's got the fiery phoenix like burned into her fucking skin on her, on her belly. And she strips down, she's got barely any clothes on, she's got her bikini on and these shorts. And she goes out and she's like, I'mma fuckin. I can take these guys out and she murders all of them in such a way that she haunts them down I love that and it's just the it's one of the best films about revenge and those are sort of the movies that I Will I will still watch those and I get a charge out of them because I will admit the darkness that lives in me If I had had my way and there were no consequences and I wasn't a good person and I would just could do whatever the fuck I want and I I might want that for my abusers.
Candy:Sure.
Sandi:But I would never in a million years make it a real thing.
Candy:Right.
Sandi:Because that's not who I am. That's not what I want to be doing. Right.
Candy:Yeah.
Sandi:But in a, in an artistic way, in a fantasy way, digging into that darkness, those are the films that sort of help me to process, it's okay to have these feelings because these heinous things were done to you.
Candy:Right.
Sandi:And I'm all about justice.
Candy:Fuck yes.
Sandi:But I would never do those things in real life.
Candy:No. No. And I, I get that. I totally get that. You know, I wrote in college, I did an exercise. I don't even remember what the exercise was, but I was real heavy into my feelings regarding my own trauma and my abuser. And so what I did for the assignment was I wrote myself meeting my abuser in an alley. And I had a bat on me and I beat the living shit out of him with that bat in the alley and it was raw and it was visceral and I cried when I wrote it and I felt like the adrenaline and anger release some from me. And it was very therapeutic.
Sandi:Yes.
Candy:You know, fast forward about 15 years later, I was back in that place because I hadn't dealt with the trauma effectively, so I kept going back in this loop, right, of revisiting my emotions and feelings, and this goes back to being afraid of the darkness overtaking me.
Sandi:Right.
Candy:And I'm like ergh I hate this guy so much, I wish he were dead, you know? I just, duh. And I drew a picture of me holding a gun to his head.
Sandi:Yeah.
Candy:You know? Yeah. And it says you were supposed to be her dad.
Sandi:Mmhmm.
Candy:It is one of the strongest pieces that I've drawn. And I needed to do that. I had to freaking draw that to get it out of me. And so I guess that would be a way of embracing my darkness. Yeah. You know, I'm like, I'm not actually going to do this, but I'm going to fantasize about this.
Sandi:Sure.
Candy:you know?
Sandi:Sure.
Candy:And when you were talking about Revenge, one of my favorite books, I think I was in my junior year of school, we used to get extra credit for going to book readings.
Sandi:Awesome.
Candy:And so I'm like, sign me up, A for the semester.
Sandi:Sure.
Candy:Um, one of the authors was Nancy Collins, and she wrote a vampire series and of course now it's escaping me.
Sandi:It happens.
Candy:Okay, so Nancy Collins wrote Sunglasses After Dark, and it is about this young woman who, I don't, it's been so long since I read it, so I'm not gonna summarize it well. She ends up in a limousine with this high profile person. He's got lots of money and stuff. He ends up raping her. He also ends up draining her of most of her blood. He is a vampire and He throws her out into the alley or like the the gutter to die and she's supposed to die and she did not She actually got turned So she picks herself up from this situation and she turns into this badass Vampire that's trying to hunt down Her,
Sandi:her maker.
Candy:Exactly. It is so, it gives me chills thinking about it. I need to reread it. I have been wanting to, but I, I am so down for the revenge horror stuff also. And it wasn't until you said something that I realized I'm all, fuck yeah. Cause that shit is empowering. Like not going to empower me to actually do the same thing, but. in reclaiming power that was taken from me.
Sandi:Yes.
Candy:I'm like, I don't have to be shuddering under the covers.
Sandi:Right.
Candy:You know, I can, I don't know, pick up a bat and beat the shit out of my abuser in a fucking alleyway.
Sandi:Right.
Candy:In a story.
Sandi:Right. Yeah. You can literally go make, go take your maker and drain him dry. Yeah. Nice. I love it. That's so therapeutic. But again, these are not the things that everyone really wants to hear about in the course of daily conversation, right? That, you know, you tell somebody that these things happen to you and they're like, Oh my God, I'm so, so sorry. And they immediately sort of, you know, crumble and like see you perhaps as a victim. Right. But when you process things in this way and you delve into the shadow world and you. You work with your darkness, you pull it out to play. I always, like, pull out, it's like, that's my kind of phrase. Like, take your darkness out to play.
Candy:I'm gonna invite it over for some tea.
Sandi:That's right, that's right. And then you talk with it and you're like, you wanna do some fucked up stuff, and the darkness is like, yeah, I kinda do.
Candy:Oh my goodness, I love that.
Sandi:I love it. This is the same thing that I kind of do with like inner kid work, like when we have people, when I have people who have missed out on certain things, I will often ask, because of something really traumatic happening to them, oftentimes abuse or a person of trust who's harmed them, I'll often say, what does that little kid want? What did that little kid need? And we identify the thing, and then we have that person consciously take their kid self with them to go do the thing in adulthood.
Candy:Oh, that's heavy.
Sandi:And it's so healing, and it's such a big fucking deal, and it doesn't sound like what you'd hear in the normal course of therapy. It's certainly not a CBT intervention, right? But it is this inner child work, this psychoanalytical work, where we're making the thing that went very wrong, right. Yes. And I'm not saying it fixes it entirely, but it is one intervention that people can do by making a conscious choice to, I'm going to take my wounded inner little with me, and we're going to go do the fucking thing that we were not allowed to do.
Candy:Right, that we were supposed to do, and like we talked about in our last episode, make up for lost time.
Sandi:Yes. Yes. Yes. So, like, it comes to mind when you've talked about, I'm gonna wear makeup. Because your abuser flat out told you, you're not allowed to wear makeup.
Candy:Right.
Sandi:You can't go out like that. Well, fuckin watch me, sir.
Candy:Yeah, like, I'm gonna double down.
Sandi:Mm hmm. Mm hmm. Yeah. You okay after the heaviness of that?
Candy:Yes. Yes. My brain is in heavy thought mode. there's a lot to contemplate there and I'm excited. I like talking about this a lot because I've done all this other work and stuff and you know, I, the deeper that I clean, the more mess that I find, you know, and, but yes, but I like working on myself. I like analyzing the hows and the whys of, of my own behavior and. This is something I'm, I'm thrilled. Like I know that it can be a lot of hard work, but I'm not afraid of the hard work, you know, and I'm excited to feel so nerdy to say, but I'm excited to find this whole other area of my inner self that needs some work. And it, Honestly, I can make it fun work.
Sandi:Yes.
Candy:Directly, like, with what I'm writing right now.
Sandi:Right.
Candy:My character, I'm putting her through trauma to go through the rest of the book.
Sandi:Yeah.
Candy:And I can directly channel that and deal with some of that, shadow work. My inner darkness into my creativity. And that's what I'm all about, is transforming trauma into art.
Sandi:Yes. Yes. I mean, the whole fuckin podcast is the transformative nature of trauma. Why it's important. What can we do and what can just we, we insert in the daily course of our human lives to make up for the things that we missed to address the little pockets and corners where all the shadows lurked once. And now we're like, we come in with our whisk room in a vacuum and we're like, fuck all this and we clean it all out. And then we're like, ah, crap, there's mold underneath. Now I get the sledgehammer and dig this up and go down to the foundation.
Candy:Tear up the floorboards. Like we got to start all over and just have the, the bare bones.
Sandi:Right.
Candy:Yeah.
Sandi:Right. I've been a big Evanescence fan for decades and I finally got to see them live a few years ago when they were in Denver. And I told my husband, I was like, you're going to see a side of me that you have never seen before because I've never been able to see them live. And there's a lyric in one of their songs that says if we don't talk about it, we just keep drowning in it. And I'm sitting there and I've got my big fangirl on and tears are streaming down my face. And it was just like all the, and I get like, my hair is standing up on my arms as I'm talking about it. But it was that, one of those moments was like really pivotal for me of like, We have to talk about the fucking ugly in the world, we have to dig underneath, and we can't come into the world with just the Pollyanna lens, for as much as we'd love to. But there is darkness in each and every one of us, and if we don't deal with it, it's going to come out in really dysfunctional ways.
Candy:Yes, it is. And what you just said, the quote about if we don't face it, we drown in it, Is that?
Sandi:Yeah, if we don't talk about it, we keep drowning in it.
Candy:Right. And I'm, I'm afraid of drowning in it, but not talking about it, and actually drowning in it. Yeah. Because I haven't been. Discussing it with anybody or bringing it out into the light, right, you know, right. It's funny I've been afraid of the dark like for a long time because that's when the scary things happen, right? And I've worked on that a lot. It's gotten so much better. You know, I feel safer sure now And now I have to go into my darkness and tell it to not be afraid of the light.
Sandi:That's right.
Candy:Oh, I fucking love that shit.
Sandi:That's awesome. I just got done with a clinical week and had like lots of those. Oh, I love that for you. I love that for you. And now I'm sending it to you. I love it for you. Oh, so great.
Candy:That is making me emotional. I love that. Oh, I need to draw that too. Okay, so much drawing.
Sandi:Well, you know, make your notes, you know, we're here. We're here not only to, you know, have an audience and teach them things and share things with them that are our perspectives and some, you know, psychological tenants and compare it to, you know, film and pop culture and lore and all of those things that we're, you know, going to incorporate in, in wild ways sometimes. But we're also here to learn, because the more we talk about things and the more we bring them up from the surface, the more we integrate the things that have happened to us that maybe have been painful. And it is a learning experience. It is, you know. I love learning. Yeah, I know. Ooh, I'm so excited! It thrills me! Shwing! Um, So we kind of talked about revenge movies as being something for me. That has helped me a great deal to absorb and to understand and to integrate what happened to me and all the things that I lost along that way through that journey through a very dark period in my life. And I have tussled also with substance abuse and not being, not wanting to be conscious to things. And that, that is no longer who I am and I haven't been that way in quite some time. Um, that, that need to be conscious, interestingly enough, Amy Lee said something like that at the show that I was at for Evanescence, and she said something to the effect, she paused it, and it was, it was post COVID, but it was just post COVID enough that it was still fresh, there were still cancellations happening, and things were still, like, it was still a fucking struggle, right? We were still in, like, really early post pandemic mode. And she said something about her own loss because her brother had died. I believe he had Epilepsy?
Candy:Oh.
Sandi:I believe it was her younger brother, and she mentioned it in the show, which is one of the things I love the most about her and why I've been such a fan for so long, um, because she talks about herself. She brings her full self forward into her music, into her performance, and she talks about real things. And she mentioned her brother in the show. in passing and said something to the effect of, I don't want to be numb to pain. We can't be numb all the time. We have to be conscious to what's happening to us and around us and to other people. And I'm like, uh, if I didn't love you already, I just love you that much more for saying that. Because that's sort of my whole thing, is that if we're going to live happily, we, and Carl Jung has some quotes about this, like, we can't really appreciate the light until we know the darkness, right? We can't, we can't deal with the darkness in other people until we deal with the darkness in ourselves. So it's that kind of theory that just sort of makes me go, yes. And one of the things that I've done is, and I always referenced that Halloween time, I get dressed up and I will go and I will wear my face out. And I'm going to the bank and the grocery store and people are looking at me like, what the fuck are you doing? It's like, are you going to a party? It's 10 o'clock in the morning. No, I'm out here wearing the face that I feel like makes me strong. Right. It makes me able to be the weirdo and be the outlier because that's who I've always been. But I was pushed into those corners by other people. Now I make my, I make my own corner and I'm going to inhabit that. And that's a source of strength for me.
Candy:There's so much goodness that I am taking away from this episode.
Sandi:Oh good, oh good.
Candy:Oh, I love this. You just said something that, that struck me. I don't know if I'm going to be able to remember it.
Sandi:Well maybe if you share a little bit about Like, I've told you what I do. Revenge movies, the character inhabitation of I'm gonna be this person for a night, for a day, for an event. What do you do?
Candy:Oh, God. What do I do?
Sandi:Or, maybe the better question is, what do you want to do now?
Candy:That is the fucking question. Because I have, like, you know, like I've mentioned before, I didn't realize that I was already addressing some of that through my writing, through my painting, through my drawing and stuff. But what do I want to do now? God dang, that is a good friggin question. You know what I've always struggled with? Oh, we talked about this a little bit outside. Is, is my, my inner goth. It's very inner. Yeah. You know, I mean, I've talked to my kiddo a while back and she said, mom, you'd be a pastel goth. I'm like, I want to be a fucking pastel goth. I want to be like goth, goth. Right. Or maybe cyber goth. That's pretty fucking cool.
Sandi:Cyber goth could be good.
Candy:Right. I could, I could see that for me.
Sandi:Sure.
Candy:Um, I don't know if I could actually answer that right now. That's fair. I have to think about that. I don't know. Cause my brain is just racing. It's like trying to nibble on all these tidbits that we've laid out before me. And I'm like, I want all the things and. I have to process.
Sandi:Yeah, that's cheers to the new neural pathways. I know, right? I know, right?
Candy:Yay for microdosing.
Sandi:Yeah, just as an aside, that can help. Yes, absolutely.
Candy:Uh, wow, yeah, that is, oh, that is a really good question.
Sandi:Well, I'm gonna leave you to ponder that. Um, I'm, I'm for myself always in a state of ongoing flux toward more experience, more things that perhaps in my 20s and 30s when I was so afraid to try new things and I was living sort of a very straight and narrow life, I mean, I had those gothy kind of wishes in me at that point, you know, that unfulfilled sense of like, Why do you like these really dark things and why do you like Halloween now used to be used to be the thing that I would Look forward to to sort of exercise that mm
Candy:mm hmm.
Sandi:And now I just leave that shit up you're round, right? And then I walk by my ghouls and my goblins on the way to make coffee in the kitchen I'm like, yo, what's up? You know and it just fills me with so much joy that I live in a house and a family in a world where I can Do that inside my house
Candy:I'm very envious of your house. I want this shit in my house. And I want the glitter. And I need both.
Sandi:Yeah.
Candy:I need them side by side.
Sandi:Sure.
Candy:Oh man. I need more darkness in my life.
Sandi:Yeah. And I'd say that I need more lightness, but I, I just, I have found a very nice cozy place for myself being a positive, hopeful, optimistic person. But I also am not going to do Pollyanna and pretend like everything's okay. When things are not okay.
Candy:Right.
Sandi:In our culture, in our world, in our politics, in our economics, like we have problems because humans create problems.
Candy:Yes, we do.
Sandi:And humans with unmet needs often do very dysfunctional shit in the collective to get their needs met and fuck everybody else. Right. And I'm on a mission in my life and in my personhood and clinically to help clear a pathway so that everyone can be here and be safe.
Candy:Ooh! Love that for everybody.
Sandi:But in order to be safe, we gotta understand the darkness, where it comes from, and we gotta start with ourselves.
Candy:This has been a very enlightening episode. Thank you for your expertise on the matter.
Sandi:I am no expert. I just, you know, like Tyrion, I know things because I've paid attention. And once I became more conscious to myself, that just enlightened me as a person to such a degree that I'm like, everybody, y'all, Come to the dark side for a little bit and poke around and then go back out and see what you think
Candy:I've heard They have cookies
Sandi:Cookies
Candy:on the dark side
Sandi:lovely Lovely yes, I will eat the dark side cookies
Candy:All right, well, thank you for this I've got a lot to think about and ponder
Sandi:I'm just happy to be here, and I'm so glad we're doing this damn thing.
Candy:Me, too.
Sandi:So. All right, um. And please don't report us. We're not going to go murder people. We're not going to take revenge on anybody. That's just not what this is about. So please don't take it out of context. This is just a way of looking at things to delve into the dark side of the pool and the deep side and go really far down and pick up some goodies along the way and then come back up. Bring them back up. Come back up for air. And then put your goodies on an altar like I have.
Candy:Yes.
Sandi:Thanks so much for being with us today. We will see you next week for episode eight and we're not going to share with you what we're going to talk about because it's a surprise.
Candy:I love surprises. Talk to you soon.
Sandi:Peace out.