So how do we deal with our dark side? It begins, not with denial, shame, starvation or a moral campaign against Darksiders, but with the acknowledgement that we are human, and we have a dark side. We are capable of personal and professional failure. Means (2009) states that “Taking this first step means discarding the obsession with reputation and embracing a less heroic, and more authentic view of ourselves as people with both a light and a dark side.” (alcoholicsvictorious)
Dealing with our dark side, Means states, is “nothing less than civil war, and…it’s a war we’ll wage until the day we die.” (alcoholicsvictorious) He outlines six steps in Parts 3 and 4 as follows, and states, “All of them require a special measure of courage, but in my experience, anything less is like charging hell with a squirt gun.” (Means, 2009)
1. Acknowledge the Insanity
This step is about breaking denial, about achieving a new level of honesty about ourselves. Many Jedi are used to describing our lives the way we think they should be, rather than the way they truly are. We often are in denial about our lives, and we need to learn to calm and center ourselves through the Force to begin healing from lives that have somehow become “unmanageable” for one reason or another.
2. Identify Your Pattern
One recovery veteran I know defines "insanity" as "repeating the same behavior over and over and each time expecting different results." In my own battles with bipolar disorder and borderline personality disorder, these behaviors have been characterized by chaotic relationships, emotional instability and frequent self-defeating behavior patterns (like not taking my medications when I was feeling better, impulsive shopping and various risk-taking behaviors).
I was born 10 weeks prematurely and spent about 3 months in an incubator isolated from human contact. To this day, I have an acute fear of abandonment, and my mother insists that we did not really bond. I grew up developmentally delayed and was often mislabeled “retarded” by the other kids, who frequently denied me opportunities to play team sports. So I grew up more or less a loner, hanging out with other loners. As a result, like Patrick Means, I took a “Hero” role in life, “overachieving in order to garner other's approval and praise. The energy to play out that kind of dysfunctional role comes entirely from my dark side. But my mid-life body and psyche have been telling me for some time that they can no longer tolerate the levels of abuse I periodically put them through.” (alcoholicsvictorious)
”Your pattern may involve obsessing on a relationship, and on the need to gain approval from an individual, only to explode in anger and resentment when you don't get the level of approval you desired. Or your pattern may involve periodic conflicts with your mate, followed by numbing your pain with alcohol or some form of sexual addiction, which in turn is followed by overwhelming feelings of guilt and depression. Our dark sides express themselves in specific, predictable patterns. We take a major step toward freedom when we identify our patterns and "own" them.”
3. Tell Someone Else
Recovery from the negative behaviors arising from our dark side requires us to drag those behaviors out into the light. Which means telling someone else. For me, that means telling you all that I am not anywhere near perfect, that I have made my share of mistakes and have my share of failures. It also meant going to people I thought I had hurt in the past and asking their forgiveness. Which was hard, but they each came back with either they didn’t know what I was talking about, or that they forgave me. (alcoholicsvictorious)
4. Drive A Stake
Author Earnie Larson is credited with the droll maxim "Nothing changes if nothing changes." This is nowhere more true than in confronting the restless power of our dark side. Just identifying a negative behavior pattern isn't enough; we have to take practical steps in the real world to break our pattern. This is tricky business, for our human nature will do everything in its power to keep us from going through the pain connected with true change.
For me, change means seeing my psychiatrist regularly, taking responsibility for dealing with my illnesses and adding counseling sessions twice a month to my daily regime of medications. It means owning up to my dark side and naming my demons, for when I name my demons, I have power over them.
5. Don't Go It Alone.
Recovery is not a solo activity. We must wage this war with the support and the perspective of a friend, a therapist, or, best of all, a support group. Such a group must be one in which you can feel free to be deeply honest with others, without shame, and one which allows you to deal with the pain of living, to allow growth and healing.
Vergere in Traitor teaches Jacen Solo about pain, and illustrates this by an example of a shadowmoth emerging from a chrysalis. “When I was very young—younger than you, little Solo—I came upon a ringed moon shadowmoth at the end of its metamorphosis, still within its cocoon,” she said distantly, a little sadly. “I had already some touch with the Force; I could feel the shadowmoth’s pain, its panic, its claustrophobia, its hopelessly desperate struggle to free itself. It was as though this particular shadowmoth knew I was beside it, and screamed out to me for help. How could I refuse? Shadowmoth cocoons are polychained silicates—very, very tough—and shadowmoths are so delicate, so beautiful: gentle creatures whose only purpose is to sing to the night sky. So I gave it what I think you mean by help: I used a small utility cutter to slice the cocoon, to help the shadowmoth get out.”
“Oh, you didn’t, did you? Please say you didn’t.” Jacen let his eyes drift closed, sorry already, for how he knew this story would end.
“You can’t help a shadowmoth by cutting its cocoon,” he said. “It needs the effort; the struggle to break the cocoon forces ichor into its wing veins. If you cut the cocoon—”
“The shadowmoth will be crippled,” Vergere finished for him solemnly. “Yes. It was a tragic creature—never to fly, never to join its fellows in their nightdance under the moons. Even its wingflutes were stunted, and so it was as mute as it was planetbound. During that long summer, we sometimes heard moonsong through the window of my bedchamber, and from my shadowmoth I would feel always only sadness and bitter envy, that it could never soar beneath the stars, that its voice could never rise in song. I cared for it as best I could—but the life of a shadowmoth is short, you know; they spend years and years as larvae, storing strength for one single summer of dance and song. I robbed that shadowmoth; I stole its destiny—because I helped it.”
“That wasn’t helping,” Jacen said. “That’s not what help means, either.”
“No? I saw a creature in agony, crying out its terror, and I undertook to ease its pain, and assuage its fear. If that is not what you mean by help, then my command of Basic is worse than I believed.”
“You didn’t understand what was happening.”
Vergere shrugged. “Neither did the shadowmoth. But tell me this, Jacen Solo: if I had understood what was happening—if I had known what the larva was, and what it must do, and what it must suffer, to become the glorious creature that it could become—what should I have done that you would call, in your Basic, help?” (Stover, 2002)
6. Go In Grace
Patrick Means sums up, “The reality is, when all the practical steps toward change that can be taken are taken, our dark side is still a fearsome, powerful force within us, and will be until the day we die. No mere self-improvement course by itself stands a chance of taming, or containing, its restless energy.” Recovery is a gift of grace and it is up to us to accept that gift humbly and in turn, share our journey with others.
http://www.alcoholicsvictorious.org/ Accessed May 18, 2009.
Stover, Matthew. (2002). Traitor.New York: Ballantine Books.