Creative Status is a podcast about using creativity as a vehicle for improving your life by deconstructing ego, integrating the shadow self, and designing and manifesting a real life. Every episode explores how the creative process can help you GROW REAL by moving towards wholeness in yourself by making the unconscious conscious.
In this episode of Creative Status, I had the pleasure of interviewing Shadi Sadeghi, a certified life coach specialising in Jungian Psychology. With over 15 years of personal development experience, Shadi empowers men and women worldwide to live more authentic and fulfilling lives.
Shadi’s coaching method combines the wisdom of Carl Jung, eastern philosophy, and social neuroscience to guide individuals towards self-discovery and personal growth. In our conversation, we explored the fascinating intersection of Jungian psychology and creativity.
This was a really powerful conversation and Shadi offered practical insights on navigating major life transitions and finding inspiration from different cultures and perspectives.
We also explored the transformative power of creativity in personal growth and self-expression. Shadi shared strategies for overcoming creative blocks and fostering a mindset of experimentation and curiosity.
Throughout the episode, Shadi’s passion for helping individuals lead more purpose-driven lives shone through. Her holistic approach to coaching, informed by her deep understanding of Jungian psychology, left listeners inspired and equipped with practical tools to unlock their creative potential.
Join us in this thought-provoking conversation as we explore the rich connections between Jungian psychology, self-discovery, and the boundless realm of creativity.
Listen using the embedded player above or go to your favourite podcast platform and search for Creative Status!
Thanks for checking it out and stay real,
Oli Anderson
(Scroll down for the show transcript)
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Episode Links:
Shadi on Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/thislifefulfilled/
Creative Status Links:
The Creative Performance Transformation Lab: olianderson.co.uk/creativeperformance
Follow me on Instagram: instagram.com/olijanderson
My YouTube channel: youtube.com/olianderson
Get my books on Amazon: amazon.com/author/oli
7-Day Personality Transplant System Shock for Realness and Life Purpose: olianderson.co.uk/systemshock
Free one hour creative workshop to take your creative brand or project to the next level: olianderson.co.uk/creativeworkshop
Free 90-Day Journal Challenge: olianderson.co.uk/journal
The Law of Attraction for Realness (mini-course): olianderson.co.uk/lawofattraction
Show Transcript: A Jungian Approach to Creative Empowerment
Show Intro
Oli Anderson: Oh hi there, Oli Anderson here, you’re listening to Creative Status. If you don’t know, this is the first time you’ve found the podcast. Well, this is a place where we talk about using the creative process as a vehicle for bringing more realness into our lives.
Realness means that we’re connected to our true values, our true intentions, and we’re taking the next obvious steps towards wholeness and connection rather than holding back with all of the unreal thoughts that our ego puts in the path before us, all of the mental blocks, the emotional blocks and all that kind of stuff.
If you don’t know, my name is Oli Anderson, like I already said, but I’m a Creative Performance Coach, which means I help people to kind of implement a lot of these ideas in their lives and their business. You can learn more about me on my website, olianderson.co .uk.
Every episode of Creative Status, I interview somebody who has something interesting to say about life based on their background or the work that they do. And then we try and look at how this relates to the creative process and to wholeness in general. My belief is that we’re all dealing with the same reality, but we look at it from slightly different vantage points.
And if we can understand that, then we can basically learn how to go deeper into life from absolutely anybody. Today’s interview is with a Jungian life coach called Shadi Sadeghi. She has loads of amazing stuff to say about Carl Jung and her own work that she’s done, her own interpretations and twists that she’s put onto the things that she does to help people to kind of move towards individuation, which is the Jungian term, if you don’t know for basically moving towards wholeness and self-actualization.
Loads of amazing stuff, loads of insight. I personally love Carl Jung anyway. I think he’s basically right about everything.
Like he was just kind of a genius. And ultimately, this is just a really powerful conversation. If you want to learn more about his work, if you want to learn more about life itself. So Shadi, thank you so much for your time. Everyone else, thanks for listening. Here’s the interview. I’ll see you again next Monday for another episode of Creative Status.Boom.
Interview
Oli Anderson: Oh, hi there Shadi. Thank you so much for joining me today on this episode of Creative Status. You are a follower, shall we say, of somebody that I really admire, Carl Jung.
You use his work and your own work. So I’m sure we’re going to talk about that in a moment. But before we do, would you just like to introduce yourself, tell people what you’re all about and also what you want to get out of this conversation that we’re about to indulge in?
Shadi Sadeghi: Sure. Thanks, Oli.
Thanks for having me. Yes, not only am I a fan of Carl Jung, I am a certified Jungian life coach. So I actually have had over 15 years of personal development experience. Read all the books, all the self-help, personal development books, you name it, I’ve heard of it. But really, I think, and I’ve done the therapy thing. I, you know, I’ve gone through that. And then I think what really just completely changed my life was getting a Jungian life coach myself and then becoming certified and then realizing that I want to help bring people to the light, so to speak, myself.
Oli Anderson: Wow. So I suppose the obvious question there is, what is it about Carl Jung’s work that kind of appeals to you so much? Like, personally, I think he’s right about nearly everything. But what was it about the Jungian stuff that kind of clicked for you?
Shadi Sadeghi: You know, I think what clicked for me is, so because I had really read all the books, I’d done the therapy, I’d listened to every webinar, podcast, you name it. And I think that, like you said, I think Jung just gets, is like the source of, you know, and it’s a psychological basis, right?
It’s a psychological theory of how human, the human psyche develops and the stages in which it develops. So it was almost like a guide map, like a roadmap for me. And understanding why I do the things I do or why I did the things I did and why I would get stuck in certain patterns and not be able to go towards what I wanted.
And I just, to me, you know, you read about law of attraction, manifestation and like all these woo woo things, which are also part of our reality, which are part of, you know, the world we live in, the universe we live in. But I think Jung was a more practical, modern approach to that. And that’s what really resonated for me.
Yeah. So for people that are familiar with his work, so people that are listening, how would you describe, I suppose, the short version of that kind of playbook that you just described for the psyche? I know that’s a really big question, but like, what is the short version of the pathway he talked about?
So essentially what Yang uncovered in you know through he was a psychiatrist and a psychologist so he started to see patterns with his his patients and and then he also started to implement sort of an approach to to breaking those patterns in his own life and he discovered that ultimately everyone is on this path to self actualization and he called that path individuation. And individuation is essentially the what I like to say it’s the western modern world word for enlightenment so becoming a whole essentially becoming more of your potential and your true self.
Oli Anderson: Brilliant so now you’re talking my language because one of my favorite words is wholeness so the main premise of this whole podcast is that the creative process is a journey of going from a fragmented state to a state of more wholeness and that can actually apply to anything so if you use that way of describing it or defining it anything can be a creative process – the way that you drive your car the way that you talk to other people you can create opportunities in your life for bringing more wholeness into your own experience and the way that you relate to other people.
So one thing that I’m always talking about in relation to that is that as we go from fragmentation to wholeness we have to make the unconscious conscious which is that is literally a Carl Jung quote verbatim there’s a famous thing that he said he says until you discover the unconscious it will you know rule your life whatever it is and you’ll call it God and ultimately the unconscious is basically driving everything that we do and until we become aware of that and allow it to become conscious then we’re always going to be fragmented and divided and blah blah blah blah and that is not going to allow us to get the results that we want to from life.
So that was a very long-winded way of saying that but what do you have to say about that just before we dive in?
Shadi Sadeghi: Yeah that’s exactly it I mean not only not only is it it’s yes it’s creating our life but it’s because we are acting from that fragmented place so majority of people think that they form an identity which is it is the natural process of growing up that you form an identity I am you know a a good student I’m an introvert I am a lawyer a doctor whatever I’m a good daughter and so with that you know identity comes a whole host of actions and habits and patterns that you have decided is going to help you survive and so so the what doesn’t help you survive or what is you know socially unacceptable or inappropriate based on your childhood you push away into your unconscious and so that’s how we become fragmented and then we go through our life just creating from that you know just that part it’s like a piece of who we are it’s not the totality of who we are in a lot of our gifts and talents and potential and fulfillment and happiness is in our unconscious so like you said it the more that we become conscious and aware then we can actually choose who we want to become and what kind of life we want to create and then that is what creates massive shifts in our lives.
Oli Anderson: Yeah so is it fair to say then that individuation is just about raising our awareness so that we can accept ourselves more and then we can take better actions in life because if we go through that process of moving towards wholeness we find a solid foundation on which to build our lives instead of just building it according to this unreal identity that we might have picked up in childhood or wherever we picked it up and then filtered everything that we do through that and so actually it’s just about reconfiguring the way that we relate to ourselves so that we can have a better relationship with life.
Shadi Sadeghi:100 % yeah that’s it that’s exactly it.
Oli Anderson: So what is it that causes us to attach to an unreal identity in the first place like I know it’s kind of a broad question and it’ll be slightly different for everybody but what is that causes people to kind of go into hiding originally anyway so that they even need to go through this process – like if it’s such a natural process why are so many of us not aligned with that all the time anyway?
Shadi Sadeghi: Yeah so two parts to that so the first part is I think that it is a natural process but I also think that modern society has been set up in a way unfortunately so that most people don’t typically advance from a certain stage of the individuation process so that’s that’s where they kind of get stuck and I mean you can define that now as like quote-unquote midlife crisis and I think that when you look at ancient cultures traditions even you know um old times as they say um there were certain there were certain traditions and practices in place that almost were like helping the individual step into the next phase of their development.
So you know a lot of um I think a lot of you know Native American tribes they had it was like the village raised the children um they they helped them to become men and women earlier on and I think and to stay true to themselves not to say that you know back then they weren’t split or fragmented or they didn’t you know form unconscious that is I think that is the right that is the human experience no matter what that is part of the experience but we often get stuck in a stage of development wow and then I forget what was the first part of your question too you said something else
Oli Anderson: So ultimately just why is it that we become fragmented in a way that way yes yeah okay yeah.
Shadhi Sadeghi: Yeah, so like I said, we become, I think we become fragmented, essentially it’s based on multiple factors. So DNA and genetics, you cannot ignore that. There are certain, as they say, a loaded gun, right, if there is a certain type of cancer that is in your lineage, it’s been passed down. That is, that’s epigenetics.
We inherit that, right? And then there is your actual childhood experience within your family structure, within your community, within society, you know, on a smaller scale and then at a larger scale. And then there’s the culture that you grow up in as well.
All of these are different factors that shape an individual’s experience of what is it okay for me to be so that I can survive in this moment. And it’s very subtle, very knee jerk, very much, you know, we often imitate or replicate one of our parents. And so that’s why, you know, generational influence is so impactful, because we’re often learning from a parent, we’re learning how to love, we’re learning how to make money from immediately, initially from our caretakers. And then it can be reinforced or perpetuated by our school system, by our culture, by our friends, our, you know, the job that we end up getting into. And so it can be, it becomes stronger and stronger, that ego form, you know, develops and becomes stronger and stronger.
Oli: Yeah. Like, I always look at the ego as basically been the world internalized. So we pick up all these external ideas, and we take them on board has been true. But then eventually we start to identify with them as well. And so our identity becomes outside in instead of inside out. And when we end up putting ourselves in that situation, that’s when we end up becoming incredibly fragmented, because we’re just owning parts of ourselves that are socially acceptable.
And so that means that we’re going to disown a bunch of parts, which are very real and very necessary, and they’re never going to go anywhere. But we create a version of ourselves where those parts are kind of out of sight, out of mind. That’s when we end up getting the shadow itself. So I think we should explore that in a minute. But I want to backtrack a little bit to what you were just saying about how society ultimately either supports our development and journey towards wholeness, or it kind of causes us to hold back or to remain in a kind of a rested state of development or whatever, where we’re basically in a bubble.
We’re stuck. So when you were talking about the tribes and everything like that, like the Native Americans or, you know, all of these kind of ancient cultures, they used to have rights of passage, didn’t they? So the famous example is, you know, once a boy reached puberty or whatever he was, he was going to be a man. They take him out to go hunting and, you know, he might wander off into the desert or whatever by himself and he’d have some kind of experience where, you know, he might figure out what his spirit animal is or something like that.
But the point is those rituals would be built into the culture and they would actually support the journey from one stage of development to the next. Because basically once they came back from that rite of passage, they were no longer in the realm of childhood. They were like actual adults, they were men. They understood more about life and reality and all that kind of stuff.
So do you think, and I’m making a big assumption, but do you think based on the fact that those kind of rites of passage are not as common in our society now than they may have maybe once were, do you think that we’re kind of living in a bubble where we’re actually hiding from some of the harsher realities of life, I guess, and that is causing us to not be as whole as we can be because you have to face the dark stuff, you know, like if you go out hunting and all that kind of stuff, you have to face the dark stuff in order to become whole basically. So is there something that like I’m kind of making it too broad, but what do you think?
Shadi: Interesting. You know, it’s funny you use the word bubble, but to me like a bubble feels safe and protective. And yes, and I get that element of it, what you’re implying is sort of people are shielded from facing their fears or fully accepting these aspects of themselves as they’re growing up. I mean, you know, going through puberty, going through, you know, teenager years, et cetera, et cetera into adulthood. But to me, I feel like because modern society is lacking those community safeguards to evolve and to make mistakes or to face their fears, you know, whatever those ritualistic practices are, those traditions are, it’s almost like people are flailing, like kids are flailing.
And so especially with technology, what do they look to, they look to because they don’t have the community elder or the tribe, you know, the tribe elder mentor, they look to social media, they look to celebrities, pro athletes, they look to if you’re lucky, you have an honor uncle that you admire, you know, or an elder in your family or your culture. But I think that they’re actually, they’re, they’re, they’re flailing. That’s it’s like, it’s not a bubble, it’s so much it’s like, they’re going through, we are inevitably going to go through struggles and challenges in, you know, in different chapters of our lives and different phases of development in our lives.
But there’s just no one. And their parents are also, they have the same experience, right? When you look back like one, two, three, four generations back. So it’s like the flailing are, are raising more flailing in children or, and it’s inadvertent, you know, it’s, I’m not, I’m not, I’m not criticizing parents, parents are parenting is the hardest one in the hardest job. It is the hardest job, I think, on the planet. And they’re doing the best that they can. But I think that society also, like society is reflecting the individual, right?
So when, when you see large communities in a unable to fess up to their mistakes or their shortcomings or whatever their shame or anything like that then Individuals also will do the same. They will not face aspects of themselves that they are either Afraid of or ashamed of and that is those shadow aspects that you talk about Yeah, so they just stay in the unconscious the unconscious mind and it just sort of gets bigger and bigger and bigger until one day It is just no longer sustainable And then boom you got the midlife crisis.
Oli: Like I think the a simple way to look at it is Exactly like you said so if if one generation becomes disconnected from reality for whatever reason and they They’re basically taking themselves off of the path Collectively towards moving to hope towards wholeness, which means facing all of the dark stuff about life, you know death That we’re gonna make mistakes blah blah blah blah blah all these things that trigger our shame if we try and live in a way that Puts that keeps it at arm’s length then ultimately we are creating a collective ego that is going to be passed on to the next generation and then the next generation and the next generation…society is just other people isn’t and so if the people are unreal IE they’re not moving towards owners if they’re unreal as individuals then the society as a whole is gonna be unreal as well.
Something I’m always saying is if you put real in you get real out if you put unreal in you get unreal out and what because society has kind of been built by people who are disconnected from meaning or truth for whatever reason in general obviously not everybody is disconnected in this way then society ends up reflecting up so can we say that You’ve kind of just said it right on an individual level if you avoid the truth for too long then eventually something is gonna happen because it’s not sustainable and the truth is gonna come sweeping back into your life we’ll have a midlife crisis.
So, you know, you’ll hit rock bottom and ultimately when that happens, I always think it’s because your unconscious drives Your unconscious drive to be real and to move towards homeless is basically reconfiguring your life so that you go back on the right path. So that happens with individuals But is it likely that that is either going to happen or is in the or is in the process of happening with? With you know society as a whole so we’re taking it in a totally different direction but what do you think?
Shadi: I mean Look around -what’s happening right now? 2020 I think that we are as a as a collective Listen young game theory says and this is this is also very much aligned with Ancient religions Buddhism Hinduism. We are all connected. So in Jungian psychology there is something called the unconscious Collective the there’s the personal which is on an individual level, which is just my unconscious my shadow and then the deeper you go then there’s the the archetypal world That is the next stage of individuation and then the next stage after that is the collective unconscious Are we are all connected?
So whhat we are seeing in society at a large is reflecting our internal conflict and so I think that I think that this is an incredible time in history in in the development of Humankind and I I know that sounds very trite or or I don’t want to downplay people’s struggles and what’s happening in the world but Absolutely, I think that what what we are seeing is Many people especially since 2020 are Whether they like it or not whether they’re conscious of it or not are facing their shadow Yeah, and going through that and so on an individual basis. I mean just look at Statistically look at the mental health numbers as well But you know, it’s it’s going to reflect in it and the many people call this the dark night of the soul and this is a process in which One you know one must go through at one point in their life many points actually in their life And so the way that I this is why I feel like young Ian coaching is so helpful is because it’s expected that you’re going to go through That but we want to be more conscious and aware And instead of having as I call it the cosmic bus kind of drag you Towards your wholeness It’s you know, it’s important to be more conscious and aware of of going towards it instead of you know one day just Waking up and you know blowing up your life.
Oli: Yeah, yeah, yeah, so if you live in the right way or in a real way you’re Constantly evolving and expanding and responding to the wholeness in yourself and then the wholeness in life but if you don’t live in that way, well, the alternative is that you’re unreal, which means that you’re clinging to the filter of the ego as if that’s true, but the ego only exists in order to Help you survive what you think you’ve already been through. Okay. That’s a good thing but also it exists to keep the shadow itself at bay.
This is how I see it the ego and the shadow are always in constant conflict, but the the ego is ultimately a product of conscious mind and the shadow is a product of or is the thing that drives or kind of fuels the unconscious mind. And so individually I found like in my own life and like working with people in my own coaching practice sometimes when we’re going through that dark night of the soul in fact not sometimes always if we’re going through the dark night of the soul it means that we have reached the end of the line when it comes to the current version of our of our ego.
We’re holding on to an idea that is devoid of meaning and is not actually getting us the results that we need in reality. And so the dark night of the soul is basically a call to wake the fuck up is saying look now is the time for you to raise your awareness and to reconfigure your belief system so you can start flowing with reality again.
And people resist because obviously if you let go of the ego then the shadow is going to come swimming up to the surface then you’re gonna have to feel the shame the guilt the trauma that you’ve been hiding from and all the disowned parts you’re gonna have to make friends with them again blah blah blah.
If you keep resisting you get to the point where you become self-destructive like you might end up getting an addiction you might start making really bad choices you know as a way of escaping this reality that is calling to you but that self-destruction is actually self-resurrection and so that’s the worst case scenario is that you don’t listen you’ll destroy yourself but actually that process of self-destruction is so that the real you can rise again to the surface and I suppose that is potentially happening collectively as well because what you said the collective unconscious there’s a shadow there there’s things that we’ve disowned about humanity as a whole but we have to own them and face them because they’re real.
Real always works so I suppose the question is what do you think about that?
Shadi: I just got goosebumps. Yeah you hit it.
Oli: Yeah thank you. What do you think about the whole self-destruction thing but also we were talking before the call about this idea of like shadow language or you call it mirror work which is the idea that you know the unconscious stuff is always there it’s always screaming from beneath the surface of what we think we know at the level of the ego the conscious mind blah blah blah but if we can learn to listen we can avoid having to hit rock bottom and go through that self-destruction self-resurrection process and to start flowing with like awareness and acceptance and then inspired actually as I always say it so what would you say about all that and I know there’s probably loads that you can see.
Shadi: Yeah so two parts again I want to go back to what you were just saying with really what society is going through what the collective is going through I think that do you follow Gabor Mate at all? Are you familiar with him?
Oli: I think I heard him on a podcast or something but I haven’t read his books or anything.
Shadi: Yeah so I think I believe he’s a psychologist he’s a Canadian he’s a Hungarian Canadian psychologist actually. Yeah he’s Hungarian and he has exploded like in the last year and he talks to this very much and I think he is actually he may be a psychiatrist I think he’s from in the medical field because he is the first of his kind that is getting a platform at the scale where he is very vocally talking about this concept of you know he talks specifically about trauma and addictions and that self destructive behavior and that it is a protective mechanism it’s not that people are willfully choosing to do drugs or you know numb themselves it is a protective mechanism which as you described it is the ego it is the ego trying to keep the shadow at bay and I call the ego the overprotective bouncer like the overprotective bouncer at the door and it it wants your best interest it’s protective and then so he you know if he had surface like I would say even two years ago I don’t think the world would have been ready for him and I think that that just goes to show that people are going through enough struggles where they’re beginning to this is resonating for them what he’s speaking to what we’re speaking to really is is more resonating for people because they’re ready for it and so that was what I wanted to say and then the damn you asked such great questions Oli I missed the second part the last part of the question which I wanted to get back to.
Oli: I might be wrong but basically it was about the self destruction is self resurrection thing so what we’re saying is the ego yeah me too but okay so the ego is a protective device that’s true right but the thing is it causes us to protect ourselves so much that we start forcing life instead of flowing with it and the second part of the question was about the shadow language or the the mirror stuff so I think we end up in so busy forcing life that we become blind to all of these kind of these whispers shall we say or these signs yeah that the shadow is throwing us and so is there something there where we can learn to listen to that stuff so we can avoid hitting rock bottom and having to…
Shadi: Yeah, that was it I remember now yeah so so really the secret is, and this is easier said than done, I mean this is essentially shadow work is to see everything that is coming up in your reality, in your life as feedback. And it is, so it is mirroring your internal belief system and your unconscious mind.
So reality is mind, that’s like what I always say, your reality is your mind is reflecting your mind. And I know that’s oversimplifying it and it’s not that easy, it’s super hard because ultimately that means owning your shit and it means that you are accountable for everything that’s showing up in your life and that’s coming into your life. And I don’t mean to say, you know, because people are like, what about if you get cancer?
What about if like an accident happens or something like that? Yes, of course those things happen or going to happen in life, right? But how you respond to it is going to create your life, is going to create your reality. And how you respond is dictated by unresolved unconscious aspects.
Oli: But there is also an element where we can go totally crazy and off the charts and say that we do attract everything that comes into our experience. And obviously if life sucks right now, if you’re at the start of this individuation process and you’re really fragmented and you’re stuck in a victim mindset and blah blah blah blah, here in somebody say you attract everything in your life is going to be very offensive because obviously you don’t want to admit that all these bad things are down to you at some level. But ultimately, it goes back to what I was saying earlier, if you put unreal in, you get unreal out. If you put real in, you get real out, right?
And so if you’re at the start of this journey of moving from fragmentation to wholeness, the void within you between the shadow self and the ego that you’re putting out to the world, that is going to be, there’s going to be a big gap basically, there’s going to be a big chasm. And if that chasm is there, you’re going to have emotional turbulence of some kind, because there’s no way that you can’t, because that gap between the ego and the shadow needs to be as narrow as possible in order for you to feel whole within yourself. And if you can feel whole within yourself, then your inner state means that you’re going to be putting out wholeness into the world, you’re going to be putting real out there.
And so you’re more likely to get real back. And even on the most basic level, if you don’t want to sound like a lunatic, you could just say that if you’re fragmented within yourself, you’re going to make fragmented choices, which is going to cause fragmented things to come into your life. Yes, mixed messages.
Yeah, exactly, right? And so you could say that probably, and this is a question for you, instead of me running and raving, but could you say that, you know, if somebody has a lot of friction in their life, so things are constantly going wrong, you know, mistakes have constantly been made, relationships have fractured, and there’s tension and drama and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. If life is like that, that is a sign, I would say, that you have to do some inner work, even if it’s just learning to set healthy boundaries or something like that.
But your external state always reflects what’s going on inside of you. Is that true? 1000%. Yeah.
So, yeah. So what are some of the things then that we can look out for? So what kind of things might be happening in our life that we can take as a sign to, you know, get our shit together, basically? And then how do we go about doing that?
Shadi: Oof. All right, so we’re going, we’re going the tough love route with on this, on this episode.
All right. For those who are experiencing a lot of conflict, drama, friction, like always, you know, nothing works out for me, nothing, you know, why does this keep happening to me? I honestly, the very first integral step of change is accepting responsibility for how are you contributing to all of these things in your life? And how are, you know, how might you, number one, how might you, not even how might you be contributing, but I think that I don’t like to say this, but you know, the victim mentality, because the victim mentality is necessary as well.
I think that that is a protective mechanism. And I honor that aspect of the individual psyche. But I think that as soon as I sense myself feeling like XYZ is happening to me, that is a telltale sign. I’m giving my power away to something outside of me. And I’m not owning my, my responsibility for my life. And so if we are in a toxic relationship, for example, I’m not saying that the other person is not toxic, or I’m not saying that the circumstances are, are not, you know, you’re up against a wall, you know, of course you are, but you’re also complicit.
And I think that that’s the piece that is integral to change is in really arming yourself with that knowledge that I’m in control. I get to, you know, yes, I’m choosing to stay in a toxic relationship or situation, you know, if could be work, and I’m complicit. And that’s still a choice. The alternative may not be a comfortable choice, but you always have the power to choose.
Oli: Choice is so important. Like the choice thing, if you can get to that place where you can make real choices, i.e. you’re coming from a place of wholeness within yourself, then it means that you have gone through some kind of a process of raising awareness of all this stuff. The problem is for a lot of people that they’re kind of running on autopilot, like the ego stuff. It’s kind of like a program that’s just running in their minds based on, you know, what we’ve been saying about the shadow and the ego, and then need to survive whatever it is that they’ve already been through and to avoid situations like that again in the future.
But the thing is, if we’re running on autopilot like that, then we are just going to attract more drama and more bullshit because anytime that drama and bullshit comes into our lives, we’re going to react to it based on that programming. And so there’s an element, I think, where we need to dissolve the shame and maybe guilt and to some extent trauma but we need to dissolve the shame that is causing us or people in general, people who are suffering from this problem, we need to dissolve the shame that is causing them to rely on the autopilot rather than their feeling of realness or the connection to wholeness that is their real state because once you come from that real place, the place of wholeness, all of that drama and all of that toxicity and all of those things that can happen when we’ve been unreal, it kind of just dissolves
It gets neutralized because as soon as the unreal stuff meets the real intention within whoever it is that we’re talking about, then it’s basically seen to be unreal and it has no power and so it’s only us being unreal that gives power to other unreal situations if that makes sense and the way out of that is to stop being driven by shame I found to dissolve the shame so that you can let the ego kind of lose its power to some extent and you can start coming from that real place.
If that makes sense.
Shadi: Can I interject real quick? I hear you and you can’t dissolve shame so the thing is what people do is they integrate it because nobody likes to feel shame, nobody likes to face shame so we avoid it. We numb ourselves, we distract ourselves and if you imagine a scenario if you’re public speaking and in a moment you forget what you’re about to say, I think it’s very instinctive for someone to feel like you your palms get sweaty and in that moment we squash it.
That is the autopilot reaction so that is how we’ve been conditioned. It doesn’t feel good, we don’t like to feel shame so it is automatic instinct to just squash it and push it away and whatever you’re pushing away, whatever you’re resisting is going to persist so you’re going to create more, you’re going to create more experiences of shame because you’re avoiding it so what you actually want to do is bring light to it, you want to sit with it, you want to integrate it and you want to observe why it’s coming up and why it’s so bad.
Why is the ego defending a feeling? It’s just a feeling in the body, it’s uncomfortable, it doesn’t feel great but the sooner you actually just sit with it or honor it or see it and observe it for what it is then it dissipates. Then it subsides and then you start to see, oh wow, that’s not a big deal actually. That’s when the resistance subsides as well and it just becomes more state of flow and that’s really part of the individuation process. It is integrating these uncomfortable emotions.
Oli: Yeah, 100%. That’s actually what I mean by shame dissolving. Shame driven is exactly what you said. People who are shame driven, they try to resist it and like Carl Jung said, what you resist persists and so it just causes the problem to get worse but in relation to all this stuff that we’ve been talking about, ego is the thing, it’s basically the glue that holds the ego together. Shame is the glue that holds the ego together because the fear of feeling that shame is what causes people to run around like headless chickens on autopilot to keep it at bay and shame dissolving I would say is where you accept that it’s a real thing.
Okay, you feel it but by feeling it and staring it right in the face, that’s when it kind of disappears. You realize that it has no power over you because shame that drives you and controls you is always an ego thing because it’s always about judgment and the ego is ultimately the illusion of judgment and so when you step away from that and put yourself back on path to wholeness then you can kind of step back and come from that real place where all of these things like the drama and the bullshit and the toxicity that we’re talking about, those things they rest on the ego having a hold over somebody basically and so if you can step away from one you can step away from the other but the only way to do it is to kind of ride through the shame or to integrate or to face it whatever word you want to use which means that you can bring the shadow self to the surface as well and then that gap we were talking about between the ego and the shadow gets narrower and narrower and then we’ll make better choices in life ultimately because it’s all kinda linked.
Shadi:It also releases sort of this repressed energy because feelings are usually it’s energy so it’s creative energy, it’s energy to be free and when you integrate these repressed aspects when you really release them it’s like letting them out of Pandora’s box it opens up this energy to create something new something outside of that shame pattern or I think anxiety is another one that just came to me I think it’s so prevalent right now across society as I say this there’s a siren in the background and I think that people’s struggles with anxiety is because they’re they’re resisting it it’s like it has a hold on them because they’re so resistant to just letting it surface and sitting with it and becoming aware of it and what and then the more you become aware of it then the more you start to see how it’s been a defense tactic implemented from a really early age.
Sometimes often from a very small experience or it could be a trauma it doesn’t even have to be a massive trauma it could be from anything experience you had with a parent or a caregiver and then your body kicks into that fight, flight, freeze or fond response and then as you grow up the mind doesn’t know the difference between that experience from childhood and your boss chastising you or something you know something that could seem very trivial but then your nervous system kicks in with that same response because it immediately associates it with that childhood experience that conditioned response and so the sooner you just so it was planted there a long time ago it is just a defense mechanism so the sooner you actually just just sit with it and give it what it needs, which sometimes is just the chance to be seen and heard. It’s just a part of us. It’s this energy that just wants to be acknowledged. Then the sooner it’s released and then you can start to see like, holy cow, like I’ve been doing this unconsciously.
I’ve been doing this without recognizing it in certain situations.
Oli: Yeah. Do you think we could say that that release is ultimately the return to reality or wholeness, whatever word we’re going to use? I think a lot of the issues we’re talking about, so anxiety, depression, blah, blah, blah, all these things that can show up in people’s lives, they’re symptoms of being detached from reality in some sense. I know reality kind of has a bad reputation. If you say get real, it can sometimes mean give up on your dreams or whatever, but getting real, being real actually means putting yourself in alignment with wholeness.
And any time you start to believe things that take you away from that because of the programming, the scripts, the assumptions you picked up in childhood, blah, blah, blah. If you start believing that stuff and it’s unreal, it just adds unnecessary tension to your experience. That tension is what we call anxiety, depression, blah, blah, blah, toxicity in relationships.
It’s just all the same thing, which is something that is causing us to move towards unreality rather than reality. We’ve covered a lot, but to wrap all this up, could we say that the release of that tension that you were just talking about is just the return to wholeness or whatever we want to say?
Shadi: Yeah, the way I see it is it’s radical acceptance. Radical acceptance is returning to your wholeness.
We are born whole, and I mean in spiritual concepts and theory, you can say we’re born light, we’re born love and light. Then through our conditioning, it’s like these veils just get layered and layered and layered on top, which is the tension that you describe. It’s this resistance to what is. It’s almost like we’re in denial of reality, of the truth of who we are.
And then the more you start to become aware and more conscious and integrate those repressed aspects of yourself, you are lifting those veils and returning to the truth of who you are, which is a being of love and light and accepting. So what does that mean? That means accepting that at any moment, if I feel like crap, okay, I’m going to accept this reality that I feel like crap right now. I’m going to sit with it, and I’m going to accept I feel like crap right now, and then it subsides even much faster.
It’s incredible. I mean, a lot of my clients are like, wow, just sitting with it sometimes like, I’m like, holy cow, it just went away. And the more you accept whoever and whatever you are, or whatever your reality is, even if it’s not true, the sooner you accept it in that moment. Yes, my boss and I don’t get along, or yes, I am in a bad marriage. The sooner you accept that and you accept how you’re showing up in response to that and owning it, then you are returning to yourself, your homeless.
Oli: Love it. And it goes full circle because actually at the start of the conversation, we were saying, you know, if you’ve got all this stuff going on inside where you become fragmented, then ultimately, you start making choices about your life that are motivated by the ego stuff only. And if you start making those choices, then obviously your life is going to become unreal. And so if you accept everything no matter what, then obviously you’re going to accept reality.
But if you accept reality, it’s a shortcut to accepting yourself as well. And if you have exactly exceptions of yourself, that gap between the ego and the shadow and between, you know, you and everything else is going to become narrower and narrower and narrower. And that’s when life is going to move in the direction that it needs to, not that you think it should because of all your programming and so on and so forth. So we’ve been talking quite a long time.
It’s gone quick. I always say that, but it’s always true. Have you got any final words to sum up everything that we talked about? No pressure because we talked about a lot of stuff. But how would you know we covered a lot? Yeah, but how would you sum up this conversation? And also, can you tell people where they can learn more about you and your coaching and all that kind of stuff?
Shadi: Yeah, sure. So I mean, I know it sounds really simple yet poignant, but like we are, we are in, we’re in the driver’s seat. That’s ultimately, and I’ve said, I say this over and over again, and I think a lot of people sort of feel helpless or powerless in whatever situation they’re in, but rest assured you are, you are in the driver’s seat of your life at any moment.
And you know, the sooner that we can take ownership of that, the sooner we can create change towards a desired outcome or desired reality or what we really truly want that is aligned with our wholeness and who we are. And then so you can find me on Instagram. My handle is at thislifefulfiled, f-u-l-f-i-l-l-e-d. And I offer a complimentary consult session with anyone who’s interested, curious about my work. And I do, I am taking one-on-one clients right now at the moment. And you can email me, you can DM me on Instagram or if you’re not on Instagram, you can email me. My name, my first name is spelled S-H-A-D-I.
And my email address is shadi@intuit-coaching.com.
Oli: Perfect. So I’ll share all your links and everything in the show notes. But Shadi, thank you so much for coming on here and sharing all this stuff. It’s been really awesome to hear about it. So really appreciate it.
Shadi:Thank you, Oli. It was so fun talking with you. We could talk about this forever.
Oli: Yeah, that’s the thing. I think I can keep going for like another few hours. I’ll save you for though!
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