Darkness

[WildMermaid]

We all know that we're a mix of light and dark but I have a few questions about your experience with the Dark Side so to speak. *passes around cookies* How does your darkness manifest in your life? Do you feel in touch with it? Are you at peace with it? Have you found anything constructive to do with it?

 

[shimmerz]

*passes around cookies*

Do I have to fess up to my dark side in order to score a cookie?

 

[WildMermaid]

@shimmerz nah you can has as many cookies as you like! ;)

 

[WildMermaid]

I feel like all fine with having a dark side until I share it in writing, art, or postings. Then a whole bunch of shame and "They're all going to laugh at you!"-Carrie's mother from Carrie by Stephen King. My husband thinks my nightmares can benefit us, but I struggle with this. It feels as if putting more darkness out there is not healthy as it just breeds more of the same. Then again the stories I most want to tell are DARK in many ways. *sigh*

 

[Recovery4Me]

I reframed the dark side into strengths and experience eliminating some of my black and white thinking. Good versus bad stuff thinking that can twist me up into cognitive distortion. I accept some choices after hind site were not the best choice but the best I mustered at that time. Wisdom is rarely passive. This frame work for me allows me more openness, acceptance, forgiveness, remembering I made those mistakes or had shared those mistakes.

Insofar as reflecting on the dark-side with respect to your post #4 that is a different ball of wax from my perspective. I believe you are worthy to share if and when you wish for support AND it helps others to share their stories, yes? So maybe it will be a terse ball of string...that I believe is one of the purposes of the board.

Consider if this is what you want to do, stick your toe in the ocean and see. Consider the diary or a public post, either way...it will take courage. I believe in you.:hug: Be like Nike...just do it!:clown:

ps...your cookies are good!!

 

[braggle]

I think my dark side is tied to my creativity.
Some of the ideas for drawings I have make people shudder but they always say something prevelant to me and my experience.
I don't feel in control of the thoughts that come with it but I can choose if I create what its suggested. I actually love this part of me as it sees things in a way that most don't and it gives me the opportunity to create something out of all that hurt that may help someone else.

Can I have a two cookies please :)

 

[Senecia]

My mother is very adamant about being all good and all light...but like yin yang, I think everything should be balanced. I try to embrace my darker side. It makes me feel human. Whether that be my more "primal" emotions like anger and aggression, or my fears. I realize that they're there and in a way it humbles me. I've been afraid for a while to express that side because "no one likes a negative Nancy" haha. However through art, I primarily paint night scenes, helps bring peace to the dark side of me. I'm not even sure what I'm going on about anymore.
Overall, not ignoring that it's there has made me more whole and I appreciate the spectrum that is Me.
Here's one of my paintings. Link Removed

 

[davebassman409]

try mixing acid with mdma. thatl show you your inner self. ddint do shit for me but some people value life a lot more after this experience. all i found was a f*cking mess. theres no such tning as light or dark, just a pointless wait until death so may as well give it a good blast

 

[jaccat]

Ditto with creativity, as has been the case with all my family. My writing is full of darkness and when I can't get it out in writing I draw it, any way I can. I seek out the darkness in other writings and forms of art, such as in the works of Stephen King and Neil Gaiman, and in mythology and fairy tales (the original unedited ones). The links between such stories and what they mean to people personally and culturally fascinate me.

I want a tattoo on my back- a barren, Edgar Allen Poe style tree with birds flying out of it, as a link to my darkness. Not in a negative way but in the sense that trees are full of life even when they look dead, and full of power.

 

[Hope4Now]

@WildMermaid do you have any white chocolate/macademia nut ones? If so I might say more ;).

My dark side mostly only manifests on the inside of my life...in my inner world. And it ain't pretty. Every once in a while it leaks out in self-harm or obliquely in my fiction or poetry or artwork. Am I in touch with my darkness? Only since my meltdown. Am I at peace with it? Hell no, there's all out war and torture going on in there. I'll count myself lucky if I can survive this therapy stuff and get integrated. I've not truly found anything constructive to do with it. I am aware of it but I have not embraced it.

Here's one of my paintings.

Wow! @Senecia that is totally cool! Thanks for sharing your dark side :).

 

[holdenmonty]

Thank you for the cookie :) and now for how I deal with my darkness. I tend to feel like those old cartoons with the angel on one shoulder and the devil on the other, but not completely to that extreme. I'm trying to think of how much to share I tend to feel some shame in my darkness and I try to hide it but say for instance when my family goes to a local mall that has a play area for small kids probably about three foot and under but there are kids that are easily 4 foot playing and jumping all over the stuff and knocking kids over. My what I would like to do is go over to the kid that knocked a smaller kid down and knock them down and say how do you like it. You need to watch where you are going you aren't even suppose to be playing in this area. But I know that it could/probably would get a very hostile reaction from that kids parents if they are even around. So I just yell HEY WATCH WHERE YOUR GOING YOU JUST KNOCKED THAT KID OVER. Other times I have hung out with some friends and we have been talking and they make it sound like I'm this perfect person that doesn't have any inpure thoughts, and I just want to let them have it with the stuff the stuff in my head but I don't want to scare them.

It's kind of a tough balance with living with it I guess. I have accepted that it's part of who I am it is more apart of me now then before my deployment I guess you could say I'm in touch with it, working at having peace with it but haven't really found anything constructive to do with it, and I'm thinking because it manifests itself in being protective and harming others. Maybe down the road if I'm coming up with concepts of bad things that can happen and how to prevent them.

 

[Born to Run]

I believe I got the darkness out of me in therapy; I have visualised killing my mother soo many times and in so many different ways, that I am done with her. I never ever felt guilty for it; she was a monster, she deserved it. I liked finishing her in my mind; it was great. In the beginning my therapist would expect me to feel guilty, but I never did.

@Senecia I really like your watercolor :tup: