Council of nine :Focus your mind and emotions only on the positive.

[Asolsutsesvyl]

But it is quite a headache to deal with all the charged-up contradictions on an emotional level which have built up. Clarity dissapears until it slowly rebuilds in a fuller and more balanced way.

Ah, I am so dealing with this at the moment. Had a huge turning point in making the unconscious conscious, but now it almost feels like I have multiple personalities. The fragmentation in early trauma is real. Hoping it will all come together. If you have any other insights/advice/suggestions, I'd love to hear it.

I can look back at some of what I have gone through. But that's only how it personally unfolded so far. An old post also summarized some much more general information:

The point is that there's not two, but more, patterns of dealing with the shadow. And in long-term development, there can be several distinct stages, intermediate stages being filled with self-conflict.

An unconventional psychiatrist, Kazimierz Dabrowski, developed the "Theory of Positive Disintegration", systematizing the long, multi-stage journey of positive development, where many reach the earlier stages of conflict but far fewer go beyond it to re-integrate the psyche according to a personal ideal-structure which has developed. The following is a very short summary:

Level I: Primary integration. The majority. Some simply don't deal with a conflict, instead just living out the darkness in self-love without understanding. More are rigidly socialized, their inner worlds constrained by the rules of society. The "third factor", neither biology nor society, isn't actively directing life.

Level II: Unilevel disintegration. The most common crisis stage. People plummet into confusion, ambivalence, and existential anxiety, with disorganized inner conflict. If it extends for a long time, then psychosis or suicide may result. Most fall back to the previous level, some end negatively, some move forward.

Level III: Spontaneous multilevel disintegration. Some begin to develop a multi-level sense of meaning in the midst of the crisis, turning the inner conflict into a struggle between the higher and the lower.

Level IV: Directed multilevel disintegration. Some make the inner restructuring process consciously driven, re-examining life in all aspects from the new foundation. The prosocial becomes individual and authentic instead of dictated by something external.

Level V: Secondary integration. A few bring the process to completion, the result being a new harmony in which what is valued is consciously lived.

In short, the work of "making the darkness conscious" depends on something positive having been built, which can enlighten the darker parts of the person. It often takes years of intense inner conflict before that can happen. Thereafter, a fuller and genuinely positive harmony can begin to encompass the whole of the psyche.

That was from a discussion in which I made the case that conflict, judgment, etc., can very much be part of the inner life of positive people during long stages of development. It doesn't help to judge judgment to be so negative that it cannot be allowed in positive people. Even though it's often part of a wall which prevents fuller understanding in the long term.

To add more to that old summary, a balance between the emotionally-driven and the intellectually-driven can help. The emotional drives on the inner chaos, but is also needed to break apart the rigid structures that prevent something fuller and more "real" from integrating. It ties into both the darkest and the brightest which is experienced. The intellectual allows bringing order into chaos, and relating things meaningfully in a structured way. It is key to building something new after the old is demolished inside.

But the greatest factor is the mystery of the "third force", neither of the body nor what comes from outside. That's the key to finding more real and permanent higher values, and may become the "director" of the inner process. That's where the larger method to what may seem like madness at the time comes from. In a sense it grows down as people grow up into a fuller integration.

I don't know what the "director" of your process works with. That's a main personal question, different for each. But it probably knows a lot. Its "thinking" may be expressed in old and new symbolic patterns, themes, and things which can be arrived at over time. It can take time to distinguish between smaller and larger patterns, and get a sense of what the whole is really like.

I experienced the larger, much more intense inner drama after gathering information needed to explain it (in a basic intellectual sense). But after some time, older patterns, and old inner tensions, dreams, ideas, etc., seemed like they were very much part of the same whole. But I don't really feel I understand it all yet.