There seems to be a debate in the emotional health community about which one is absolutely necessary and which one you should discard. I'm going to talk about my personal experience with both here.
Positive focus
Is a necessary part of our healing practices.
It refers to making a conscious effort of paying attention to the positive things in life. As we go on with our life we can't help but fall in the trap of noticing everything that upsets us. We likely end up complaining about it too. This mentality is straining for both our psyche and eventually our bodies. Sadly we've gotten so accustomed to it that the long term effects go unnoticed. Not to mention that there's a multitude of situations which cause us greater harm and they overshadow our general state of being.
Positive focus also plays a big role in the practices of manifestation or the law of attraction.
There are many ways you can use Positive focus to improve your emotional and mental well being. Just like the room, house, job, garden or any other environment, we spend the majority of our time in, our thoughts and emotions influence us on a subtle level. Would you prefer to be surrounded by beautiful art or bags of garbage? If you surround yourself in garbage and ignore the fact that it's there for a long enough time, it will soon start to affect your mood. And of course, knowing humans, instead of putting in the effort to remove the garbage, we tend to add more to it.
Admittedly, it's much easier to pick up a garbage bag and walk over to the nearest bin to dump it in than it is to change the fleeting immaterial thoughts buzzing through our head. However, it's still very much possible and here are a few ways you can go about it.
Meditation. I encountered a big problem when it comes to focusing during meditation but the Emotional Vipassana was one of the only meditations that I could undertake successfully. So what I did is to wait for a feeling of calmness, happiness and serenity to come to me randomly and when it did I sat down and focused my attention onto it. By doing this I overshot any other positive focus practices by miles! It's extremely effective both short and long term.
Training. I made an effort to change the habit of the complaint and noticing only the bad in any situation. I would catch my negative thoughts in action and either ignore them by changing the subject completely or replace them with a focus on the appealing aspects of said situation. I think it's worth mentioning here that finding commonalities between you and people you don't always agree with is a very powerful technique in creating long-lasting bonds, good friends or simply a better understanding of them which leads to social harmony.
Discarding environmental factors. What type of YouTube videos are you watching? Are you spending time with dramatic friend groups? What about those TV/alternative media news you can't live without? Having a continuous flow of negative vibes sets you back, to say the least. Any positive focus practices you're trying to achieve will be cancelled out by that one 'bad news' post on your favourite Facebook group. These are all distractions and procrastination, it keeps us stuck in a powerless mentality. You don't need them.
Pampering. Good food, good music, good long baths, etc. Don't mistreat yourself by avoiding these needs when they arise. I often cool down my stressful thoughts by listening to those 3-hour long Zen music videos on YouTube. (one of my favourites: 528 ➤ Emotional stability)
There is a point where Positive focus can be detrimental to you.
To understand this, you need to know what coping mechanisms are. In my experience, forcing myself to stay positive during a negative situation or trigger is painful. I would not recommend this attitude to anybody, it's extremely harmful on many levels.
The only positive thing I've done during one of my darkest moments in life was to decide, for the near future, to strive towards a happy life instead of sinking deeper into sadness and depression. This happened only once in my life and it, itself was very painful.
Also, I've found that attempting to progress towards a healthy state using just positive focus won't take you too far. Inevitably you'll reach a wall you can't go through. That wall is a trauma, a part of your conscious that got split off from you (likely during your childhood) that needs to be heard, understood and re-integrated.
No amount of positive focus can ever bulldoze through that wall because it's done for the (negative) reason for ignoring somebody that's in pain. This is why Shadow work is essential.
Shadow work
Is a necessary part of our healing practices.
It is the practice of noticing, paying attention and healing the negative aspects of yourself and your traumas. Sometimes this practice refers to healing a situation that is outside of yourself, much like purging an energy vortex or healing another person.
It's similar to deciding to start cleaning up the trash in your living space.
This practice has nothing to do with focusing on the negative, as is our habit. It helps us notice the cause of the negative and heal or eliminate it.
I am most accustomed to this practice. I've been using it for many years before I found what the actual term for it was. My early attempts were less successful and didn't have long-lasting result but I believe they're worth mentioning:
The brick at the bottom of the wall. It refers to discovering the root cause of an emotional problem and understanding how it came to be, without doing much else. This used to be my most common practice. I would spend hours upon hours attempting to discover the origins of my emotional problems. Without the proper knowledge, my guesses would be either superficial or hit-and-miss. This method is now obsolete by comparison to the one below.
Emotional Vipassana. As opposed to the practice above, this one sheds intense focus on the emotional issue. Darkness cannot exist where there's light. Your consciousness is the light! And when you focus all of your conscious attention on something that's 'dark' within you, it has no choice but to dissipate. If done properly, the trauma is completely healed. This has been my silver bullet for the last 2-3 years and none of the traumas ever returned, but you will find that each trauma you tackle has many different aspects and facets. This process heals each individual facet at a time.
The completion process. This is an even more powerful tool that extends from the one above. It is capable of healing the worst of mental illnesses out there, including PTSD, BPD, DID, etc. The worst I ever had was depression so I can't say much about it. However, I have had the chance to use it a few times in my life and they were all very positive and blissful healing experiences.
Is there a point where shadow work can be detrimental to you?
In my experience: No. Not really. The only negative incident I had with it was at one point, about a year ago, when I felt absolutely exhausted for doing it too much. But, as the term states, it is indeed 'work'. And like with any other activity, too much of it can become exhausting.
It was my own fault for not offering myself enough time in between sessions. I was rushing to get EVERYTHING wrong within me fixed in the smallest amount of time possible. However, the lack of positive focus can keep you in a lower vibration than you could be. Shadow work has it's own moments of bliss, after the removal of each trauma, but it alone is not enough to propel you upwards in the vibration scale.
It was my own fault for not offering myself enough time in between sessions. I was rushing to get EVERYTHING wrong within me fixed in the smallest amount of time possible. However, the lack of positive focus can keep you in a lower vibration than you could be. Shadow work has it's own moments of bliss, after the removal of each trauma, but it alone is not enough to propel you upwards in the vibration scale.
There have been people that refuse to do Shadow work in favour of a strict positive focus diet. When it comes to Parts work this avoidance behaviour can be a crime. You'd literally be ignoring and avoiding your "inner child" while they are in a deep state of pain. That part of you or that child needs a specific kind of healing that you can't provide if you refuse to listen to his/her actual strife and needs.
Conclusion
Like Yin and Yang, you need both.
Thankfully, Shadow work is only useful if you have 'shadows'. All humans have a limited amount of traumas. It may not seem that way because as soon as we start this practice it would seem as though the flood gates have opened. You'll feel like there is no end in sight and they are just too many problems for one individual human being.
But I can promise you from my experience that there is a point where you'll find fewer and fewer traumas to overcome and your life has reached a moderately happy state of being. From here on your energy will be spent predominantly on positive focus.
But I can promise you from my experience that there is a point where you'll find fewer and fewer traumas to overcome and your life has reached a moderately happy state of being. From here on your energy will be spent predominantly on positive focus.
Be mindful of your moods. Don't force shadow work when you need to rest or bathe in good vibes and don't force yourself to stay positive when you feel like something negative within you wants to come to the surface. Being in alignment with yourself is crucial in all circumstances.
Good luck and take care of yourself!
