Episode 160: Confronting Your Shadow with Andy Mercer

“Shadow” Acrylic and digital media, Barbara Fisher 2026. This painting was originally done in acrylic in November of 2024, when I was actively re-engaging with my own personal shadow. To illustrate this episode, I photographed it, took it into Procreate and added some more layers of light and shadow.

“Unfortunately there can be no doubt that man is, on the whole, less good than he imagines himself or wants to be. Everyone carries a shadow, and the less it is embodied in the individual’s conscious life, the blacker and denser it is. At all counts, it forms an unconscious snag, thwarting our most well-meant intentions.” —Dr. Carl Jung

We all have a Shadow inside us. We all have parts of our personality that we do not like, parts of our nature that we see as negative or as uncivilized. We usually hide these aspects of ourselves from the rest of the world, but the worst thing we do, is hide those difficult traits from ourselves.

It is part of our sacred duty as humans to know ourselves, and to become the best people we can be. And in order to do so, we have to bring our Shadows out into the light, examine them, and find a way to accept and integrate them into our everyday personality. In doing so, we reduce our tendencies to react to changing situations, relationships and circumstances in ways that do nothing to help anyone or anything. As a person who has done Shadow work for years, I can tell you that it is a relief to not have wild emotional reactions burst out of my head, heart and mouth for no obvious reason. Rage that ignites suddenly out of the blue is hardly ever a positive development in any situation.

Andy comes to the rescue with discussions of what the Shadow is, where it comes from, and what its doing in our psyche. Lest you think, “Oh NO! Where is the paranormal here? “

Well, It’s all through the entire episode, so cool down! Have no fear! We’ve got angels, devils, UFOs shadow people (you knew we’d have some of those), dreams, psychokinesis and lots of other weirdness besides. Considering we tried three times to record this episode, and we still have some weird audio artifacts in the finished podcast, I’d say there’s plenty of paranormal in here.

Enjoy!