SHALLOW WATERS
‘Her feelings were an ocean in which she feared she might drown. So she chose to live in the warm, shallow waters, hoping that one day, she would have the courage to navigate the sea.’
Beyond Shallow Waters: The Exploration of the Shadow Self
How many of us live our lives at the water’s edge, in the shallows where the water is warm, and the dangerous depths of life can only be seen on the horizon far off in the distance? We wade in the comfortable shallows, where life is predictable, and the illusion of safety wraps around us like a familiar embrace. Beneath the surface, however, something stirs – unspoken fears, forgotten dreams, and echoes of a self we’ve left behind. The human psyche is an ocean, with depths that are difficult to navigate. The conscious awareness is but a small island where we bathe, floating on its surface. Below, in the vast subconscious, lie the experiences and thoughts we have buried, and the emotions we chose not to see, truths we submerge into the black waters of the unconscious mind. To venture into these waters is an act of courage, and a risk in which we fear drowning in the unknown.
Carl Jung spoke of the shadow, the submerged parts of ourselves we suppress, deny, or fear. These shadows whisper from the deep, calling us to explore what lies beneath. But the deeper waters are turbulent, and so we stay in the shallows, divert our reality and tell ourselves it is preferential. We create and exist in a life of surface pleasures, superficial connections, and carefully curated identities, while we push our true selves under and allow them to drown in the unseen depths. Many people are conditioned to be providers, caregivers, nurturers, and keepers of peace; we learn from an early age that our dreams, desires and emotions are inconvenient, overwhelming, and even dangerous facets of the self that need to be suppressed. Anger is softened into politeness, grief is swallowed with a smile, and ambition is tempered into acceptability. Over time, these unexpressed selves become strong currents beneath the surface, pulling, dragging, and eroding our lives beneath our very feet.
Repression is a human survival mechanism, a way of socially adapting, beginning in childhood, keeping us afloat when the tides of emotion or non-compliance threaten to pull us under. Neuroscience reveals that emotional suppression activates the prefrontal cortex, an area of the brain responsible for self-regulation and control. Yet, suppression does not erase emotion; it merely redirects it to the limbic system, where unresolved feelings continue to simmer beneath the surface. Over time, these suppressed emotions manifest in unexpected ways—through anxiety, depression, physical illness, and even self-sabotage. The subconscious mind is not a vault but a living current, funnelling our emotions and desires, shaping our choices, relationships, and perceptions without our conscious awareness. When emotions are consistently buried, the body’s nervous system is affected and we can remain in states of chronic stress, triggering the amygdala, the brain’s fear centre, that keeps us in a cycle of avoidance and hypervigilance. Sadly here we mistake our desire for safety for stagnation, and we then begin to mistake stagnation for ‘peace’.
What is buried in these channels is not erased. The subconscious does not forget; rather it waits, building with pressure, and eventually the waterline will rise, the valve give way, and the inner turmoil will release. There comes a moment in every life where the unconscious choice of suppression and avoidance is no longer an option. The life we carefully constructed over years and decades begins to crack under the pressure, and as we look at our reflection in these dark waters we see a disturbed stranger staring back.
This is the invitation to descend, to reclaim what was lost and to reconcile the truth of self that lives beyond the surface. To know ourselves not as fragments, but as complete beings, light and shadow entwined with the full breath of human emotion. As control is surrendered we begin to acknowledge the pain we have avoided, the loss we have suffered, the aspects we have denied, and the rage we are told was inexpressible. The psyche resists this descent, fearing that to face our drowned emotions would mean to be consumed by them; that through the profound experience of embodying these aspects of self, we would render ourselves so vulnerable that we would expose ourselves to the risk of death. The beautiful paradox of healing is that what we fear will drown us is, in fact, the very thing that sets us free.
There are only two choices when faced with the depths: to drown or to dive. Those who refuse remain trapped in half-lives, restless and unfulfilled, watching the horizon but never daring to sail. They convince themselves that the shallows are enough, that the hunger for more is foolish, that safety is preferable to truth. But those who dare to dive, to surrender to the depths, discover something miraculous. They do not drown. Instead, they find a self that is wilder, freer, and more alive than they ever imagined. They touch the ocean floor and rise again, reborn.
To navigate the ocean of our emotions is to embrace the full spectrum of human existence. Pain and beauty, fear and courage, darkness and light. It is to reclaim our wholeness. The neuroplasticity of our brains allows and ensures that we are free to evolve and transform beyond our limitations and forge new identities and pathways of awareness, resilience, and authenticity. If you are reading this and feel the pull of the deep, know that you are not alone. Deep water is not your enemy; it is your playground where the true experience of self and life can be discovered within the complexity and vastness of your soul for those who have the courage to navigate the sea.
