Thanks for your reply! My current belief is that humans swing between good and bad moods. If you "deal with your shadow", you would eliminate the good mood along with the bad mood, and your mental life would become bland. Emotions like anger, loneliness or pain are "pushers" where happy emotions are "pullers". Shadowy emotions are pushing your attention to something that needs attention. This line of thinking worked for my back pain, where repressing it with pain killers or therapy made things worse, and changing my luxury chair into a simple stool improved things.

So I'm leaning towards becoming friends with the shadow instead of fighting it. I'm working to enjoy the mood swings, instead of always trying to have a good mood. The concept of sublimation sounds interesting, thanks for the pointer!

Cheers, Thinking-Turtle