MIDLIFE: CRISIS OR CHANCE?
Oftentimes, it's in our midlife, during (peri)menopause, that external triggers cause strong reactive emotions. Maybe certain patterns were always there but they now seem to amplify.
It's our shadow playing up. Where it was maybe whispering for attention in previous stages of our lives, now it start to scream at us, right in our face and we can no longer ignore it.
The darker aspects within ourselves, our shadow, is an aspect of self we have been conditioned to fear. We have been conditioned to believe our darkness is not good, not holy, not sacred, nor clean. It is evil, wrong, and hysterical.
Yet the darkness, shows us the way home, if only we trust we can see in the dark.
Shadow work is the highest form of light work you will do. If you haven’t been familiarised with shadow work before you go through (peri)menopause, then don’t be surprised that during midlife your shadow will start to play out. All the parts inside yourself that haven’t been fully seen, understood, acknowledged, accepted, loved and forgiven, all the parts of yourself that haven’t been fully digested or processed, will either gently start popping their heads from under the surface of your subconscious or suddenly start to rear their heads like outrageous monsters finally waking up and not to be ignored any longer.
In this blog I will introduce you to the basics of Shadow Work with a simple guide to help you transcend the darker aspects of yourself.
What Is the Shadow?
For many people, the term ‘shadow’ brings up all kinds of negative and dark associations. Because of this, it is easy to assume that shadow work is a dark spiritual practice that involves the negative and sinister aspects of our personality.
The shadow is dark because we are made of both light and dark aspects. But it is part of who we are and we can only feel truly fulfilled in life when we have embraced both the light and the dark inside ourselves.
The shadow was first brought into the Western world by psychologist Carl Jung. He described it as the unconscious and disowned parts of our personalities that the ego fails to see, acknowledge, and accept. It is any aspect of ourselves that is not exposed to the light of our awareness.
As children, we are born whole and complete, but that wholeness is short-lived. The shadow is born in our childhood as a byproduct of certain interactions we had with the people closest to us. Our caretakers make us innocently believe that certain aspects of ourselves are good and others are not. The aspects that are seen as bad are rejected and, consequently, banned to the shadow of our personality, where they live in exile.
How the Shadow Affects You
When we depend on our caregivers for survival, we suppress the aspects that are disapproved, and we amplify the aspects that are approved.
For example, imagine a 5-year-old girl who is very much in touch with her feelings. She is sensitive and emotional. Something happens, and she gets mad and cries. In response, her mum says, “Stop crying like a little girl, be a good girl!”
Her mom can’t bear hearing her daughter cry because she has unhealed wounds and trauma’s herself. She suppresses her own and her daughters emotions. As a result, the latter pushes her gentle and sensitive side of herself into the shadows and begins “acting tough.”
As an adult, she has trouble feeling things and will not show her emotions even when it’s required. Because of that, she struggles in her relationships, never allowing herself to be fully seen.
The shadow grows every time you repress it.
The Role of The Subconscious Mind
We can call the subconscious mind the shadow because we cannot see it clearly and thus are not aware of it. The conscious mind is akin to the light because we can see it clearly and are aware of it.
What goes into our subconscious is everything we reject about ourselves — the unacceptable and unwanted bits.
The minute you say something about you is “bad,” you have a reason to suppress, ignore, and deny it. Even though the shadow is unseen, it affects everything we do.
When we deny an aspect of ourselves it doesn’t disappear. It just fades away from our conscious awareness. The shadow — with a life of its own — affects our actions and life experiences heavily if we don’t pay attention to it. A staggering 90% of our choices and behaviour comes from the Subconscious Mind, in other words, our shadow.
The shadow is the reason we do certain things in life without understanding why we do it.
We become adults and feel we should be able to handle life better, yet we keep falling into the same unhealthy patterns. That’s because the shadow operates outside of our conscious awareness, in the form of unconscious and limiting beliefs.
The Potential, Gifts and Talents Of Your Shadow
The shadow isn’t just negative and dark. It contains so many treasures that haven’t been unearthed yet. Great things may end up in the shadow too.
Let’s say that a girl is born with a strong sense of self. She knows who she is; she knows what she likes and doesn’t like; she asks for what she wants and she for sure isn’t afraid to speak her mind! She is a strong little girl, but she is raised in a family that constantly tells her to tone it all down because it’s “too much.”
The parts of her that are strong and confident are rejected, so she rejects those aspects of herself.
She grows up to be quiet, sweet, and obedient. But she doesn't understand why her life is so painful. The truth is, she suppressed some important aspects of herself and therefore feels divided. She has a shadow side she doesn’t quite know how to bring to the light.
The reason positive aspects are contained in the shadow is that we are afraid of what people will think or react when we fully own up to those positive aspects, when we fully shine.
Dissociation From Parts of the Self Creates a Split
The shadow is an inner fragmentation that occurs within you. It’s almost like two different people are operating your life.
Have you ever met the most gentle, sweetest, and kind person, and in the blink of an eye something happens, and this person turns into someone else? They become mean and scary; they throw the biggest tantrum or freak out.
How did this sweet person turn into a crazy psycho?
That’s because they have two parts of themselves operating their life and the shadow part took over when they got triggered. We often underestimate the shadow, thinking it has no power over us. But that’s wrong. The shadow is very powerful!
It can turn your life upside down and destroy your most cherished relationships.
Every time you act out of your shadow, it grows bigger and bigger.
How To Identify The Shadow Within You
Separation and division are not the natural states of anything. Integration and wholeness are natural for humans and, because of this, the subconscious will continually try to get your attention to integrate what’s there.
It's difficult to spot your shadow, especially if you’ve suppressed a big part of yourself into the unconscious.
Here are three ways to identify your shadow in action:
1. Projection
Many people project their issues onto others. When they dislike something in themselves, they point it out in others. We often project our shadows — our repressed anger, guilt, shame, and other things we don't like about ourselves — onto others. We lash out at people for the behaviors we don’t like in ourselves.
Pay attention to how you project yourself into the outside world. Because the universe works to make us whole again, people, places and things become a mirror and reflect who we really are. They show us where we are still identified and not free.
2. Triggers
A trigger is a reminder of past trauma. The surface events that cause conflicts in our lives are not just triggers — they are messengers that enable us to become conscious of something that is buried deep within us.
Pay attention to your triggers because they can show you your wounds and your shadow self easily. Try to catch your emotional triggers before you act out, not after. This takes observation and awareness. It’s the ability to take a step back before we get caught up in identification. (I am what I feel and I am how I behave).
3. Patterns
Repeating patterns in our lives point us to aspects of our shadow. Patterns are expressions of the shadow because the shadow mirrors itself into your reality to be seen and integrated.
The shadow wants you to become aware of it. It wants to be seen and accepted. It wants to be understood, even ‘hugged’ and loved like a wounded child in your lap. Within these patterns, you will find aspects of your shadow self that will keep showing up in different situations until you are ready to look at them and break the cycle.
WHY WE RESIST SHADOW WORK
The shadow is a weird, controversial subject.
While many spiritual teachers, life coaches, and psychologists love shadow work and feel it can improve a person’s life, others believe it’s not that beneficial. They believe that if you go looking for dark things, all you will find is… more dark things.
But while it’s great to just focus on the light, it doesn’t make the dark go away. The dark is just on the other side, waiting for a time to show its face. And when it does, you may not be expecting it at all.
It's better to go looking so you can make peace with the shadow once and for all. If you are worried about what you might find, there is probably something important you don’t want to revisit. Instead of continuing to avoid it, you can see it as one more reason to do shadow work.
This work is necessary if you want to transform your life. And the truth is, no one else can do it for you. But you don’t have to do it by yourself.
Shadow work isn’t a huge thing that requires years of planning. Shadow work is simply becoming aware of what’s hidden and gradually healing those aspects of yourself by welcoming it into your heart.
When you start shadow work, you may feel the way you felt as a child when you were forced to suppress those emotions. But once you overcome it, it opens your eyes to a whole new side of you you had no idea existed. More of your creative potential and innate health & well-being become available to you. More of your True Nature is uncovered. You feel whole.
HOW TO INTEGRATE THE SHADOW?
Shadow work is nothing but to make the unconscious conscious and the unacceptable — acceptable. That’s all you are trying to accomplish.
The goal of shadow work is integration. The integration of the unconscious leads to complete and total awareness. To do shadow work is to bring your shadow closer to you. It is part of who you are, after all.
The goal is to bring your shadow into the light or to shine a light onto the shadow. The more you shine a light on your shadow, the smaller it gets.
Here are simple ways to begin your shadow work:
1. Review your childhood
Ask yourself:
“Was I completely accepted as a child? How did I feel most of the time? What was expected of me and what behaviors and emotions were judged by my people?”
Those behaviors that were judged created some sort of shadow aspect within you. Once you find the answers to these questions, they will lead you to see the shadow aspects of yourself.
The shadow usually has its root in your childhood
2. Become aware of your shadow
We are unaware of the shadow in the same way we can’t see in the darkness. To become aware of something, you have to choose to see it. Once you see those rejected aspects of yourself, reflect on them.
Are they positive or negative? If you find something negative, make peace with it and release it from the shadow. If it’s a positive aspect, reunite with it and call your power back.
Becoming aware is similar to seeing something that is suddenly illuminated by light. The most important step in doing shadow work is to become aware of it.
Shine a light on it or bring it out of the darkness
3. Don’t shame the shadow
Once you become aware of your shadow self, don’t shame or blame it. Instead, give it your love, compassion, and acceptance.
Your shadow was born from non-acceptance and rejection in the first place. It was created the moment you began to push it away. Antagonizing the shadow even more only adds fuel to the fire. The shadow is part of who you are, so look at it from a place of love.
Love your shadow for all it is and start to experience the gifts it contains
4. Use Your Triggers
Triggers are messengers and an invitation to delve deeper into unconscious things. The messengers are the events that cause an extreme emotional reaction within you. Naming triggers as such change them and decreases the effect they have on you.
It allows you to step back from your emotional reaction and observe it, instead of living it.
Triggers are reflections of the deep unresolved wounds. They come to open your eyes to things that are suppressed.
5. Observe without judgment
One of the biggest mistakes you can make with shadow work is to judge the shadow once you spot it. If you let the harsh inner critic come up and judge the shadow, you are rejecting it all over again and therefore making it bigger and stronger.
When you see your shadow, acknowledge and observe it without judgment. Observe it to understand it and then work to integrate it.
Shadow work is the highest form of light work you can do and it will set you free
FINDING EMOTIONAL FREEDOM & PEACE OF MIND
Shadow work is a great way to experience inner healing and transformation, and all it takes is self-awareness and self-love.
Every person on Earth has gone through a difficult time in their life that created shadows within them. The good news is, the entire universe is on our side trying to help us uncover our innate Wholeness. Every action of the universe is headed in the direction of growth and expansion.
We are provided with abundant opportunities to confront our shadow selves so that we can finally be free of them. It doesn’t matter how long you avoid looking at your shadow self. It will keep manifesting into your reality until you pay attention to it.
The self that is fractured seeks to become unified, and we will be presented with opportunities to see the aspects of ourselves we have suppressed, rejected, denied, and disowned.
The more you become aware of your shadow self and accept it, the more embodied you are as a conscious being and the more mastery you have over yourself and your life.
The only way to find emotional freedom (= freedom from the deep rooted reactive emotional patterns) and peace of mind is bringing your shadow into the light of your consciousness. Your own warm Presence is all you’ve ever longed for where it comes to healing your shadow.
Bright Blessings
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