Three Things You Might Have Tried to “Fix” Your Shadows That Will Never Work  

On this Leap Day of Leap Year 2020 are you ready to truly make a leap in your life? A leap into a whole new understanding of who you are, what you’re capable of, what your greatest gifts are? It’s not about fixing your shadows.

It’s all about opening up huge parts of yourself that you’ve kept in lock-down so they can step up and be your conscious life-partners.

Today I want to talk about some things you might have tried to “figure out” your life. And share why they cannot answer that question.

Three key ideas come to mind.

The first is that there is something wrong with you that needs “fixing.”

• Fighting against the parts of yourself that you don’t like – even that “final 10 pounds.”  “If I could just get rid of these last 10 pounds, I’ll be happy.” What? Think about it. You’re in battle with your own body. And we women were given black belts in the war against our own bodies.
• That body war is only one of many unconscious internal wars you’re fighting.

Next, only think positive! Banish anything that smacks of negative is the path you aim for.

• Classes, workshops, books, etc, etc, etc… all proposing the message to only allow the light to come in. Shove down any hint of so-called negative feelings like anger, resentment, jealousy, arrogance, weakness, manipulation, being a bitch, a bully, a liar, comparing yourself and always coming up short. Quickly switch those around to something nice and positive.

Lastly, work very hard to hide those parts you don’t like from others

• Needing to appear together even if underneath you’re hanging on by a very thin thread
• Feeling shame and embarrassment to admit to any of those negative aspects of yourself. You do your best to hide any flaws or mistakes.
• Driving yourself relentlessly – never letting up, no rest, little playtime. Always feeling a need to prove yourself to be loved or accepted.
• Need to be in control… from all aspects of your day, to your kids, your spouse, your colleagues. And you might not even see how often you’re the back seat driver in other people’s lives. They see for sure. You probably think you’re just trying to be helpful.
• I know this shadow well. It’s totally tied in with the victim/helpless shadow. Because unconsciously I felt so out of control, I had to try and control things to make me feel safe and secure. Yes, I’m still working on this one.

Before I talk about why those strategies will not bring you peace and happiness, I want to expand on this last point.

Taking an Unconscious Vow at Eight Years Old

In Part 1, I shared about making a decision at eight years old to be the good girl. Then, during a coaching session just a couple years ago, I was stunned to discover I’d made another decision that day. One I truly could not see for most of my life.

As I was reliving that early experience, I realized I’d felt completely paralyzed and helpless.

And what’s another word for helpless?

How about victim?

I made a decision—a vow—to be helpless that sent me on my own life-quest to explore what personal power means. Of course this was all at an unconscious level. I wasn’t aware of making that decision. But it was made nonetheless.

We’ve all made our own decisions to explore a big theme in our lives. I can see now how much that Victim archetype shaped who I became and continue to become. This is a key archetype for women all over the world.

From Good Girl to Radical Feminist

My good girl routine worked really well until I got to social work graduate school. A rather innocent question I posed for a paper in class turned my whole world inside out and upside down. I was curious to know if three-to-five year-old girls and boys in pre-school, knew what it meant to be a boy or a girl. Did they have a sense of their gender in other words?

I was plunged into intense weeks of research, staying up late into the night, learning about how much we are all channeled into roles and expectations based on our gender. Buried under the weight of centuries of women’s  oppression, I readily got swept up in the blossoming women’s movement of the early 1970s.

When I scrapped the good girl for a radical feminist, it all made so much sense. The heady feeling of joining with other women fighting against all the rules and restrictions women faced was exhilarating and powerful.

I couldn’t stand helpless women and thought I’d moved way beyond that.

How could I think of myself as a victim when I was fighting so hard against it?

Well, it turns out that’s the biggest sign of all!

What we resist and push against is the very thing we’re unconsciously acting out. This is the shadow work in action. It comes in layers and we get pieces and parts of its unfolding as we’re ready to see it.

Connecting To Your Inner Power

Circling back to why fixing your shadows won’t work.

First of all, you are whole and complete already so there’s nothing to fix.

I know it sure doesn’t feel like that a lot of the time. But like a seed that contains the entire tree inside it, you already have the fullness of you in you. In the process of living you shut down parts of yourself. So the point is all about opening up to and embracing who you truly are, including your defenses and stories of lack. They can only transform when we embrace them.

I love this quote from Neale Donald Walsch:

“Love is not what you want, it is what you are. If you think that love is what you want, you will go searching for it all over the place. If you think that love is what you are, you will go sharing it all over the place. The second approach will cause you to find what the searching will never reveal.”

Only Think Positive

To my mind this is one of the most damaging tenets of the new age spiritual movement. And I’ve been involved with this spiritual quest my whole life. So I’m totally aligned with our task of helping to usher in a new age for humanity. I just see this idea that you can only allow yourself to be positive as cruel and misguided.

It’s quite ironic too.

In not fully embodying the reality of who we are as human beings, we try so hard to live our life through only half of our energy channels. We think of ourselves as male or female. (Well, most of us anyway.)

Everything in the 3D universe operates through the male-female polarity. From the cells in our body to the stars in the sky.

The male side of the electrical pole is the positive charge, the light, the outward moving radiant energy that comes into us from above.

The female side of the pole is the negative charge. It’s magnetic energy deep in the earth, the darkness, the void, the womb of creation.

They must come together to make the current so the energy can flow. These are not good and bad value judgments. But when we hear that the female is the negative charge, women get all upset about it.

This masculine-feminine polarity runs through our bodies, hearts and minds. It’s a sacred dance both sides of us make that contributes to our wholeness.

Even as women are learning and coming together in women’s circles, we often still don’t allow ourselves to look at the darkness, the deepest aspect of our feminine nature. At the same time, many people keep promoting the notion that moving into the light is the ultimate answer – and yet that’s the male energy and we are so often at war with this. No wonder we’re confused. 

Plants send down roots into the darkness to be strong enough to grow upward

The fertile compost of our own lives—our disappointments, fears, defenses—are the rich soil we process to stand in our own personal power. Our darkness is the womb of our own creation too. You cannot have the light without the darkness.

This brings me to the last point.

When you try and hide the parts of yourself you don’t like from others, it’s a sure sign you’re hiding them from yourself.

This hiding and pretending we’re not a certain way takes a massive amount of energy. Yet when we turn and face the shadows, embrace our demons, our fears begin to melt away. We become so much kinder to ourselves and everyone else. This surge of compassion wells up in you. And you really do see that there wasn’t anything wrong with you in the first place. There’s a new found sense of internal integration. The war within softens too.

When you can speak about your own shadows and not feel shame you know you’re on your way to a whole new experience of yourself. Your relationships get easier, you stop projecting your stuff onto everyone else.

In Closing…

In Carolyn Myss’s book, Sacred Contracts, she says,

“The primary objective of the Victim archetype is to develop self-esteem and personal power. The core issue of the Victim is whether it’s worth giving up your own sense of empowerment to avoid taking responsibility for your independence.”

To put that another way, there are many side benefits to remaining an unconscious victim—even though you might protest against that. It certainly took me years to see this. When you’re ready to be responsible for your life—for all your thoughts, words and deeds— then you’re on the road to self-mastery. Tiny baby steps are good. As are giant steps like turning and facing your own shadows. And this is something we can do together.

I so appreciate you!

This work is deep. The concepts may or may not be new to you. I appreciate you following through this series. If you need to catch any of the first three here are the links:

Pt 1  ~ Your Shadow Knows Your Hidden You

Pt 2 ~ The Road to Burnout? Trying to Outrun Your Shadows

Pt 3 ~ 14 Reasons to Explore Your Own Shadows

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What does this bring up for you?
Share your thoughts in the comments below.

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Helping women understand how your masculine energies are set up to be your inner partner and support team for your feminine power, creativity and leadership is my own calling. When you’re ready to stop the internal battle between your male and female selves—that you probably don’t even know you’re waging—click to know more about my Make Peace With Power ~ Leadership Playground coaching program.

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Be sure to download your free guide below: Meet Your Sacred Masculine- Your Partner in Women’s Creativity, Power & Leadership.

Women on a Mission: Meet Your Inner Partner in  Creativity, Power, & Leadership