Pt 1 ~ How Your Shadows Are in Service to Your Full Humanity  

Ever heard of that American crime fighter radio series from the 1930s called The Shadow? A spooky voice would proclaim… “Who knows what evil lurks in the hearts of men? The Shadow knows!” followed by an eerie laugh. We often think of the shadow as a thing to fear or shun. When in fact, these are the parts of you waiting for you to welcome them home to yourself.

Your Shadow Knows

I’d like to talk a bit today about your shadow. You’ve probably heard the term in the personal development arena, but might not be so clear on what it means. Or you might have done some or even a lot of shadow work with different aspects of yourself.

Shadow is a word coined by psychoanalyst Carl Jung to speak about all the parts of yourself that you disown, ignore, repress or deny. Usually we think about dark shadows like being angry, needy, greedy, and so on. But you can also have light shadows. Those are the things you admire in others but don’t allow yourself to experience.

Where Do Your Shadows Come From?

As a child you were born with full capacity to access all parts of yourself. You were wide open. But pretty soon you learned to distinguish things that felt good and brought you love from your parents and things that caused pain.

So at two years old if you saw a toy another kid was playing with and you wanted it, you just tried to take it away from them. Suddenly there was shouting and maybe even a spanking for being “bad” or “selfish” and you started your process of filtering your life into categories of good and bad. Acceptable and Not Acceptable.

Or you watched other people doing something that brought them pain and you decided, no way, I’m never going to be like that!

 Making Decisions That Change Your Life

I remember clearly coming around the corner of the dining room when I was about eight years old and stopping dead in my tracks. I couldn’t figure out what I was seeing. My older brother, who I loved dearly, was crouched down on the floor with his arms up over his head and my mother was pounding on his back with her fists. The thing is, my parents never hit or spanked us so I was actually stunned and scared at what was happening.

I decided that day that I had to be the good girl so my mom would never treat me that way. I turned into her little helper with my three younger siblings, got A’s in school, didn’t rock any boats, did my utmost to be the goodest little good girl on the planet so I wouldn’t lose her love. 

The interesting thing is that years later, I learned my younger sister was standing behind me in that dining room. Only her response was the exact opposite of mine. She became the rebel, the fighter, the one who said, “Hell no, I’m not taking this!”

Our reactions to what happens to us are unique to us.
We’re the ones who give them meaning.

From birth to about seven years old we operate in the theta wave length zone- the same ones used in hypnosis. We’re a sponge soaking up everything with no way to grasp subtle reasons or distinctions as to why something happened. We make it mean something about us. “Mommy’s not going to love me anymore if I’m bad. So I need to be good – at all costs.”

Our stacks of good and bad qualities grow, get more entrenched. It’s ok to be kind, cheerful, happy, sharing with other kids, helpful, smart, generous, quiet, and so on. You all have your own lists.

It’s not ok to be weak, selfish, angry, sad, needy, greedy, to ask for what you want, to talk back, to not do your homework, to be loud, stupid, not pretty enough, to fail a grade in school. This list grows as well.

These come from our own experiences as well as what we’re taught by religions, schools, our communities and cultures.

Your personal version of the “good” traits become your personality. The outer version of you that you show the world. Your ego in other words. Your “I Am…” qualities.

And the traits you decided were not acceptable were shoved down into your inner dungeon, your shadow zone, hidden away, out of sight – out of mind. They live on in your subconscious mind. Repressed, ignored, denied. Your “I Am Not…” qualities.

As you know though, everything is energy. Try as you will to kill off the parts of yourself you don’t want to accept, they are still living inside you. And, in fact, they are doing you a great service when it comes down to it.

How Your Shadows Are In Service To Your Full Humanity

It’s not that I necessarily wanted to be good. I was just doing all I could to Not Be Bad – in whatever way my eight-year-old-self thought that might lose my mother’s love. (which I was never in danger of losing- that’s what I made up)

You’re actually resisting the parts you decided would hurt you in some way. And in that process of not being selfish, or needy or angry, etc, you developed those other often called positive qualities … learning to be generous, resourceful, independent or keeping the peace.

For the first few decades of your life, all this works pretty well. You have an idea of who you are and who you’re not. The outer persona operates on the conscious level of your awareness. You can easily describe yourself to friends. “I’m really independent, creative, a go-getter, self-starter, smart, a giver, I like to read and analyze things. Ya, I guess I do live up in my head a lot.”

It would never occur to you that underneath each of those descriptions is a shadow

A part of you that you’ve rejected because for some reason it caused or might cause you pain.

So if you only allow yourself to be independent then what? You can’t ask for help, you start to feel burdened and overwhelmed by all that’s happening in your life. You’ll look weak, helpless, a victim if you allow yourself to be dependent. And you’ve spent years judging those qualities as not ok.

If you’re “smart”, well it’s hard to look stupid – to allow yourself to make mistakes, to market your business, your programs and products unless they’re perfect. If you’re a giver, anything that smacks of being selfish or greedy is off limits. So you don’t even know what you really want and certainly can’t ask for it.

In order for all your so-called good qualities to remain in the forefront of your life, you spent untold amounts of energy keeping the bad qualities down in that dungeon. You have to keep watch on all of them so nothing leaks out.

You’ve been trying to hold a proverbial beach ball under the water your whole life. One wrong move and it pops up to hit you in the face. That’s when you lash out at work or with your kids or partner. You don’t get projects done on time, or you’re the judge and jury of all those other people who are greedy or stupid or insensitive.

But there comes a point in life where you start to burn out, fall apart. You cannot sustain the energy drain of keeping half of you hidden away.

What to do?

Stay tuned.

In the next parts of this series I’ll talk about why most of the billion-dollar self-improvement industry can never solve your burn-out problem. And what does work instead.

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What does this bring up for you? Share your thoughts 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