What Is Your Shadow Self?
As an adult when someone feels shame or fear to express certain sides of themselves it is usually because they were taught as a child those qualities were unlovable. As a child you need love in order to survive and have your needs met since you are dependent on your parents to protect and provide for you. As children you conform to meet your parents expectations of what is acceptable behaviour and in the process reject certain qualities which are put into your shadow.
“The shadow is a psychological term for everything we can’t see in ourselves. The shadow is the “dark side” of our personality because it consists chiefly of primitive, negative human emotions and impulses like rage, envy, greed, selfishness, desire, and the striving for power.”
Anything that does not match the version we like to see ourselves as relegates to this dark side.
The personal shadow is the disowned self. This shadow self represents the parts of us we no longer claim to be our own, including positive qualities.
These disowned parts of our personality don’t go anywhere. Although we deny them, we don’t get rid of them.
We repress them; they are part of our unconscious. Think of the unconscious as everything we are not conscious of.
Every young child expresses qualities such as kindness, love, and generosity, but they also express anger, selfishness, and greed. These emotions are part of being human. Everyone experiences them at some point.
But as we grow up, traits associated with “being good” are accepted, while others associated with “being bad” are rejected.
We all have basic human needs. Maslow’s heiracrhy of needs breaks it down into 5 categories.
These needs are biological and instinctual. Physiological, safety, love and belonging needs take top priority over esteem and self actualization needs. Children and adults will adjust their behaviour in order to have their needs met.
As children, when we expressed certain parts of ourselves, we received negative cues from our caretakers and environment.
Some examples:
A child gets angry and throws a tantrum. The parents punished the child for the outburst and put them in a time out or sent them to their room to manage their emotions alone and think about their actions.
Or a child was loud, playful and silly while at school. The teacher shamed the child in front of the other students for their disruptive behaviour and sent them to the principals office.
Whenever this happens it threatens a child’s need for love and belonging, maybe other needs too depending how the caretakers punished the child. The child is likely to start to reject or repress the sides of themselves they are being punished for, pushing those qualities into their shadow.
A topic I coach my clients on are reintegrating the shadow qualities they have rejected or repressed. A lot of women can relate to having the same or similar shadows because societal conditioning tells women to behave a certain way and label certain qualities as good and others as bad.
Some common shadows women have, that I have also worked on accepting and integrating are:
Your personal power/assertiveness
Independence or dependence (both are shamed)
Emotional sensitivity
Sensuality & sexuality
To figure out what qualities are part of your shadow self write out a list of your positive qualities that you identify with. (ie. kind, ambitious, open-minded, genuine) Then write out the opposite (ie. mean, lazy, close minded, inauthentic) that is your shadow.
Another way to identify your shadow is to pay attention to your emotional reactions toward other people because we tend to project our disowned parts onto other people.
Sure, your colleagues might be aggressive, arrogant, inconsiderate, or impatient, however whatever bothers you in another is likely a disowned part within yourself.
Get to know that part, accept it, make it a part of you. Then next time, it may not evoke a strong emotional charge when you observe it in another.
Focus on what and who evokes an emotional charge in you. It doesn’t matter what the emotion is; it’s a clue you are denying something within you.
It can be difficult to confront your shadow.
So if you’re accustomed to feeling shame or guilt towards yourself, you need to transmute these emotions with gentleness, self-acceptance, and compassion.
Remember that the shadow is elusive. Our defence mechanisms are designed to keep our shadows repressed and hidden out of view.
Accepting your shadow is the key to deeper self acceptance, self-love and feeling whole. You also become more understanding, compassionate and less triggered by other people’s undesirable behaviour or qualities.
I personally view shadow integration work as deep self acceptance work. The more I work on this myself the more free and authentic I feel expressing all sides of me and my capability to love and accept others expands.