What is the Shadow?
A chance to look at the things you hide about yourself with love and compassion.
We all have a shadow side.
Humans have a fundamental need for belonging, so we create a persona around the “positive” qualities that we believe will help us fit in. Anything that doesn’t align with this image gets repressed into the shadow.
Are there parts of yourself that you reject? In our deck, Letting Your Shadow In, Jungian Master Life Coach Suzanne L'Heureux takes us through the process of getting to know the parts of ourselves that we have pushed away. In order to transform our lives and relationships, Suzanne says we need to make space for our full selves—even the parts of ourselves that we have deemed "unlovable."
What is the shadow?
The concept of the shadow comes from psychiatrist Carl Jung. It refers to the hidden aspects of our personality that we repress or deny because we view them as undesirable or socially unacceptable.
The shadow can include a spectrum of traits and emotions such as anger, selfishness, jealousy, unfulfilled desires, impulses we feel ashamed of, and even our creativity, spontaneity, and intuition.
Does everyone have a shadow side?
Yes. We all have a shadow side.
The shadow forms subconsciously from the time we’re born and we begin absorbing information about which behaviors, emotions, or characteristics receive approval and which ones are discouraged.
We all have a fundamental need for belonging and safety, so we create a persona (or social identity) around the “positive” qualities that we believe will help us find acceptance. Anything that doesn’t align with this image gets repressed into the shadow.
For example, a person who learns from a young age that they receive love and attention when they excel at things, might form a persona around being successful. Meanwhile, the unconscious belief that their worth depends on achievement can lead to a deep-seated fear of failure that resides in the shadow, along with qualities like vulnerability and insecurity that they wish to hide.
A person who learned that emotionality was viewed as weak might form a persona around being rational and in control. Thus, being “emotional” would be a quality hidden in their shadow.
People’s shadow qualities can differ from person to person because the shadow is shaped by a variety of factors, including family dynamics, cultural context, personality traits and life experiences.
What happens if we don't make space for our shadow?
There are so many negative consequences of not acknowledging our shadow!
The rejected parts of ourselves don’t just go away. They remain in our unconscious where they influence our behaviors, thoughts, feelings, and motivations without our conscious awareness.
For example, in the case of the hyper achiever, the deep-seated fear of failure drives them to overwork. They might feel judgment of people who don’t work as hard as they do, seeing them as lazy. They might view themselves as having a good work ethic but, unconsciously, they work as hard as they do to prove their self-worth and win affection. As a result, they only feel as good as their latest achievement and, secretly, they may even envy those who don’t work as hard as they do.
Caregivers are often driven by an unconscious desire to be liked. They view themselves as generous and strong, acting as though they don’t have needs (persona). Meanwhile, their true needs are repressed, which often flares up as resentment toward the people they help (shadow).
Our repressed emotions can lead to anxiety, depression, and even addiction. We might live in fear of being “found out” for the emotions and qualities we hide, like vulnerability and insecurity. We might feel unhappy because our deeper longings go unfulfilled in the name of conforming to societal expectations.
Emotions like anger and jealousy can rear up in explosive and unexpected ways when they are triggered, leading to reactivity, followed by shame. And these outbursts can hurt our relationships.
The more we repress our shadow qualities, the more power they have over us, whereas the more we look at them honestly, the more power and freedom we have because we can then make conscious choices about how we act, instead of being unconsciously driven by our repressed shadow energies.
It feels like everyone is struggling right now. Are you seeing that in your practice, too? What do you think is hard about this moment?
The biggest thing I see in my practice is how people struggle with a lack of authenticity, their fear of showing up as their true selves and being rejected.
But, if you’re asking about what’s hard about being in this world right now, aside from the tremendous violence and suffering we are witnessing, I would connect it to projection.
We all project the qualities we deny in ourselves (our shadow) onto others and it can cause all kinds of pain and misunderstanding. We do this unconsciously to defend our own self-image—to prop up a false belief that any so-called badness is “out there” in other people, rather than facing and acknowledging it in ourselves.
Just as individuals project their repressed qualities onto others, political groups, societies, and nations can project their shadow onto other groups or countries, leading to bigotry, hatred, and even wars as each side demonizes the other.
The intense polarization we are seeing in our society caused by both individual and collective projection is really painful and can sometimes make things feel hopeless.
Why did you want to turn this work into a deck?
I love Shadow work! I have had so many profound results with it personally and with my coaching clients and it felt important to create a tool that would be affordable and accessible to many people to be able to start this work.
The goal of shadow work is to acknowledge and accept all parts of ourselves. By letting the shadow in, we are able to experience psychological wholeness and find greater fulfillment by living as our true selves.
For more on Suzanne click here. If you feel like the deck would be useful to you, you can grab a copy here.
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xo, Carissa
QUICK Ending question: I hide the fact that I get angry at other people. When I get angry, or feel hurt, I just turn it around on what the other person’s needs are. In a way, this is pushing back my true feelings so that I can be respectful of others, and also don’t want to see needy. But I am both needy and angry. There I said it. How about you?
I think the concept of universal emotion plays into the conundrum you closed with. Sometimes people are shitty to us. They intended the behavior to cause distress. In that case, it's normal and healthy to feel angry. Our choice of how to act will depend on the relationship we have with the person who acted shitty.
On the other hand, occasionally, but not infrequently, someone will do something that makes us feel angry. But it's entirely possible that their words and or behavior sprang from an innocent motivation. And that's due to a difference in upbringing. Being raised differently is not a reason to act on anger. That anger will be on us. Unfortunately, the theory of universal emotion does not recognize the difference in the emotion of the other person, who may feel completely differently about the interaction.
In the second case, where we don't have tight empathy because our underlying feelings don't match, our actions will likely be deliberate and inappropriate.
The conundrum remains, how do we act in the face of another's behavior? The point that anger doesn't belong in the shadow holds. We need to feel each anger and understand it emotionally.
Despite our anger, which might or might not be justified, it serves us best to be deliberate about our follow-up actions.
The idea that we all have the same feeling and it comes from the same place for each named emotion and that we each express that feeling with the same facial movements, breathing, posture, and voice tone is flawed. Even with people I know well, I'm surprised. Sometimes, it takes years for a friend to admit they don't like something I do. I have the same problem. I don't always express what bothers me. I don't know if that's always bad, but it is something to be mindful of.
So beautiful work, Letting your shadow in, A Mindfulness Deck 💗