Where did your Shadow come from?
And why is it so hard to surface and integrate?
“The Shadow and Shadow selves try to keep us safe through the repression (making unconscious) of our characteristics and desires that are unacceptable or inconceivable by our Ego.” Bill Plotkin
Here is the bottom line: If you truly want to be happy and whole then you must learn about your Shadow, how it is harming you and how to integrate it.
This is my second article of five. My last article described what the Shadow is (e.g., unconscious memories and fears in our psyche). In this article I explain where the Shadow comes from and why it is so difficult to surface and integrate.
Where did it come from?
The consensus of psychologists is that most of the memories in the Shadow originate from childhood. They are created when we experience a difficult situation and are not able to make full sense of it. In an attempt to understand what is happening, we make up thoughts, form beliefs and even adjust our behaviour so that we can feel safe and whole.
For example, if your mother did not respond to your crying as a baby, you might have formed the idea that she did not love you or could not protect you. You might also come to think she will not love you unless you stop crying. So, you stop. Indeed, you may stop crying for the rest of your life! Here is how the Shadow is formed:
“In the face of difficult emotions, we often turn away from the experience by either repressing it or impulsively acting it out; we do not in fact experience what is there all the way through. We have learned to do this over many years to cope with unpleasant emotions and thoughts as they flow through our lives. Whenever we turn away and avoid what is there, however, we generate future suffering for ourselves and those around us.” Adyasahnti
The Shadow is helping us
The Shadow is actually helping us by hiding those things that our egoic-mind thinks will get us into trouble. For example, if we learn that being messy is bad, we hide our artistic ability. If we learn that being loud is bad, we hide our singing voice. If we learn that acting like a boy is unacceptable, we hide our athletic abilities. Although burying our assets might have seemed safe at the time, if they remain buried, we are prevented from being whole and enjoying life fully.
Also buried are traumatic memories and things that were too difficult to deal with when they occurred. As Shadow expert Bill Plotkin points out, the Shadow is only trying to protect us:
“The purpose of the Shadow is to protect us from enacting personal characteristics, if expressed, might land us in big trouble with others or ourselves. We stuff these forbidden parts of ourselves in a corner of our psyches where we can’t find them.”
Undigested emotions
When certain events are too severe for our psyches to process (such as in childhood or in extreme emotional upset) our minds supress and distort the events and memories so as to protect us from psychological distress. Julie Brown Yau describes it in the following way,
“To preserve their personal spirit, the child splits off or represses these feelings, in an attempt to avoid the depth of helplessness, fear, anger and rage that is so frightening and intolerable. But this relief is temporary and comes at a huge cost. Trauma results in a split of the unity of self, our sense of wholeness is sacrificed and, if left unaddressed, this can last a lifetime.“
Some refer to our Shadow aspects as “undigested emotions” in that they have not been fully processed or experienced. As children we did not have the capacity to process the intense feelings and energy properly, and thus they become subconscious blocks, as explained here,
“Every subconscious memory is actually an incomplete experience that the soul has not fully understood or digested. If we could see them, these paralyzed chunks of unavailable knowledge might look like black spots in our energy field. … In the Western therapeutic tradition, they’re called “subconscious blocks”; in the Easter religious traditions they’re known as karma.“ Penny Peirce
We often bury many of our memories with the hope that they will stay secret forever. Because they were so uncomfortable, we sent them to the very bottom of the laundry bag. Of course, your psyche did not know at that time that you could not be whole or happy with them buried.
Your Shadow can hold you back
So each of us, is now harbouring memories, fears and beliefs that not only hold us back, but are not entirely accurate. Without realizing it, we believe them and thus allow them to run and ruin our lives, as described here,
“The events may have happened in your childhood or at various points throughout your life. Regardless of when they happened, they left impressions inside of you. Now based on these past impressions, you are resisting the current events that are talking place. These create inner tension, turmoil, struggle and suffering. Instead of seeing this and refusing to allow these past events to run your life, you buy into them. Believing they had real meaning, you put all your heart and soul into either resisting or clinging. But in truth, this entire process has no real meaning. It just destroys your life.“ Michael Singer
To continue the metaphor of the Shadow-as-a-laundry bag, we dump our memories into our unconscious Shadow every day.
Imagine an athlete who tosses her wet and dirty clothes into a gym bag. She might forget about the bag and not look into the bag for weeks. It might start to smell. If it’s too gross, she may let the clothes sit and rot and if she keeps adding more dirty clothes the smell will likely get worse. One day the smell might wake her up, but if she does not have the energy to wash it, she might decide to put off the washing forever. Perhaps she will spray perfumes to mask the smell. Finally (maybe during a midlife crisis) the smell will be too much and she may have no choice but to drag the bag out and empty it.
In other words, over your life, your egoic mind fills your Shadow with things it has rejected or is unable or unwilling to look at. These supressed memories, emotions, beliefs, and fears (often called traumas, although many are positive attributes) cause you to suffer until you surface and integrate them.
Why the Shadow is invisible
It is important to realize that these memories are not what you know and choose to forget, but rather what you don’t know and often aggressively deny. We create a pain-body, don’t realize we have it, then deny its existence.
For example, perhaps you dislike people who are loud and brag. Although you might just think its a personal preference, if it really irritates you then its worth investigating. It could be that you unconsciously silence yourself and at some level wish you had the courage to be so bold. Your Shadow might contain a memory of being shushed as a little girl (e.g., only speak when spoken to) and that little girl wants to scream and shout, but does not dare. Thus, you might resent those who do.
As for speaking up, many of us grew up thinking that speaking our truth was wrong and could result in not being loved. Thus, we not only stopped speaking our truth, but also denied we ever wanted to do it in the first place. Yet this suppression ultimately can cause us even bigger problems such as anxiety and depression.
Society reinforces our Shadow
To make matters worse, our society does not want us to do our Shadow work. It prefers if we stay shut down and small.
Why? Because we are easier to manipulate when we are small. If we became healthy and powerful then we would be free. We would be whole, alive and vibrant. Indeed, our society and many religions use tools like guilt and shame to keep us in trauma. Even doctors feed our Shadow by defining our problems it as diseases and prescribing drugs rather than telling us to look at our Shadow. As Osho says, we have been taught all the wrong things and thus live half lives:
“Completely wrong attitudes have been taught to people. Hide your tears, remain always at a distance, keep others at least at arms length. Don’t allow others too close because they may know your inner misery, your boredom, your anguish; they may know your sickness….but meanwhile a tremendously beautiful life is slipping out of your hands.”
And all of this is reinforced at home, at school, at work and in the media. Societal pressure keeps you super busy, quiet, agreeable, obedient and fake. Indeed, we are taught that when you take the time to investigate yourself, it’s selfish. All too often friends and family members say things like, “Stop navel-gazing, It’s not all about you; Don’t be so full of yourself; and Who do you think you are? when nothing is more important that understanding yourself. Not just for you, but for them too.
There is nothing wrong with your Shadow
One important thing to keep in mind is that there is nothing “wrong” with your Shadow. It is not something that needs to be “fixed,” resolved or even healed. It is something that all humans experience and the goal is not to eradicate the Shadow, but rather surface it and integrate it, in order to be whole.
Author Bill Plotkin suggests that the Shadow is an “unavoidable feature of being human,” however, it can mature to a point where you will rarely get hijacked by it. As we learn to integrate the Shadow we grow beyond our fears and become more capable. As he says,
“The key to healing and or growing whole is not supressing symptoms, eliminating wounds or eradicating sub personalities [Shadow] but rather cultivating wholeness.”
In other words, working with the Shadow is part of our lifelong journey towards becoming whole. Not only is it a lifestyle, but it is also a choice.
It’s your choice
Every single day you can choose whether you want to deal with your Shadow or not. Each time your Shadow acts out you can either ignore it, push it down or bring it to light. Each time you feel an irritation, you can either turn away or look at it. You can either bury it or allow it to surface and clear. As you will see here, ALL irritations are opportunities to clear your Shadow. And each time you clear an aspect, you open yourself up to living a more authentic life.
In summary, we each have a Shadow in our psyches and unless we surface it and deal with it, we can be harmed and held back. The Shadow, which includes memories, fears and emotions, was mostly formed in childhood when we did not have the capacity to process events and feelings. It is often reinforced over our entire lives. So, for most of us, our Shadow and fears lurk below our awareness until we surface and clear them - not just for our sanity, but also for our evolution towards wholeness.
Stay tuned.
In my next entries I talk about:
How your Shadow harms you – real life examples
The five universal “wounds” of the Shadow (beliefs and fears)
How to integrate your Shadow
This is an excerpt from my upcoming book: “Wake the F Up.” Thanks for joining me on the journey! This substack is completely supported by you the readers. The best way to support me is to buy my books, invite me to speak or become a subscriber here