SHADOW

1. WHAT IS OUR SHADOW?

Let's start with this question – do you really know who you are?

As you possibly already know, I like paper. I invite you to get a pen and a piece of paper and try to describe yourself in few words. What are your personal qualities that come to mind? Any less virtuous characteristics? Anything you would like to improve or change?

Now, try this: do you remember feeling an immediate regret after an impulsive response? Thinking, "Why the hell did I just say that"?!, after acting moved by some sort of force you don't comprehend very well. That blind spot, that incomprehensible behavior, shows that you are not conscious of some parts of yourself.

As children, we are born whole and complete, able to embody any human characteristic or aspect. As we grow, we start developing ourselves, driven by the pursuit of love and appreciation from our closest ones while adapting to our environmental conditions. In this tortuous and demanding process, we suppress parts of ourselves to meet our core needs - intimacy, affection, respect and recognition for who we are.

To fit and feel belonged in the external world, we reshape our inside world, leaving those repressed traits hidden in the subconscious mind – our shadow. This conditioning mechanism is responsible for painful behavioral and emotional patterns perpetuated throughout life. Even though we do not notice them, they influence our reality and how we "dance" with the universe. In other words, they affect the choices we make in life and, by consequence, how life is presented to us. We will go into this further.

The term shadow was described by Carl Gustav Jung (psychiatrist and psychoanalyst, founder of analytical psychology) as everything a person is not fully conscious about oneself, the aspects of the personality that the conscious character does not identify with. It comprehends characteristics that we've rejected through pain, shame, and conditioning, or anything that has created low self-worth on a subconscious level throughout our life experience.

In fact, the shadow can include everything outside the light of consciousness and may be positive or negative, but because we tend to reject the least desirable aspects of our personality, the shadow remains largely negative. It's frequently what's holding us back, keeping us small, and stopping us from believing in our own potential.

There are, however, positive aspects that may also remain hidden in one's shadow, such as sensitivity, courage, or creativity.

"Shadow is that hidden, repressed, for the most part, inferior and guilt-laden personality whose ultimate ramifications reach back into the realm of our animal ancestors… the unconscious man, that is his shadow, does not consist only of morally reprehensible tendencies but also displays a number of good qualities, such as normal instincts, appropriate reactions, realistic insights, creative impulses, etc. "

(Collected Works of C.G. Jung, 1994)

Perhaps the descriptions you initially wrote are just how the ego (the persona within you who acts and thinks, tamed by previous belief systems) sees the itself. How your mind perceives who you are. Or maybe, some of the things you drafted came from your heart even though your mind can't acknowledge them. Some deep truth you found deep down but you’re not even able to admit on paper? There, you might be touching your shadow aspects.

The ego tries to keep us safe, within the reality and the rules it knows, free from unexpected circumstances and the risk of failure. When we are excessively identified with the ego, we sabotage the potential that resides in our subconscious. How?

When we establish a conscious intention (like opening a savings account), unconscious processes of resistance to the unknown arise, preventing us from going forward with that intention (we end up spending all the salary, for instance). The mind resists change, even if it seems optimistic.

This self-sabotage is the response to the involuntary rejection of parts of us. Taking the same example: I may want to make savings, but in fact, as I was raised on beliefs like, "the rich are always rich, and the poor will always be poor," or "being greedy is bad," or "money doesn't bring happiness" without realizing it, I systematically keep rejecting aspects that belong to me - like being greedy, ambitious or materialistic. This rejection prevents me from acting and believing that I can live in financial abundance.

If we identify these patterns of self-sabotage, we can turn them into valuable tools, as they can direct our attention to what's hidden in the shadow of the subconscious.

As long as we resist recognizing these traces, the individual character created by our mind will continue to project those same shadow aspects onto other people, things, and situations.

2. PROJECTIONS

We see in others what we don't acknowledge in ourselves – the aspect of ourselves perceived as personal inferiority is recognized as a moral deficiency in someone else. A few examples:

• You get irritated when someone is rude to you – you probably do not recognize your own rudeness. Otherwise, the other person's rudeness wouldn't bother you that much.

• You point how ridiculous is another person's outfit – there is something in the way that person presents herself that you also have in yourself. Still, you weren't able to own it yet (like, for example, the confidence to wear whatever you'd like despite what others might think).

• You feel envious of an artist making money from his paintings – maybe you would like to earn money from a passion instead of the work you have; this trigger is presenting itself to remind you of your true potential; maybe you have an incredible creative power that's being repressed and waiting to pop out.

We often attract what we have denied about ourselves. For example, if we don't like presumptuous people, we will attract them as an invitation for us to integrate the aspect of ourselves where it doesn't feel safe to be arrogant, overconfident, or vainglorious.

This process doesn't happen consciously. Usually, we are not aware of our projections.

Questions to help you spot your shadow*:

• Are you judging someone or something right now?

• Are you feeling shame or embarrassment?

• Are you feeling envy or jealousy of someone?

• Are you afraid this aspect will make you unlovable or undesirable?

These situations and people are our teachers. They guide our awareness to the denied aspects that we most need to integrate at each moment of our lives to become a better version of ourselves

3. HOW DOES OUR SHADOW AFFECTS OUR BEHAVIOR AND THE REALITY WE CREATE?

When someone asks, "why do you have this fear?" or "why do you react this way every time a person does that?"

If your answer is "I don't know", it means you're not aware of fragments that have authority in you and the choices you make – every fragment (even those you're not aware of) is like a vote in the creation of your reality.

Each individual has the power to shape the reality one is living. Our life experience is influenced not only by how we perceive ourselves and the world but also by how we decide to act upon it. It's a dynamic process where internal and external forces impact our ability to learn and create new neuronal integrations, and these new integrations will direct the course of action that changes our living reality.

A simple, practical example of a positive shadow integration and consequent reality changing could be:

• Self-perception: Since I was a kid, I believe I'm not good at drawing because, in school, I was told that "I wasn't meant for arts". Always saw myself as a science kind of guy.

• Shadow projection: Every time I see a street artist I get this strange mixed feeling of envy and criticism. At the first glance they seem so light, serene and flowy. But… how can this people make a life like this? They certainly don’t have bills to pay like I have!

• External factors and outwards experience: One day, I read this phrase in a book, "Enjoying or creating beauty is free, and something all human beings have access to." A few weeks later, challenged by a workmate, I attended a team-building workshop where we were asked to do a free drawing after a deep meditation. It was all new, but my drawing was applauded by all the other participants.

• Internal experience and emotional integration: Reading that truth in the book was like listening the sound of the sea for the first time. I have never thought about art as something anyone could have access to. Then, all of what happened at the workshop surprised me and felt really good. I was amazed by the pleasure of creating something with coal and paper.

• Shadow integration and action: I realized that I could create art and in fact I felt immensely happy doing it. After that, I decided to attend a drawing course to develop my technical skills.

• Reality change: After a few months, I was already following the pace of colleagues with more experience and participating in the annual gallery exhibition.

How we perceive the world and how we choose to act upon it are both influenced by scars created in the past – the roots of our shadows. This means that many of the decisions we make and the way we experience our lives is filtered by a part of us that we're not even conscious of. 

By living in unawareness, we give away the power of creation to the people, situations, or traumas of our past. We live imposed by the rules of events that, most of the time, are not even true anymore.

Like the example above, the person (let's suppose it's a man) believed he wasn't capable of drawing because he was told that he was much better at science in his childhood. Seeking appreciation, and under the effect of unconscious conditioning (like a spell of "Rejection Protection!"), this person developed his scientific skills and held his art abilities, even the pure joy of drawing.

The suppressed shadow aspect of "finding pleasure at drawing and being good at it" was put under the infinite layers of the self. He could have even done many drawings as a child, but he didn't remember anymore because he was guided by those false limiting beliefs imprinted on him.

In this particular example, the mind shift and shadow owning happened unconsciously and without direct intention, which brings me to the complexity of these processes.

Although neuroplasticity is often related to positive shifts and transformations, it is also "the flexible wiring of the brain with the nervous system and environment that brings us our harmful and addictive habits. When there is a strong force to maintain a certain habit and any attempt to break free from that habit fails, it is the power of already existing neuro-pathways that are so heavily grooved and feel so safe that keep us stuck" (L. Irene, 2015).

In fact, having the desire to change our attitude is not enough. When we operate outside of conscious awareness, it's common to fall into the same patterns over and over again.

The good news is that we can deliberately act on this mechanism to expand our horizons and manifest the things we want in life instead of reinforcing the negative narrative in our subconscious brain.

At this moment, I try to embrace the process of rewiring the subconscious and reframe life experience with the following steps:

A - By developing self-awareness, we begin to sit in the observer's seat and start learning how the shadow aspects affect the way we see things and behave;

B - Then, we need to access and embody the limiting low self-worth beliefs or/and the energy around that lived outside of our perception for so many years;

C - We can overwrite these old neural pathways with new ones by showing the subconscious alternative beliefs through repetition and consistency.

Healing and owning our shadow involve more than just trick the brain with fancy standardized exercises and calming meditations – this process requires having a sharp observing eye on all the interactions we have in life. Not just outside (between ourselves and the environment) but also on the inside (between ourselves, our bodies, and the thinking mind). It is a multifaceted process and highly individual.

And no. Sadly, this is not a simple-fast 3 steps program. The brain, as you know, is this monstrous organ with 90 billion neurons communicating with one another and connected to the rest of the body, making this complex electrical web with 7 trillion nerves.

This might not sound new to you, but our "body keeps the score"** of all of our life experiences. Which means, our body retains much of the emotional conditioning and trauma experienced through life, that’s why it’s so important to incorporate some body work in this journey. Let's take a look at how this happens.

According to Carl Jung, shadow projection is always accompanied by an emotional charge, implying the limbic system's involvement. The limbic system, the part of the brain involved in our behavioral and emotional responses, is almost fully wired by the time we're six years old. Before this age, our met and unmet emotional needs and their corresponding positive and negative experiences have a huge impact on shaping the rest of the brain and development of our body.

On the other hand, our survival instincts come from the autonomic nervous system (ANS), particularly the sympathetic nervous system. This precious autonomic system is embedded deep in our subconscious and it is known to keep us safe from threats by activating fight or flight and freezing reactions.

These survival instincts can induce our nervous system, brain, and internal organs into a hyper-alert state or shutdown mode (raising blood pressure, heart rate, and blood sugar levels). These systems are crucial when we are under threat, like when a tree is falling above our heads or when a lion comes to eat us. But the truth is that in modern societies, this kind of real threats, meant to be short-term, don't happen very often.

Things get a little tricky when our ANS responds to our daily stress the same way it would respond to the anxiety and terror of being attacked by a wild creature. It doesn't get the difference!

So, instead of returning to the relaxing mode (through the action of the parasympathetic nervous system) and release the survival energies after the danger has gone, we fail to come out of these highly stressful states.

Living lives under permanent stress as we do, we end up being trapped in this survival mode, leading our metabolism to store traumatic energy in the surrounding muscles, organs, and connective tissue, preventing the return to a state of balance.

Our body is not a machine. It's a living interactive element of nature. Past trauma and shadow aspects are not only stuck in our subconscious mind but also in our physical body. Healing and creating new neuronal pathways require awareness and a much deeper understanding of both, mind and body. How they react to triggering situations and how they interact with the surroundings and between themselves – for example, have you ever noticed what happens in your body when you are angry? Jealous? How does your heartbeat or posture respond to your thoughts?