Embrace Your Shadow Side

What is a Shadow Side?

We all have a shadow side, the part of ourselves that we hide, deny, or reject because it does not fit with our ideal image of who we want to be, and it’s important to embrace it. It’s your lack of confidence, your fear-based thinking, negativity, and scarcity mentality. It’s the complete opposite of your enthusiasm, the “I can do anything” attitude. With everything that’s going on in the world such as inflation, politics, economy, Covid19, etc., our shadow can be triggered.

Lately my shadow has made an appearance. There’s been quite a bit going on in my life at the moment forcing me to deal with some insecurities. My daughter is pregnant with her first child, making me a grandma for the first time. My son graduated college and is starting his new life which may have him living far away from us. Thirdly, my father-in-law passed away on May 27th. Lots of transitions. Whenever we are feeling vulnerable or anxious, our shadow side will show up.

For me, my mortality has been a source for a trigger. I didn’t think I’d really trip on this as hard as I did, being I fully and whole-heartedly believe in life after death of this physical life. However, I feel like I’m passing the torch to my children and a new generation is becoming, while another generation is leaving, and my generation will be not that far behind them.

The shadow isn’t necessarily a bad thing and even so, it’s there regardless. If you ignore it, you would be ignoring parts of yourself. Think of yourself as a whole circle. On one side you are this happy-go-lucky, positive, nice, sweet person. But on the other side, you have the exact opposite of those traits. Negative, Debbie Downer attitude, mean, and nasty. You might not even recognize yourself when the dark side pops out. The good thing is once you do know, you can choose to operate from your positive self. It’s when you don’t know what’s happening to you, you just respond usually in an irrational way. The Dark Side of the Light Chasers by Debbie Ford explained how this worked clearly for me. https://www.amazon.com/Dark-Side-Light-Chasers-Reclaiming/dp/1594485259

Embrace Your Shadow Side To Avoid Disasters

Since I’m about wellness, law of attraction, and energy work, you’d think I’d have control over my shadow. Nope! Triggers that run deep can get to everyone. Once a few years back on Mother’s Day, for whatever reason, my family didn’t do the usual breakfast in bed, no cards, no nothing. My feeling were hurt, needless to say. But I had to run down to the store to get my aunt a birthday gift. (May is was like Christmas in my family, birthdays and Mother’s day.) My shadow almost took over in the parking lot.

I’m driving the right direction in the parking lot when this car drives in the wrong way to park. I didn’t mind, because there were two parking spaces so I grabbed one of them. Apparently, the passenger, a young girl maybe early 20’s, didn’t like the fact that the guy she was with and driving the car, had to back up in order to get into the parking space. She gave me dirty looks. And boy did that trigger me hard! It triggered my youth when someone would try to bully me.

I thought, how dare she mean-mug me, when they were at fault. Now mind you, I didn’t get my Mother’s day breakfast, so I was not in the best head space. I probably shouldn’t have done this, but I waited for her to get out of the car to see what her problem was. I also didn’t want her to think you could just bully anybody. We exchanged some words. My adrenaline passed through my body, and I thought we were going to go to blows. What jumped into my head and stopped me, was this could go viral on YouTube. This grown 50 yr. old woman fighting a 20 something yr. old. Not good for me who wants to promote wellness and energy work.

This shadow of mine isn’t a stranger and thankfully I realized what had taken over my emotional state. I had a huge conversation in my head to get out of this situation. I could act with my shadow self and look like a fool. Or I could remember the light side of myself to calm things down. By the end of the situation I told her to have a good day and she told me Happy Mother’s Day. Disaster avoided.

How Is Knowing Your Shadow Side Beneficial

Knowing your shadow and where it comes from can help you be in control of your emotions. Your shadow is all about perspective and things we deem negative or weak. But when you can recognize your shadow, it can give you more empathy towards others. Because when someone is acting through their shadow side, they usually are lashing out, like that girl in the parking lot. Her actions spoke more about where she was coming from. And we know where my head was. I believe she wanted to control me through intimidation.

My shadow has a very aggressive nature and can be nasty and hurtful, (which is the completely opposite of my light side) something that I’d like to stuff away when it shows up, like it did with my reaction to the girl. But I know how to use my aggression in other ways. I set aggressive goals and deadlines and I can fulfill them. It’s allowed me to set up healthy boundaries, which as young person I didn’t have many boundaries. It’s allowed me to honor my fears and face them.

As a business owner, blogger, YouTuber, and author, I put myself out for some serious criticism online. People can be brutal online and I’ve had some negative comments. One told me I was another idiot tarot freak. Someone left an angry review on my memoir https://wellnessgardentoolshed.com/product/manifesting-me-a-story-of-rebellion-and-redemption/ basically calling me a wild child and blaming a church on it. I’m pretty sure something was triggered in that person.

I’ve had lots of negative comments on many things. Knowing what my shadow wants to do, and the conversations I have with it, let’s me react accordingly, meaning not reacting. People hide behind screens allowing them to say things they most likely wouldn’t say in person, but you never know these day, so it’s best not to engage in that negativity. Clearly the people leaving negative stuff are working from their shadow side. They may not know it yet, but that’s their journey and not for me to judge. We all learn at different rates.

Shadows Are Never That Scary

Shadows are never that scary when you shine a light on them and so is your shadow side. We are a whole person, not a half. Where there is light, there will be dark on the opposite side. Where there is good, you will have that equal and opposite to that good. That’s what makes us whole. The good thing is you have a choice from where you want to act from. We are the ones that make judgements on our feelings. If everything was peaches and cream all the time, could you be grateful? Or do you need unpleasant experiences to appreciate good ones? Sometimes reacting from your shadow is necessary. You should have healthy boundaries and if someone pushes too hard, your shadow may have to come out to save your back.

We were at my son’s graduation in Boston (I mentioned this in my last blog) staying at he Westin. https://wellnessgardentoolshed.com/snooze-your-way-to-better-health/ My shadow came out a bit on my third complaint to the hotel about the level of noise in the morning. My shadow helped me get some money taken off of my bill. If I didn’t let some of that come out, they would’ve only given me a free meal. My shadow also helped get money back from a bank for not doing their due diligence in protecting money in their establishment.

After reading Debbie Ford’s book that I mentioned above, I could understand my actions in relationships much better. In fact, since reading that book and understanding how my shadow works, my marriage has been more solid than ever. As much as I don’t like to feel that shadow side, it is a necessity. It offers insight on what you issues you need to address. The negative experiences allow you to have gratitude for all of the positive ones. And most importantly it’s a part of you.

Even a happy life cannot be without a measure of darkness, and the word happy would lose its meaning if it were not balanced by sadness. It is far better take things as they come along with patience and equanimity.

Carl Jung

Have you addressed your shadow? Did you know that you even had one? Please Share, Like, Subscribe, and leave a comment, if you’d like. Thank you for reading.

If you want to learn more about the shadow side of personality and how to work with it, you can check out these sources:

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