Breaking the Cycle: Overcoming Self-Sabotage Through Shadow Work
The Hidden Self
The shadow self swoops in, but remains hidden, until you start to observe
You’d have heard buzzwords like Shadow Work, ‘Dark Night of the Soul’ floating about in recent times. A quick Google search will yield philosophical answers that help you understand the concept, but knowing information about a car doesn’t mean you can drive it. Everybody tells you to do shadow work, but they don’t tell you how to “do” the shadow work.
Firstly, let’s understand what it is -
The term Shadow self reminds me of “Prince of Persia” the game where you’re trying to rescue the princess and out of left field you see a shadow like figure sabotaging your plans by stepping on a piece of stone and it starts to close out the door before you’ve completed your task. “$@#$#@ Why is this guy messing up my plans” you wonder. Upon closer look you’ll notice it looks just like you, in fact it is you; rather your rejected self.
The simplest to shadow work: SELF OBSERVATION
(Original artwork owned by me - reema chhabra. Not for use or reproduction without permission. Check out more of them on www.reemachhabra.com)
Have you ever tried to break a habit, only to find yourself exasperated, wondering “how did I get here again?”
“I can’t stop myself” they say. Well, aren’t you acknowledging there are ‘two’ in you - you and your self, when you say that statement? Coz whom are you trying to stop, if it’s just you?
Your shadow self is made up of all of the qualities that you to hide from the world, believing you’ll be abandoned if someone found out that side of you. Or maybe it’s too dark so you repress it under the surface of your awareness, where even you can’t remember it. It could also be the parts you’ve had to bury deep down in order to receive love from your caregivers growing up.
One thing I can tell you about the shadow: Love it, or hate it, but you can’t ignore it. It will do anything to get your attention, even self-sabotage.
This part acts unconsciously, often regressing you back to the level of an infant. Sometimes it sends you back to a stage in your life where you hadn’t yet developed an intellect. You can’t control your reactions and feel powerless against a tsunami of emotion that hits you. Think back to a seemingly trivial thing that happened, but your reaction to it was massive in comparison to what it originally was.
How to observe the Shadow?
Pay close attention to your triggers:
When something triggers you and you can’t get it out of your head, know that almost always a trauma or your shadow self is involved. When something hurts you disproportionate to the actual situation, it’s because a previous hurt existed there and this trigger reached within and reactivated an old hurt
The mind can’t stop replaying what happened:
An extreme emotion usually brings about a tape recorder like experience in the mind. It rewinds and plays on its own. You stop the tape from playing, but in a few seconds it start out again. Say you have a conflict with someone and they said something to insult you, and you couldn’t defend yourself in the moment. The next two days will be spent replaying the part of their words that hurt your ego the most, and you’ll continue to ideate “I could’ve said this” “Why didn’t I say that”. It’s when we feel the most powerless, the shadow is triggered because it activates the rejected self.
Self-Sabotage:
Ever been intentionally late to an important meeting, or postponed a task or studying for an exam, while fully knowing it will impact your credibility if you delay it? The shadow self is connected to the inner child and it tries to get your attention one way or another - through positive or negative actions. Just like my cat spends over 20 minutes trying to wake me up on a Sunday morning will chew on plastic coz he knows each time he did that in the past I immediately opened my eyes and focused on him. When you don’t integrate with your shadow, it’ll try to get your attention through self-sabotage so that you finally start to look within and wonder why you’re pulling yourself down.
Can’t break habit loops: addicted to guilt & shame:
Humans become magnetized to guilt and shame. We can seek out relationships that reactivate our guilt and revive our trauma identity. Interestingly, love and hate are both magnetic. What we hate, we are connected to, and that hate keeps feeding the bond. Meeting someone who reactivates our hate creates a sense of familiarity from the shadow side. The shadow is not just a part of you, but it’s also connected to the collective unconscious, a concept coined by Carl Gustav Jung (my birthday twin!). Humans have several layers, and there’s a distinction between the intellectual mind, the emotional body and the inner self. Emotions like guilt can drive our actions that the intellectual mind can not comprehend, because it’s below the level of consciousness that is perceivable by the intellectual mind. Imagine explaining the concept of love to someone in words versus helping someone experience it themselves. Exactly! Emotion has depth that words can not convey. This is why questioning ”why do I take decisions that reactivate my guilt” can not be understood by the intellect. The root-cause lies in a layer that’s deeper - the emotional level.
So what next?
Self observation allows you to connect to your inner self, and sends an invitation to the shadow self that you’re ready to face yourself.
“People will do anything, no matter how absurd, to avoid facing their own souls.” - Carl Jung
It’s because it’s not easy to see yourself in the mirror when you’ve spent your entire life running away from your reflection. It reveals to you the parts you inherited from your parents that you abhor, and would not like to admit are a part of you. Imagine seeing the very parts in you that you hate in your parents. Shadow work is difficult because it breaks the idea of the perfect little self you’ve created in your mind and makes you realize how cringe you are. But once you can accept that you’re all cringe, what lies on the other side is integration with this part that holds immense power and wisdom.
