Bringing Your Shadow Out of the Dark: Breaking Free from the Hidden Forces That Drive You

by Robert Augustus Masters

An exaggerated need to please or to be liked. This need stems from a childhood history of things going badly when we were ourselves, but less badly when we behaved in ways that were pleasing or otherwise acceptable to those who held power over us. Wanting to be liked is rooted in wanting to be accepted; if we had an early history of not being accepted—and I speak here not only of our behavior but also of our very being—we’ll attach excessive importance to being liked. What’s in our shadow here is our self-acceptance, along with our anger.

Self-sabotage. This shows up as procrastination, martyrdom, settling for crumbs, and so on, in the midst of which we play victim, “trying” to make things better but only continuing to derail ourselves. When we’re obstructing ourselves, it may look as if we’re just being unfairly treated, as if we’re a victim of forces beyond our control. The payoff is that we get to avoid taking responsibility for what we’re doing to ourselves. Slipping into guilt and its self-punishing rituals is our common reaction to our self-sabotage, but such practice is just more avoidance of being accountable. What’s in our shadow here is our inner child and our neglect of it, accompanied by our attachment to staying small, to not having to grow up. (See chapter 24 on self-sabotage.)

If we won’t bring ourselves present when

Ways to make this more doable include not treating your pain as an enemy or problem; befriending your discomfort and resistance; not letting your inner critic have its way with you;

Don’t flee your hurt. Don’t try to eradicate your hurt. Don’t treat it as a problem, inconvenience, or anomaly. Don’t belittle yourself for it. Rather, give it compassionate room in which to breathe and find fully alive, healing expression.

Cultivate more internal stillness. Spend some time each day sensing the space between thoughts and the space between the end of an exhalation and the very beginning of the next inhalation, and let these spaces widen, expand, open into stillness. Bring your busyness, your inner turmoil and fuss, into such stillness, bit by bit, without any pressure to alter them. Real stillness doesn’t require a cessation of movement or thought but rather a relocation of attention to the presence of Being, the feeling of Being. You don’t have to be motionless to be present. In fact, you don’t have to be anything in particular. All you need is to consciously be, regardless of what’s happening.

Worse? Yes—unchosen empathy, automatic and innate, can be far from a good thing, as when we’re flooded or engulfed by another’s emotional state. This happens with particular ease when our sense of autonomy is weak and our capacity for having healthy boundaries is hidden in our shadow.

Once we’re empathically overwhelmed, we lose our sense of autonomy and our focus; we’re unable to sufficiently separate ourselves from the other person. Our defining edges, our shape, our integrity as a separate person become mushy. Losing our integrity has obvious importance in relational health.

extension of us. When we have empathy for something in our shadow but are nearing the point of getting overly absorbed or lost in it, we need to more firmly position our empathic shield—not to block out this shadow element but to regulate how much we let it in, how much we let it affect

When both our empathy and empathic shield are functioning together optimally, we’re open, receptive, and fully attentive. We make room for and register the impact that our shadow elements (and those of others) are having on us, especially emotionally. We’re available but not too available, thanks to our empathic shield. This is empathy at its best.

“Holding space” for others usually means being present with and for them without judgment, hosting what they’re doing without any interference or direction. Our role is both supportive and neutral; our attention is both spacious and focused, and we suspend our disbelief. We’re not taking sides.

Confusing being passive with being open. If holding space for something in our shadow is more comfortable for us than actually meeting it, we might slip into passivity—simply staying in a holding pattern with this shadow element, with a tacit agenda of keeping to this pattern because of the emotional remove that such behavior promises. We may appear open and spacious, but in fact we’re not. We’re attached to remaining intact, and so we keep more distance than is needed from the shadow element in question.

Avoiding taking action when it’s needed. Sometimes holding space isn’t enough—such as when what we’re facing in our shadow is crossing the line into extreme agitation, and keeping ourselves apart from this feeling only aggravates the situation. Under these conditions, we may try to just stay as we are—attached to remaining uninvolved. Perhaps we think that we shouldn’t interfere, but to not step in is more harmful than staying put. For example, we’re holding space for some childhood pain we’ve encountered in our shadow, and we’re trying to keep from feeling that pain, to the point where we’re basically numbing ourselves to it. What we need to do is start moving toward such pain, letting ourselves openly feel it and feel into the child who originally experienced

Thinking that being nonjudgmental means having no judgments. Truly holding space doesn’t mean being free of judgments, since having judgments—positive or negative—comes with having a mind. Instead, it means not letting judgments get in the way. Sometimes when our presence deepens, our mind will get very quiet and be free of thoughts for a while; other times, thoughts—including judgments about what’s in our shadow—will flood our mind. But there’s no problem if we hold space for these mind-forms without taking them too seriously.

Reactivity. When we’re reactive—reverting to knee-jerk, emotionally disproportionate behavior—the wounded child in us is taking center stage, showing up through our speech, movements, intentions, and manner of relating. We’re on autopilot and usually very resistant to admitting or being told that we’re being reactive, even when we know better. The charge, or amplified excitation, that we have at such times, originating in our early years, is very strong and can easily override our capacity to embody a saner direction, if we let it.

Magical thinking. Magical thinking is a mode of prerational cognition in which we assume that we have—or can have—a causal role in events that we actually have no control over. This way of thinking is entirely natural in early childhood (think of four-year-olds assuming that they’re making the sun follow them as they walk along), and it shows up in adulthood in various forms. When we get lost in magical thinking, we’ve regressed to early childhood—for better, as in the creative throes of artistic passion, or for worse, as in the egocentric spirituality of those who believe that all we have to do to change our reality is think differently (as if all that a starving mother in some barren land has to do is repeat some positive affirmations about being more prosperous). Magical thinking can also show up when we’re feeling strongly overwhelmed or are unusually distraught; for example, someone close to us has suddenly died and we find ourselves imagining that if we just do certain things a particular way, that person might come back to us. Magical thinking gives us a sense of power over things over which we have no power. Think of the appeal of fairy tales to a child—tales in which a rejected or neglected child often gains the power to dramatically affect their world for the better. There’s nothing wrong with magical thinking, but it’s important not to let it get behind the driver’s wheel.

PRACTICE Connecting with Your Inner Child Early each morning and right before bedtime, while comfortably lying down or sitting, attune to your inner child, making contact with that very young, tender, vulnerable part of yourself, doing so with as much care and undivided attention as you can. Sense

there; if you can’t sense this, place one hand on your heart and the other on your belly. Let your breathing be easy, keeping your belly soft. Keep some attention in your hands as you do this. After several minutes, say in your own words something along the lines of “I unconditionally love, accept, and support this little one who assumed he or she wasn’t worthy of [here, put in whatever fit your early childhood].” You might follow “wasn’t worthy of” with “being loved,” “being protected,” or “being seen”—whatever expression feels most fitting, whatever expression emotionally resonates with you. Imagine that you’re holding the child very closely as you say this. And say it at least three or four times, in a soft voice, feeling each word. You can keep holding your hands on your body as you do this, or you may shift to holding a small pillow, holding it as you would a very young child.

Our inner critic’s messages might be out in the open, but its roots are often largely in our shadow. If we’re fused with our inner child, we’ll take what our inner critic is saying as unquestioned truth, not even recognizing at such times that we have an inner critic. Waking up to this—and to the origins and anatomy of our inner critic—is essential for effective shadow work.

Shame is the emotion at the core of the inner critic. Healthy shame triggers and is triggered by our conscience, but unhealthy shame, toxic shame, triggers and is triggered by our inner critic.

When we fuse or identify with the child within, our inner critic holds the power, talking to us as though we’re but a child (or an incompetent somebody). But our inner critic doesn’t hold the power in any innate sense. We are giving it the power, the authority, to shame us, to degrade us for not making the grade.

As we acknowledge and observe our inner critic and move away from it, we need at the same time to move toward the child in us. Doing so brings out in us a sense of increased protectiveness of the child within, so that we’re both loving that little one and keeping him or her safe.

Once we sense the dynamic between our inner critic and our inner child, seeing that it’s usually nothing but a shame-centered dramatization of the bully and the bullied, healing can begin.

Think of your inner critic as a mental mosquito. When we stop giving away our power to our inner critic, it downsizes into not much more than a mosquito, buzzing around on the outskirts of our mind, almost out of hearing, unable to mess with us, unable to shame us, at most being a bit annoying.

Immediately shift your awareness from what your inner critic is saying to whatever sensations you’re feeling in your body. In doing this, you’re shifting the focus of your attention from cognition to sensation, giving you some needed distance from your inner critic’s pronouncements. It also gives you more space to observe the actual energy and feeling of your inner critic as opposed to its contents and messages.

Direct your full attention to your chest, breathing deeply into it, and also soften your belly. Count at least ten breaths, counting at the end of each exhale; if you forget where you are, start at one again. If you remain agitated, count to ten again.

Have a sense of standing between your inner critic and inner child, with your back to the critic, so that the child isn’t subjected or answerable to your inner critic. Then imagine picking up that little one, holding him or her close with one hand. Turn to face the critic, holding

Through such radical self-acceptance, we become more whole. We can even open our heart to our own closed-heartedness by acknowledging to ourselves (and maybe to others close to us) that we’re currently closed-hearted, admitting this without self-shaming and without giving our inner critic a green light.

perhaps most difficult to step back from our inner critic’s content when we know we’ve done some bad things—really hurt others, been selfish, cheated, lied, broken the law, and so on—and hence feel deserving of being shamed, even toxically shamed. So we bare ourselves for our inner critic’s beating. But such self-battering does us no good and, in fact, prevents our healing.

We need to get a sense of who our inner critic takes after and to understand that our inner critic is a complex activity within us, ready to flare up when current conditions sufficiently mimic the original conditions that spawned our self-shaming tendencies. If, for example, we were overwhelmed by an angry parent who slam-shamed us, part of our work is to get in touch with the anger we had to repress in order to survive that parent’s rages. If we have our anger on tap, we can say an effective no to our inner critic (which is also a no-longer-buried no to what our angry, shaming parent did to us). But if we don’t have our anger on tap, our no will be either non-existent or tentative.

We’re not born with it, but once our inner critic starts to take root, usually sometime in our second or third year, our self-sabotaging tendency soon follows.

Our inner saboteur is often confused with our inner critic, our internalized, shame-ridden, heartlessly negative self-appraisal. The differences are considerable: • Our inner critic is an overseer; our inner saboteur is an undercover agent.

Our inner critic is a bully; our inner saboteur is a detouring presence.

• Our inner critic undermines our sense of self; our inner saboteur undermines our direction.

Our inner critic is a repetitively flattening message; our inner saboteur is a repetitively flattening action. • Our inner critic shames us; our inner saboteur sets us up for shaming.

Becoming intimate with our inner saboteur means directly feeling what’s childlike in it, attuning to that child and the key factors that shaped it. Without such focus, the efforts of that child to get our attention may submerge, sinking back into the shadows, or they may fester into attention-snaring behaviors that block or otherwise obstruct our path.

Identify your survival behaviors. Develop the ability to name them as they arise and the ability to relate to them, so that when they show up, you don’t lose yourself in them. 4. Recognize the voice of rationalization in yourself. Get familiar not just with its grammar and content but also its tone, its underlying agendas, its message, its broadcasting locales or lack thereof in your body.

Sense the presence of your inner saboteur. You’ll notice an internal conflict about taking a certain direction and feel a pull to not do what you think is the best thing to do. You’ll also notice that you’re rationalizing this pull. b. Name it. You might say something such as “Self-sabotage is here.” c. Name its three key elements and attune to each one: The neglected child: what basic feelings are arising; what primary/core needs are present.

“Adult” activity: what you think you should be doing; what’s being done to avoid or override your neglect of your primary/core needs. Rationalization: what’s being said to support the neglected child’s victory over the agenda of the “adult.”

Identify and attend to your primary needs without bypassing your awareness of your secondary needs. Connect with your real hunger without losing sight of your appetite for the cookies. Once you’re in touch

with that original hunger, your pull to the cookies will lessen.

Learn how to operate from already-present, innate wholeness. Acting from an undivided place, responding from your innate wholeness, means making decisions not from only part of yourself but from your core of self.

Many of the characters in our dreams are shadow parts cast in human or nonhuman form. For example, our disowned power might show up in a dream as a frightening carnivore.

Dreams often dramatize conflicts we’re having, difficult decisions, or relationship and work challenges. They make explicit through such engrossing drama what may not be so obvious while we’re in the waking state.

we start to recognize that in order to emerge from our pain, we have to enter it.

Turning toward our pain doesn’t increase our pain for very long, and actually decreases it relatively soon, mainly because we’re no longer paining ourselves by putting so much energy into trying to get away from it.

When we thus relate to our pain, cultivating intimacy with it, we start liberating ourselves from our pain and from the painful consequences of avoiding our pain.

Pain is fundamentally just unpleasant—sometimes extremely unpleasant—sensation or feeling. Suffering, on the other hand, is something that we’re doing with our pain. Compare: Pain My husband just left me, and I’m hurting terribly. My heart is broken. Suffering My husband just left me, and I’m hurting terribly. My life is over. I’ll never find love again. My mother’s right—I should never have been born.

Where pain is consciously felt hurt, suffering is the myopic dramatization of that hurt, casting us in the role of the hurt one and binding us there. We’re occupied by our hurt role to such an extent that we’ve little or no motivation to see through or stand apart from it.

Suffering is a refusal to develop any intimacy with our pain. When we’re busy suffering, we’re without healthy detachment;