Transforming Our Shadows

How many times have you heard someone say they have an Inner Critic?

Or maybe you’ve heard them say they have a “Mean Girl” in their head.

No matter what name you give it, we all have these subpersonalities inside that can cause problems for us or hold us back, and most of us spend quite a bit of time and energy trying to get rid of or work around them. Instead of having just one mind, we actually have many minds that make up our personality. These different parts of our mind are involved when we engage in thinking, and when we make decisions.

Maybe like me, you’ve heard women who are quite successful talk about how they have learned to “manage” the critical parts of themselves. But that usually means they’ve learned how to ignore the internal voices, adapted their life so they can avoid dealing with whatever triggers the behavior, or numbed out from the trigger with something unhealthy or unhelpful.

What most people don’t realize, is that there is a MUCH better way of dealing with our internal Mean Girls and Inner Critics, and it involves helping these Shadow parts of ourselves transform.

Shadow work has been given a bad rap. It can sound scary. And many people think you have to go to a remote location like the Himalayas and meet with a Shaman to do the work. But the truth is that you can do Shadow work anywhere, and it can be much easier and fun than you might think.

Modern day “mystics” use what is called Internal Family Systems or Parts Work to heal people’s shadows. And, contrary to popular belief, the technique doesn’t involve getting rid of the shadows.

Getting rid of Shadows is counterproductive because they actually are not bad. They are only trying to serve or protect you in the only way they know how, even though the way they go about it is often unhelpful. And once you help them heal, you can harness power to help you gain momentum towards achieving your goals.

Our Shadow Parts act the way they do is because they don’t realize that we have the capacity to lead or manage our internal Parts in a healthy way. They go by what we’ve done in the past.

For example, let’s say you were 5 years old and you hurt your knee badly the first time you tried to ice skate. Let’s also imagine that you weren’t supposed to be ice skating in the first place, so then you also got yelled at by your parents for doing something without their permission. It may have all seemed very traumatic.

As a result, you’ve become afraid to try new things, and you avoid risky behavior. While you could get by quite nicely in life without ice skating, there’s a Part of you that may have decided ALL new things are unsafe and should be avoided.

Your internal Mean Girl still thinks you’ve 5 years old and you need to be protected from getting yelled at for trying new things. She’s protecting that Child Part of you because she doesn’t realize that you’re an adult now and you have more bandwidth now to handle situations like the one you encountered back then.

One of the first and most important steps in helping a Shadow Part transform is to stop fighting it. Instead, invite it to tell you it’s story. See if you get to the point where you can appreciate how it’s been trying to help you for all these years. There’s a good chance you’ll be amazed at how that will shift things for you.