Podcast Transcript | Ep. 49

Embracing the Shadow Self

Embracing the Shadow Self | Ep. 49

[00:00:00] Hello and welcome to Order Within Navigating a world of endless chaos and crisis, many of us are experiencing inner turmoil, insecurity, anxiety, fears, and isolation. These feelings are only being amplified by news cycles. Social media and never ending political madness. How do we find our way out of the chaos?

[00:00:24] How do we find strength within ourselves? How do we find meaning in a world driven by materialism? These questions and many more I aim to answer on the show. My goal is to be a trusted guide on your journey to selfhood. May you find what you seek. Hello and welcome everyone. I'm your host. Brandon Ward back with another episode of order within.

[00:00:54] Episode number 49.

[00:00:57] This show is going to be about embracing the shadow self. Now I've talked about the shadow self. Quite a bit. On the show.

[00:01:09] But I really want to dedicate. This entire episode. To navigating our inner darkness and reclaiming our authentic power. Through the shadow self.

[00:01:23] I think there's a lot of confusion around the shadow self. But it's a huge part of our journey of self-discovery and self-mastery. So I want to ensure that we understand these concepts. And then look at some ways that we can help.

[00:01:39] Understand the role, it plays in our lives. So we want to understand the shadow self. We're going to look at the role that it plays. In our society. We're going to recognize the shadow self. We're going to look at techniques for embracing the shadow self. And then we're going to integrate the shadow self for.

[00:01:59] Personal growth. And then we'll wrap the episode there. But this is a big concept. And it's one that's influenced my life heavily. The older I've gotten the more work I've done within myself. The more I've realized that so much of this is about. How we navigate and manage the negative dark energies in our life are, the dark emotions and negative emotions, whatever you want to call them.

[00:02:26] They get a bad rap. I think we've gotten a little overly. Positive oriented, a little overly optimistic oriented in that sense, like in the. I am a huge optimist. And there's studies. I've talked about this on the show before. There's studies that have shown that optimism has a huge. Benefit and our health, our wellbeing.

[00:02:49] Our ability to succeed, to live the lives that we want to live. So there's a lot of reasons to have an optimistic perspective on life, but you have to cultivate it. Something that we have to cultivate and develop. But.

[00:03:02] Optimism doesn't mean that we deny. Negative emotions or dark emotions. We embrace them. You optimism says there's nothing that I can't handle. There's nothing that I can't learn something from, regardless of how. Dark or negative or bad situation may be. But a lot of times what we do is we run away from the scary parts of ourselves. These scary experiences, these scary feelings.

[00:03:29] So we run from them.

[00:03:33] And. In our world today.

[00:03:37] The shadow self. And the chaotic world, they really can feed one another, especially when fear's leading the way. And that's, what's happening so much in our world right now is fear is definitely. Driving a lot of the narrative, a lot of how we interact with one another. And the main headlines that we're all seeing in so many ways is being driven by fear.

[00:04:04] And we fear is something is always there when we're never going to be absent of it. But we develop and cultivate courage and bravery to, to act in spite of our fear. That's the state we're aiming for. Fear will always serve us. But it's not something to live within. It's a great indicator. It's a great communicator.

[00:04:26] It tells us when things may be off and where we're out of alignment potentially, and also helps us find dangers in our environment. Predators and things of that nature, and that includes bad relationships and bad situations. But living in fear is different. So it's understanding it, activating it, learning from it, and then moving forward from there.

[00:04:51] And that's a huge part of what embracing our shadow self is about so that we can strengthen that connection with our authentic selves. And activate the power that we all hold within ourselves. To live more fulfilling. And intentional lives. Because ultimately gang, like we have. The ability and power to live lives that are aligned with who we are.

[00:05:16] And fulfilled we can live fulfilled from within, but it takes effort and work. And intention. But it's totally worth the work I've found. There's nothing more satisfying and fulfilling than doing this work. And experiencing the inner strength and peace that comes with self-connection.

[00:05:38] So let's get into understanding the shadow self. The concept of the shadow self. Is the unconscious aspects of our personality that consists of repressed emotions, desires, and traits that we may perceive as negative or undesirable. These hidden aspects of ourselves are often in contrast with the persona we bring.

[00:05:58] We present to the world. That's a huge component of it. So a lot of times we think of our shadow selves as things that we know, but often they're things that we don't know or are unaware of. So there. They're unconscious in our mind. They're those repressed feelings desires. Things that we've pushed down because of society. The expectations that maybe our family or community has for us, whatever it is.

[00:06:25] There's the external forces that are. Driving us to push down. The tr the true feelings that we have, the true desires or traits that we may have. And from that the shadow self can form and forms out of our unconscious subconscious mind. The goal is to bring that. Information, those feelings, those emotions.

[00:06:47] Into our consciousness so that they can integrate, we can integrate them with our whole self and we can leverage their power.

[00:06:56] Now the.

[00:06:59] This term. Originated from Carl Young. And he was a Swiss psychiatrist and psychoanalyst. He believed that the sat shadow self was a necessary component of the psyche representing the parts of ourselves that we deny suppress or disown due to societal norms and personal beliefs. So again, Young was really the father of this concept.

[00:07:24] And he believes that it was a critical component to. Representing the whole versions of ourselves and that understanding these pieces, these parts that we deny or suppress or disown. I can cause large problems and they, and we often throw away our gifts that are associated with them too. And that's something that I don't want to talk about.

[00:07:43] As well as cause a lot of that fades away when we. Turn away from our shadow. We also lose the gifts that it holds.

[00:07:51] So the role that it plays, the shadow cell plays in our psyche is crucial to understanding our whole selves. By acknowledging and integrating the shadow self, we can achieve a more balanced personality and a deeper sense of self-awareness. Conversely though ignoring or repres repressing, the shadow self can lead to internal conflict, self sabotage and other psychological issues.

[00:08:15] That was something for me that I had experienced. This is where a lot of my anger, a lot of my sadness, my pain, my isolation. I had all these feelings that I had repressed from my childhood, my youth. 'cause I just, as I've gotten older, I love my parents. My parents did the best they could.

[00:08:35] As parents, I mean, dealing with the light that they had and living and growing up in West Virginia. So I love them. It is not about blaming them or anything like that in terms of the childhood that I experienced. But there was a lot of. A lot of chaos. I was from a family of divorce. They got divorced early.

[00:08:56] And so there were a lot of things that I had to hide or turn away or suppress. Just to survive because of the environment was somewhat chaotic and. And imbalanced. And but that's okay. I love my parents. I'm not it's. It's hard and I've healed a lot. I was angry. I was mad. I was upset. was all these things.

[00:09:18] But I wasn't facing them and it wasn't until I faced them until I started integrating them that I was able to find some peace around all this before I didn't feel this way. I was very angry and resentful and. And bitter about what I experienced growing up. And I held a lot of resentment towards my parents and, but it was hurting myself. It was hurting.

[00:09:39] My relationship with them. I was hurting my relationship with the people that I cared about in my life. So these things. It seems like a good idea to potentially push them away because they're scary, but they grow into these massive monsters and they really drown out all the good that can come from our lives when we don't engage them. And that's what happened with me is over time.

[00:10:02] The longer I did not. Engage and deal with these things. The harder it became to just function as a normal human as a, I was just miserable and sad all the time. No matter how much I tried to counter it, no matter how much I tried to push away, no matter how much I tried to positive my way through it.

[00:10:18] It did not matter. I was sad. I was depressed. I was lonely and it was only through. Engaging with the shadow self that this stuff started to change. And that's what I want for you is to know that you have the ability to do this and that it's okay to feel these things. And there's. The darkness that we feel that the emotions that we feel are valid, but we have to understand, and we have to take the time to get to know them.

[00:10:45] And to learn from our experiences so that we can move forward and take the value in them and integrate them into who we are. And brewed come more whole people.

[00:10:57] So now we're looking at the role, the shadow self in today's world. And how societal expectations can suppress the shadow self. And they, so societal expectations often play a significant role in suppressing the shadow cell from a very young age, we are taught to conform to certain norms and behaviors.

[00:11:14] Which can lead to the repression of emotions and desires that don't align with these expectations. This repression can create an imbalance within our psyche and contribute to feelings of dissatisfaction or disconnection from our true selves. And that's a key piece. There is that this actually disconnects us from our true selves because society or communities or whatever may say that's not normal or that's not okay, but that's who we are.

[00:11:39] And a lot of that could be. It's just the times have not yet caught up to what that is. We don't have a reference for how to understand these types of things. There's a lot of stuff in our world. That's expanded upon that. We now know that this is just natural. It's something that comes to be. And like sexuality is a prime example of that, right? People have sexual identities and. They, their sexual expression is what it is. And it's developed often very early. And so it happens. But this idea that there were all these causes that would create. Certain sexual responses in people with silly. What we've come to realize is it's just nature things. These things happen. Like we there's, you can look at all types of sexual expression all throughout nature. So it is what it is like.

[00:12:28] But we had all these crazy reasons that we would come up with and that we would suppress and people that we would try and change them, that we would try. And, like the insane idea of praying away the gay, like that's a prime example of the insanity. That can come from this type of thinking when we're suppressing, repressing these types of feelings, these natural feelings that exist in people, as we have greater context to how we understand human nature and how we function as a species, we realized that these things are just simply nature. So we don't have to have this violent repressive response to things, but there's still so much of that going on in our world.

[00:13:10] And when we don't reconnect with that. We're cutting off into our parts of ourselves and we're living. Incomplete lives because we can feel it. And that leaves a sadness in ourselves that leaves an emptiness in ourselves. I felt that for years, because I had isolated in several parts of myself because I didn't feel it was okay.

[00:13:31] I was repressing them. I was suppressing them and I was cutting them off because I was afraid of it. But as I began to embrace that, I became more full, more, whole more at peace. A prime example would be my masculinity. For the longest part of my life. I felt ashamed and embarrassed by my masculinity. So I suppressed it and I was deeply saddened and depressed about it. But over time I became to realize that that part of me is who I am. It's a huge part of who I am.

[00:14:03] And it makes me who I am. And I started to embrace those qualities of myself that I had repressed for many years. And through that process, it became happier and more at peace because I integrated parts of myself that I had thrown away years ago. And that's what happens. As we throw away parts of ourselves.

[00:14:22] Because of misunderstandings because of these societal expectations this nature, this repressive nature that can sometimes happen.

[00:14:30] So when we deny and repress the shadow self, numerous negative consequences can happen. Like our mental and emotional wellbeing can be hugely disrupted, which is what happened to me. It happens to a lot of people. When we suppress these aspects of ourselves. They can manifest an unhealthy ways such as addictions aggression or self-destructive behaviors. That's another thing that we're seeing a lot is you're seeing a lot of addictions in today's society. You're seeing a lot of passive aggressive behavior and you're seeing tons of self-destructive behavior.

[00:15:02] It's because again, we're separating ourselves. We're separating parts of ourselves and we're feeling unworthy invaluable. And so we, because we haven't accepted those parts of ourselves, we start destroying ourselves because we believe that's what we deserve. It's crazy how our minds, our beliefs.

[00:15:21] Can get tangled up and then create these very self-destructive behaviors because we don't believe we're worthy. We don't believe we have value. Because of so much of this denial.

[00:15:34] So additionally ignoring the shadow self can lead to a lack of authenticity in our relationships and an inability to fully express and understand our own emotions. And that was something that I experienced a ton too. I wasn't being genuine. And a lot of the relationships that I was in. And I had the inability to express certain emotions because I was repressing them. I couldn't be at peace. I was always trying to fix things. I could never just let someone be. I was a fixer in my family. So for the longest time,

[00:16:04] I couldn't just.

[00:16:06] Except someone and support them through hard emotions. I always had to try and fix it because I couldn't handle my own dark emotions. I hadn't embraced them yet. So when someone was upset or sad or depressed or angry or whatever, I would try and fix it. Because I hadn't done that yet in myself. So seeing it reflected in others was like, oh no, I have to change this.

[00:16:28] I can't allow that.

[00:16:31] Because I wasn't allowing it in myself. So it, it can bleed out into everything that we do if we're not careful. And that's what it does over time, the longer this stuff lingers.

[00:16:41] But when we embrace our shadow selves, the benefits of that can be. Tremendous. And it also helps us navigate the complexity of today's world because we need all of ourselves to navigate the complexities of today's world. It is a very complex world and it continues to increase in conflict and complexity.

[00:17:00] But by acknowledging and integrating these hidden aspects of our personality, we can develop a stronger sense of self-awareness resilience and authenticity. This in turn can lead to improve mental health and emotional wellbeing, healthy relationships, and a greater ability to cope with life's challenges.

[00:17:16] And that's really what it's about is this allows us and enables us. To succeed and achieve and build the visions that we have for our life and to cope with life challenges because they will come. Life will always have challenges for us to overcome. And engage with that's a guarantee. No matter how well off we may be.

[00:17:37] We will always face challenges. Because we're here to grow and we grow in challenging times. We don't grow in comfort. We grow often. Well, we always grow in discomfort. That's what pushes us in many ways.

[00:17:51] So when we. So the next part of the show here is going to be recognizing the shadow self. And I think this is an important aspect is identifying common traits and characteristics of the shadow self so that we can start to integrate them and manage these feelings.

[00:18:08] So some of the common traits and characteristics of the shadow self include repressed emotions, such as anger, jealousy, or fear denied desires. So we're pressed emotions are a big one. If we there's certain emotions that we can't handle, we shoved them down. That's a big one to identify and look for.

[00:18:25] Anger jealousy or fear, huge ones. They can lead us to where we're repressing those feelings. Denied desires is another one. Things that we wish we could do want to do desires that we have, that could be. Engaging in certain activities, it could be engaging in certain our sexual preferences. It could be engaging, it could be desires of where we want to live. It could be career desires.

[00:18:48] There are so many that are not desires that we may deny based on what we've learned growing up. And then ultimately aspects of our personality that we consider unacceptable or Lovable. These traits may manifest in various ways, such as passive aggressive behavior, projection, or cell sabotage. And that's a huge one, too.

[00:19:11] It's because there's so much of ourselves that we have deemed unacceptable or Anello unlovable because of the experiences we've had. And that's just simply not true. It may have been, but also the thing is like people misinterpret what we have, especially as kids, our abilities are our talents, our feelings, they misinterpreted adults. Don't get it sometimes.

[00:19:33] So we. When we. If we are not careful, we can internalize that stuff and then carry on those beliefs that were unacceptable or unlovable as adults. And we go on. Allowing ourselves to get mistreated. We'd sabotage ourselves. We'd have destructive behavior. We get in to very destructive relationships. There's a lot of things that can come from that.

[00:19:57] So understanding and identifying those parts that we believe are unacceptable or unlovable is a huge piece, too.

[00:20:04] Now looking at how we can. See if the shadow self is influencing our behavior, and those are signs. So signs that your shadow self may be influencing your behavior can include recurring emotional patterns, feelings of shame, or guilt or unexplained reactions to certain situations or people. Other indications might be persistent negative. Self-talk.

[00:20:28] Difficulty setting boundaries or engaging in self destructive behaviors, all of those things. Our great indicators to look out for. So if we're feeling. Recurring kind of emotional negative patterns, feelings of shame or guilt. Or unexplained reactions to certain situations or peoples if we're finding ourselves triggered by certain situations.

[00:20:50] Those are indicators to look into that our shadow self may be ruling. Especially the internal dialogue, persistence negative. Self-talk. If you can't set boundaries, if you have a hard time saying no, if you have a hard time standing up for what you want.

[00:21:06] Or if you're just engaging in self-destructive behaviors, all this stuff can add up and can indicate to us that something's happening and encourage us to look within and find out the roots to these stories, because there's always roots in there. There's always, so we can get to that and it doesn't have to be this long drawn out process that takes years.

[00:21:27] It just requires intention and courage to hit head on the things that we're struggling with. That's how you quickly make progress with things that you're dealing with, but you have to hit them head on. And that takes a lot of courage.

[00:21:40] And so I've talked a bit about here.

[00:21:45] Personal aspects. Of the shadow self. The, a big one for me has always been a repression of anger.

[00:21:53] And then how, like when we were pressed it, we have these. We have these blow up moments where we blow up at our friends or blow up at our family members over these. Unnecessarily unnecessary things, things that aren't. Valid for our explosion. And that's because like for me, I would do that all the time when I was refreshing my anger, but what ended up happening once I incorporated this and I started healing through all this stuff is now all that fire. And that energy is now being exerted and used in positive ways.

[00:22:23] I'm able to leverage that same. Fire that comes with that anger. And so the power of this is, is that when we confront and integrate our shadow cells, we actually gain strength and power from it too. It's not giving up something it's actually incorporating and gaining something back often. So there's a lot of incentive to do this work because it's not all just suffering.

[00:22:48] But it absolutely enables us.

[00:22:52] To have strengths and talents and abilities that we didn't realize we had before that we can leverage in our life and use them in meaningful ways.

[00:23:02] So now let's look at. Doing some shadow work. And. Embracing the shadow self. So shadow work is a process of exploring, acknowledging and integrating the hidden aspects of our personality. Like we've been talking about in the show, there's a lot of indicators that can lead us to that.

[00:23:21] It's an introspective practice. To do this work. And it often involves delving into our unconscious mind to uncover those repressed emotions, desires, and traits. And then working to understand and accept these aspects of ourselves. So it's identifying them. And then getting to the root of them, looking to understand where those emotions desires and traits are coming from. And we do that by exploring stories that we've experienced.

[00:23:49] For me. Inner bonding was a huge process of helping with this because I went back to my child self. And let him speak about the experiences that he had. And by doing that. I uncovered so much of the stuff that had been repressed from the perspective of a child. Which enabled me to understand why I was feeling those things, the way that I was, and also validate them because there's a lot of validity to what I was feeling.

[00:24:19] And so that process. Allowed me to understand and accept those parts of ourselves. That's the same thing that you can do. You can do similar things. That's why I talk about all kinds of different methods and techniques because ultimately they're tools. To help us better understand ourselves and live more aligned to who we are.

[00:24:39] That's really what it's about. And there's so there's many ways to do that. So inner bonding is one way. Journaling. By exploring thoughts, emotions, and patterns, and another way. You can putting your pen to paper, you can gain clear understanding of our unconscious of those unconscious beliefs, those fears and desires.

[00:24:59] Regular journaling can help us identify these recurring themes and patterns. And make it easier to recognize and address them. In our lives. Because journaling brings awareness to it and it allows us to explore our minds, our beliefs in ways that are safe and. Organized through paper. In pen. So I highly encourage you to journal if you're not, it's a great way to learn about yourself and explore not just the shadow self, but many other things as well.

[00:25:29] Mindfulness and meditation is another practice that can help us become more aware of the presence and influence. Of our shadow selves. By cultivating nonjudgmental self-awareness. We can begin to recognize the thoughts and feelings and behaviors. Associated with our shadow selves and learn to accept and integrate these aspects of our personality.

[00:25:51] Do mindfulness and meditation is really underrated. I love meditating. I do it now every morning. I started this again, which has been great. It's just 10 minutes set a timer, just sit and just be meditation can be a powerful way to explore that. Especially if you start a meditation with intention.

[00:26:07] To say, Hey, I want to explore my shadow cell so I can understand. And begin to accept and love myself in nonjudgmental ways. And so you set that intention for the meditation. Then you close your eyes and you go into that meditation and you see where it takes. You. You'd be surprised where intention and then mindfulness and meditation can lead us.

[00:26:27] So being intentional. With a meditation practice and our mindfulness can help as well. And then finally therapy and coaching can be a huge practice that can help us navigate this terrain because ultimately having the support of someone else that's done this before, that's trained, that has experienced in these spaces.

[00:26:45] I can be a huge benefit and can shortcut our progress hugely because it's. They're a guide on the journey of the self. And it's a very dark tumultuous terrain inside there. And without a guide, it can be scary and hard and challenging. So having a guide that can work with us to assist in developing strategies and uncovering these hidden aspects of our personality and dealing with a lot of this crazy stuff that comes up sometimes with doing this work.

[00:27:13] It can be a powerful way to support our journey of healing.

[00:27:17] All right. So the last piece here, and then I'm going to wrap the episode is integrating the shadow self for personal growth. So there's numerous benefits to contribute to our overall wellbeing and personal growth by acknowledging, accepting these hidden aspects of our personality. We can develop a more balanced sense of self experienced, increased self-awareness and foster greater emotional intelligence. And all of these things lead us to more fulfilling and enriched lives.

[00:27:43] And ultimately that's what it's about living a more fulfilled. Enriched life aligned with who you are expressing your gifts with the world, helping the world to be a better place because you're being who you are. You're serving in a main boy meaningful way, and you're impacting others around you in a way that's aligned with who you are.

[00:28:00] That's a beautiful thing and that's what we want.

[00:28:04] So when we're harmonizing the shadow self. Into the rest of our psyche, we can employ various strategies. Like I mentioned earlier, such as self-reflection. So some of those techniques I mentioned earlier are specific, but also just reflection, being compassionate towards ourselves and setting boundaries can go a huge way in terms of cultivating and harmonizing our shadow self.

[00:28:28] Just showing compassion for yourself and setting boundaries are two things that can be very powerful when applied.

[00:28:35] By cultivating a nonjudgmental attitude towards ourselves and recognizing the value of our shadow selves. We can begin to integrate these aspects. And create a more cohesive, balanced sense of self that's. What it's about. But doing our best. To recognize where we're being judgmental and being nonjudgmental is key or very harsh and critical of ourselves and others. This is something that I'm working on hugely because I do this too. And I have a lot of work to do in terms of my inner judge.

[00:29:06] When we embrace our shadow self. It can lead us to live a more authentic and fulfilling life. As I'd mentioned, by allowing us to fully express and understand our emotions, our desires, and our needs by integrating our shadow selves, we become more resilient in the face of adversity. We develop healthier relationships.

[00:29:27] And experience a deeper connection with our authentic selves. This in turn can lead to increase satisfaction and a greater sense of purpose in our lives. And at the end of the day, y'all. That is what it's about. A greater sense of purpose and satisfaction in our lives. To live more fulfilled. Doing shadow work and enables us to do that.

[00:29:48] It's really difficult to reach peak stakes of performance and fulfillment. Without doing the shadow work. I tried it for years. Trust me. There's a lot of people. That have tried it for years, too. Repressing and suppressing these painful emotions and feelings simply doesn't work. It just builds and makes more problems over time. And the longer we turn away and deny it, the bigger those problems get. And.

[00:30:16] When you look at our world and you see that now that's what's happening. You're seeing it. All these problems that we're denying are compounding, and that's going to continue to happen until we recognize and acknowledge the shadow self. The society is a reflection of our collective individual experiences. So the chaos that we're experiencing in our society is a reflection of the inner chaos. We're exterior still experiencing as individuals.

[00:30:44] The work of transformation begins within us. One person at a time. That's how we transform the world. Within each of us, if all of us did this, the world would change. That's what's wild. If everyone simply embraced this journey. The world would transform.

[00:31:03] All right, Joe, that's all I got for today's episode. So remember that acknowledging and working with the shadow self is a vital component of self discovery and personal growth by exploring and integrating these hidden aspects of our personality. We can develop a stronger connection with our authentic selves.

[00:31:20] And navigate the complexity of today's world with greater resilience and wisdom. And that's what I hope for you. So I hope y'all are enjoying the show. I've got some things coming out. I've got some career shifts that I'm doing in terms of. Looking to join some organizations. I think I'm going to level up here and continue on my coaching journey, which is going to be exciting. I've got my own program that I've been building and working on. I've got some training programs that I'm now a part of as a coach that I'm very excited about.

[00:31:49] And I'm also looking to join some organizations as a business coach to help them serve their clients. And serve in general as a coach, I've come to realize how much I love coaching on all facets. And I'm excited to have found a career and a path that I really love and am dedicated to. So I appreciate y'all coming along with me on this journey.

[00:32:11] I'm going to continue to expire. Share and expand on the growth of this journey. Something that I'm very excited about. So I hope that you are also on this journey of self discovery. Finding that path for you building the life. That you envision so that you may live a life aligned with who you are from within.

[00:32:31] So with that being said, y'all. Until next time.

[00:32:35] Thank you for listening to Order Within. If you found the episode helpful, please consider sharing, rating and subscribing. New episodes will be released every Thursday at 11:00 AM Eastern Standard time. Until next time y'all.

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