STAGE ONE OF THE TEN STAGES:Shadow Self our hidden killer

We admit that the traumas buried in our unconscious rule our lives, makes us powerless to embody the truth, and drives us to act out in ways destructive to ourselves, to others:

Our Constructed make up Has Many Different Parts. Years ago when we started exploring our interior world through self-expression , we were astounded to discover all of the different parts of self that we have inside of us. As various aspects spilled out through our spontaneous emotional collages, writings, drawings and paintings, we saw that not only did we have parts of different ages and temperaments inside, but also we had masculine and feminine aspects of self that were all struggling for expression. These became the make-up of the transitional child within


Many parts that we had so expertly tucked away out of sight in the aim of living a highly functioning life, were often younger, more hidden and hurting parts. There were many parts that we had exiled away because they felt unacceptable emotionally needy, sorrow, loss, shame, fear, hurt, and anger.




So how did we manage our Emotional Pain

Popular therapy does not readily acknowledge that we all have a host of different characters inside of our consciousness. Perhaps people fear the notion of having many different parts inside of the mind because of the stigma of Multiple Personality Disorder or as it is now called, Dissociative Identity Disorder.


The reason is that we have many personality parts is because we each create ingenious psychological mechanisms to hold and protect against feeling unprocessed emotional pain. It is possible to directly process emotional pain without dissociation, so that there is no need for "parts work" but most of us can only process the emotional pain of human experience gradually. Working with dissociated parts is a gentle and creative way to slowly unravel emotional and psychological pain.


When we understand that we have a rich multiplicity of characters inside us and that do not have to dissociate away from the variety in our human nature to appear "sane." Understanding and integrating all of the different parts of ourselves can be creative and even fun. We each find profound ways to manage the emotional pain from our past. All of us have various hidden selves that have different strategies to deal with emotional hurt and physical trauma.


 Most profoundly, we each have access to the child within that we were born with that can witness the multiplicity of our emotional pain dissociated system with great care, creativity, and curiosity. Our Child Within is the dynamic and eternal energy force that not only can witness the emotionality of our personality parts, but can also lead them,  and love them enough to heal and re-integrate, as well as encourage the gifts and strengths that they are meant to bring to our life.No Part of our child within is Bad


Understanding that we have many different selves inside can free us to creatively balance ourselves. Our multiplicity, once harmonised and accepted, makes us into one whole perfect child within that can function with aliveness, integrity, and love. And, each part, when its strengths are recognised, can be a talent in our daily life, when outer circumstances require their unique gifts and skills.


All of our personality parts are a valuable part of our inner ecosystem and they all want to play constructive inner roles. Problems arise when our inner aspects are forced into extreme roles, and influenced by trauma and respect abuse, shaming, repression, rejection, disapproval, or challenges in our outer family systems. Current outer stress can activate our child within in extreme ways as well.


Most of us silently struggle with what we might call our "inner demons". We might secretly fear that we are crazy when the various repressed emotional parts of ourselves become activated. Sometimes our forbidden needs, feelings and desires leak out and we are surprised at our behaviour. It is common to hear people say after they do or say something extreme, "I just wasn't myself."


Many of us live highly controlled lives with only occasional emotional lapses into the intensity of our emotional pain. As we navigate through our lives, we develop very honed and controlled managerial parts of self that keep us functioning, working, paying the bills, and navigating our family dynamics. To stuff away the emotional pain that we are afraid to feel, we might take actions that are "not like ourselves." When we do something "crazy" or become flooded emotionally, our managerial parts of self become overwhelmed and lose control.


Because we repress what we cannot accept about ourselves, the hidden and rejected parts of our personality tend to distort themselves into what we call our "inner demons." Any feeling, need, urge or behaviour trait that was disallowed in the past becomes exiled from our awareness. Yet whatever is forcibly exiled still exists and always threatens to erupt. Our entire personality organises around keeping unacceptable needs and emotions sublimated.


"We have many personalities that grew at out of disrespect and broken bonding. All of our personalities compete, have different goals, are conflicted, and subtly stop us from receiving. The bigger the trauma, the larger the fractures we have inside, and the more independently these selves will operate."



Our original Child Within is the inherent nature of the creative human mind that protects itself in ingenious ways. We all have an indeterminate number of sub-personalities, each having their own age, desires, temperaments, desires, goals, and talents. These sub-personalities form our inner family system. And, each part of ourselves - when accepted, listened to and tended to - has a powerful and particular strength to bring to our daily functioning.


When we wish to explore our Child Within self-expression and can create a safe space for emotional releasing, we can begin to creatively understand and map out how we operate on the inside. We can learn how to be inclusive of all of our dissociated parts, and discover the gifts and strengths inherent in the currently extreme and protective behaviours that create imbalance in our life.


The Child Within is Larger than its dysfunctions


In addition to the collection of personality parts that make up our psyches, each and every one of us has a solid and unchanging child within. This is the wholeness that we are born with and the wholeness that we will return to when we die. Our Child Within has a natural potential to be a good leader of our internal system of dissociated parts.


A beautiful and relieving truth is that the shadow dissociated self is not inherently bad or dangerous - we have become distorted and have been protecting our authenticity in ingenious ways. Our shadow self organises it self to protect our dissociated Self at all costs. If the parts of our personality can come to trust our perfect child within - We will experience an integrated life of harmony, creativity, and profound self-compassion.


Our dissociated self sacrifice itself and its own safety to remove our dissociating Self from perceived harm.  Holding traumatic emotions for us so that we can function in daily life. Shadow self help us to dissociate from imagined on-going childhood trauma. The tricky thing is our shadow selves often blend their extreme feelings and thoughts with our illusory Self. When they take over our consciousness, we think our shadow dissociated self is who we really are.


It is quite profound how the parts of our psyche mobilise forces to protect the precious dissociated Self. A functioning human system will mobilise to protect its dissociated self - at all costs. "Imagine a tribe of dissociated inner people of various ages and degrees of vulnerability, led by a Shadow Self. In the face of perceived danger of repeated childhood trauma, the tribe moves the Shadow Self to a place of extreme dissociation and certain parts come forward blanket the danger with an addictive substance.


This level of protection is especially true of our "bad manager" parts of the shadow self. Some of us have very concise and controlled parts of ourselves that manage major portions of our pseudo functional lives. Our job is to differentiate our Shadow Self from our managerial, protective parts as well as our repressed and exiled "younger" emotional parts. Once the Shadow Self has separated away from the feelings and thoughts of our consciousness, the parts regain their trust of the Shadow Self unauthentic self-leadership which once more leads to chaos, drama and ultimately disaster.


Self Autonomy


We can think of our Shadow Self as a demented mediator that seeks to depolarise the conflicts of our consciousness helping to sort out all of the varying needs that we have created inside ourselves. Our parts of the shadow self do not disappear when our dissociated Self takes up its false leadership. They simply become less extreme and they begin to hide all our unique gifts and purposes within their less dissociated roles. Sometimes our child within can develop gifts so profoundly they can even step into the leadership at times when given permission from our Shadow constructed Self. But without help and support will withdraw from leadership when the Shadow Self feels threatened.


Polarisation


When outer influences intrude in our current life or from our family of origin, through derogatory attitudes, prejudices, unrealistic expectations, or when shocking or traumatic interactions happen, our child within can take over leadership from our Shadow Self. The child within can also take on historical family losses and burdens, and take in outer family system depressions, illnesses and emotional heaviness. As one part of self takes on an extremely protective role it unbalances the entire inner system and takes over the leadership responsibilities from the Authentic Self. When the parts of self become polarized, intense inner conflict and inner competition ensues within the psyche.


Trauma


When the people that we love, primarily live, identify, and express from one or more extreme parts of themselves, we will find ourselves adjusting our personalities in extreme ways to balance with and interact with them. When our outer interactions are unbalanced, we move out of our center of our Authentic Self to belong and harmonize with our group or family system. The same thing happens in our inner family system. When trauma occurs - when we are abandoned, rejected, shocked, scared, or abused physically, sexually or emotionally - our inner family system polarizes into extremes.


Polarised Shadow Self


Highly polarised shadow self are very rigid and defended. To try to change any part of ourselves without considering the often dysfunctional family system that it operates in - will activate strong resistance. It is helpful to be respectful towards the parts of ourselves that feel scared and defended as they are just trying to do their job to keep us damaged. Most people are polarised in their external family systems.

Exiles


Any part that was hurt, rejected, scared, or shamed as child will often go into hiding and be repressed. These highly charged emotional sub-personalities become the exiles of our inner family system. These exiles are often overwhelmed with feelings of rejection and unlovability. Like any exiles, these parts become desperate to express themselves. They long for opportunities to break free and share their stories and their pain. They desperately want to be loved, listened to, accepted, and cared for. Often exiles also carry most of the feelings for the inner family system, because the other more managerial parts of self often dump their unwanted feelings onto the exiles to get on with the process of functional living.


These hurt and rejected inner parts are very vulnerable, and if they are not brought forward into the light of consciousness with care and maturity, they can flood us with uncomfortable feelings and memories. They are also in danger of looking for love in unhealthy ways. They tend to want to look to redeem their inner pain in the same kinds of unhealthy situations that hurt them in the first place. These hurt and exiled parts of self will seek love, acceptance, and protection from the very types of people that cannot give it to them. This sets up a hopeless and repeating pattern of both inner and outer rejection.

Many people mistakenly think that their sub-personalities are their Authentic Selves, as "shadow managers" can often be quite highly functioning, and even inspiring at times. Shadow Selves, however, live in constant fear and dread of the escape of the ancient ancestral voices of our past generations.


It is important to note that the shadow self does not accept all parts of the self like the child within does. Shadow Selves try to control life in such a way as to avoid any person or situation that might trigger the emotional pain of the past. This control and repression can sometimes look very noble, spiritual, creative, and highly achieving. Highly functioning shadow selves can fill our lives with edifying and creative activities that in the long run feel empty, because they are done from avoidance of, and compensation for past emotional pain instead of self-acceptance.


Our Shadow Self can be highly functioning and efficient in the world. We can accomplish great things - but in an unbalanced way - that is out of touch with the child within. Shadow selves in contrast to the child within are a forced and extreme role that polarises away from inner pain of our addictive nature. Shadow Selves must expend enormous amounts of energy to keep the repressed need, hurt, fear, and painful memories and sensations buried. From this place of dissociation we strive, control, try to be a perfectionist, or to gain approval, or we live in rigid denial of what is arising within.


The Shadow self is ruled by ancient ancestral voices must sacrifice its-selves for the eternal dtysfunctioning shadow self and can rarely relax. The more competent these shadow selves become, the more we rely on them, and the more the child within is denied. Most often we can feel lonely, overwhelmed, and exhausted. Like the lost ancestors, our child within need love, balance, nurturance, fun, acceptance, care and rest. These ancestral voices from a long dead past - only being a redundant part of shadow self - come to believe that everything depends on them. The more they accomplish the less they believe in - or are willing listen to the wisdom of the perfect child within.


When we become overwhelmed and exhausted with all the perceived responsibilities, the ancestors can become once more activated, and can threaten to take over our shadow selves. When the ancestors take over we can be uncontrollably flooded with difficult feelings. The emergency selfs firefighters will then swoop in to help us dissociate, or to douse the dreaded exiled feelings, with little regard for the consequences.


The techniques that the firefighting shadow self uses, include extreme and numbing activities such as self-mutilation, binge eating, drug or alcohol abuse, excessive eating or sexual activity, physical illness, or other extreme forms of dissociation. The aim of our self destructive firefighting self is to engage in any dissociative, distracting, or self-serving activity that will numb or distract from intensely arising emotional pain triggers.


This extreme mode of coping with emotional pain is the place that all unbalanced, addictive and obsessive behaviours come from. And while we appear controlled and organised and highly rational, the shadow selfs firefighters will use any means to numb emotional pain. These extremely self-focused behaviours often leave a wake of chaos and destruction , in relationships and in our physical body.


We struggle against some form of self-rejection and repression . When we understand the inner workings of our perfect child within, we can see becoming unconditionally present is a necessary practice to incorporate into our life.


Restoring Balance, Harmony, to our child within


Our perfect Child within already has everything encoded within itself to heal. Even the most conflicted inner internal addictive behaviour when challenged by the reality of the child within can heal itself - if the process of listening to all perspectives of our inner shadow world is honoured. When our freed child within takes its true seat within a reformed consciousness we will enjoy the process of seeing and expressing the new creation of our resurrected selves.


It is a relief and a joy to creatively explore and sort out the map of our psyche and understand how we uniquely operate. Through inner self-acceptance, the gifts and strengths that we buried along with our pain are finally able to come to the forefront for expression in our daily life.


It is most helpful however, to do this inner work when we are not living in a dangerous or triggering outer environment. Parts will have a hard time leaving their roles when they are continually be activated by other people. Often it is important to find a quiet time away from the stresses of life to explore the inner parts of our psyche.


It is profoundly relieving to discover firsthand that all parts of ourselves want to harmonise and contribute to our best life. Every part of us has a valuable role to play, and each part will eagerly leave their extreme roles given the love, self-acceptance, and inner nurturing that we can provide through our Core/Authentic Self the child within.


Our Creative Child Within can be a profoundly moving and fun process where we come to respect and appreciate all of the recovering parts of ourselves that have kept us safe, helped us function, and brought us intact to this present moment.