There is a part of you that you do not let anyone see. Maybe it feels too messy, too raw, too broken, or too unacceptable to bring into the light. And when it does show up, the negative self-talk starts and the voice in your head gets mean.
If that is you, I want to offer you a different way to look at that part. I believe the parts of ourselves that we hide are not the enemy. In this post, I will walk you through why those parts act the way they do, what is actually underneath them, and how shadow work can help you accept yourself instead of fighting yourself.
The Desires You Called Bad, Wrong, or Forbidden
Somewhere along the way, you wanted to say something, be a certain way, or take an action, and you pushed it down. You called it bad, wrong, or forbidden. Sometimes that came from your own fear and sometimes it came from the collective fear around you, but the result was the same. You cast the desire out.
Those words carry real power. They shape desire, and they decide what gets exiled.
Why the Parts You Exile Cause Chaos
I believe the shadow characters inside us, and the ones we do not like to see in other people, are allies or protectors that have turned on us. When a part gets cast out or stuffed away, it does not disappear. It looks for any way out, a crack or a moment of weakness, and it often turns toward manipulation or acting out. That is how these parts create turbulence and sometimes chaos in your life.
So when I look at a pattern that seems dysfunctional, I am not looking for what is wrong with you. I am looking for the golden key, the insight that turns the pattern back into life force, play, and access to your creative impulses.
What Is Underneath the Facade
The key is to discover the shadow desire. Underneath the facade of bad, wrong, or forbidden, there is energy and there is desire. That is raw material, and you can use it to build a new relationship with your own power and with collective power.
I invite you to get curious about it. What would happen if I took a breath? What would happen if I got more curious? What would happen if I went deeper than the label and found out what the energy and the desire actually are?
You Can See How You Fought Yourself Without Attacking Yourself
When you look at your own patterns, you will probably notice a tendency toward self-attack, being hard on yourself, and saying mean things to yourself. You can see how you have been your own worst enemy and feel it fully, without attacking yourself for it. That is a real shift.
When fight, flight, or freeze shows up around a part of yourself or around someone else, you have another option. You can breathe and get curious instead of making an enemy of your own life force.
The Shadow Will Never Be Eliminated
This one frees people up. The shadow will never be eliminated, because the only way to get rid of a shadow is to remove the light. Light and shadow are collaborators, like day and night or the changing seasons. Trying to wipe out one side is a game you cannot win.
Everything that has happened in your world and in your lineage is raw material you can create with. Challenge, despair, depression, and even death can be treated as flavors, frequencies, and colors instead of waves that pull you under. When you stop fighting the wave and learn to surrender into the flow, you can ask how skillfully you can move through challenge and how beautifully light and dark can shape the legacy you are living.
From Power Over to Power With
Making enemies of our own parts keeps us stuck on the trauma triangle, and the shadow ends up cast as the perpetrator. When you accept your shadows as allies, you step off that triangle and into circular power, which is power with instead of power over. That applies to the enemies inside you and the ones you see outside you.
There is plenty happening in the world that is undesirable, unfortunate, and downright terrible. I see it as part of the play of human experience, part of what we signed up for in coming to earth school to engage, learn, and discover.
Bring Play and Adventure to the Work
I want you to approach this with play and a sense of adventure, the way you did as a child battling with a pretend sword. Every part you discover is part of your team. The ones who were cast out and stuffed away are the ones who learned to act out, so they are often the ones with the most to give back.
Remember too that what you see and experience in this work is creative imagination. You are the storyteller, the writer, and all of the characters, and you can change the story and the energetic experience in any moment. You also get to decide how far and how deep you are willing to go.
A Mirror Practice That Changed the Standard
A few minutes into a client’s first hypnosis recode session, we did a mirror practice together. She was speechless and asked, “How do you know how I speak to myself?” At first, she couldn’t look herself in the eyes. When she did, she started crying. I guided her through what to say, beginning with an apology. Watching her go from being her own worst enemy to becoming an ally was only the beginning. This powerful practice changed the standard for how she was treated in her professional and personal life, so she could finally receive the life, success, and relationships she wanted.
That is what this teaching looks like in a life. The moment she stopped attacking herself and met herself as an ally, the pattern started working for her instead of against her.
What You’ll Receive
- A new way to see the parts you hid, as protectors and allies that turned on you and that hold your desire and life force
- The ability to see how you have been your own worst enemy without attacking yourself for it
- Permission to be curious and playful with every part of yourself, since all of them are part of your team
- The understanding that you are the storyteller and can change the story in any moment
- A way to treat challenge, despair, and everything in your lineage as raw material instead of waves that pull you under
- A practice for receiving on the inhale and clearing on the exhale that you can use any time to start fresh
Questions to Sit With
- Which desire, word, or quality did I push down because I decided it was bad, wrong, or forbidden?
- Where does that exiled part find a crack to show up in my life right now?
- What would happen if I took a breath and got curious about the energy underneath it?
- What do I say to myself when that part shows up, and what would an ally say instead?
- Where am I trying to get rid of the shadow, and what would it mean to let the light and the shadow work together?
So I will leave you with the question I started with. What part of you feels too messy to show, and what might it be holding for you if you stopped fighting it and got curious about what is underneath?
RESOURCES MENTIONED:
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HYPNOSIS RECODE INVITATION:
Are you interesting in booking a session with me? A custom Hypnosis Recode doesn’t try to fix your whole life in one session. We rewrite a core belief that cracked your foundation where your personal power is leaking into old and unconscious agreements. Rewrite a Core Belief to Reset your Foundation and Access your Personal Power. Book your session at https://hypnosisrecode.com