It was Carl Jung who first introduced the idea of the shadow self. He believed it’s a part of our psyche often hidden from ourselves and others. I can sense my shadow self is present when I become angry, judgemental and irritated. I can feel the tension in my body as my lower back becomes painful.
On the flip side of that is the golden shadow. This is a part of me that awakens my positive aspects and qualities. The golden shadow part of me is fully alive in the present moment as I choose how I will respond to the world within and around me.
Learning how to integrate all parts of my inner world is the work of Internal Family Systems. It was Richard Schwartz who first identified and created a model to describe this way of understanding our behaviours.
Our minds are made up of different sub-personalities with their own viewpoints, interests, memories and qualities – we call these parts.
Each part has a positive or benevolent intention, even if its actions are counterproductive. How many times I’ve caught myself admonishing and shaming myself for a seeming mistake? It’s a constant process of self-loathing.
Parts are built to deal with external circumstances, act as a defence mechanism or satisfy a need.
Often, these parts of us are not aware of each other and they can fight with one another.
They are stuck in the time they were first created. They don’t know we have matured, and the context of our lives have changed unless we recognise them and help them to integrate, in a healthy way, into our lives as they are now.
These parts carry the full range of emotions and language and can be experienced as thoughts, feelings, sensations, images, words, sounds, movements and bodily sensations.
When we’re not present, we are in part identified with a part.
The three types of extreme parts
Managers – They play a protective role, handling how we interact with the world to protect us from being hurt or experiencing painful traumatic feelings or experiences.
They tend to be dominant and have as much influence in our lives as possible. They believe they know what’s best for us.
I have worked with my manager who shows up as the voice of, ‘work harder. You’re not good enough. Who do you think you are?”
It’s important to compassionately and firmly regain the active and compassionate leadership position. Examples, are the controller, the critic, the perfectionist, the sceptic…..
Exiles – they are those parts of us that have experienced pain, shame, fear, loneliness, dependency, grief or trauma. Managers and firefighters try to protect these exiled parts from coming out into the open ie: into consciousness to prevent this pain from surfacing again. Exiles carry whatever the pain is and tend to go into hiding and need gentle coercing and encouragement to come out.
Firefighters – they deal with exiles when the exile risks breaking out, actually does break out and demands attention. Firefighters protect us from hurt or shame. They manifest as impulsive and
addictive behaviours. We often judge them harshly, but we should be grateful that they are protecting our exiled selves.
In doing this work, the goal is to increase awareness and to use parts when we need them, rather than allowing them to take over and drown out other parts which could be useful resources, but which don’t get the necessary airtime and attention.
With compassionate enquiry, I introduce you to your inner parts. Instead of shaming them, you can heal them and honour them for protecting you in the only way they know how. Through a process of reassigning their roles, you can begin to deeply connect with your golden shadow, reassigning each part a new role in your life.