Shadow Work and Childhood Trauma

So this video is going to be a little bit different and it's going to be different and kind of difficult, well, not that a lot of my videos aren't difficult, but what I'm trying to say is that there's a dark side to our

childhood

. The symptoms of

trauma

and our problems, maybe my video editor can include some Halloween music or some lightning that indicates those things and I'm trying to be funny here to diminish these things and this video will be about not taking our dark side too oh really. accepting it, which is actually the way to go, is something called

shadow

work

and I'm making fun of how there seems to be a vibe about how

shadow

work

has to involve darkness or wetness, which is a bit of a stretch.

For me, you know a lot of my videos cover the dynamics of the abusive family system, our symptoms, our problems and the things we're trying to fix and what that process might look like, and it's important to feel seen and validated in those things because if you have the option. At the beginning of our

childhood

we would not have chosen any of this mess we are going through, however, there is also a dark side to many of us. To me, we can be intense, we can be defensive, we can be neurotic, we can be. negative, we can even be vindictive, things can come out of nowhere for us and we can get scared of those who are close to us including ourselves, we can control, we can be very pessimistic, of course those things are there for us too, It is part of being human. and I think to be human is to have some kind of wound that we all have to deal with at some point.

This is not directly in line with surgeons and people researching Shadow work, which is largely rooted in Union psychology. I think the work, as I understand it, is to discover our unconscious, which is the main role in good psychotherapy, and accept that we have some difficult things and ideas that drive us to accept that we have difficult behaviors and thoughts, the difficult part is I. I think because of shame and giving a good image of ourselves to the world, something known as the Persona, we came up with this Persona or mask if you like to survive and it creates resistance to having a dark side or resistance to knowing our flaws or Admitting our flaws, being a people pleaser, for example, is a Persona we came up with to survive and it's hard to be criticized for it because we think that's totally who we are, when that's not exactly true, looking ahead.

The depth of a The advanced way is to see why people like us and at the beginning of our recovery we are usually really disconnected from all those reasons about why we like that Person, like when someone tells a child to

trauma

tize Survivor. I've heard this a lot. that are intense um, it's hard to be okay with that because the inner child just interprets it as maybe just criticism or we've made a horrendous mistake or it seems like someone is picking on us again when we're just trying to do our thing. . The best thing is that those are the feelings that arise when we are told that we are intense, but the reality is that many of us are super intense.

I take things very seriously because of that shame rooted in childhood trauma that we might shy away from if we're told we're intense. Like what do you know, you know or you don't know what it's like to be me or I'll do better and I'll never be intense again. I'm going to be perfect from now on, those are generally some of the common reactions we can have. They tell you very intensely but there is no learning in the sense that it is more of the same trying to hide it or keep it, those are more strategies to make it not true to ourselves, so let's look at some examples.

Through four behaviors and ideas that have to do with our shadow, I am going to give some examples from my own life that you will probably resonate with and many of these four will overlap with each other, so it could be a little bit confusing, so I'll go over the example of where it comes from in our childhood and other ways it could manifest and towards the end of the video I'll give some ideas on how you can work on shadow issues in the form of prompts, so as always, if If you identify with being neurodivergent, you may need to include it in these examples, which can be tricky.

I'm giving it. I'm neurotypical, so I'm giving it from that perspective as best I can. focus on it from the perspective of childhood trauma, if you can do that, so here we go, here's number one, it's something I call cautious mistrust that comes out of nowhere and is ingrained and really is the shadow problem. around trust, so in the middle of my own trauma work I started dating this amazing woman, we were very young, about 22 years old and we were in that glorious five to six week period of falling in love, that beginning of a relationship in which we work together.

At this restaurant we met and one night we were getting along well, but she called me one night and told me she had to cancel the meeting with me because she had a friend who was in trouble and I had this immediate trigger and I told her. she we broke up right there and in that moment I felt all this disdain for her that came out of nowhere and there was this automatic immediate experience that I don't know where it came from and it was a huge unwarranted reaction to the situation it tells us that we are going through a trigger like when the punishment doesn't fit the crime and there's this classic childhood trauma.

Survivor Vibe is that I was like you're dead to me, you're dead. To me, Fredo was like a mafia and the poor poor woman was confused. She tried to dissuade me. She tried to reconcile, but there was really no turning back for me. I was overly self-righteous, which is a sign of being triggered very triggered, and as a side note, this caution overlaps with some other topics on my list, such as later when I talk about being self-involved, so occasionally, in the circumstances correct triggers, I would do this highly suspicious angry thing with people here. Um, that came out sideways, you may have heard me talk before about how our trauma comes out sideways and I still regret doing this to this person and she was really lovely and wonderful and it was probably very confusing and hurtful to her and again we were fine, so this came out of nowhere, which is really the point I keep emphasizing that this Shadow piece came out of nowhere, it came from the unconscious in therapy.

I was able to get help to find out that every time I felt like someone close to me was putting me down or manipulating me from a place where part of my trigger felt like they were playing with him like I like you, but that has its limits or has a shelf life and here is the real me, I really don't like it that much. it was probably you that triggered me and I would get really angry and feel self righteous at those times so where does this come from in my own childhood I grew up with a lot of emotional neglect I grew up with alcoholism and really inconsistent parenting and consistent bonding and when I was a girl, like in elementary school, my mother would leave for a whole day to go drinking or do whatever and sometimes she wouldn't tell us where she was going and our father would sometimes do the same to gamble so we could stay. lonely a lot or worse if she left us with him and he was home because he was really a nightmare to deal with so this would also happen during things like we were promised something like yes we are going to see E.T tomorrow I promise.

We will do it and I remember those days waiting a whole day like the window waiting for my mother to take home for about a good eight or ten hours. I am five or four years old and then the time had already passed to go see the movie or do the thing to come back to the present as an adult, when my inner child felt that others were giving more importance to something else, the knives would come out because it would be my body that remembered exactly what it was like to be with my parents and their addictions always come last , so that is the trauma that surrounds it and for humans those things are forgotten, the things from our childhood are usually forgotten or put away or just survive, but the body and the inner child or the shadow, everything is relative, it remember, but the good thing is that in our current life we ​​can put more anger and mistrust and those big reactions in those close to us in the present because it is safer to do it with them than with them, say my mother at that time, you know that we can be.

As punitive as it is, my mentor Amanda Curtin says that we put this childhood trauma on others, because you know it is that way. I would never tell my mother how scared or disappointed I was for fear of losing her even more, but we can put that mess of misplaced emotions on friends, lovers, and family in the present because it is safer to do so and they will be more available to do so. , sometimes with another reason to be more in tune and more aware of things. in our Shadow Self type, other examples of how this problem, the trust problem, could manifest, it could manifest by being obsessed with yourself, with infidelity, like with your partner, it could come from keeping track of similar invitations or inclusion with people around him, it could manifest. in the way of sabotaging, like leaving them before they leave you, things again, thinking about trust or building a case of how they don't really love you, is another version of this or not fully delving into situations, I'm playing it's safe and superficial just by not wanting to get into situations where trust is like a risk, so the first one is about issues of cautious trust, the second one, as I mentioned in the introduction, is about intensity, what I call intensity taking .

It's too serious, coming out of nowhere, you can probably already see how those two things are related, like number one and number two, so at work I often got comments about being too nervous, when in reality it wasn't that important o I took things too seriously and even after a lot of trauma and group work, I remember a good supervisor I had in this strange initial job in Finance that I had for a split second and how this great guy, the supervisor, told me He asked me questions about something that I would interpret as an attack and one day he really caught my attention.

You know, it's actually very useful when we like and respect people who criticize us about some things that contribute to greater safety and type of landing or assimilate it about how we do things, so it's useful if you let it, it's useful if you like when you get feedback from them and he asked me a question one day and I got really defensive and answered it. of this place, he thinks like Beaker from The Muppets, you know, like he got a little anxious and he said, "I'm just asking, like you get excited when I just need to know things and we had a pretty good relationship and I'd worked hard. enough at that moment that I could listen to it or not take myself too seriously at that moment and even change my vibe around it or my intensity around it, but I had heard it before, although I had heard it from my coworkers in so long. . in other places and they were like, man, it's just quiet, it's just no big deal, so what that could happen for me in childhood is when we were growing up, we lived like a lot of toxic families do in survival mode and it's a shame. , you know, going to another family.

In the house of a member who was better groomed than us, you had to look better than you really were and hide the shame or hide the condition of the house you lived in. If you grew up in chaos and poverty, you had to really clean up. and preparing things for the company even though the house still looks a bit chaotic and unkempt, so it was necessary to look at people in a certain way. This is how shame manifests itself in our lives. You know if people discovered things when you were trying to hide. Things like: "You know the domestic violence that would happen or the insanity or drunkenness that you grew up with.

We were trying to cover up the shame of our parents' lifestyle and dysfunction, so in some ways you lived on a boundary that moved Let's say, in my school years, like primary school, adolescence, high school, you were terrified if someone called you something like a bully or a teacher because you felt like you weren't managing to maintain a good appearance, this is complicated, how shame manifests itself in other places and you don't. You don't have to grow up in a family like I did and if you have this thing that looks good on paper, you have to look amazing, that's another way we can be intense about those things. because you're a bad person if you don't like getting A's or looking good or whatever, so um, so there was this energy for me that's like please don't let anyone find out what my home life is really like and things like homework. or what you wear. uh whether you were cool or not or what you said in class, all of those things had a lot at stake for kids who are being abused at home, so other examples of how this intensity or this neuroticism might seem like it's all really nice, you know? normal yesyou are growing, but when there is a lack of security it can look like perfectionism, so in one way we can be neurotic, in another or perfectionism that is based on not looking stupid, another version of the same, being more focused on things like things They are done well. like being controlling versus being empathetic or calm, you know, putting too much on the line, like what you bring to a party and how you look matters too much, everyone falls under that kind of intensity that comes from childhood trauma and if we're not connected to that if we are not really connected with making that conscious. um, it's not like we're not going to learn from that.

You know, I mean, we'll keep doing the same things, so let's move on to number three. huge one here is taking it personally, hurting, that's kind of what I'm talking about, um, this one is so big, this one is super difficult because our families often use our sensitivity when we were children or just how we are wired as a way of Gaslight and there is a paradox that we become very sensitive to criticism because when we grew up, criticism was often very direct and very personal. It was personal, so the feedback for me and I guess for you too, if you grew up with a toxicity that was really out of place, oftentimes, childhood trauma survivors, there's often a trigger of feeling like you're getting kicked when you're already you are depressed.

That's what feels very personal about feedback, so there's some overlap and the two previous examples I gave. I took the rescheduling of that night with me very personally. I took that boss's questions very personally because I felt in my body that when someone lets you down. it's a message about you it's a personal message about you that's what it feels like that's not reality but that's what it feels like or if a boss was asking something their question was like they thought I was incomplete and now they needed to check on me. or monitor everyone very personally speaking so related to that in my groups and my childhood trauma groups from time to time I will do this exercise asking the group how they respond to feedback positive feedback negative feedback or neutral feedback positive feedback can seem manipulative and it's not really true and we can take that personally negative feedback that we're more familiar with, unfortunately we can get defensive and take it all or take it all, which is also taking it personally and taking it personally doesn't always mean rejecting it.

It can mean absorbing it with resentment, believing they are right or whatever, but still having personal feelings about it and neutral feedback is actually the worst because it makes us feel very distrustful, like they are hiding something from us and we can take it personally. . like if you ask your partner how's the spaghetti I met you know I made for you and they say, yeah, that's good spaghetti, you know, we can even take that personally because we think they're lying to us or something. Anyway, I hope that makes sense, so where does this come from for me in childhood.

I share this in another video and I will put the description of this incident with my mother in the video description link and this incident happened around um. like an award ceremony at the end of elementary school, in short, at the end of elementary school, in sixth grade I got the class clown award, um, I wasn't really interested in being a good student or in sports, he was interested in making people laugh to achieve this. attention and it worked, you know, I could have a little bit of a social life and make a teacher laugh or annoy them as a way to feel like I mattered or that I had an impact on others when that wasn't true at home and in my My mother came to this ceremony half drunk or drunk and she got mad at me when we left there for having Ward look so stupid, which was like something I was actually proud of, but it was like a reflection of her despite the feeling of shame that my friends got sports or academic awards so she really confronted me about it and my mom made this very personal like I was making a fool of her when in reality I had no structure or parenting. help with grades, it was always better that you get in shape and not be a loser, that was the extent of parenting and that is a great example, but a smaller one and one of them in the more daily examples where my mother would do it personally if we needed help from her, like going to a store to do a school project for school and we were a burden and they really let us know in a very personal and embarrassing way, there was like verbal abuse, there was shame intense, simply you.

I know how to shame a child for being a child and blame them for things that are out of their control, all very personal that you will probably relate to, and this took a lot of analysis in therapy to realize that the alcoholic blames others around them. due to its highly chaotic character. and dysfunctional lifestyle and the impact they have on people, so some other examples of how this problem manifests itself to others. Taking it personally, it can feel like keeping score, being passive-aggressive, or waiting for your partner to make a mistake so you can pay it forward. them when they gave you feedback about Good Times, another interprets when you see other coworkers or other friends have relationships that don't involve you taking it personally, as if it were something about you feeling that someone will get recognition or attention and you No.

It can seem a little personal, there can be competitiveness, you know, comparing yourself to others and having stories in your mind, it can seem very personal, when you see other people getting opportunities and you don't, as a side note, my mother acted like that there. It was a conspiracy against her in the world, she took the world very personally if her neighbor got a new car or went on vacation. I can still hear my mom saying that it must be really nice to have things like that handed to her and she couldn't. connect her alcohol use or her codependency or the disorder in her life as things may be preventing her from having more abundance or more healthy things in her life and she took the fortune of others, you could relate to this as one of your parents if they did it.

This, you know, she would take other people's fortunes or, actually, that she would do better in life in terms of functioning. She took it very personally, which we kind of absorbed as her perspective on the world, from my late teens to my 20s. She had a rather disgruntled view of people my age who grew up in better or better-functioning families and had better opportunities. It must be nice to have parents to take you home for the holidays when I'm really out there, you know, with no family. of something, so I'm not ruling out different socioeconomic factors here.

You know, I waited tables at various restaurants outside of places like Harvard and MIT and served kids who landed at those universities while I collected their used plates and took them to them. more ketchup, you know, and it seemed very personal to me, but that wasn't really the truth. Little by little we can stop putting ourselves down or taking it personally or focusing too much on the justice of the world and not worrying about it as much. The world definitely didn't have a conspiracy behind my downfall, but it felt that way during the time when the reality is that there was some sort of conspiracy in the world about my success much later, so it was number three to take it personally. and I hope. that it made sense for the number four to be self-consumed.

I have labeled it as essentially a Shadow problem when it comes to the Ego, we could almost see this one as the culmination of the last three, trusting to take it personally. Being intense or neurotic, being consumed, I think means operating in what Eckhart Tolle describes as the pain body, which means you're operating from a place of pain rather than a place of presence, it doesn't mean you have narcissism. Personality Disorder I get that question a lot, it means we may have some kind of narcissistic traits because being self consumed by childhood trauma means being in a void or a bubble and we grew up in bubbles that we grew up in. vacuum cleaners, especially if you were neglected, so what do I mean by that image?

A coworker you could identify with. You could have worked with people like this image. A coworker who feels like the place is behind them and they are a little nervous, they have an advantage, they feel that things feel too personal in meetings or not being invited when other coworkers go out to lunch, they feel that it's personal that everyone around them comes from better relationships or better families, which is probably not so true, maybe they feel that the place makes it personal and they get intense with projects or they don't trust that the new person won't will take their place or get them fired.

Anyone who associates with someone like that. What I'm trying to say there is that that coworker is really unconsciously behaving just as he did in his family of origin, for example, as a scapegoat, there is that pain body that we could see in another person or what is operating from another example. Have you ever gone to a social gathering? Maybe you're not in a good place and you assume there's this kind of energy and you feel like people can see right through you and that's exhausting for you, that's what childhood trauma does. for us in terms of being consumed by ourselves, which means that we really feel convinced that it just feels like there's a conspiracy and that people know how horrible we are or something, so when I think about being myself -consumed means to me it means being convinced that people think of you a certain way when in reality they don't think about us at all since they are only focused on themselves and what they have in front of them is my experience.

Another way to look at it is how this happened for me: I had the feeling that by being around others I felt like everyone knew how terrible I was in college classes or in the jobs I had in friendship circles or in bands in the clubs. that he played I was always acting unconsciously having this to prove myself to people who I assumed thought I was kind of terrible while having the belief that that's what people really thought of me, which wasn't true. Another way this happened for me was when I started therapy and shortly after sobriety, I was already into it to the point where it was really bothering people.

I had to let everyone know I was figuring things out and I couldn't stop talking about it. I had to let everyone know that they probably had terrible families too. And I would really go out of my way to let them know that that's big. I guess I probably still do that, but this was really different in recovery. There is a period where I am a little in a cloud of pain or a little intoxicated. with a new healthy reality, but being self-absorbed also comes with a lack of awareness of how you impact others and how you make them feel.

What's a little scary is that it's a lot like our family, so we learn to be ourselves. consumed by self-consumed people and it's a strange note Looking back Being self-consumed during that period of my life when early recovery was like having a self for the first time, it's like I was trying it on for the first time and had an opinion on things and I had a way of being in the world, but it highlights how we can be so absorbed in our own stories and our own things and our own pain and our own uniqueness that we can't really see beyond ourselves and then as a note aside about being selfish, which makes it complicated if we are struggling with dissociation, that is, being in our heads without knowing how to really read people in the moment and perhaps if we are dominating a conversation with someone because we are anxious or We are nervous and do not allow reciprocity because we already feel uneasy about being there or what we are sharing is another version of the self-consumption type.

Here are some other examples of how Being Consumed manifests in our current lives. I really want you to take this in because it's been a big deal to disagree with people, and I say this from experience as a pretty self-consumed young man. I would stay away from positive experiences. or the social Mira are neutral and in a certain way triggered and in this, what was all that? What did they mean by that? Why did they look at me like that, blah, blah, blah, blah and all these stories in my head or like damn, that person was?

Totally uninterested in anything I had to say when in reality that person who provoked me might have had something like that or if we're at a party maybe he drank too much or was just worried about something and Being consumed by oneself means making things about yourself, It's a clue if you notice that if you are often disconnected or a little bewildered with others, your inner child might be interpreting or reading too much from that place of self-consuming pain or them. We are all idiots, that could also be areality, but maybe they can't all be idiots.

You know there is. I'm not trying to take away a present piece, but if you feel really disconnected from people or bewildered by people who are like that. could be a clue, move on to another example of self-consumption consumed in the present is being too aware of what others might be thinking about you, we think too much about pleasing people when reading that you were not appreciated or recognized That is already enough evidence that You didn't like them enough or didn't provide enough in a good enough way. That's another version of being a little self-indulgent. Another example is noticing that you feel the need to connect with others from a place of negativity or complaining or Things like gossip, a lot of people do that, but do you notice that you connect with others in certain ways, like oversharing or pessimism?

It's another version of being consumed by yourself. Being exhausted by people can also be a sign of being consumed by yourself, like even people you might want to be around, you know jerks are exhausting, so I'm not talking about that, but what here is self-consumption is being self-consumed, it is being in some way dominated by your trauma and our inner child that we feel. like we need to present ourselves as wonderful and full of energy and do it great instead of just showing up feeling like we have to pretend to be social or hide all the disgust or shame that it means to be in that kind of pain body in a common situation in The my partner's work where one wants to have more of a social life as a couple and the other wants to isolate themselves and have few social connections, they may be consumed in the way they think being sociable is a waste of time. or distraction from living in your head is kind of a thing, so now that I've probably discouraged you, let's go to some places on how to work on it, so what does it all mean and how to work on it?

Data work and acceptance of our things and acceptance. ourselves and immersing ourselves in these topics gradually will result in the following list: Number one is taking ourselves much less seriously. um, it's actually very nice, but don't take that to mean that I belittle you or that you have to pretend not to be bothered by the things that I just did enough work on trauma to realize that you're just not interested or that you no longer need go to those intense places. Number two is that you are less bothered, provoked or offended by people, places and things.

It feels less personal. Well, number three is that you see the humanity in others because you've accepted more of the humanity in yourself, which is really nice. You are less consumed with yourself. Number four is that you don't have to hide negative emotions or problems as much. more normalized for you because you have embraced your Humanity a little more. Number five is that you are growing into a more mature and balanced place, which is really nice. Number six is ​​that you have appreciated that growth and are even grateful that you are not. You don't operate from those old places anymore and the final number seven is that you're largely uninterested in failures and problems and what people do and don't do, which is really good.

Here are some suggestions or ideas for journaling. So that you investigate any or all of those four problems, whichever number one you identify with, write down the problems that the four problems really resonate with again, if you trust to take it personally, be selfish or be intense, write specific examples of these manifestations. in your current life, how they might arise unconsciously. Number two is what comes up for you around these specific examples. Do you experience shame, regret, or anger for being selfish or intense? Remember, the more we judge and the more we repress, the further we distance ourselves from having any mastery over it or any learning.

I still feel some regret about those trust issues or my reactions, but I can also hold space and understanding about how my trauma led me to those reactions, so The third overarching message is: How is it possible that the problem in Is the one you are thinking of among the four or the four because you grew up in the midst of abuse? How could you have been conditioned to think intensely in survival mode? How did your heart break? around trust, think about those questions about being, you know, that someone cares about, um, our parents, how they made it personal versus using healthy parenting, um, like being made to feel like a burden when you know that they signed up to be parents, what made you have to get in your head and be so defensive, so those are some questions and the last one is what prevents you from having compassion for yourself in admitting these issues.

You know this, despite obvious reasons. What specifically feels difficult to answer. accept or admit these problems, for many of us it is difficult to admit things like we spend our lives trying not to make them happen, like the intensity is trying to cover up the shame, so we try to do things so perfectly and you know that's how it is. It's hard to admit that, related to that, we put a lot of energy into not being like our parents, so it's hard to admit flaws when we really try to do the best we can and try to be a better person coming from where we come from, so those were the journal prompts and if you would like access to extended prompts on these topics, check out my monthly Healing Community membership.

It's right here where prompts on specific topics are sent every Monday to members and there's also a bi-monthly live question session. with me sessions via Zoom, as well as all the access to my childhood trauma, online courses, work doing inner child work, everything is up to par. Shadow work can be a kind of surrender or admission to things like being intense or self-consuming and this kind of scary because in our family of origin giving up or admitting fault meant you were a bad person and that's not what it's about, too. you have to have a good sense of humor about it, so that was helpful for me.

I wouldn't be here if I was still defending myself tooth and nail against my flaws and gradually accepting them actually helped me resolve them and no one died when I admitted I didn't die when I admitted my intensity or my aggression or my negativity. but because of shame and working our way up to our real integrated Persona, it can be very, very difficult that way. Finally, the most difficult moments I have had in my recovery. I really want you to take this into account when I had a sponsor or a therapist or a group therapy partner or a girlfriend question me about how I would act from these dark places with these issues and how it affected others;

It might have been the hardest thing to take in his comments, but there was a part of me. That I knew they were right, but the pain engulfed me and I felt like I was being kicked again while I was on the ground because I was trying to do the best I could and that's all one big dramatic story in my head at that moment. And again, as kids, we put so much energy into adapting and hiding things and surviving and trying to be this way or that way that when someone says hey, what you're doing isn't really working and you're having problems, it feels personal. again or it feels like a failure, which is also not true, so you get more maturity and more freedom from not taking these things so seriously or ourselves so seriously, which is a little counterintuitive to our bodies as we had to take everything seriously to survive so I hope this was helpful.

I'd love to hear your thoughts in the comments and, as always, may you be filled with loving kindness. Be fine. May you be at peace and at ease.