FACING YOUR SHADOW SIDE

Something that I’m learning more as I get older is that nothing good comes to us until we’re truly ready to receive it, not even brilliant insights or life lessons. We ignore opportunities to grow because the obstacles we have to face may be uncomfortable and the easy option is to avoid them. Sometime we need a bit of a shove in the right direction and this week I got mine. Recently I've been reading a lot about facing your shadow side, vulnerability and shame, but there is a difference in just educating yourself and actually doing the work. I am born perfectionist and control freak (I hate admitting this, it goes against the image I want to portray of myself to outside world), and when life gets hard I clamp down tighter not just on myself but also on my environment and the people around me. The problem with needing to keep absolute control over everything and feeling like the entire world doesn't understand is that it can lead to feelings of resentment, bitterness and frustration. I'm not sure if I work harder at the task in hard or looking like I'm coping with task in hand. Keeping up appearances for long enough becomes exhausting and instead of being responsive to life and the people in it I become reactive and snappy. Unfortunately, the pressure of the expectations and responsibilities that come with holding onto the belief that we have to manipulate our outcomes to turn out in a certain way can be enough to lead people to a breakdown. This is not a sustainable way of life. Using control in a positive way can bring structure and productivity and can help to soothe the day to day anxieties but need for excessive control can be detrimental. Research shows that perfectionism hampers achievement and is correlated with depression, anxiety and addiction. The fear of failing, making mistakes, not meeting people’s expectations, and fear of being criticised keeps us outside of the arena where healthy competition and striving unfolds. Perfectionism is a form of shame, it doesn’t help to avoid shame. Where we struggle with perfectionism, we struggle with shame. We are human. We are raw and real. Just as much as we are capable of doing incredible amazing things, we are capable of slipping into the chaos and drama that goes against what we know leads us to be our best selves. I have always want to block out my darkness, the feelings that lead me to behave the way I do. I act out with what I may believe are good intentions. I justify my actions and look to find blame (myself or others) or I would simply just ignore and shut out the parts of myself I did not like and to appear more innocent than I really am, lie, or tell half truths. The thing is you can only over come your demons by owning your shit. I am not always positive or bubbly or sweet. I am not always fun or polite or kind. I can be angry and bitter, passive aggressive, impulsive and selfish. I have a habit of shutting people out and I have been known to use my femininity to my advantage. I am not proud of these parts of myself and I often have to remind myself that I am human and will make mistakes and that is OK, but to make mistakes at the expense of the feeling of others is not. I lash out and turn nasty to protect myself, that way if I am disliked I believe it will hurt less - it does not, it leads to loneliness, isolation and guilt. It's important to give yourself the space to feel and more importantly the permission to feel. Buy shutting down our feelings you are only setting off a time bomb for them to resurface at an importune time such as welling up on the drive home, getting snappy with co-workers or feeling like you're on the verge of a melt down in the middle of Morrisons. I love a lot more parts of myself than I have ever done but I can't say I love all of me and there are parts I would still rather pretend weren't there but as I continue on this self love journey I am coming to learn that embracing this darkness is another layer of what self-love is really about. It is about learning to tame these dragons so that they don't get out of control when we're not looking. It is about learning to love yourself as a whole not just the pretty parts.