What is the Shadow Self?

So much of us are moving into a new year feeling all bright and shiny and ready to tackle anything that comes our way. However, we forget that as the year continues, and the newness wears off, we may be faced with those same issues, patterns and beliefs that hold us back.

If we don't give ourselves time to during the year to be in our dark spaces, things might feel like we get stuck or never truly move forward.

That being said, many of us in the new age community are taught to focus on the positive thoughts to attract what we want.

And yes, to get in the "vortex," so to speak, one must be able to shift one's thoughts to high vibrational feelings. Yet, we need to know how to take into account the darker times.

So, how do we do that?

The Shadow Self

According to psychology, the shadow self is, "...the side of your personality that contains all the parts of yourself that you don't want to admit to having. It is at first an unconscious side. It is only through effort to become self-aware that we recognize our shadow."

In the "shadow self," we hold beliefs we may have held onto from childhood, ideas about how the world works that we would very much like to change (i.e. how we view money, relationships, success is all here), and it even comes up by how we view people.

Whenever you are triggered by another's behavior, looks, or persona (both positively and negatively), this is a direct reflection of things you are holding onto in your shadow self.

For example, if you are triggered by how a person acts--let's say it's someone who acts grumpy and you wish they would just be a little more positive at times--this is a reflection of an unhealed part of you. Perhaps you grew up with a person who was constantly pessimistic and you never forgave them. Perhaps you don't want to admit that you are actually quite pessimistic yourself (way you talk to yourself in your mind or the first initial thoughts), but you try your hardest to cover that part of you up and appear optimistic.

These are places inside of us that need healing, so that we may grow into the person we truly are and especially in order to hear our intuition. Without healing the trauma, without forgiving the past, without going into the darker spaces of things we may not want to admit about our personality, we may never really hear the intuition loud and clear-- or we may hear it but not know how to trust it.

Ready to honor these dark spaces and heal them?

Watch this week's YouTube Episode and learn 3 Ways You Can Honor Your Shadow Self.