The very thought of healing can be enough to send someone into a destructive downward spiral. The fear of having to go within, look at oneself, and be accountable for healing the traumas that lurk in the darkness of one’s shadow, is a powerfully crippling emotion.
With that in mind, it’s no wonder that so many prefer to avoid shadow work at all costs. It’s much easier to project one’s pain and behavioural patterns onto others. You know, this is where people often step into the role of playing the ‘victim’. It’s where the individual typically feels sorry for themselves, and blames everybody else around them. They have absolutely no awareness to the fact that the behaviour they are recognising in everyone else, is merely a reflection of what they are refusing to recognise within themselves.
The best way to recognise if you’re caught in this ‘victim’ cycle is to ask yourself “Is my life filled with drama?”. Are you constantly feeling aggrieved by the people within your circle? Does the same pattern keep occurring, even with new people that enter your life? Do you often ask yourself “why does this keep happening to me?”. If you’ve answered yes to any of these questions, then you could very well be trapped in a victim mentality.
I know that can be really hard to hear, but let me reframe it for you: People who are stuck in a victim mentality don’t reach that point because they are terrible people. They reach that point because they have suffered some kind of (or a series of) event(s) that has caused emotional pain. Unfortunately, we are not taught how to process and clear pain, but rather, to suppress it. When this pain compounds over time, it builds within the body and causes the individual to subconsciously act out in unhealthy ways. One of those ways is to ‘play the victim’. It’s usually formed because the person in pain realised that when they step into that victim role, other people tend to feel sorry for them and offer some kind of sympathy. The feeling of receiving sympathy, temporarily soothes the ‘victims’ pain – the pain that they don’t know how to soothe for themselves.
The problem is, this relief from being soothed by others is only fleeting, hence why, the person in pain falls into the trap of needing to play the ‘victim’ on a regular basis. The relief becomes addictive, and the person in pain doesn’t know how to gain relief in any other way. This is where the constant drama enters their life, or should I say, where they need to create it. Without any drama, they don’t have any reason to step into the role of being the victim. The double edged sword of this, is that now they are actually inducing the very pain they were initially trying to soothe in the first place. When someone embodies this victim mentality, it can be extremely challenging for them to realise all of this drama is of their own doing. They fear facing their pain more than anything, and they fear having to admit that the number one cause of this pain they hate feeling so much, is actually coming from themselves.
No body likes having to admit that they are at fault in any situation, let alone, having to admit that they are actually the cause of the greatest source of pain within their own lives. This is the terrible human affliction of our ego. An ego that always wants to protect itself from feeling bad, from feeling shame, from feeling pain. Its sole job is to ‘protect’ us from what’s DIRECTLY in front of us. The problem is, decisions made for short-term (instant) relief, does not consider what decisions are best for the long-term as a whole. It is the ego’s limited sight, that ultimately, creates all of the long-lasting suffering and pain within our lives. This is where shadow work comes into play.
Shadow work is everything that is hidden out of the ego’s immediate sight. It’s the parts of ourselves that we are most afraid of, unaware of, or aren’t yet ready to face. You could say that the ego sits in the driver’s seat of our conscious mind, and our soul-self sits in the shadow of our subconscious mind. To get really philosophical, we could label our subconscious mind (shadow-self) as our dark-side, and our conscious mind (ego) as our light-side. The ultimate goal of shadow work is to unearth our dark-side out into the light of our conscious mind. Our pain only comes from the ego’s fear of the unknown – what it can’t see with its limited vision. When you do the shadow work and expose that unknown into the light (the ego’s vision), the ego no longer perceives that pain as a threat. Unearthing the pain is what transmutes it from a negative to a positive. Which is the complete opposite of what society likes to portray.
We are taught to view our dark-side (faults, pain, inadequacies) as something to fear, to ignore, to suppress – to run from! But as I have come to learn after diving deep into my own shadow, the opposite is required. Everything we are taught to fear and avoid, is actually the very thing that will set us free from the pain we are trying so desperately to escape from. Our ego’s advice is great at protecting us from immediate physical danger, but when it comes to protecting us from emotional pain, it sucks! In fact, all the ego does is cause more of the pain we don’t want.
The ego doesn’t just lead us into playing the victim either, it leads us into playing the rescuer, and the persecutor, too. The rescuer is the need to ‘save’ other people, usually someone who is playing the role of ‘victim’. Rescuing provides the same kind of emotional soothing from the emotional pain of feeling rejected, unworthy and unlovable. It also allows the rescuer to avoid looking at themselves, for they are far too busy being caught in the drama of saving someone else. Playing the persecutor, also provides temporary relief from the pain of feeling powerless, vulnerable, weak. If they are the ones doing the ‘bullying’, whether emotionally, or physically, then they are temporarily inflicting the pain instead of receiving it. The egos avoidance of facing immediate pain is also where ALL addictions are formed. Drugs and alcohol provide immediate (and temporary) relief by numbing the pain and creating a euphoric feeling. Same as gambling or sex, it relieves the immediate pain by temporarily creating a short-lived high. When we understand this, we can see how people become so easily addicted. It is NOT the drug, habit or role that is addictive, it’s the need to avoid the emotional pain of unprocessed negative emotions that are trapped in the body. Or rather, hidden in the shadow of one’s subconscious mind.
With such a limited societal understanding of all of this, it’s no wonder we have so many people that are unknowingly allowing their ego to make them terrified at the very thought of healing through shadow work. However, I do hope that after reading this article and gaining a deeper understanding of what is behind your fears, that you can gain the courage to dive into the darkness of your shadow, and unearth what lurks there out into the light – into the sight of your ego’s vision.
For all of the pain that you are afraid of, there really is no greater pain than living in the ignorance of your ego!
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