My Shadow is reflected in you

You can be a smart, thoughtful and an all round kind and considerate sort, but your monkey brain is still out to get you. So many of us are not aware that it can run the show, if we don’t get some awareness and even more importantly strategies in place to keep it in check. Your monkey brain, is quick, sharp and guided by the dark that you won’t admit is a much you ....as your positive caring sweet self.

OWN UP

You may as well own the fact that you aren’t perfection, no one is... inability to acknowledge your dark side is as far as I can see, rather foolish. Dark, I mean, what is that really? Where you don’t kowtow to some of the b.s. rules of society or what your mother thinks or what your mates say? No I don’t think it’s any of that or that is a pretty trite and unimportant aspect of it. It’s the bits of you that you hate and only very reluctantly admit to (admitting to it is a good thing, but a very hard thing, accepting it harder still but yet you must try.)

I’M SO GOOD

Quite possibly you are so busy being that great person ... trying to be a supportive friend perhaps or helping someone you think might be struggling ... you are striving to prove to everyone around you how fabulous you are, at your job, as a friend, a spouse, a parent or the many roles you inhabit, day in day out. You’re not looking and you certainly hope they aren’t looking at what an angry, jealous, miserable, lazy, petty, immature mess you also are. Because that’s being human. You maybe secretly enjoy doing “the wrong thing” too, I know for a fact I do..pretty standard human behaviour...But we really don’t want to look at all that. Problem is if we don’t look at it... we can get into all sorts of strife. Our shadow can run us.

HIDDEN

Our shadow can lead us to be drawn into situations we might be better off avoiding... we can be drawn to the, of course, unaknowledged shadows in others. That can be a recipe for disaster particularly if they are even less willing to admit their shadows, and overreact to behaviour in you… that they will not or can not see is part of themselves. The stronger the condemnation the greater likelihood you are bringing up for them something that is part of their make -up, but they don’t want to own it.

TRIGGERED

Combine that with your monkey brain’s lightning reaction speed ... someone calls you out on your behaviour...well apart from the fact it is probably masking that they have potential to behave in that way too....you’ll raise hell trying to mitigate the fact that your shadow was peeking out.... NO!!!! “That’s not me I’m a good friend, spouse mum etc etc!!!” Only when you are so confronted you might move away... and really take it as an opportunity to face yourself... it’s not easy...not easy at all... but it’s part of being a human. It’s really worth looking at, admitting and embracing those unacknowledged parts of ourselves.

EACH OTHER’S MIRROR

It would be great if our shadows could come out to play... we could discuss the fact that we are actually mirrors for each other in many ways. You storm off because someone was angry and berated you really nastily.........aren’t you as angry with them... when you walk away and never speak again? You think you are taking the high ground but actually you are not behaving any differently from them, you are just running from your shadow in a different way. Wouldn’t it be better to unpack all the stuff running us from behind the scenes... and stop giving our monkey brains a chance to mess up?