Our shadow selves make bad decisions 2
27th Jun 2009
Hello lovely people
But when we get thrown into a traumatic situation, we instantly forget all those ranges of responses. We forget all the life experiences that helped us outgrow our shadow selves. We go right back to being the child that had that first experience, and we apply the same coping mechanism without even thinking. And it does not work, because you and the situation are both quite different.
Instead of having those sets of behaviour come to the rescue like the previous time, they make everything worse. And this is where you make a decision that is probably perfect for the old shadow self, but disastrous for the person you have since become.
You decide that the only way to deal with your trauma is to get rid of the environment that is to blame, and you move house to a familiar area of which you have good memories from a previous time. You wake up in a neighbourhood that has changed, among people that are quite different. You feel even lonelier than before and discover that everything you ran away from is still with you, ready to be faced when you are ready.
Or you decide to simply ignore all your emotions and get on with life. But things get worse because you develop health problems that can get quite serious. You also get into a relationship with a totally unsuitable person. It takes a while for you to realise that you have added to your problems, and then there is the task of getting out of the relationship
Or you outwardly accept blame for the entire mess and you do not tell anyone that you are so angry at some people. You lie awake at night, feeling guilty. You really feel like a victim when on top of everything you develop health problems. The easy way out is alcohol or medication, because they both dull the emotional pain – until you wake up the next day feeling rubbish, with even more guilt and anger.
Our shadow selves are very convenient when we initially use them. Later in life they are only convenient when we are able to recognise them and use them as a measure of our spiritual growth since we first needed them. The shadow selves also remind us of all the issues that we still need to deal with.
This is why traumatic situations should in fact be seen as blessings – they help us clear out the spiritual stuff that we no longer need, so that we can move on to the exciting stuff and into the Light.
Knowledge is power. When we identify our dominant shadow self (and we all have some of each in our arsenal) we are already in a strong position to confront the underlying limiting decisions and remove the barriers that we placed there for ourselves.
We can run, but we cannot hide – especially from ourselves.
Please leave a comment if you feel inspired.
Love and Light
Elsabe
