The Sunny Side of Your Shadow

When you think of your psychological shadow, you may think of a terrible, dark, and even evil twin inside. And you would be wrong. There is a way to see a sunny side to your shadow.

What is the Shadow?

Your shadow is made up of qualities you disowned or repressed because your parents or society judged you negatively for having them. When others who were important in your life made judgments that you were “bad” or “wrong” for behaving or thinking in a certain way, you took the hint and tried to psychologically hide those traits out of sight. So, even if you still displayed these traits, you no longer registered that you did because you hid them away outside your conscious awareness. Nonetheless, they will show up in your beliefs and behaviors even if you’re not aware of them or work hard not to admit to them.

Are All Shadow Qualities Bad?

Interestingly, “shadow” qualities aren’t necessarily “bad” or undesirable in everyone’s book. They were according to your parents or society, but that doesn’t mean that the whole world agrees that no one should have these traits. This means, may have very useful and wonderful qualities stored in your shadow. That’s why one way to discover some of your shadow qualities is to look at qualities you admire in others. Most likely, you have that same quality. For example, if you admire someone because they are extremely kind, you probably are too, but may not admit to it because being kind was seen as a weakness in your family, so you hid your kindness in your Shadow.

To clarify, you may have a quality that others criticize you for but you don’t care that they criticized you – you like that aspect of you. That’s not a Shadow trait because you’re consciously aware of it and don’t try to hide or repress it.

Your shadow shapes your perception of the world. One way it does this is through a process called “projection”, which happens when you judge others. When you catch yourself judging others for how they show up, this is a clue that you haven’t accepted a similar quality in yourself. These value judgments can be either positive (praise) or negative (a criticism).

The Importance of Becoming Aware of Your Shadow

Becoming aware of your shadow is important if you want to become a more authentic individual. For authenticity, it’s to your benefit to learn to express all aspects of who you are in ways that don’t harm others. That is, all qualities have benefit – even those you’ve been taught are negative. So, before you can get gung-ho about identifying and owning your Shadow qualities, you must become vulnerable enough to own up to them. This can be difficult because your inner critic will most likely kick in to criticize you.

Embracing Your Shadow Qualities

Here are some things you can do to learn more about your shadow and eventually embrace its qualities as a part of you.

Start seeing qualities that may be in your shadow. Think of things your parents scolded you not to do, like:

•  Don’t be so/such a . . . (crybaby, slob, stubborn, defiant, disobedient, girly, a tomboy . . . .)

• Don’t you dare . . . (talk back to me, disobey me, eat that candy before dinner . . .)

Think about:

• Qualities or traits others judged or criticized you for in the past.

• Qualities or traits you still judge in yourself.

• Things you stop yourself from doing to avoid looking vulnerable in front of others.

Once you identify possible Shadow qualities, try these steps to accept it:

1. Think of a Shadow quality you’ve identified.

2. Think about how it showed up and negatively affected you in the past.

3. Then, reflect on how that quality, despite a negative effect, was actually beneficial in the long run. For example:

Quality	Negative Affect How the Quality Has Negatively Affected You	Positive Affect How the Quality Has Helped You
Stubborn	Kept me stuck in my own way of thinking and kept me from developing closer relationships with some people	Kept me true to myself and allowed me to persist through difficult times
Disobedient	Was grounded, restricted, or punished in some way	Helps me to be free of what others think of me

To accept yourself completely the way you are, see if you can accept your Shadow qualities and focus on their positive effects. Heck, some of the qualities you’re hiding in your Shadow aren’t even that bad: many people might think they’re just fine.

Once you surface a Shadow quality, channel it in the most positive way and enjoy the sunny side of your Shadow.