Sometimes, our anxiety and negative thoughts result from not addressing our shadow self, or doing our inner child work.
The Third Part of Self-Love
I've been talking about prioritizing ourselves and loving ourselves well. First, boundaries: keeping them where they need to be, in a place that gives us success without keeping us too tied down. Then, strengths: knowing and using them in our day-to-day lives, so we can feel real fulfillment and see a real decrease in anxiety and negative thinking.
This week is tougher: shadow work, sometimes called inner child work.
I Didn't Think This Applied to Me
I remember the first time I heard about inner child work and shadow work. I thought, I'm not sure that applies to me. My life's been pretty easy. I haven't gone through that much. I think I'm fine. I don't have a lot of dark sides, I'm just nice and bubbly and happy.
I was wrong. So, so wrong.
Why We All Have a Shadow Self
We all have a shadow side, and we all have an inner child. Every one of us was a child once, and every one of us has suffered some kind of trauma. It could be neglect or abuse, or it could be something less dramatic. There are countless kinds of trauma that might've happened to you, and that have happened to me.
As adults, we can look back on those events with new eyes, new understanding, and a new ability to process them. But when things happen to us as children, we process them as a child would, and children are very focused on themselves. The long-term result is a lack of love for self. We blame ourselves for what we went through, and we keep blaming ourselves as we grow older, often subconsciously, the whole time.
The solution is to dig into your shadow self and do some inner child work. I'll give you a simple tool that's helped me start this process. As always, I recommend therapy as an excellent container for walking through what you experienced as a child.
The Photo Exercise
When I'm working with a client and I see there's inner child work to be done, I typically recommend this to start:
Find a photo of yourself at an age where you felt innocent, beautiful, and wonderful, whatever age that was for you.
Keep that photo in front of you as much as possible, for at least three days. Make it your screensaver. Put it on your steering wheel or your desk. Somewhere you'll see it often.
As you look at it, start talking to little you. Ask how they're doing. Tell them what they have to look forward to. Assure them of who they are, and how wonderful and phenomenal they are. You'll find your own words when you look at your own photo.
Continue the conversation for the rest of your life.
Why It Works
At the root of this exercise is the chance to take out your inner child, address the traumas that baby girl or baby boy went through, and reparent the child within you with love, compassion, acceptance, and communication, whatever might have been missing the first time around.
Embrace your shadow self. Embrace your inner child. Embrace, ultimately, the traumas you've gone through. They were terrible. That's true. You were hurt, and you didn't deserve it, not at all. That was probably the result of someone else's wrong actions. But you were hurt, and you had the strength to survive. You came through it. You survived it, and hopefully even thrived despite it. Now you're a successful grown-up.
You have the opportunity to give young you, still inside of you, the security you've built for yourself now.
I know it sounds a little wild. It does work.
So do your shadow work. Get to know the traumas. Open your eyes to them. Flip on the lights. Talk about it. Work it out. Get a therapist. Do all the things, so you can reparent that inner child and get to a fuller place in the here and now.
It's not about the destination. It's about the journey. Enjoy it.
Recommended resources:
Tepeyac Consulting
The Amazing Clarks
BetterHelp Online Therapy
Calm
Question of the day: How has doing inner child work helped you? What was challenging about it?