Shadow Work & The Inner Child - How to transform trauma for good.

Darkness is a great teacher.

Everyone in the counseling, therapy and psychology world seems to be talking about shadow work and the inner child these days. What is this work, what does it look like in practice and how you can get started in this deep work?

Although "shadow work" was coined by Ivan Illich in his 1981 book Shadow Work, the theory behind is was invented far earlier by Carl Jung. He once wrote "the meeting with oneself is, at first, the meeting with one's own shadow. The shadow is a tight passage, a narrow door, whose painful constriction no one is spared who goes down to the deep well. But one must learn to know oneself in order to know who one is." In working with shadow, we work with the unconscious and subconscious mind to uncover the parts of ourselves that we repress and hide from ourselves.

In Jungian theory there are 8 different archetypes:

• Self

• Shadow

• Anima

• Animus

• Persona

• Hero

• Wise Old Man

• Trickster

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How My Journey In Shadow Work Began

My exploration into shadow began with Imago Therapy developed by Harville Hendrix and Helen LaKelly Hunt many years ago. This is a type of relationship therapy often used for couples. Imago is based on the concept that in life we typically choose the partner that most represents the wounds we experienced as children through our parents, as this type of relationship feels familiar. In this respect we choose the partner that is least likely to be able to fulfill our needs. The first time I listened to a couple working through an Imago dialog at my first workshop, the dialog sounded something like this:

Male - "When I hear you burp or make bodily noises I feel irritated and disgusted by you and want to physically get away from you."

Then she was asked to repeat back exactly what her partner said verbatim. This is called mirroring.

Female "When you hear me burp or make bodily noises you feel irritated and disgusted by me and want to get away from me".

The stuff being shared was dark, triggering and often leads to an emotional response for both parties. It's past the point of platitudes and is not focused on kindness it's focused on how we are feeling when we are feeling at our worst. I remember feeling so terrible for the woman that was mirroring. She was having to repeat all of this. I couldn't understand why this was helpful for anyone and didn't dee where the conversation was headed next. It all starts with childhood.

The facilitator stepped in and asked "can you remember a time in childhood when you felt irritated and disgusted by noises?"

Male - "I remember being five or six and my little brother had asthma.

Female - "You remember being five or six and your little brother had asthma.

Male "He would cough and wheeze all night and I felt irritated, angry, disgusted and I wanted to throw him out of our bedroom ."

Female - "He would cough and wheeze all night and you felt irritated, angry, disgusted and you wanted to throw him out of your bedroom".

Male - "And I felt guilty because I felt like I hated him and I also loved him and knew I couldn't help him."

Female - "And you felt guilty because you felt like you hated him and you also loved him and knew you couldn't help him."

This is where they got to the root of the pain associated with this incident and why his reaction is so strong to her behavior. It has little to do with her and much to do about his childhood.

This is when I realized that this work was transformational. It was many years later that I wondered if I took the time to look back at all of my own childhood hurts, could I actually transform completely and embrace the lessons of them all? The answer was YES. Since then, I have done this work to fully metabolize the pain I experienced as a child and pain that shows up as an adult to gain the lessons and gifts that the pain reveals. I'm living proof that trauma is a teacher.

How to begin working with past trauma:

1) Make a list of your past childhood trauma. This can be triggering, so I suggest that you go slow. You may want to start this processing with the least significant - a slight hurt. Not your deepest wound.

2) Feel the pain and name it very specifically. Use this emotions wheel for help with naming the feelings.

3) Fully feel this in your body. What do you notice? Is there a tightness, a burning, a buzzing? When we recognize the cues in our body we can begin to recognize sooner when these feelings come up again.

4) Determine what was lost. What exactly did you lose in having this painful experience? Name this - we need to know what we have lost so we can then get it back.

5) Whatever you lost - determine how you can give this to yourself. If you lost a sense of safety how can you give yourself a feeling a safety? If you lost self confidence how can you begin to give yourself confidence? If you lost trust how can you begin to establish trust within yourself?

6) What is the gift that you now see in each painful experience? How are you different now? What lessons have you learned that you take with you and move through life now with more ease and perhaps eyes wide open?

When we see the gifts of our trauma and how these were lessons to teach us every step along the way we can begin to appreciate these moments in our lives and know that they are meant to be. That they are not happening "to us", they are happening "for us" to learn the lessons we are here to learn to evolve us in our consciousness.