Recently I’ve been listening to an audio series by Robert Augustus Masters called Knowing Your Shadow, about how to reconnect and integrate all the parts of yourself that you’ve basically told to go sit in the corner–your anger, your shame, your humiliation. (Pick an emotion, any emotion.) One clue that your shadow is running the show (at least in the moment)? You find yourself reactive. That is, you’re re-acting, acting out again, or responding to a present situation as if it were a past one. For example, recently I made a big deal about losing a puzzle piece. Not because losing a puzzle piece warrants freaking out, but because I’d borrowed the puzzle from a friend and part of me was afraid of making them mad or “getting in trouble.” This, I’m sure, was a part of me that still feels like a child, a part of me that hasn’t grown up yet.

A part of my shadow.

As far as I can tell, our shadows get a bad rap. We think they’re these evil monsters that are going to suddenly take over or cause us to do something we’ll regret later. But that’s not the case. Rather, our shadows are simply the parts of ourselves we’ve dissociated from in some way, most likely because at one time in our lives (our childhoods) we thought we’d be better served without them. For example, if you grew up in a home where anger was either not displayed or conversely displayed without restraint, chances are you’ve put at least part of your anger (which all of us experience) “over there.” The problem with this strategy is that if we leave parts of ourselves in the dark, we end up growing up without their help and assistance–because every part is valuable and has something to offer us. As adults we end up playing without a full deck (and then wonder why we can never seem to win).

Consequently, we end up less whole, not fully ourselves.

One of the exercises in the audio program suggested “reentering” a dream in which you felt fearful or were being chased. I tried this and reentered (imagined) a dream in which I was trying to run away or hide from a man with a gun. (For reference, I associate guns with strength or power.) But this time instead of running, I turned to face him. Then, like the Adam Lambert song, I said, “WHAT do you want from me?” And he said, “STOP RUNNING AWAY FROM ME.” Then he morphed from this shapeless figure into Superman.

The point of this exercise, the takeaway for me, is that one of the parts of myself I’ve banished to shadow-land is my power, my strength. That is, there are a lot of areas of my life where I play small or at the very least feel weak and ineffectual. But as I’ve meditated on this the last two days, I know that’s not who I am at my core–weak. As I told my therapist today (and started crying when I said it), “The truth is that I am totally strong.” Not that I can leap tall buildings in a single bound, but I know that–fundamentally–I’m a force to be reckoned with–stable, solid, and fierce.

Last night I started reading a book by Judith Blackstone about, among other things, our fundamental qualities, the contention being that we all have innate, this-is-the-way-it-is-whether-you-like-it-or-not characteristics. For example, according to the book, we’re all intelligent and we’re all loving. This doesn’t mean your next door neighbor, the guy who drinks thirty beers every Friday night and wakes up on his lawn every Saturday morning half-naked is going to win the Nobel Peace Prize or suddenly turn into Mother Teresa. Simply because you HAVE a quality doesn’t mean you’re in touch with it. But it does mean you can GET in touch with it. That is, nobody has to PUT intelligence in your brain or love in your heart. They’re already there. If you don’t believe me, simply close your eyes and try tuning into your head (for intelligence) or your chest cavity (for love) and see what you find there.

Blackstone says you can likewise tune into your solar plexus to discover your power, another one of your fundamental qualities. She says that when you do, you won’t find this aggressive, ugly thing (a man with a gun), but rather something strong (Superman), like a waterfall.

This morning I saw my therapist, and we discussed all this. Well, except the waterfall part, since I just read that part of the book this afternoon. But we did talk about my shadow and the fact that not only have I disconnected from my sense of power, but that I’ve also, largely, disconnected from my anger. I imagine a lot of people do this. Anger isn’t a socially acceptable emotion, unless, of course, you’re yelling at your nine-year-old soccer player’s referee. (It’s gotta come out somewhere.) Plus, it’s scary. When you really FEEL an emotion like anger, it’s easy to think, I don’t know if I can control this. But my therapist said that as you get more comfortable with your anger, you get more comfortable with your power. Said another way, when you really own all parts of yourself, you can both feel and express strong emotion without flying off the handle. You can stay in control.

One of the scariest things about doing The Hard Work, being in therapy, and trying to welcome all parts of myself has been and is learning that I’m not who I thought I was. What I mean is that most of us grow up telling ourselves these stories. We say, “Oh, I’m shy” or “I never get mad.” We say, “I’ve always been that way.” We say, “That’s just me,” nervous, embarrassed, ashamed, whatever. But when you dig deep, you find out all of those things are just a construct, a facade you created in order to survive and get along in your particular circumstances. When you bring your parts out of the shadows, you find out–What a damn minute, I’m strong and confident. This is who I am. I can speak up. I can stand my ground. And this is good and this is a relief, to find out that you’re anything but weak. But this is also challenging–because now you have to say goodbye to your old self, and now you have to stop apologizing for taking up space in the world, and now you have to stand on your own two feet, taller than were before.