The Secret to Healing Childhood Trauma (Shadow Work)

[0:00]So what's the secret to healing childhood trauma? Because if you've been in this journey for a little while, it can feel like almost impossible. You're still getting triggered, those traumas and wounds of the past still affect your relationships and how you feel day-to-day. So the first thing in understanding how to heal trauma is to understand what is trauma really? Especially when we're talking about childhood trauma, is when there's an experience of abandonment, right? Whether it's physical or emotional. Or maybe sometimes they're there, sometimes they're not. It can also be shame, if you had a parent that was shaming you, guilting you. Whenever you made a, uh, you know, a mistake, they would shame you and and call you a bad child. This inherent sense that your authenticity is not welcome here, and that fundamentally you're bad, and you have to make up and prove yourself to be a good child. Right? So a lot of us have this kind of shame. There's also neglect, parents perhaps dismissing us, rejecting our feelings or even just flat out ignoring it. That could be also physical and or emotional abuse. Maybe you were slapped, you were grabbed roughly, it can also be sexual abuse as well, as well as the emotional abuse, yelling at you, criticizing you. Also a chaotic environment, just so unpredictable, you never know when your parents are going to get pissed off, or when they're going to fight with each other. Very much life walking on eggshells in your childhood. These are just quick examples of what childhood trauma looks like and feels like. And a key thing here is that when we experience this, what happens is that there is what's called a split that has to happen. What it does is it says that my authentic self is not welcome here. My natural, innocent, playful self is not okay. And if I am that natural, innocent, playful self, I'm going to experience rejection, I'm going to experience shame, abuse and so on and so forth. We are all naturally authentically whole initially, before our parents start to condition us out of that through traumas and the way they raise us. What happens is that we have to split ourselves into two. And what that split is, is that there is a shadow self that has to be created to cope with the pain. So we call this the shadow self. It can also be called the inner child. This is a part of you that experienced these wounds. And because you had nowhere to go, no one to hold you, no one to help you feel and kind of parent you through those emotions, other than tell you that you shouldn't feel that way, or get over it, or they'll attack you even more. Usually experiencing this meant that we're alone with it. And this is very painful for a child. So what we do is we try to hide these parts of ourselves, because it was so painful to experience this, we push it away, we suppress it, we repress it, and we cast it into the shadow. And it can also be the part of you that feels unworthy, right? You know, it can say of love, um, unsafe. Right? Talking about the abuse and unsafe in our chaotic environment, the unsafe part of you. The part of you that felt rejected, right? Not good enough. Not good enough. Part of you that that believes perhaps that vulnerability equals pain. I'm bad, right? So this is the shame. The sense that I am inherently bad. So this is not very fun to have exposed to anyone, right? We want to hide it, hence the shadow. So what we have to create for ourselves, which is unconscious, but it's also very intelligent at the same time, is an adaptive self, the masks that we wear, the personality. An example of an adaptive self is the person that has avoidant attachment, but also anxious attachment. Right? So the avoidant person learns that they have to avoid conflict, because if they experience conflict, they're going to experience shame, judgment, criticism, they're going to be attacked, it's going to be painful. And so they develop this sense of avoidance. I'm not going to express my feelings, because I'm gonna be judged for it, or attacked for it, or rejected. They become avoidant in relationships. The counterpart is the anxious person. They fear abandonment, so they might do things like love bomb. Cling very hard and fast, they try hard, they might people please or overgive, or get very aggressive. You know, so many ways that an anxious person can try to control the intimacy to have it closer, because they fear being alone, as an example of one of the many fears that they have. So you can see that these are these are coping mechanisms to address the shadow here. We're going to keep going down the list, because it's going to be very enlightening to perhaps even see yourself on this list. It can be even be the person that is the narcissist, the narc, who is very controlling. They have such a very extremely low sense of self-worth, they carry lots of shame. And so they tried to again, keep that suppressed in the shadow by then creating this avatar that I am the life of the party. They're charismatic, they're funny, they attract a lot of pleasers and followers to prop up and inflate a false sense of confidence. It's an adaptation to pain that we all do in different flavors. But on the other side, you got the pleaser, right? So the pleaser is the one that's always been pleasing, they go with the flow. They don't want conflict, they're afraid of rejection, they're afraid of being shamed, they're afraid of being alone and abandoned. And so they please, and they give, and they go with the flow, they don't try to do anything to create any sense of dislike of them. It's really no different than the narc, they're just trying to cope with pain. The narcissist and the pleaser are two sides of the same coin, in the same way that the avoidant and the anxious are two sides of the same coin. Just opposite ways of coping with pain. Hopefully you're starting to see the pattern emerge pretty quickly here. This gets pretty interesting, guys, right? So the lone wolf. They're afraid of vulnerability. Scared of being dependent on people, being in connection with people, because again, fear of being shamed, fear of rejection. So they just say, fuck it, I excuse my friends, they say, fuck it. And I'm just going to be the lone wolf. But then also you got the victim. The person that always needs to be saved, always asking for help, always depending on people to save them. And then there's also the savior. The person that feels that they always have to be saving and fixing people. They're making everyone's issues their responsibility. Again, why would they do that? Coming back to the shadow, they want to feel accepted. They're scared of rejection, they're scared of being unworthy. If I can't fix and be the hero and do the quote unquote right thing, the good thing, I'm going to be a failure. And they're always seemingly attracted to the victims, the people that constantly need saving. Right? So the polarity here should start to emerge as I go down this list here. And then we've got the overachiever, always working, always proving themselves, always trying to get achievement and praise and money to get the validation from the attention from other people. Or maybe they're trying to prove for themselves so hard that they're finally worthy by achieving and pushing themselves and reaching goals. Whether they're trying to prove to others or prove to themselves, it's still the same thing. That they don't feel worthy enough to begin with, and they have to make up for it. And also the, uh, perfectionist, that overlaps with the overachiever often times. And we can keep going, right? So the life of party, or even like the the shy, quiet type. Right? You got the loud type, you got the quiet personality. The person gets louder to get the validation, to be heard, to be seen. The person that's quiet is trying to not be seen, if anything, being seen is very scary. If people really saw me, I'd be exposed, they would see how bad I am, how inadequate I am. Right? So they hide from the phantom threat of being judged, rejected and so on. And then the life of the party overlaps with the narcissist, they oftentimes so terrified of being invisible. And so this list can go on forever, there's so many personality types. The key theme that you have to understand is that it's an adaptation. Recreating these very pains, even though they're trying to avoid it, right? The more you try to cast this pain into the shadow, the louder it gets over time. I imagine that you're experiencing this already, otherwise you wouldn't be on this healing journey. Right? Even though you've tried so hard, it keeps coming up louder and louder. And that's because what's happening is that there's a split inside you that's trying to avoid the pain of the shadow. And so this is essentially where shadow work comes into place. So what shadow work really is, it is a unification of all these parts of yourself. Right? It is trying to gradually drop the masking and start to face and process this right here and stop trying to push it away and repress it, run away from it. So, in essence, it is bringing things back to the authentic self, right? That was never split to begin with, right? So it's a unification of the parts. So what is shadow work? It is not an intellectual process. Part of it is intellectual, so the first part of shadow work is really seeing the shadow. Right? It's the opposite of avoiding, pretending it's not there, which is what the adaptive self is trying to do to try to protect you. It's trying to adapt to the pain. The functions of what seeing the shadow, to see, to really see the pain of what you went through, and stop trying to get away from it. There's a couple things that happen here is that there's an acknowledgment that happens of what you went through, that, oh, my parents really screwed me up. And this is the impact of how it's affecting me today. And then there's also what happens at the same time, there's an acceptance of that pain, because when you allow yourself to see it, you're both acknowledging it and accepting it at the same time. And when you can do that to those parts, there's a healing that happens, where those parts finally feel seen. The shadows are no longer in the shadow, the light is being shined on it, and what does light do when it's aimed at a shadow? It starts to dispel the shadow, and the light starts to illuminate the darkness. Now, the second thing that has to happen in shadow work is actually feeling. If you do not do the feeling, the seeing becomes more of an intellectual exercise. It's not deep-rooted, it doesn't really imprint deep inside you, there isn't really a release of the pain. So feeling is so critical here. Feeling comprises of the few components, right? The number one is emotion, right? That's part of the feeling experience. So like sadness, grief, anger, rage, fear, panic and so on. Right? There's an emotional experience to it, and it's allowing yourself to feel those emotions. Right? Not thinking about them, not trying to analyze them, but literally going through the process like maybe the grief has to turn into tears. Maybe the anger has to be red-hot rage where you feel you're punching and beating up a pillow. Or your body is shaking and trembling in fear and allowing that to finish its cycle, which then leads to the next component of feeling which is movement. When trauma starts to cycle through, when it starts to come up to the service and we don't interrupt the process with our mind and overthinking and suppressing and avoiding and all that stuff. The body will start to do involuntary movements often times, you might get trembling, shaking, shivering. But also this one is very seldom um, talked about in healing in general, but is energy. You have to understand is that trauma is an energy, the shadow is an energy. It's beyond the the logic and physical dimension, but there's an energy that you feel when you are in the feeling of your body. For example, often times when I work with clients in my mentorship, and I guide them through the experience of their body, their body goes hot and then cold, for example. They might feel an energy wave like a buzzing healing that rises from their stomach and then goes up and out their head. It's a felt experience, it doesn't make any sense, but does happen. Other examples on how that energy is sort of manifested in process is like when people are processing shame, often times, they will see it and feel it as like, as like this black slimy goo that is feels like kind of disgusting. And if they can not run away from it, it will come over and it will start to release, it's not logical, but starts to move, starts to discharge from the system. And then other examples will be like what some people would call like Kundalini awakening, where there's an energy that starts to do like a double helix up the spine. It almost feels like electricity going from the bottom and up and even perhaps down. Right? This is how energy moves through the body in so many of shapes and forms, sometimes you can see it, sometimes there's a shape and color and image that comes with it. Buzz energy. It's not logical. But when you're in the feeling, when you're out of the logic, when you're properly seeing the pain, you're allowing yourself to feel through it. Your body knows how to digest, process and release the pain. And it happens in layers, right? It's not just a magic pill that happens in one time you're sitting with yourself. It's a practice of you doing it over and over again, but if you want to do really deep work, this is what it feels like. You know, if it kind of scares you, if you're listening to this, it is uncomfortable, there's no way around it. But on the other side of it, there's more peace, there's more acceptance of yourself, and therefore more patience and acceptance towards other people. You're able to set boundaries and speak up for yourself, but you also know when to be flexible. Right? There's so much ease that happens when you're actually healing, where your personality is changing. So we come right back up to the adaptive self, these things start to drop, because there's no longer this mask of a personality that was meant to cope with pain. This is where you're actually becoming secure, where triggers don't no longer bother you because you're no longer trying to avoid what the trigger was originally provoking inside you to begin with. And so, yes, there's no way to short-circuit it, there's no magic pill here. It's hard work, you've got to do a lot of processing, a lot of feeling, a lot of working with your body and your subconscious. But every time you do it, it gets better, every time you do it, you get stronger. I tell people that true healing is just like the gym. You go to the gym, it's uncomfortable, you lift the weights, you sweat, you're sore, it's burning, but you get stronger from doing it. The healing work is the same way, the more you get better at seeing yourself, really seeing yourself, being honest with yourself, your insecurities, your shame, your fears, your anger, your sadness, your grief, you get better at the more you do it, and the easier it gets. And you're no longer the person chasing someone or expecting someone or demanding someone to soothe your feelings as much. Right? That that reduces dramatically, and you're also no no longer the person hiding your feelings. You feel a lot more comfortable being in this very vulnerable space, because you know that your body's intelligence knows how to move through this. So this video is getting long enough with such a heavy topic. I'm going to conclude with this, right? See it, feel it, that is shadow work in simple terms. To truly see yourself fully, authentically, in a very raw way and to learn to feel through what you see is really the key to transformation and healing. Right? Where even if you don't call it shadow work, it is what it takes to make transformation and deep rooted change where literally your personality starts to change. And ultimately for the for the better. If you're curious about any of this that might have confused you, drop a comment below. And this is also a transformational journey that I guide clients through in my mentorship. If you're curious about that, visit the link in the description, and maybe I'll see you on the other side.