Your first relationship is usually that with your parents.

The child, at a very young age absorbs their parents’ (or one of their parent’s) fears and worries. Parents oversharing with the child especially about  stuff the child can not adequately process may push the child into the ‘adult’, this may create underlying anxiety. Anxiety also arises in the child when the parents have excessive demands and expectations on the child which may also create anxiety in the child. another important aspect that creates anxiety in a child is when a parent compares their child to another child. This may leave the child believing ‘ I am not good enough’. Also the lack of  boundaries at home may creates chaos and unpredictability creating tension in the child.

Naturally the fears, worries and anxieties of the parent interfere with the relationship with the child. 

There is research that highlights that when a child is brought up with an anxious parent there is a high tendency that the child will also suffer with anxiety.

So it is very easy for a parent to transfer her/his anxieties onto their child.

The young child will learn skills to cope with these anxieties, and from a young age the child learns what can freely be expressed and what needs to be withheld. 

The child may learn to remain silent, not to talk, not to feel and not to trust.

The child grows up and now believes that ‘that is just the way I am’. At some point life can becomes very ‘normally uncomfortable’, still we have now come to believe that ‘that is life’. You do though, as an adult recognise that your life just doesn’t add up, not quite sure why, as the majority of people now believe that all this is just a part of life.  

A subtle kind of tension starts to  build up,  either directly or indirectly, but usually a bit of both. Your Self confidence starts slipping away. You start shutting down, remaining silent ‘to keep the peace’.  But yet we feel anything but peace.

Now you know that you do not talk much, barely share how you truly are and barely feel anything. You only know something is not right, sometimes, often,  quite at a loss at what is actually happening.

You might find yourself even denying your feelings,  burying them, projecting them, even lying to yourself, just to make sure no one gets to know how you truly are, not even yourself!

You might do this often unconsciously, because what you might experience may be too uncomfortable for you to acknowledge so the mind does what it has been trained to do, shut it down, deny it, lie about it, justify it, etc., with the belief that you are preserving yourself.

But this is where you need to dig deeper.

Working through this is about unlearning all these beliefs that are causing you uneasiness, discomfort and pain. It is about unlearning and relearning. It is about showing up for yourself.  It is about being enough. It is about compassion, it is about learning how to love yourself with no judgdement, it is about having tapping into your authentic self.

The shadow

describes the parts of your personality you have pushed out of awareness. These are traits, emotions, desires, and impulses that you have learnt to see as unacceptable, so you unconsciously project them onto others.

“People will do anything, no matter how absurd, in order to avoid facing their own souls.”

Carl Jung

The Human

is made up of the autoimmune system, the mind, the body and the emotional/spiritual part, each connected and affecting each other. 

The job of the auto immune system is to defend and protect you.

It is also important to feed your mind with beliefs that YOU believe in, and to eliminate those that are not working or limiting your world.

Your body needs nourishing food and movement, your senses need to be nourished too, and naturally our emotional and spiritual aspect to being human need to be supported.

Supressing any parts of you that you find unacceptable is like abandoning/rejecting/denying parts of yourself.

This is recorded as tension or discomfort in the body.

Meaning that the emotional and spiritual suppression then raises your cortisol levels which then leads to the  immune system to start breaking down.

What do we do? Unconsciously?

It shows up in our adult life.

We blame someone close to us, usually someone we love,

and the pattern (of our childhood, where a parent or both parents transmitted their anxieties onto you) continues.

Where we comfortably believe

‘I am full of anxiety because of you!’

You blame the other, ridding yourself of any responsibility. 

What you ARE NOT AWARE OF is that this kind of mindset leaves you feeling very powerless. Why? Because YOU have given power to the other person to lower your own anxiety, in all fairness… no one taught you how to tap into your potential and learn how to self regulate 

All of these aspects, the auto immune system, the mind, the body, the emotional and spiritual parts of us, is what makes us human.

That is what makes up your inner world. While our outer world is praising compliance, you could end up paying the price through your health, your mental health and in turn your physical heal.

It is pointless rejecting all this energy and pretending it does not exist, because it keeps accumulating, till you can not function normally in your day to day life.

Over time self betrayal or chronic compliance changes the chemistry of your body where everything starts to feel like a threat, even when there is none, your heart is working harder (faster beats) your cortisol floods your bloodstream and blood sugar spikes up.

All the above parts make up the whole, the human body. 

 

“Shadow work invites us to dance with our demons, transforming fear into freedom, and pain into power.” 

Author Unknown.