👹 SHADOW WORK 👹 + BONUS ON ENNEAGRAM

by Larissa

Part 1 ☯ What is Your Shadow Side?

The concept of the “Shadow Self” is a Carl Jung original, although I don’t care much for the background of anything I’m interested in, so that concludes your history lesson. Distilled gold or bust.

The “Shadow” is essentially what we, as humans, deny or reject in ourselves. The “bad” or “good” qualities that we revile or relish. The Shadow can be what doesn’t gain us acceptance, parts of ourselves we were told were nasty, or parts that got us the kind of attention we despise, and so we unceremoniously stuffed them into the Shadow. BUT It’s also what we idealize in others, as if it's something we are unable to access. This process is largely unconscious, as our ego automatically shoves what’s undesirable into the Shadow, and highlights what’s desirable (in whatever frame that manifests for you, personally).

Why would we push traits we admire in others into our shadow? We may have been shamed, humiliated, chastised, or put in other “dangerous” feeling situations as a result of those traits. Like if you have a fear of standing out it’s probably because something negative happened in your past as a result - like a pack of envious girls kicked you out of your friend group or your parent made you feel like shit.

When our shadow is activated by a person or situation, it can show up as “triggers”, bursts of reactivity or projections. We can feel immobilized by terror, envy, shame or anger. It can literally paralyze you, often pulsating out of your chest, rising up to your face in red hot heat… you go into fight or flight. Or sometimes on a lower level, it just shows up as being illogically reactive and hostile or overly annoyed at someone or some situation. But it’s often where our principles, ego and self-righteousness reside. The absolutely non-negotiable terrain that you firmly plant your feet in each and every single day.

You might encounter someone out in the wild, socially, or at work - and they rub you the wrong way. You end up stewing on what a piece of shit they are for hours, and how you can’t believe someone can behave in such an abhorrent way. However, it’s possible they’re simply reflecting your Shadow back at you.

The Shadow is what you deny about yourself, or simply deny yourself, and project onto others. Another way of looking at the Shadow is as your repressed “Id”; the urges, desires and impulses (both libidinal and destructive) that you stifle and deny expression. And the more you repress these urges and desires, the bigger the Shadow gets.

Part 2 ☯ 👹 How Does Our Shadow Affect Our Lives? (a short example)

Imagine, if you will, a little boy named Billy Joe. He grows up as part of the proletariat. His pa, Alvin, works twelve hour days, and doesn’t like his job none but it’s an honest livin’ and he cain’t do nuthin’ to change it. “It’s how it is for us folks.” He gets home and puts his stinking socks up on the rotting ottoman and only interacts with his family insofar as he can bark at them to get him another cold one from the fridge. At dinner time, ma serves up the Honey Boo Boo ‘sketti special or maybe on nights when she’s feeling generous of spirit, boiled wieners with the fancy mustard.

Now there’s an uncle, let’s call him Uncle Rick. He didn’t settle for less like his brother Alvin, and when they are forced to see him each year over Christmas he causes quite a stir. Rick dares to have a “career.” He’s confident. He keeps himself in shape. He’s coiffed. He smells pleasant and doesn’t shrink to fit in with his low-striver siblings or parents. Maybe he has a young, attractive wife. He’s frivolous with his money and thinks nothing of picking decadent, over-priced alcohol for the big torturous Christmas event. His signature move is rolling up late in a flashy new car, while announcing his presence by dramatically wrapping up some deal on his cell phone. And while he might impress Billy Joe, the child also notices the eye rolls, groans and quiet comments from the rest of the family. Uncle Rick is so selfish, braggadocious, a scumbag city slicker.

Depending on Billy Joe’s personality type, or perhaps his age, he might interpret this information to mean that confident, successful men are hateable demons. This is internalized and goes into his Shadow. As he struggles to gain acceptance and love from his bloated alcoholic pa, he might unconsciously repeat these familial patterns - end up in a job he despises, drinking to dull the pain, and hating anyone he sees living their life in a more ostentatious or individualistic way. He may view others' successes through an envious or defeated lens, thinking it’s not possible for “us folks.” Maybe he gets a raise at work but is too embarrassed to share it over one of those Christmas dinners, for fear of rejection from his father. His Shadow keeps him small.

Now, if little Billy Joe is a totally different type of person, he might grow up despising his pa and internalize “working class” people, or viewing people with lower standards of living to be putrid and weak. He may seek to distance himself as much as he can from his family’s image. He now only eats fine, organic food. The mere smell of cheap beer makes him nauseous. Unlike Uncle Rick, BJ’s too ashamed to bring his hot wife to meet his undignified family. In Billy Joe’s Shadow lies the fear of failure, being broke, being seen as a worthless, weiner-eating loser. He sees someone struggling in the cold, shaking a mug for coins, and stares at them derisively for daring to pollute his short walk between Starbucks and the lavish tower he’s a CEO.

Part 3 ☯ 👹 The Shadow, The Ego + Self-Image

The Ego, which is Freud’s concept, is the protective mechanism we utilize to prevent us from experiencing pain, shame, humiliation, danger and any other rotten thing that threatens our self-image – which ironically is what CAUSES us pain, shame and humiliation. The Ego is our identity and where we can be deeply wounded. Much like the Shadow, the Ego’s purpose is to keep us “safe”. However, the rules and limiting beliefs created by the Ego become prison bars as we get older. They limit us from our full potential, prevent us from changing and from being truly self-aware.

The Ego is who you THINK you are. It’s a construct. A self-image. It’s what you tell yourself about yourself in the negative and positive. It’s your IDENTITY. It’s the “you” that you’re conscious of. You’re probably proud of these traits, as it’s the part of you that you feel “safe” or positive with identifying as “you”.. Like I can ask you - describe yourself in a sentence. You might say - Well I’m Suzie, I love kids/kids love me, I love cooking/cookin loves me, I give the best back rubs - oh yeah - and I’m a tenured secretary at Burn the World Acquisitions + Mergers.

THe Shadow is the parts of you that you do *not* identify as you, that you reject or envy. The Shadow is largely unconscious, The Ego is more conscious. It’s what you think you are or need to be in order to survive in this world. The Ego wants you to be what it thinks makes you “safe” - even if that’s not true.

Much like the Shadow, when your Ego boundary is butted up against it can become reactive, hostile and destructive. It’s the piece of you that believes with total certainty that you are a specific way, or you must be a specific way to survive. Anything that threatens that belief or image is “bad” or threatening.

Example - Maybe you have a strong conviction that you are the World’s Sexiest Man Alive. It’s how you define yourself. You oil yourself up with Sandalwood essence and perform extraordinary glute acrobatics in the large ornate mirrors mounted over your bed and on every wall. You are perfection. That’s great that you have that self-belief - it’s positive. But what happens when it’s threatened?

You’re the WSMA and then you meet a man who, somehow, is even sexier and not only that but is younger and richer. That cannot be. Your Ego will seek to crush him - whether it’s by trying to get outside opinions that you are indeed the sexiest one of all, or by pushing him as far out of your field of consciousness as possible. What if you can’t though? What if he gets hired at the same corporate Hellscape as you? Or your wife’s eyes linger a little too long on his biceps and she gets his number for business reasons. You can’t escape it. he becomes the star of The World’s Next Top Sexiest Man Alive. It’s possible murderous delights will dance through your head as you inevitably spiral into self-destruction. Unless, of course, you realize what’s happening and *sparkle emoji* heal and integrate *sparkle emoji*.

To the same token, if your ego is wrapped up in a more “negative” self-image, like say you identify as an unlucky fucker. A sad sack. You’d describe yourself as the World’s Unluckiest Lady Alive. Then when experiences, and information, and opportunities to the contrary appear in your life that you actually you could change, be happy, life could get better for you, you have skills, people like you - then your Ego will actively work to sabotage you. Basically. So if you find yourself in these negative self-image loops - this is why. Because your Ego has positively identified with a “negative self-image” and to think of yourself and believe the opposite for you is true, feels threatening.

👹 What is your Enneagram shadow type? 👹

You have an enneagram type in each center (head, heart, gut) and a wing on each of those types. The wing is the type on either side - so if you’re a 7, you would either be a 7w6 or a 7w8.

These wings create our “shadow” - an aspect of ourselves that we have access to but either reject, abhor or envy in others - because we don’t really see or acknowledge those elements so much in ourselves. So if you’re a type 9 with an 8 wing, you might see other people doing 8-ish behaviors - like being assertive, taking up a lot of space, streamrolling, being controlling - and it might trigger you, upset or annoy you, or you might wish to be more like that and therefore it creates a kind of envy.

The irony is, you do have access to those behaviors, they’re just in your shadow. And we have that in each center. So, if you have a 4w3 in your heart center, even if it’s not your core type, you will have an awareness of what your wing is doing in the heart or “image center”.

4’s are overly self-indulgent and inwardly self-focused and in a constant state of separateness, and often find 3-ish behavior’s of self-promoting, putting themselves out there, networking, social climbing, greasing people’s wheels, adapting to ideals - to be totally grotesque and cringe. Or the 4 heart may envy their shameless ability to do these things as the 4, even if not the core type, so a fix, still has access to it and can behave this way - they just cannot see it in themselves.

And if in your head center, if you have a 6w7, you have “superego” in the head center which is giving you an awareness of rules, morality, doing what’s right, how what you do impacts others or the people you care about, the collective, and unconsciously seeking a kind of baseline consensus or agreement - and because this is also the “fear” center - you are seeking security in your dominant instinct (social, sexual, or self-pres). So when you see 7’s or 7 fixers out there being chaotic and feeling the rules don’t apply to them, just making shit up on the fly, not caring about how what they say or do affects others, it can be both or either triggering/annoying or something you wish you had access to. “If only I could be so confident and careless.” But again, you also have access to that, you just don’t necessarily see it.

So you have a core type, a trifixation/trifix,, and then you have your shadow type… what you loathe, envy, ignore or are annoyed by… can you see your shadow? What do you dislike or like about what you see?