Meeting my shadow self (a story of self-love)
I thought she needed scolding, but what she really needed was a hug
Hello! This week we’re talking about the shadow self.
Meeting my shadow self sounds like a dark and twisty endeavor, but in fact it’s the light I needed to get into recovery from my eating disorder.
Eating disorders are deceptive. They often look like a simple problem with a simple solution. Just stop purging, binge eating, restricting, exercising too much, or whatever you’re doing. But as you know, recovery isn’t as simple and straightforward as it seems.
While the symptoms seem obvious, the causes run deep. They’re often rooted in our shadow.
The shadow self can be defined as the part of us we repress or hide, usually because we believe it is unworthy of the light. Our shadow self is where our shame and unworthiness live. It’s a part of us that we bury early in childhood because we learned that showing that part of us would cause the worst fate for any human child: rejection from the group.
Rejection means death to a child, so we fight tooth and nail to avoid it. It’s in our DNA.
Another term for the shadow self is a collection of “exiles,” which comes from Richard Schwartz, who developed the Internal Family Systems (IFS) approach. As he puts it, an exile is a very young, hurt part of us. It naturally hides in the shadows. Meanwhile, other parts of us, called “protectors,” fight to keep exiles safe from the cruel world.
“Your protectors’ goals for your life revolve around keeping you away from all that pain, shame, loneliness, and fear, and they use a wide array of tools to meet those goals—achievements, substances, food, entertainment, shopping, sex, obsession with your appearance, caretaking, meditation, money, and so on.” ―Richard C. Schwartz, No Bad Parts: Healing Trauma and Restoring Wholeness with the Internal Family Systems Model
In some cases, our exiles are so vulnerable that our protectors adopt maladaptive coping behaviors in a misguided attempt to keep us safe. This all takes place largely outside of conscious awareness.
Whether we think of them as our shadow self or exiles, vulnerable parts exist within all of us. My eating disorder was one method I developed to cope with the pain hidden in my shadow self. I believed that if I could just maintain a thin body, I would be safe and avoid being rejected.
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