Shadowed Cards

Negative Nancy
Negative Nancy

 

You will never make peace with yourself
until you own all of who you are.
~ Chelsea Wakefield,
Negotiating the Inner Peace Treaty

 

Learning about our personal shadowed parts is a powerful tool for self-discovery, particularly when looked at through the light of SoulCollageĀ®.

Shadowed parts are parts of myself that:

    • hold me back
    • make me unhappy
    • get in my way
    • I feel embarrassed or ashamed of
    • I want to hide from myself and from others

Some of my own shadow parts include: Negative Nancy, Angry Annie, Misunderstood, Queen of Denial, Chameleon, Hiding Away and Ethel my Inner Critic (and believe me, there are plenty more!).

The SoulCollageĀ® approach to working with these shadowed parts of ourselves is to: name them, tame them and claim them. We are to meet them and bless them with kindness and compassion. We are to accept them exactly as we are. Seena Frost talks about carrying them rather than curing them. There is no need to fix them or change them. We are to be grateful for them (and this may be easier with some than with others!). The idea here is that these shadowed parts become less excessive and less troublesome once they are brought to the light of our consciousness.

A huge shift took place in my life when I realized that I wasn’t supposed to change or fix any of

I am the one who can never get enough. I am the one who eats and eats (and hoards food) in order to zone out and not pay attention.

these shadow parts but to simply accept them as they are.

Use the Shadowy Parts Worksheets handout on this page to start naming some of your own shadow parts. Remember, this is NOT about beating yourself up. You don’t need to go out and make SoulCollageĀ® cards for every shadowed part that is inside of you!Ā  This is just an exercise in self-observation.

Also, please remember that your mission here is to not seize up with panic when looking at your list. It might be tempting to think that you need to change or fix these darker parts of you, HOWEVER, that is not the goal here. Do this work with the intention of simply naming and accepting these parts of you.

The next step is to make some cards that honor these Neters (parts) and begin working with them using the basic journaling exercise.