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In my last post (#10 The Shadow) I described the expressive power you unleash when you form a bond with your Shadow. The next step is to learn how to form that bond and how that act forms the basis of a tool that will bring you confidence when you most need it.
Jennifer was a patient who was lacking in confidence all the time. Strangely, she felt most insecure when she was around her ten-year-old son’s soccer team – more accurately, around the other soccer moms. She was a divorced model, raised in a rural area she freely described as the “trailer-park capitol of the world.” Although she was intelligent and beautiful, she was convinced the world saw her as “trash.”
She had as much interest in soccer as she had in nuclear physics. But she had good reason to follow boys’ soccer – her son was very good at it. Soccer was going to be his entrée into upscale Los Angeles. He was already making the “right” friends. In a few years his skills would give him a leg-up in the insane paper chase for an Ivy League education and his eventual membership in the “in-group” that ruled society. Jennifer was determined he’d never have to feel the humiliation she’d felt as a “hillbilly” outcast.
She assumed the other soccer moms were charter members of the in-group she was grooming her son to enter, Range Rover-driving goddesses who might accept him but never her. This made them so intimidating she could barely speak in their presence. She’d freeze up, her brain locked, unable to form a simple sentence.
Finally, on a long bus ride, the ice was broken and Jennifer began to speak to the other moms. To her shock they told her they didn’t see her as an outcast. Far from it, they saw her as a drop-dead gorgeous, mysterious, and aloof woman who would stop their husbands in their tracks. That revelation made her feel better for a few days but – knowing it was irrational --she quickly slipped back into withdrawal and insecurity.
I explained to her that insecurity comes from the Shadow and that no matter how much positive feedback she got from the world, her Shadow would never go away. The only solution was to accept its presence and bond with it. I explained that the hidden powers this act releases become a source of confidence that has nothing to do with what others think of you.
You can’t bond with your Shadow unless you can see it. Visualize yourself in front of any number of hypercritical people—it may even be a single person. They make you insecure and self-conscious. Now, look at yourself from their point of view—see yourself as they see you. What do you look like? This version of yourself is your Shadow.
It may look very different from the person you think of as you. A handsome ladies man might have a Shadow that looks like a troll. A gregarious female executive could have a shadow that’s a lonely little girl. Jennifer’s Shadow was a pudgy, awkward 13-year-old with acne.
Once you’ve identified your Shadow, concentrate on its presence and imagine you’re forming an unbreakable bond with it. Tell the Shadow, “You’re with me at all times,” while feeling a physical connection to it. Creating a bond with your Shadow is the first step of a tool that allows you and your Shadow speak with one voice – a voice of authority.
It’s a type of authority you’re not used to because you generate it from inside yourself – which is why we call the tool Inner Authority. The tool allows you to trigger this force at will, particularly in your most insecure moments. Jennifer began to use it every time she was around the soccer moms. Not only did she stop freezing in terror in their presence, she began to see them as human beings with their own insecurities (and their own Shadows).
-- Dr. Phil Stutz
