Shadow Work Of The People Pleaser: What You Didn't Know

Shadow work refers to the journey one takes to make that which is subconsciously conscious, so as to discover the lost facets of the self for the purpose of a more integrated sense of self and being-ness. In this episode, Lisa A. Romano delves into the specific shadow work necessary for a codependent people-pleaser.

Lisa points out that shadow work is the most profound self-discovery journey anyone can take. It should not be viewed as woo-woo or pseudo-psychology but instead, as an opportunity to more fully integrate the not-so-likable and very likable yet denied facets of the self in order to become more fully self-actualized.

Transcript

Welcome to the Breakdown to Breakthrough Podcast.

My name is Lisa A.

Romano.

I am a life coach,

Best-selling author,

YouTube vlogger,

Meditation teacher,

And expert in the field of codependency and narcissistic abuse.

I am a believer in the power of an organized mind.

My aim is to help people learn what it means to live above the veil of consciousness rather than living a reactive life.

May your heart feel blessed,

Your mind feel expanded,

And your spirit find hope as you spend time with me here at the Breakdown to Breakthrough Podcast.

So today,

We're going to be talking about the shadow work of a people pleaser.

Sometimes when we hear the term shadow work,

We could assume that it has something to do with new age,

That it's anti-Christian even,

Or it's anti-religion,

It's anti-spiritual.

It has something to do with the metaphysical world.

It has to do something with the new age world,

And ooh,

It's like,

Woo-woo,

We shouldn't touch it.

And I don't think anything could be further from the truth.

We know that Carl Jung,

Who is one of the most profound teachers on this subject,

This incredible psychologist who helped us understand that there is the conscious and the subconscious mind,

That until you make that which is subconscious conscious,

It's going to control your life and you're going to call it fate.

You'll think that you're doomed for bad luck,

Or you'll think that you were never supposed to be happy.

You'll think that bad things just happen to the people in your family.

Your mom had breast cancer,

Your grandmother had breast cancer,

So obviously you're going to get breast cancer.

There's this idea that whatever happens,

Happens,

And we have very little control over what's actually happening to us.

So we walk around truly feeling like we are completely victims of circumstance.

And that is so sad because when you start to make things conscious,

When you start to make that which is subconscious conscious,

That's when you develop power.

That's when you develop empowerment.

And so shadow work is basically the work of Carl Jung,

Making that which is subconscious more conscious.

It's essentially shadow work.

We are looking at those parts of ourselves that we were forced to ignore and deny that became suppressed.

And whenever you suppress an emotion,

You're talking about energy.

And again,

Unfortunately in modern psychology and in most therapist's office,

They don't want to hear you talk about shadow work.

They don't want to hear you talk about energy.

And yet there is no such thing as separation.

If there is a shadow,

The shadow represents a part of myself that I had to deny for the sake of survival,

Right?

That's psychology.

It's in the subconscious mind.

It will affect the way that I feel and whatever.

For instance,

If I'm suppressing energy,

I might become a kleptomaniac.

If I'm suppressing the fact that I'm homosexual,

I might perhaps develop a porn addiction or I might start picking at my skin.

So this idea that suppressed emotions cause disorder,

Mental and emotional psychological disorder,

Is real.

We can all agree that that which I splinter from or that which I deny causes some true mental health issues.

I might end up with severe anxiety or depression because of why?

Because I have a shadow.

Because there is something in the subconscious mind that I have had to deny,

Suppress or ignore or believe was wrong in order to survive my childhood.

So let me explain.

So I'll use my life as an example because oftentimes when I do that,

People go,

Okay,

Great.

I can apply that to my life.

I was born to two unrecovered adult children of alcoholics.

Obviously,

They had their shadows.

For my mom and my dad,

Their shadow was that they had to suppress their needs as a children.

They lived in very unpredictable homes.

They suppressed their fear.

So everything that they suppressed,

Their needs,

Their wants,

Their fear,

Their anger,

They couldn't be angry at their mother and father,

Their alcoholic parents,

Because the anger threatened their survival.

So where did the anger go?

It was suppressed.

So that becomes part of the shadow vault,

If you will.

So here I'm raised by two people who have shadows.

If you were to say to my parents,

They both passed,

But if you were to say to my parents when they were alive,

Tell me about your childhood,

They were completely in denial of the consequences of being raised by alcoholics in their life.

There was no consciousness around,

Well,

I became very stubborn,

Distrustful,

Narcissistic,

And I became highly codependent,

Seeking approval.

And so both my parents had shadows from similar childhood experiences,

But they expressed differently.

In my mother's case,

She took on a lot of codependent attributes and characteristics.

And think about that.

What was she suppressing?

She had to repress and suppress her anger because she was living in such an unstable home that anger threatened her survival.

My mom was four years old and cleaning socks and shoes in the kitchen sink because they were dirty,

Because her mother was incapacitated and her father was nowhere to be found.

And so what did my mother have to suppress?

She had to suppress her natural needs as a child to explore,

Her natural curiosity,

Her natural,

Why have you forsaken me?

She wasn't allowed to cry.

There was no space to cry.

So these natural expressions of emotions of being forgotten and abandoned,

They had to go all underground.

So as a mom,

When she gives birth to me,

I'm dealing with my shadow mom.

I'm dealing with a mom that has no idea how her childhood has affected her.

And so in the 3D world,

She's frustrated by a little baby that has an enormous amount of needs.

My mother was only 19 when she had me.

My father was drinking at the time,

And he was gambling at the time,

And he was bowling at the time,

And he was hanging out with his boys at the time.

So here is this 19-year-old young woman,

Mom,

Who has spent her whole life suppressing her emotions just to survive,

Going underground,

Denying how she felt.

And what emerges is,

Please don't ever leave me.

What emerges is,

If you need me,

You'll never leave me.

And so my mother's shadows as a codependent were tied to people-pleasing,

At least with my dad.

They were tied to not feeling like she was able to express herself.

So even though it was obvious to everybody that my father went over the line,

My mother swallowed it.

Why?

Because her shadow told her that speaking up and having a voice as a woman was a no-no,

That if you went against me,

Dad,

Or you went against me,

Mom,

We were going to push you out of the tribe.

And that's akin to abandonment.

And so my mother has the shadow for people-pleasing.

She has a codependent shadow,

If you will.

I don't feel good enough.

So what is she doing?

She's suppressing her natural need to feel good enough.

When it comes to codependence like this and people-pleasers like this,

We have to understand the shadow is suppressing what is good as well as what is unacceptable,

Or at least what she has been taught as a child what is unacceptable.

So in my mother's history,

She was taught that little girls had no right to speak up,

That whatever dad said goes,

Whatever the male in the family says goes.

So here she is suppressing her natural need to express herself,

To say,

I'm angry at you.

She's got to suppress all her anger.

And so now,

Later on in life,

If you would have said to my mom,

You're very tense.

You're very angry.

She would say,

I'm not angry.

I don't know what you're talking about.

And that was a common experience with me,

That I felt my mother's anger.

But she saw herself as a born-again Christian,

Singing hallelujah,

Listening to her little Walkman back in the day,

Singing church songs.

But I felt her anger.

Why?

Because she was taught early on that anger was unacceptable.

It threatened her survival.

So that's part of my mother's shadow.

But my mother also had to suppress the fact that she was quite brilliant.

Even though she did not finish high school,

By the time my mother was 18 or 19,

She was a manager at the Bell Telephone Company.

So here she was without any formal education.

And she was waking up every day.

She was getting dressed.

She was buying her own clothes.

And she was actually managing other people.

So there are parts of my mother,

Her individuality,

Her voice as a woman,

That also went underground.

And so the good parts about her,

As well as the negative parts,

The suppression of the anger,

Her manifesting like an angry,

Codependent mom,

Very frustrated,

Taking her unhealed wounds out on me,

That she did not see.

What she would tell herself is that Lisa annoyed me.

Lisa and I have a personality conflict.

So that's part of her shadow.

That's the voice of her shadow.

It's not you.

It's your daughter.

All your anger is because of her.

Now remember,

When we're thinking about shadow work,

Remember what I said earlier.

When we have shadows,

And we all do,

And our goal is to come here and to make that which is unconscious conscious.

And as I develop the ability to become more conscious,

More self-aware,

The shadow dissolves.

Along with the shadow dissolving is also the release of the emotions that I have had to suppress that are a mirror to the shadow experience.

So we become conscious,

But we also have to learn to stay in our body so that we can release the energy of these suppressed emotions.

Now remember what I said earlier.

Most people walk around with shadows,

And they feel like something outside of me is causing this anger or this frustration within me.

That is not the case.

That's not to say that unfortunate things don't happen outside of us.

But what I am trying to say is that when we have shadow work,

And we're unconscious to how we're showing up in the world,

Or we're unconscious as to what we've had to repress,

Or we're unconscious to the sinister way that our ego rationalizes and justifies our behavior in the world,

Or the way that we experience people,

Or what we project.

For instance,

Like I said,

A codependent mom,

A very wounded codependent mom who has her own mother wounds.

Again,

We're using all these phrases and these technical terms that really all point to making that which is unconscious conscious.

So it's not woo-woo.

It's not hippy-dippy.

It's true work,

And it is the way to heal,

And it is the way to integrate.

So it's not to say that negative things don't happen,

And you're not going to have a response.

But what I am saying is that for those of you who want to do true recovery work,

Who can feel the separation of self,

Who can feel that you splinter yourself off,

Who can feel like I'm dissociating,

If you identify with a people pleaser,

If you identify as someone who's codependent,

If you keep attracting narcissistic people in your life,

Guess what?

Narcissists have shadows too.

The difference is that the narcissist's shadow is something that they probably will never be able to heal because they won't be willing to do the deep dive in order to heal it.

Where I have found that those of us who struggle with codependency,

It's a little different.

We're able to develop self-awareness,

And the further along on the narcissistic spectrum someone is,

The less likely it is that that person is willing to do the shadow work.

The last thing I'll say is that shadow work is counterintuitive.

I always say this inside my coaching programs,

That healing at the emotional level is absolutely counterintuitive because your brain and your ego are designed to protect you,

To not feel this tremendous pain.

Our brains work through pain versus pleasure,

And the entire goal is to avoid pain.

And so someone who does this shadow work,

Someone who does codependent recovery,

Somebody who does the deep dive and says,

I want to integrate,

I want to feel whole,

You are a hero,

You are courageous,

You are incredibly brave.

And if you stay on this path long enough,

You,

Dear one,

You shall break through.

Reviews

Great information. Shadow work is important to change. Recognizing the suppression and underlying issues is helpful in changing.
Thank you Lisa!

Thank you for the illustrative scenarios, it really helped to dissect the origin of our “shadow.” 🙏

thanks lisa. great talk 👍🩵👍💙👍🩵

Really interesting, as always. I was listening to uncover pieces of myself, but ended up thinking about my parents! Thank you for your insights 🙏