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As a fearful, avoidant attachment style, who you are triggered by the most actually tells you the most about yourself and where you are at in your own healing journey. And in today's video, I'm going to break down, number one, what the relationship shadow actually is and everything you need to know about shadow work and how powerful this will be with your own healing journey. Number two, why the very things that trigger you or rub you the wrong way about other people actually tell you so much about what needs healing within you. And number three, what charged judgment that you make about others tell you again, the most about yourself. And I think this will blow your mind a little bit in terms of your own healing journey. This is one of my favorite tools and topics, and I can't wait to share it with you. Let's talk about this for a moment. So shadow work and the idea or concept of the shadow is from Carl Jung. And he basically talks about how the shadow is a part of ourselves we try to deny or hide. And I touch on a little bit about how this has to do with our classical conditioning. And the things that we are taught and we're socialized to learn that are negative because we get punished or shamed for expressing them, we largely repress into our subconscious mind. But these traits don't have to be actually negative. Like, it could be that you are taught as a young man or as a young woman that your emotions are negative and being too emotional is negative, so you repress that. It could be that, you know, you're too serious all the time and too ambitious and so, you know, you're supposed to be a good girl and people please, pleasing and selfless and put others first. And so maybe you repress any ability to be selfish or to move in the direction of your dreams. Like, there can be so many ways that this takes place. And basically we are going to be attracted to another people or really repulsed by another people, the traits that they are expressing that are repressed within us because our subconscious mind is seeking wholeness. So it draws us to those things by the way of strong emotional output. So we have like a shadow, and then we have a golden shadow, which are the people we put on a pedestal because they express traits that we think are good and we've laced those emotional associations towards. And then we get repulsed by the people whose traits we think are bad. So when it comes to relationship shadows, something that's so interesting is that because we often carry like this dense shadow, it has a profound impact on our relationships. And also the parts of Ourselves that we're rejecting, we feel not worthy of love. And so having a dense shadow impacts our feelings of self worth at the deepest subconscious levels. And it also makes us feel unseen and unheard and unloved for who we are in a relationship if we're only ever showing parts of ourselves and if we have an acute awareness of that at a deeper layer within our psyche. So the fearful avoidance relationship shadow tends to take place in this way, okay? The things that trigger them the most, that tend to be the most repressed in them as a general rule number one, feeling taken advantage of. Why? Because fearful avoidants are often taking advantage of themselves in order to please others in order to stay safe. That's usually an adaptation that they learned in childhood, right? So the idea of them taking advantage of somebody else when they acutely knew in their childhood that not actually necessarily, but from their perceptual viewpoint, it was probable that it would leave them like without a caregiver, right? Like let's say a parent was an alcoholic or an addict or whoever, whatever it might be, if they didn't feel like they had the trust and that person the emotional bandwidth to look out for them, then it really scared them the idea of taking advantage of somebody else because that would make them super unsafe, more so than they even already were. Right? And then the other part of this shadow, if you're looking. Cause what we ask, like a little adaptation of this shadow work exercise that we can use, is we can ask ourselves, okay, so where do I need to bring this trait into balance within myself, okay, by actually integrating it. Where do I need to be in a. In a space where I am recognizing that I might do this to somebody else? Where do I do this in the relationship to myself? That's painful and that's what the person's reflecting to me, or where do I do this to the person that I'm specifically judging? Okay, so this is what you can look into. So where do you need to integrate taking advantage of others to a certain degree? And that sounds like such an awful form of terminology, but it's really just bringing into equilibrium the end of being taken advantage of or taking advantage of yourself in order to please others in order to stay safe? So it's not like you have to start taking advantage of other people. It's like you have to bring that, oh my gosh, I can never ask anybody for anything. I never want to be a burden. I can't take anything from anybody. You have to bring that into homeostasis where you allow yourself to receive. You allow yourself to ask for support. You allow your feelings to be heard and acknowledged. And you allow yourself to have like a. An energetic exchange in your emotional relationships or close relationships in your life. I just wanted to pop in here and let you know we are doing a seven day free trial to the All Access membership pass at pds, which means you get access to literally everything inside of the school. And this includes the four live webinars I do with our students every single week. And on top of that, you get access to all of our different courses. We have over 55 different courses on relationships, communications, boundaries, Emotional mastery, guilt and shame. Learning your needs. So many different facets that are really important to master our lives and feel really good about our lives going forward. And last but not least, there's a daily community event. We have trained facilitators and coaches who are in there doing that work, showing up to support you on your journey every single day. Please join me on the other side. Come check it out, see if it's a fit for you. I'd love to see you there. Go ahead and sign up by clicking the link in the description box below. And then you can ask yourself, where do I take advantage of others? And it doesn't. Remember, it doesn't have to be in the same form. So you're not gonna look and go, oh, I take advantage of others all the time. You're probably gonna find that you go out of your way to not do that. However, I bet most fearful avoidance can relate to having given themselves, given of themselves so much that they are then forced to rely on others and take advantage of other people. Maybe you were so frivolous with your money and lent your money out to so many friends that at one point, all of a sudden you're stuck financially and now you're like, oh my gosh, now I have to go rely on other people or ask for support from people who maybe weren't the people I lent my money to in the first place. I have to go. You know, just as an analogy, right? It may have nothing to do with your finances, but just you'll see that sometimes because that can be so out of equilibrium that the pendulum can swing to the other direction. Okay, so. And then you can ask yourself, where have I taken advantage of the person that I'm judging? And it may or may not exist, but take a look in any form. It could be emotional where they take advantage of you with your space. And maybe they said they were gonna stay at your home for a week and They've been there for a year, you know, like whatever it might be. I'm just coming up with sort of like funny off the cuff examples. But I want you to really take a look in all seven areas of life. Career, financial, mental, emotional, spiritual, physical relationships, which include friends, family, romantic. Okay? And just take a moment to look. So that is really important to recognize. Another really big shadow piece for fearful avoidance, if they feel like others are disrespecting them or are disrespectful. And it can be because they are often disrespectful of themselves and their own boundaries. Okay, controlling can be a big one. And fearful avoidance often won't be super controlling with others, but they'll have moments of it in certain relationships. But fearful avoidants are very controlling of themselves. So like how they live their life, what they do, their routines or structure, even if they don't follow through, they try to be very controlling. And in my opinion, this can often be a manifestation of like having an authoritarian parent. And you internalize that relationship and play out that interaction in the relationship to yourself at a subconscious level. Dismissive, where are you dismissive of yourself? And then you are naturally going to be attracted to others who are dismissive of you. Where are you anxious with yourself? Because remember, you have both polarities and are you attracted to anybody who is anxious with you? So just take a look at that sort of landscape and see if there's anything in there that is a trigger and a shadow piece for you. And then what I want you to do is create a strategy to create change so to have healthy balance of this trait. Okay, so for example, you might say, okay, how can I stop taking advantage of myself to please others? How can I stop being so controlling of my own life and allow for some freedom of flexibility? Where am I dismissing myself and my own boundaries, or maybe my own feelings and needs? And what's a strategy to overcome that? Or where am I like, very anxious about having my alone time? Maybe because I've been so out of balance for so long and how can I proactively end that pattern? And so just notice it and try to write down some strategies, journal about it, and then start trying to implement them on a daily basis. And through that repeated, really daily basis work and showing up differently, you're going to actually have the ability to reprogram. And thank you again for being here. I will see you in the next video.