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Chapter 4

SABOTEURS

You must go into the dark in order to bringforth your light.

Debbie Ford,

The Dark Side of the Light Chasers

We often think of superheroes in terms of the epic battles they valiantly fight with their enemies, where good triumphs over evil, and light over dark. Batman foils the Penguin's plan to devalue Gotham's currency; Superman swoops in at the last minute to defeat an assassination attempt. We Superheroes of Love must look inside to meet our mightiest foes. It's not the shadows in the dark alleys we need to confront, but those inside us. In this chapter, I hope to inspire you to be curious about the previously unnoticed places in your heart where your shadow selves live, and to empower you to deal with your shadows when they become saboteurs and wreak havoc in your life.

Have you ever become enraged when someone cut you off in traffic or in the grocery line? Have you lost it when someone spoke down to you or made you feel stupid? Have you ever overreacted and then later regretted it? Do you sometimes feel angry, but don't know the source of your fury?

Renowned psychiatrist and psychoanalyst Carl Jung developed the concept of our shadow selves as the pieces of ourselves we suppress, deny, or ignore that recede into our subconscious. Because we are not consciously aware of them, they can become stealthy little bombers that strike when we least expect it—for instance, when we are in line at the grocery store and become supremely annoyed by someone in front of us.

Shadows become saboteurs when they take control and hinder us or cause us pain. Shadows are constantly operating, influencing, and driving our choices. The moments they tend to grab our full attention are when we label what they are doing as sabotage. And that's a good thing. When they shift into the role of saboteurs, we wake up to them. Where they may have been just background noise that we could previously tune out, they are now screaming: “Look inside; get to know me. I am not going away. I need you.”

Whenever you feel less than your most powerful self—steeped in anger, easily triggered by others, paralyzed by fear, enveloped by blankets of dark sadness—you can likely benefit from doing some shadow work. You don't have to wait for your shadows to scream for your attention. Hopefully, as we continue to discuss shadows and how they become saboteurs, you will start to become more cognizant of their wily ways.

Let's say, right up front, that it's normal that we remain unconscious of our shadow selves. They are, after all, sub conscious, flying under the radar of our day-to-day awareness. Normally, we focus on what's in front of us, what we can access with our five senses. But we all have subconscious desires and motivations that are completely disconnected from our conscious dreams and wishes, and these have the potential to wipe out our higher aspirations. Imagine someone who wants to marry and have kids, but has a subconscious desire to remain free and untethered. This is an example of the shadow steering the car and taking us where we don't want to go. Otherwise, why would we end up where we don't want to be?

You may have fallen prey to your shadow if you:

 Do things that you know you will regret

 Feel out of sorts and don't understand why

 Say yes to things that will cause you pain

 Can't remove yourself from a source of pain

 Say you want one thing, but consistently create something altogether different

 Feel as if you are treading water

Shadows are born when bad things happen to us, or when perfectly mundane things happen to us as children. Yet, from that innocent perspective, we perceived them as traumatic events. And trauma, whether perceived or actual, has happened to all of us.

I will never forget how distressing my first day of school was. It's a normal event in any young child's life, but for some of us, it was traumatic. I couldn't understand why I had to leave my comfortable home, my toys, and my mom and go to a completely foreign place for hours on end.