How my midlife crisis helped me integrate my anger.

I was 33 when I had my midlife crisis.

I feel grateful that it came before marriage and kids.

But it was tough.

Everything around me crumbled within a year.

❌My relationship

❌My health

❌My job

❌My finances

I was hemorraging money from my failed centre, Anahata. I felt the energy being sucked out of my solar plexus.

I felt like I was dying.

I was recovering from Narcissistic abuse and had started to doubt my own version of reality.

On top of that, I had a herniated disk and couldn’t walk straight because of the pain.

Some days I couldn’t even bend down to put my socks on.

Feelings of blame certainly did come up becuase I’m human. But I knew that I needed to look underneath the hot sticky lava of blame & resentment to feel better again.

And that’s where the shadow work began.

WHAT IS THE SHADOW?

The shadow is the person you would rather not be.

It’s the part you dislike about other people that you actually have locked away in yourself, refusing to admit it.

It’s what breaks up families.

It what causes wars.

The shadow is the part of us that we reject in ourselves and in others because we judge it to be “bad”.

MY SHADOW

One of my shadow sides is playing the role of good girl.

Good-girl-itis is a common disease among women my age. It is a manipulation of the emotions of other people so that they like us. We need others to like us so we feel better about ourselves.

This has manifested in my life as not:

❌expressing my anger (I didn’t want to rock the boat)

❌expressing my sadness (I didn’t want to bore people)

❌speaking up when people treat me badly (I didnt want to judge)

But here’s the thing.

By denying my anger, I withheld my love.

By denying my sadness, I withheld my happiness.

By not speaking up, I withheld my freedom.

This is because when we suppress any “negative” feeling or part of ourselves, we also suppress its opposite.

WHAT HAPPENED WHEN I DENIED THESE PARTS OF MYSELF?

I was living in the shadows, not allowing my full light to be seen.

After all, how can your light be seen when you are blaming, resentful and burnt out?!

As they say, ‘What you can’t be with, won’t let you be’. 

If you ever came into Anahata in 2022 you would have seen the effect of this on me.

🌱I wasn’t the best version of myself.

🌱I was rude, distant and stressed.

🌱 I was very rigid & serious

I’m sorry if that affected you.

HOW DID I HEAL THIS SHADOW SIDE?

Things started to get better when I:

✅ started giving myself permission to feel emotions.

✅ started giving myself permission to put boundaries.

✅ realised I would rather be whole than good.

I also started channeling my pain into music.

As an artist, when a song starts coming through, I know it’s important.

I leave everything to give space for that song to be birthed.

This is how Embrace Your Shadow was written – during the difficult process of integrating my shadow.

I don’t remember how the words came through, but within a week of starting it was finished.

I felt the lyrics coming from another world, from my higher self, assuring me that I would get through it:

“embrace your shadow even though you are afraid,

the brightest sunrise follows the darkest night”

I was reminding myself to have faith that everything would be alright.

HOW DID I INTEGRATE MY SHADOW?

As I started to heal, no longer did I have to repress or get rid of the parts of myself that I disliked.

Instead, I began to find the POSITIVE ASPECTS of this shadow side and integrate them into my life.

I changed my relationship with anger.

Instead of judging it as bad, I realised it served a sacred purpose.

Anger is a fuel. When we feel it, we want to do something. Anger is meant to be listened to. Anger is a MAP. It shows us our boundaries and where we want to go. Anger points the way, not the finger. Anger is our friend. Not a gentle friend, but a very loyal friend. It will always tell us when its time to act in our own best interests.

I gave myself full permission to FEEL my anger.

This took time and effort.

✨I did pillow scream therapy.

✨I bought a foam noodle to smash my anger out on the bed.

✨I received somatic coaching

✨I did boxing and imagined smashing my narcissstic ex partner’s face in.

I got in touch with my anger and I gave myself FULL PERMISSION to feel it.

Then, I used it as a catalyst to take action in my life and to EXPRESS.

At first it came out quite aggressive.

Which is a good sign.

It means it’s working.

Eventually, as my anger started to integrate inside of me, I was able to express my anger in a gentler way using the language of non-violent communication…

“I feel frustrated when I see XYZ”.

I started to see how I could express my anger super sweetly.

But first I had to allow myself to feel it and take responsibility for it.

When I realised that anger is not violence, everything changes.

Anger is a natural human emotion. Violence is the uncontrolled, harmful expression of a natural emotion.

It’s easy to confuse the two things, especially if we were brought up in households where we were shouted at.

If we grew up not feeling safe because of an adult’s anger, we promise ourselves that we will never be an angry person.

And that’s how our shadow is born – we repress what we think is bad because we were never shown a better way.

In reality, no human emotion is ever bad.

All emotions are designed to be expressed and to create change.

HOW INTEGRATING MY SHADOW HAS HELPED ME.

When I could accept & forgive the part of me that feels angry, I could accept and forgive others.

I used to judge angry people as “bad” people because I hadn’t yet accepted the anger within me.

But now I feel INSPIRED by healthy expressions of anger.

It is an energy that EXPANDS and EMPOWERS.

Being around people who can express their anger gives me PERMISSION to express my anger too.

Getting it out rather than keeping it repressed inside is a blessing. It cured me from a whole host of illnesses that “traditional” medicine is still unaware of.

If you missed my article about how repressing anger gave me autoimmune disease, you can check it out here.

I am constantly learning about safe ways to express.

It adds to my personal power.

Feeling my anger enables me to take action to change the things in my life that I don’t like.

If you want to find out more about anger and expression I recommend reading this book:

HOW TO GET IN TOUCH WITH YOUR SHADOW

Getting in touch with your shadow and converting it into a tool for your toolbox takes time.

If you want it enough, you will find away.

Don’t worry if you are currently unsure what your shadows are.

Here is a simple process can help you get in touch with your “inner oppressor”.

1) Close your eyes and take a moment to think about something you’ve wanted for a long time.  Maybe you’d love to have a fit body, a healthy relationship, or a home on the lake?  See it in your mind’s eye and sense it in your bones.

2) Give it a few minutes. You likely hear a familiar negative inner voice creeping in telling you why you can’t have what you want, or why you don’t deserve it.  It may remind you that you’re not good enough, focused enough or worthy enough.  This is the voice of your shadow self.

3) Now think back to the earliest time you can remember hearing that same negative voice.  Who was there?  What was happening?  How old were you?  Likely you’ll be able to trace it back to a time when you were between the ages of 2-10 years old.  Maybe you wanted a new bike, and you were told your grades weren’t good enough. It’s the little child within you that created the shadow self that needs some love or attention.  It’s that aspect that feels stupid, bad or unworthy and is hiding in your psyche setting the parameters of your life.

4) Sit with them.  Imagine that shadow self as the prodigal son/daughter coming home.  Give ‘them’ the love that they have been yearning for.  What did they/you need at those critical times that they/you didn’t get? Are you willing to give it to yourself?

5) Action:  Write a letter to your 10-year-old self.   Let them know you are there for them, you know what happened, and they’re worthy/lovable exactly as they are.  ‘Dear ten-year-old me, this is what I want you to know….’

CONCLUSION

In integrated anger is only one example of the shadow-side.

It’s been one of my personal shadows.

It’s a side that I have healed in making the unconscious conscious.

I wish to state that in no way am I trying to pretend that I have healed all my shadow sides. I think that is impossible in only one lifetime.

I know I have many more shadows that I dont even know about yet.

After all…YOU DON´T KNOW WHAT YOU DON´T KNOW.

That’s why it´s called a shadow – because you are unconscious of it.

However, what I DO know is this:

When my shadows rear their ugly head, I have all the tools and strength in order to deal with them 💪🏻

And so do you!

When you integrate these parts of you, you will open up to more personal power and possibility than you ever imagined.

I hope you found this article useful.

Love from Abbey xxx

P.S: If you want to listen to the song I talk about in this article, EMBRACE YOUR SHADOW is available on Spotify as of Friday 2nd August 2024.. Click here to listen now.