Types of Shadow

The Shadow Cycle consists of three distinct and repeating actions. Projection, acquisition and excommunication. The tricky part of navigating the shadow cycle, is that we’re all always intertwined with others and it can be difficult to identify what’s mine and what’s not.

You’ve probably heard of shadow projections. It’s when we experience something negative or positive in someone out there, but we don’t notice it in ourselves. Because projections can generate such strong emotions in us and expose our judgments so starkly, they are the easiest point to access the shadow cycle.

Before we can project one of these unexamined judgments, it must first be installed in our meaning-making system. This can happen genetically (passed on from our ancestors), gestationally (in the womb), experientially (making meaning), or by acquisition (taught to us by our adults).

Once installed, to render a judgment unexamined, or in other words, to create shadow material, a part of the self must be excommunicated. In the case of experience and acquisition, this can feel like, or actually be, a matter of survival. In the case of our ancestors and our mama, it’s their experience of life or death situations, translated and handed down for our protection.