Why do some people “get under our skin” while the behavior of others leaves us completely cold?
Why, in certain conversations, do we hear not what is being said to us, but something entirely different—as if through a distorting lens?
Discover how our mental filters work, how the Shadow speaks through them, and how to recognize when your emotions aren’t about the situation at hand, but about the unaccepted parts of yourself.
Read on to learn how to see yourself reflected in other people.
The Filter Through Which We See the World
Everyone has their own unique filter. This filter is made up of many things: your personal experience, traumas, programs, beliefs, and attitudes.
First, we run through this filter whatever is relevant at the current moment. Two weeks pass, you’ve changed, and you listen to the same broadcast again, for example, and you hear different things because the first need, the first priority, has been lifted.
Something is no longer relevant, you expand the range of what you can pay attention to, and you hear something slightly different.
We interpret the same words we use differently because the interpretation of identical words varies from person to person. Our traumas, personal lived experiences, red buttons, and triggers—what sets us off—are all different.
See also: Mental Filters, Cognitive Distortions, Assumptions. How to See the Truth Behind It All
Emotional Reaction = Shadow Projections
Everything that’s said about shadow projections always includes one key point: emotion, an emotional reaction. Most often, you don’t see it in yourself, but it shows up in full force with children, for example, when they don’t listen.
Or in a conversation with someone, you hear the phrase: “Why are you lecturing me or trying to raise me?” or “Who do you think you are, my mommy?” And you stand there bewildered because they are picking up on something you never said, did, thought, or even intended.
Or people often send us situations for analysis saying, “they reproached me.” But what is this word “reproach” all about? Who has the right to reproach another person? Not to talk as two equal, equivalent adults, but to reproach. Or, “I made a comment to him.”
But where does that phrase in your head come from—that you even have the right to make a comment to someone?
An emotional reaction is always the first signal that a shadow is hidden here.
See also: What Are Shadow Aspects of Personality and How to Return to Your True Self
What is the Shadow, a Shadow Projection
Everything listed above is called a shadow projection.
This is the nature of the shadow: you don’t see it, you don’t realize it, it is suppressed, rejected, denied, and pushed out of your consciousness.
You live your life completely unaware that it exists. It has no other option but to send you signals from the sidelines, through someone else. And then you react with strong emotions to the simplest things.
The Shadow Speaks Through Others
The Shadow is what speaks through you. You don’t see it, you don’t realize it, and the only way to get through to you is through someone else.
So it turns out that you’re communicating with another person, but you’re not reacting to them — you’re reacting because your shadow is speaking to you. You look at them, but you see yourself, and since you don’t realize this, you can’t do anything about it.
This time it might be a guy smoking in the elevator. Another time it’ll be a man spitting on the street, then some drunk homeless person or an alcoholic lying near the entrance.
Until you reclaim this shadow projection and acknowledge — this is me, this is a part of me — the outbursts will only get worse. In the mirror — it’s not someone else, it’s you.
As soon as you feel a sharp emotion inside, most often irritation or uncontrollable, unmanageable anger — hello, shadow projection!
In that moment, you’re talking to yourself, you just don’t realize it.
The shadow shows up strongly with mothers-in-law, fathers-in-law, sisters-in-law, with your husband’s relatives, with your husband’s ex-wives, with alcoholics, homeless people, and it reveals itself powerfully through children.
The most important thing is that there’s always an emotional reaction.
See also: How to remember the divine within yourself and what it means to be a divine mirror for another
How to tell when the Shadow is speaking to you
In the new version of the “Dance with the Shadow” course, we created an algorithm. How does it work?
Run your reaction through this algorithm:
- 1. Direct mirror — in what situations do you behave exactly the same way? Did it infuriate you that someone made a mess? Where, and in what situations, do you make a mess and not clean up after yourself? Look at it from different angles.
- 2. Interpretation of this behavior. This is your decoding. What does it mean for you?
Here, thanks to personal experience, everyone will have different reactions and different interpretations of the same situation.
Most situations are a direct mirror, but there’s also a distorted mirror, and a boomerang (the opposite behavior — what you would like to do but forbid yourself from doing).
What to do so the emotional reaction goes away
The emotional reaction will go away when you reclaim your shadow aspect.
But that doesn’t mean you’ll start liking this behavior. It’s not about you thinking it’s uncultured and then behaving the same way. You’ll stop being shaken by it; this behavior will stop being a red button that gets pressed without your consent.
Let’s say you’re in a great mood, you’re running, feeling uplifted, on your way to a meeting, the movies, the theater. And then — bam — your favorite red button. You explode, your mood is gone, and you can’t do anything about it because you’re not in control of it.
You don’t understand why you keep seeing the same situation over and over, and you keep falling for it.
But when you accept it as a part of yourself, when you see it in yourself in one form or another, you’ll stop reacting that way.
A healthy reaction using the example of fried potatoes
So what does a healthy reaction look like? Let’s look at a few examples.
Someone loves fried potatoes, and someone can’t stand them, for whatever reason. What’s your reaction to that?
Okay. What’s the big deal? Well, the person doesn’t eat fried potatoes — everyone has the full right not to eat them. I won’t even bother thinking about the reasons why.
Maybe he has contraindications; maybe he thinks it’s not kosher food. What difference does it make? It’s not about him. Why should this provoke any reaction in you?
A healthy person, a healthy psyche, a healthy approach: like it, don’t like it, well okay, and you keep it to yourself. Everything else is already a deviation, a departure from the healthy version.
There is simply a normal, adequate reaction: like it, don’t like it. I love cats and I’m not very fond of dogs. Does this affect anyone? No. Does it affect me in any way?
See also Shadow Healing. The Space of Accepting Inner Demons
Example of an Adequate Reaction to Abandoned Animals
Many people explode when animals are hurt, when they see an offended, wounded, abandoned animal on the street.
There, shadow aspects are in full swing — it’s my abandonment, my traumatization, my woundedness that I see. A one hundred percent match.
We remove this mirror, this painful, distorted one. What remains? There is an animal that is squeaking. I can make a decision, whether I want to help this animal or not. Do I have the ability to help it — or not, but there is no longer that personal component.
In the connection at the level of abandonment, traumatization, there is no longer pity, there is a healthy reaction and an assumption — the animal probably needs help since it’s squeaking. If you can’t help yourself, turn to someone who can help.
What is the Dark Shadow
There is such a concept as the “dark shadow.” We all want to be light and fluffy, especially those who are on the path of spiritual development, going through this stage.
Many Light Workers have an unbalanced dark shadow part, where everything dark in oneself is rejected.
In Russian, there is the phrase “white coat.” These are people who consider themselves right about everything, they know how things should be, and they will always point it out to you. They think they are bringing benefit to people and the world, but in reality, with their toxicity, they destroy the relationships of the people they engage in dialogue or correspondence with.
But in reality, it is precisely this shadow part that is unrestrained, which sometimes plays dirty tricks, including through demonic things.
If this part inside a person is not acknowledged, they can get offended, upset, cry about it, worry, or go take revenge, manifesting their witchy nature.
Again, it’s different for everyone. We don’t always recognize our personal experience.
In this life, I have never encountered witches and haven’t read books about witches, and had no experience, but I have been burned at the stake multiple times in past lives for witchcraft and for causing harm and evil. And it still works through me, and my reaction exists.
Similarly, you may know nothing about Atlantis, but if you drowned in those times, you will have a reaction to the flow of water in dreams or in reality, or very complicated relationships with the element of water.
You may not remember this, but subconsciously it all works.
Such things are uncovered in no time with the help of specialists, through past life regressions. Or they spontaneously begin to manifest because the time has come to integrate them.
Do you have “favorite” red buttons that your loved ones periodically push?
This article is based on a broadcast from the #couch_conversation #155 Leaving the Looking Glass
P.S. If you are tired of shadow projections manifesting and want to understand what your shadow self is telling you, we invite you to the basic course «Dance with the Shadow 4.0». See details >>