I grew up in the crown jewel of the deep south, Mobile, AL.  We did many strange things like take ballroom dancing in fifth grade.  It was hands down the most awkward thing I’d experienced until then, and I’ve always felt at home on a dance floor.

This was different though. Kids from a couple of neighboring schools would gather on a Thursday night at 5 o’clock in a big gymnasium at St. Ignatius Catholic church and learn all the old-school couples dances like the fox trot, waltz, and others I’ve purposely erased from my memory.  The most unbearable part of it wasn’t learning the dances, it was learning the dances with the boys.  They were hyper, smelly, and had no rhythm.  They also thought they were beyond cool. 

My favorite part of the night was when I spotted my mom’s minivan headlights in the carpool line.  She’d swoop in and pick me up and we’d proceed to Checkers for the long-awaited chocolate milkshake(s).  I had to take the edge off somehow. 

Learning to dance with our shadow, or shameful parts can feel just as unpleasant.  They are those parts of us that we’d rather not talk about.  Early on, we learned to hide them from the world around us for acceptance—for survival.  They are the parts of you that if someone saw, they might ultimately reject.  You may be found out…and deemed unloveable. 

What are the shadow parts you’d rather forget about?  Is it depression, body shame, singleness, financial troubles, or even sexual trauma as a child? Whatever they are, much like the smelly boys at ballroom, we’ve got to learn to lean in, let go, and learn to dance with them.

The Enneagram is all about integration.  The less compartmentalized, or fragmented we are, the more integrated and whole we will become.  Just as we are made up of hundreds of different body parts, muscles, and organs, we also have so many different parts of our emotional, relational, and creative beings.

Oftentimes in therapy sessions with clients, these parts come up.  Take anxiety for example.  Anxiety is an emotion or part of us that can be immobilizing.  We often deal with it by numbing, fixing, or running from it.  Anxiety is really just a shadow part of us that needs compassion and understanding just like, say, the creative part of us.  When we stuff our anxiety and try to avoid it, we really just give it more power and as a result, create imbalance.

What might dancing with this anxious shadow look like?  Well, first of all, we must listen to and get to know it.  This allows us to cultivate empathy for that anxious part of us.  After all, she has been working overtime for a while now to keep us performing, staying safe, and “on the ball.”  

Shadow work is really a reckoning with parts of ourselves we’ve misjudged for a long time.  The payoff is wholeness—flow.  It’s realizing those parts we’ve been hiding for so long aren’t so terrible after all.  In fact, they end up being the best parts because they are the most thorough teachers.  

That anxious part of you desperately wants you to see her for who she really is: someone who deeply cares about your future, yet may go about it clumsily.  She wants you to sit with her, commune with her, and realize the worst thing that can happen isn’t so bad in the end because you have other resilient parts of you that can step in and take over when she needs to sit the next song out.  

Take a minute and visualize the part of you that you dislike, a lot.  Perhaps you feel guilty about this part or constantly judge it.  What does she look like?  What is she doing?  In the same minute, take one step towards her…then another, and another.  You left her alone a long time ago and she feels abandoned, even scared.  She knows you dislike her but she desperately longs to know you and play on the same team.  She needs you big time.  

If this feels completely terrifying, it should.  Your brain is freaking out because it has no idea what it’s doing.  Hang in there though, this is perhaps the most life-giving work you’ve ever done.  Dancing with shadows or smelly boys is probably not on your bucket list.  Oh but I bet I know what is…

Freedom.