Our Shadow & Professional Relationships
When we see (or project) our Shadow in another person we become triggered.
We may become judgemental, angry, superior and educating, or disgusted and wanting to go awat.
It may cause us to lose our empathy and our center, leading to emphatic failures with clients.
It also makes us more prone to being captured by different roles and transference relationships.
A common, even archetypal example may be falling into the role of the savior because our helplessness is in the Shadow. Another one is being captured by a perpetrator role in the system of the client because we haven’t gotten enough in touch with our own perpetrator in the Shadow.
Shadow Triggering may also lead to emotional and physical attraction as deep inside we would like to be close and even unite with what we have removed from our conscious presence. This becomes complicated when it happens with our clients, colleagues and teachers, and it does.
Finally, What is in our Shadow influences the range of topics our clients can safely bring to us, and also the types of clients we can work well with.
For Family Constellations facilitators, Shadow work is invaluable as it helps us maintain a wide perspective and to stay fully in touch with the knowing field, and identify it when we lose that position.