Shadow Sabotagers of Rest: The Givers & The Controllers
The more inner work I do, the more I see my old stress cycles and behaviors that worked against rest and resilience. With a social scientist brain, I’m always wondering WHY? The ‘why’ path of this moment took me down the road to shadow work - ohhhh, love me some Jungian based shadow shit.
Quick review: Your shadows - as we all have them - are the ego parts that helped you survive childhood. The shadows mask our fears and show up to try to keep us safe from an ego/brain perspective. It might be helpful to think of it as a MASK you wear when situations call for perceived protection.
Dr. Shefali Tsabary, clinical psychologist, in her book A Radical Awakening: Turn Pain into Power, Embrace your Truth, Live Free (2021) talks about three categories of shadows: The Givers, The Controllers, and The Takers. The last category doesn’t really resonate for me personally or for the folks I work with but the other two I see myself all over performing the Giver and the Controller. And that later one is super hard to admit because being labeled a controlling woman feels like such a social jab through the heart.
“Givers want to show the world how good they are, whereas controllers want to show the world how competent they are.” (p. 107)
Fuck. Ouch.
Here are some more details and descriptions.
The Giver is one of the most common defenses our ego employs to triage “good” girls when they are in despair…the good girl fears rejection and abandonment…those women tend to be sensitive and empathic. Shrinking and dimming themselves for others comes naturally. (p. 88)
The Givers include: victim, martyr, savior, and bleeding empath. The behaviors and systems that resonated for me in that group are:
Shift from helplessness to empowered choice making
Hijack the stress pain with genuine self-care and attention
Sit with my own shit and suffering instead of prioritizing fixing others
Stop self-sacrificing in the name of ‘good girl’
The Controllers - what got me with Controllers is the over-ing behavior - overprotection, over scheduling, over criticism, over management, over involvement.
Shefali says Controllers:
…are highly anxious people who convert their anxiety into controlling their environments sot act they can feel in charge and competent. They disguise themselves as achievers in the case of the perfectionist, worrying caretakers in the case of the helicopter, dominating control freaks in the case of the tyrant, and an impenetrable rigidity in the case of the shield. (p. 107)
The behaviors and systems that resonated for me in that group are:
Fear of failure with a strong, annoying AF inner critic - hello all you perfectionists!
Confusing caring with controlling - helicopter parents, anyone.
Passive-aggressive people pleasing with a side of resentment
Wearing a protective shield of accomplishment and over achieving
What sits with me is how the heck was I supposed to figure out how to rest and take care of myself when everything about how I grew up kept me hyper-vigilant to my surroundings and other people’s spoken and unspoken demands. And then self-care boundaries would be met with passive-aggressive tyrant behavior as a grasp at control and shame-avoidance. As we’ve talked about already with that stress cycle of hyper-arousal, the nervous system can’t regulate itself or get to calm/stable.
Julia Cameron - The Artist’s Way - talks about these shadows as Censors to our innate creativity where “we focus not on our responsibilities to ourselves, but on our responsibilities to others” because we think it makes us ‘good’ but leads only to resentment (P. 43).
Sabotaging reflection:
What’s distracting you most from getting the rest you need?
What’s underneath that behavior? Any shadow masks?
What’s yours that you can control versus what’s a shitty setup/system?
Who or what messages do you hear about your rest is (fill in the blank, selfish, a problem for others, inconvenient, etc)?
What fears come out when you think about change?