About Your Shadow Self

Okay this is going to be a super Scorpio thing to say but I have a deep fascination with the darker side of humanity. 

I don’t mean what causes people to go all Jeffrey Dahmer (although maybe his Shadow Self did take over). But I mean, what is someone’s darkest desires and motivations? What is that thought or instinct that they would rather die than let anyone know? 

So when I first came across the term Shadow Self in my self discovery journey (ugh I love that it sounds like a Marvel character) you best bet I started researching the hell out of it. Literally any video I could watch or any novel I could get my hands on, I consumed it. 

The Shadow Self goes deeper than the dark traits you can name off the top of your head and talk about with another human. When we’re being integrated into society as children we take every piece of information given and put it into two boxes. Either something that is socially acceptable and therefore should be integrated into our personality or something that should be rejected and tamed. If it’s something that’s being rejected we tuck it away, telling ourselves it doesn’t belong in our conscious state. But it’s not like there's a delete button for your traits - it's still a part of you, it’s still facets of your personality. So then it hibernates, silently, in the back of the mind. Growing a little more every you reject more pieces of yourself that don’t line up with society's morals. 

How to Get Into Alignment

So for me, a lot of the disconnect I experienced in 2018 that resulted in my depression was because I wasn’t aligned with my true self. I find myself wondering a lot if I was aligned previous to the triggering situations but I can never determine a clear answer. To be honest, I don’t think I was. But there was a little bit of time near the end of 2017 when I really believe that I was in alignment, which is why when I fell in 2018 I fell hard.

When I happened across LOA and by extension the teachings of Abraham and Esther Hicks I realized that what had happened was yes, I was aligned… but it was so situational that it was extremely easy to lose. So when I inevitably did lose it, I lost myself as well. Which also makes sense as to why I was so drawn to watch the I Knew You Were Trouble music video so many times but I digress… 

So the reason why we fall into a depression or even just a bit of unhappiness is because we know we should be aligned with this version of ourselves that feels so good to be. We know it exists because we’ve felt it. The version of ourselves that’s happy and shines and radiates nothing but love. When there’s a disconnect we’re desperate to get it back, which by LOA makes it even more difficult to obtain because we’re then so focused on the lack of something. 

When I was looking up ways to get back into Alignment last summer I started readjusting my routine to break my obsessive thoughts and become the best version of myself I could possibly be.

Practice Self-Love

When I say practice self-love, I mean practice it in a way that you have never practiced it before. Like honestly, fall head over heels in love with yourself. If you’ve ever been in a relationship where you were giving your partner all of you with no questions asked; all the patience, love, and guidance they needed at any time of the day they needed it—use that approach to how you’re going to be with yourself. 

Happiness

I'm gonna start this post by stating that I really don't like the song Happier by Bastille. There's no reason for my dislike of this song other than the fact that it was stuck in my head for the entire duration of me writing and editing this post. So that's all.

Moving on...

Here’s a question that I’ve found myself thinking about for the last couple of years: What does it mean to be happy? 

Here are some other questions that normally follow. 

What makes me happy? Who makes me happy? Who’s job is it to make me happy? Is it my best friends duty? Is it my boyfriends? My family? If I only find happiness when I’m around a select few, is that even real happiness? Is it selfish of me to want others to value my own happiness when they make a decision? Does that mean I don’t value my own happiness, since I’m pushing that job onto someone else? Do I make myself happy? Is there a difference between sober happiness and the happiness that comes when my mind is clouded by whichever substance? Which is real? Or are they both real? Is genuine, prolonged happiness even something that’s obtainable? Will I forever be stuck in quick moments of happiness—thinking back on them when I’m going through the longer moments of mediocrity?

The funny thing is, I sincerely do not know the answers to any of those questions which is probably why I find them going round and round in my head so often. But I guess despite that, despite all the uncertainty… for some reason I’ve truly never been happier in my life than I am right now. 

The Law of Attraction: My First Manifestation Story

I stumbled—literally stumbled—across this concept called the Law of Attraction last May. I’m an avid YouTube watcher and have been for quite some time. When I was in the midst of my depressive state, I was watching a lot of YouTube and this is how I found it. 

It came in a suggested video and I think the title was How to Become Detached and Get Everything You Want or something like that. It peaked my interest right away. I mean, how could it not with a title and promise like that? Well little did I know that this would be the introduction to LoA. And that concept was what would kick-start my process in gaining control of my life again. 

So what is the Law of Attraction? 

Quite simply, the Law of Attraction is the belief that by merely focusing your mind on positive or negative thoughts you will attract those things and things similar to it into your physical existence. A more exciting and romantic way to paraphrase it is this: You can manifest whatever you desire into your physical existence strictly by your thoughts.

The easiest way I like to explain this to people is to think of a time when you just had a really rough morning. Like, you woke up and realized that you never set your alarm and you were running late—your hair wasn’t laying right, you got toothpaste on your black shirt, whatever could go wrong was going wrong and you thought to yourself, “I guess it’s gonna be one of those days isn’t it?” 

So you get in your car and drive to work or school or wherever. Traffic is horrible, they’re playing that one song on the radio that you really just can’t stand, you’re so late to where you’re trying to go and it’s just spiraling and spiraling. 

Here’s what happened: you focused on a negative thought, first thing in the morning and so consequently more negative things found their way into your existence. 

This is the Law of Attraction. 

It’s a hard pill to swallow—I know. We’re conditioned from such a young age that what we want in life must be worked for and earned. We’re never told that we can simply manifest it into existence through our own energy and thoughts. 

I’m assuming that if you’ve never heard of LoA before you’re probably like what is this crazy person talking about. I was apprehensive at first too, but I was also really, really curious. So me, being the (semi)sane minded person that I am was like alright if this is real then I’m going to test this out. I mean, manifesting whatever I want into my life? It sounds like a good deal. So the first question I had as I got my feet wet in this concept was this: Can you manifest specific people into your existence? (Answer: yes, yes you can)

Some background: I was in a situation with a specific person where we were not talking at all, I hadn’t even seen them in months and to me that seemed like a good place to test this out. I picked this person for two reasons: the first being that I was just really attached to them and was actually just really curious to see what would happen if they came back into my life, or even if our paths just crossed again for a moment. The second reason was that I knew there wasn’t a snowballs chance in hell that either of us would reach out to the other so it didn’t seem like this would harm the situation even more to try. 

My Depression Story

So it’s been a long while since I’ve written on here and to be honest there was a point where I thought that I wouldn’t really write again. My life seemed to be moving in a different direction than keeping up a fashion blog and I was okay with that. 

Don’t get me wrong, I still love following and being inspired by fashion and the creative aspects of it but keeping up a blog, for me, started to stem on the side of narcissism and I wasn’t willing to try to keep up with it anymore.

More so, major changes were happening within myself which made it extremely difficult to participate in the majority of things I previously enjoyed doing. 

Sooo we’re going to deep dive in this post (hopefully without oversharing because my Scorpio side is actually cringing rn at letting people know what’s actually going on in my head). Recently, I came to the conclusion that even though I don’t want to keep up a fashion blog, I still have something to say. And if what I say can help at least one person then it’s worth saying. 

To be honest, depression really wasn’t a word that was in my vocabulary before this year. I have never been a person with their head in the sand about mental illness and the effects it can have on a person’s life. In fact, I’m quite the opposite. Many of the people that surround me have had some sort of experience with it and I’ve always been an advocate for the positive effects of working through what you’re feeling instead of being in denial about it in an attempt to put a Band-Aid over it so to speak.