All our Parts are working for our Good: Part one: Your dark side

Do you have things you do as a first response to stress that feel good in the moment but end up backfiring later?  Perhaps, it's the actions you keep to yourself and only a select few for fear of rejection.  What if there was a way to start a trajectory toward playing nice, making peace, and perhaps even learning to nurture the parts of us that insist on those actions? If so, how is such a thing accomplished?

Seven steps to befriending your dark side.

Go with it: Try on the assumption, at least for this exercise, that this part is working for your good in some form or fashion.  We are made in such a way that all our motives, actions, emotions, and thoughts were designed to help us survive and prosper.  Consider the fact that every trait about you has been hand picked if not by the universe, by evolution through survival of the fittest or by past personal experience as a beneficial one.  

Characterize it: If this part of you had a color, texture, temperature, shape, and location within your existence, what would the answers be? Feel free to draw it out before your very eyes.

Ask with Curiosity: Now that it has an existence outside of you, ask it, “if you were working for my good, what specific intention (rather than action) do you have in showing up right here and right now?”  Wait and listen for the answer, trusting it will come.

Thank the intention:  Once the answer comes and you begin to see the logic behind the intention, offer it (either through words or silent message) gratefulness for the intention alone.  There is no need to thank it for how the whole picture played out, as that would probably not be genuine.

Thank the effort: Tell it exactly how you can tell how hard it is working and how much this means to you that it cares so much about this intention for your good.

Offer it a vacation: If it could take any vacation anywhere in the world, where would it love to go on a vacation and rest?  What would it get to see, do, smell, touch, and hear there? Stay with these details until that part of you is completely relaxed.  Tell it it can stay here as long as it wants.  

Update the intention’s pathway: Return to the original intention.  Given your current reality, how would this intention best be addressed in a positively stated, respectful, and forward moving direction? 

Ex: If the intention is protection: perhaps, an I statement, such as I feel blank when blank and I want you to blank in the future, might be in order.

If the intention is to conserve energy, considering different ways to delegate, lower expectations, or rearrange your schedule according to your energy levels would be in order.

If the intention is to release certain emotions, time and space for appropriate expression through journal, tears, music, or exercise may be in order.

To wrap up, we all have parts of ourselves that are not naturally our favorite, but the above steps can help us actively acknowledge, validate, and genuinely nurture them so they update themselves into a likable and even loveable part of exactly who you are.