What Is Umbra?
Simply put, Umbra means the darkest part of a shadow.
The shadow is where we keep all our repressed bullshit, and often the very place we find our answers.
You don’t have to be a psychology major to understand the concept of the shadow self. (I’m sure as hell not one.) But the shadow is an appropriate metaphor to use in this kind of coaching work, because it’s often the first place we’ll start to explore.
What exactly do we bury in the shadow? Basically, everything we don’t want the outside world to see. Pain, insecurities, self-doubt, humiliation, shame, vulnerability, to name a few. The list is vastly larger than this however.
Addionally, there’s a direct relationship between the shadow, anxiety, fear, and ego. (or S.A.F.E.) It’s this conspiracy of our own minds against us, that cause intrusive thoughts leading to misery, addiction, and self-sabotage towards fulfillment.
Destructive issues form when we don’t allow those shadow parts of us to be expressed constructively. Sometimes they just need to be seen, heard, and felt. That’s step one. From there we recuperate and attack.
That’s why I named my practice Umbra Philosophy.
The Umbra Philosophy
Shadow
We all have aspects of ourselves that throughout our lives, we’ve had to deny, hide and push away in order to fit in. These parts of ourselves still exist, and live in the part of our psyche known as the Shadow.
When we fail to integrated these parts back into our whole being, we’re not able to show up as our most authentic selves, creating issues around confidence, self-sabotage, and insecurities about being seen.
Through clarity, we can set healthy boundaries and express ourselves more authoritatively through conviction, without repressing back into the shadow.
Ego
The ego exists in all of us. Yes, even you. It’s the part of our psyche attached to our identity and who we think we are. When we are driven by ego, we lose sight of our true nature, and have a tendency to see ourselves and others in a very limited light.
The ego’s prime objective is to defend itself against change, because change is the very death of ego.
When you are identified with your ego, you become its prisoner. This can be the root of issues such as self-sabotage, procrastination, anxiety, and a tendency to hold yourself back from achieving your dreams and growing as a man.
The battle against ego is life-long. Don’t fight alone.
Fear
Fear may be at the heart of what we focus on at Umbra. Fear is the most powerful emotion we have pertaining to survival. It keeps us alert to our surroundings and enables us to respond to immediate threats.
However, unregulated or misinterpreted fear (anxiety) becomes problematic, as it prevents us from living our lives to the fullest and keeps us locked in a state of perpetual anguish and distress.
Fear stems from uncertainty. Let’s get you clear.
Anxiety
Diserning the difference between anxiety and fear may seem trivial, but recognizing this difference in the moment of experiencing it can be a powerful tool.
That’s because fear is response to an immediate physical threat, whereas anxiety is a response to a future perceived threat.
A mountain lion bearing its teeth on your hiking trail induces fear. Worrying about hiking because you might run into a mountain lion induces anxiety.
Most of what we call fear is anxiety. It’s important to differentiate the two, because it will help you regain control of how you respond and move forward.
“The only monsters I see in the dark, are the ones I myself put in there.”
“Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.”
“The cave you fear to enter holds the treasure you seek.”
“When I let go of what I am, I become what I might be.”
“The first half of life is devoted to forming a healthy ego, the second half is going inward and letting go of it.”
“Of all the liars in the world, sometimes the worst are our own fears.”
“Do the thing you fear, and the death of fear is certain.”
“Anxiety is the dizziness of freedom.”
“Man is not worried by real problems so much as by his imagined anxieties about real problems.”