"I’m Always Running"
This is the story of Anna, a 34-year-old head of sales and marketing at an international financial holding company. She is successful, leading her team through multiple projects and major deals each year. Her career is on track, and she is well-regarded by both her colleagues and superiors.
However, Anna came to Shadow Work with a particular challenge: constant lateness and rushing. On the surface, her problem might not seem too severe – she is rarely more than five to seven minutes late. But the real issue lies in the fact that she’s always running. She can’t recall a single instance where she left on time and arrived at her destination without stress.
Anna, accustomed to dealing with challenges head-on, handled this one with the same resilience. Running in heels, carrying a heavy laptop bag, sweating as she rushed up the stairs – no problem, she thought. But her health started to protest. Twice in the past year, she had serious health issues, including pneumonia, and noticed a growing tension in her body that she could no longer ignore.
Here is Anna’s brief account: «I’m always running, physically. I’m always late. Either I’m actually late, or I arrive just in the nick of time. I’ve tried to deal with it. Even when I start getting ready early, I drag things out until the last moment, when I should already be leaving. It’s a daily hell. I curse myself for being late again, feel guilty about making people wait, and get angry at everyone around me for driving too slowly or blocking my path when I’m trying to catch a train at the last second. I’m exhausted by this cycle, but I keep ending up in it.»
Facilitators asked: «What would you like to happen? What resolution are you hoping for?»
Anna responded, «I want to stop running. I want to walk calmly, notice life around me instead of rushing past it, and save my energy for things that matter to me.»
What's the Cause?
Facilitators asked a series of questions to clarify Anna’s underlying issue: «What are you running from?» «How do you feel in this situation?» «What do you tell yourself?» «What does all of this remind you of?»
As she thought aloud, childhood memories surfaced. She recalled how adults would constantly rush her. «I did everything slowly as a child. I ate slowly, got dressed for kindergarten slowly, and delayed my mom when getting ready for school. I always heard, ‘Hurry up! You won’t make it! You’re managing your time wrong!’»
Anna’s father, on the other hand, never hurried. He wasn’t involved in the household chores, so he maintained his own pace, often mocking her mother for failing to manage her daughter. This created a dynamic in which Anna felt torn between her parents.
The facilitators worked with Anna to reconstruct this destructive childhood scenario, which was important for transforming it later. They helped her articulate the underlying messages from each of her parents, not just the words they said, but the emotions behind them.
Anna re-experienced this painful childhood scene, and as an adult, she gained access to the feelings she had as a child. What surprised her most was the overwhelming sense of fear. In recounting her habitual lateness, she hadn’t once mentioned fear—only shame, guilt, and tension. But fear had been repressed, pushed into her shadow.
This was the breakthrough: the child in her was scared—not just by her parents’ fights, but by the sense that neither parent cared about her. This fear had been sealed away, buried in her unconscious.
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