The Essential Guide to Shadow Work: Integrate Your Wounded Parts + Live Your Authentic Self
We all have one.
Often times, we aren’t even aware of it.
Our shadow.
I was literally a walking shadow up until my initiation onto my consciousness path.
Since then, I brought so many of my shadow parts into the light that I sometimes can’t believe I didn’t know about them before.
It’s funny how blind we are when we are unconscious. We just don’t know what we don’t know, of no fault of our own.
“Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.”
- Carl Jung
I didn’t know what I was doing was shadow work until I became interested in Carl Jung. I was only seeking more peace, overcome my suffering and heal my depression as I was experiencing recurring challenging situations in my life and in relationships. Patterns started to occur and I got more curious to explore them.
Along the way, the deeper I ventured into my unconscious, the more I became aware of hidden parts that slowly unveiled themselves. Hello, shadow!
We naturally prefer to avoid uncomfortable feelings, thoughts and memories. But that doesn’t mean they disappear. Instead, they keep living a secret life in our unconscious.
In order to become whole human beings, we have to learn to embrace not just our light but also our shadow and heal wounds from childhood (because we all have them).
The world we live in is bipolar. No day without night. No hot without cold. No light without darkness.
How can we truly be authentic if we keep hiding unloved parts of ourselves? How can we truly love and accept others if we don’t fully accept our darkness?
These days the concept of ‘shadow work’ is all around and it gets thrown around like candy - and yet, there still seems to be a lot of confusion around it all.
So what is the shadow truly? Where does it come from? Why should you even care about it? How can you get started with shadow work? What are the best practices?
I have learned a lot in my 8+ years of dealing with and integrating my own shadow parts.
Let’s dive in. We have a lot to talk about:
What is the Shadow?
When we talk about the shadow, we mean all the parts we deny, hide or reject about ourselves.
Carl Jung describes the shadow as the hidden part of our human psyche.
In his model of the psyche it is the other side of what he calls the persona, which is the part that we show to the outer world, a mask that is intended to hide all our flaws and imperfections.
It’s called the shadow because it hasn’t been captured by the light of our consciousness and because it has been banned from the surface of our visible life.
Jung basically considers everything that is unconscious as the shadow, because it is the the scary unknown that we humans don’t like to face.
However, even if it is hidden, it remains a part of us and expresses itself in our personality and how we interact in the world and especially with other people.
The shadow doesn’t just include ‘negative’ aspects of our personality, but also positive ones. The things we idolize or adore in other people is un-lived potential within us and also part of our shadow.
In essence, the shadow is comprised of unresolved conflicts and problems; un-lived desires and passions, as well as denied needs and wishes, socially unacceptable beahvior.
Here is a great video that goes into more detail:
Where Do Your Shadow Parts Come From?
So how is the shadow created? Why do we have a shadow?
During childhood we learn how to get love and acceptance - it’s what drives most of our behavior, because as children we believe without it we will die (which, according to research, is also true). It’s how we are wired as humans.
We also learn how not to be if we don’t want to be cut off from love and affection from our parents. So we conclude from these situations that we have to hide certain behaviors and that we can’t be fully authentic in our ways of expression. We mold ourselves like clay so we don’t get rejected.
In the process, as we develop further as children we have to adopt and adjust to our parents’ values and societal norms. Later on, this is further enhanced through friends, partners, career and groups and we keep adjusting to what is externally expected from us and how we get approval.
As humans, our fear of abandonment and rejection is greater than our need for authenticity - and so we keep hiding who we really are and push parts of us further into the unconscious shadow part of the psyche (mostly without even knowing it).
But the shadow never sleeps and the more our lives progress, the louder its knocks on the door to consciousness become.
Essentially, your shadow is your wounded self. It’s everything you got hurt by and didn’t fully process and so you repressed/suppressed it into your unconscious. We do this as a way to protect ourselves from further hurt and because we don’t know better at the time.
The results are behaviors for which our ego is in charge (as the “manager”), but they are really all just protection mechanisms that we had to develop as children to get love and not experience pain.
What is Shadow Work?
The intention of shadow work is to bring the suppressed personality parts back into our consciousness and learn to accept and love them.
Through different practices we can integrate the parts that got split off earlier in our lives back into our psyches and thus become ‘whole’ human beings.
Shadow work confronts us with parts of ourselves that we rather not know about - hence, why many people avoid doing it, don’t want to go there, are not interested and disregard this kind of ‘personal development’.
It’s not easy to look at ourselves in this way, actually take responsibility and accept the parts that we judge in ourselves and others.
Yet, the solution lies not in the permanent avoidance of our dark soul parts, but in their full acceptance and approval.
It’s a process of acknowledging the ‘ugly’ parts of ourselves - our anger, jealousy, greed and bitterness - and learning to love them despite our judgements of them.
Shadow work is also trauma work as we heal wounded parts of ourselves - a lot of shadows were created as part of developmental or attachment trauma when we were children, when we didn’t have the resources to deal with our emotions fully and so are stored in our nervous system and in the stories we tell ourselves.
“This confrontation is the first test of courage on the inner way, a test sufficient to frighten off most people, for the meeting with ourselves belongs to the more unpleasant things that can be avoided so long as we can project everything negative into the environment. But if we are able to see our own shadow and can bear knowing about it, then a small part of the problem has already been solved: we have at least brought up the personal unconscious. The shadow is a living part of the personality and therefore wants to live with it in some form. It cannot be argued out of existence or rationalized into harmlessness.”
- Carl Jung
How Does Your Shadow Manifest and Express Itself?
There are many ways our shadow parts show up in our conscious lives:
Jealousy
Addiction
Depression
Anxiety
Codependency
Creating or being part of a lot of drama in life
Self-sabotage
Power struggles
Lies
Procrastination
Resentment
Passive-aggressiveness
Bitterness
Aggression, anger and rage
Violent behaviors and abuse
Victimization
Guilt and shame
Reactive
Discontentment
Your shadow will control your life and keep presenting you with uncomfortable opportunities to integrate it.
We can’t heal what we don’t see or feel - and so it will keep causing challenges for you, make you and others miserable and sick.
How You Can Recognize Your Shadow Parts
The people in our lives mirror our shadow parts back to us if you like it or not and we project our shadow onto other people in the form of criticism and judgement.
“The shadow is prone to psychological projection, in which a perceived personal inferiority is recognized as a perceived moral deficiency in someone else.”
Wikipedia
Everything you find annoying in others, that you judge and reject from yourself points to shadow issues.
What people are in your environment? What do you dislike or even hate about them?
But also: What fascinates you about them?
Who are people on social media that you dislike or judge?
Who are people or celebrities that you idolize and that have put on a pedestal? And why?
Also, whenever we unconsciously repeat a behavior it is a clue for a shadow part that has taken control. Can you spot patterns in your life? Any pattern that repeats itself is your shadow calling out at you.
Here are more clues to help you recognize your shadow parts:
Lack of self-confidence and afraid to speak up
Blaming external circumstance
Weak boundaries
Fears around putting yourself and your creative work out into the world (fear of judgement, procrastination, self-sabotage…)
Not doing what you know you want and is good for you
Money and success issues (judging others who make a lot of $$ or are very outwardly successful)
Relationship issues and dramas (anxious or avoidant attachment styles)
Everything that scares you sinks deep into your shadow (sometimes it becomes a big inner monster). What are fears that you repeatedly have to deal with?
Maybe every time your partner talks about their colleague at work you get jealous even though there is no rational reason for your reaction.
Maybe you judge a woman’s masculine appearance and don’t like women who wear short hair. This could be an indicator that you reject your own masculine shadow part within yourself.
Maybe you have a friend who is sometimes late and it triggers you out of proportion.
Maybe you keep attracting unavailable partners or partners who cheat on you.
Maybe you feel frustrated in your relationships and you then turn passive-aggressive.
Maybe you feel stuck in areas of your life and no matter what you do, you don’t seem to make any progress.
Hello there shadow… 👋🏼
In essence, wherever you struggle in life a shadow hides.
Examples of the Shadow
When you grew up, your parents didn’t value what you had to say. Little You concluded that your opinions don’t matter and so stay quiet in order for your parents not to blame you or criticize you. This aspect keeps evolving and you learn to suppress your opinions and you develop a fear of speaking up, especially in school and later on in your job or on social media.
Or maybe you learned to not take all sweets from the table because you would be considered greedy. Or you learned to not be loud, wild and free in your expression because you’d be thought of as childish or annoying.
In both cases you might judge others for the exact same thing, eg. for being annoying or greedy.In my case, my family of origin is not very creative in their expression and so when I created things as a child I didn’t get the recognition I needed from my parents and thus concluded that I wasn’t creative enough and my creations not good enough.
This led to me not ever sharing my photography/films with anyone and later one, no believing in my abilities, I wanted to but didn’t have the confidence to apply to film/photography school.When you scroll around on Instagram and you see someone celebrating a 6-figure product launch or having just bought an epic home by the beach or getting married to their dream partner - and you notice yourself feeling jealousy. Or sadness. And you criticize them or judge them “Oh look at them boasting their big money egos” or “Who would need such a big house anyway?” or “Well, we all know how many marriages fail, so I’m sure they won’t make it far.”
It’s the part of you that wishes the same for you but you don’t have it. It’s the part that is in scarcity mode. It’s the part of you that is resentful that you grew up in a poor family or that your parents got divorced when you were 7 or that you grew up in a small apartment sharing your room with your two siblings.Being in love is another beautiful way we project our shadows. Let’s say you are someone with a permanent 9-5 job and you have lived in the same very organized apartment in the same city for 10 years. You have a really nice secure life. And then you fall for someone who is a real adventurer, maybe a digital nomad or someone who has cycled around the globe on a bike, who impersonates freedom in everything they do.
In this case, the aspects of you that you have not lived enough are projected onto the other person. This shows you what parts of yourself you are not expressing yet, which of your own dreams and potentials you are ignoring (probably out of fear).
In the first few months we idealize our new partner and put them on a pedestal because they have or live aspects that are part of our own shadow.
Based on the Holographic Model everything we only perceive and see in the world what lies as a potential within us.
The Benefits of Doing Shadow Work
The pathway to completion as a human being, to become whole, is to face our dark side and bring it into the light, because our shadows keep us stuck until we deal with them.
Repressing our shadow work and keeping it from entering our lives requires a lot of energy. In the long run, if we never engage with it, this suppressed energy can make us sick, cause burnout or push is into a big crisis.
Through its integration we experience deep healing and can unleash a lot of energy. It is only when we accept and honor the shadow within us that we can channel its power in a positive way and find emotional balance and true inner freedom.
When we make friends with our neglected shadow parts, we experience more joy and flow in life, more fulfilling relationships and are able to access our full potential.
We expand our capacity for kindness and compassion to ourselves and others, which makes us less judgmental and critical.
Liberating our shadow will turn us into happier people, give us more self-confidence and boost set a lot of creative energy free.
And lastly, this process makes us more self-aware, as well as conscious and in touch with ourselves. We can then actually operate from our adult self rather than staying stuck in our child self and let it run the show when we are operating from our shadow unconsciousness.
So if you have been looking to learn to love yourself more and deepen the connection with yourself, shadow work is the path.
What Are the Best Practices to Do Shadow Work?
Here are my preferred ways to reclaim parts of ourselves that we have rejected:
A. Observe your reactions and practice being conscious
What are your triggers? What and who makes you have a reaction?
Being triggered comes from unconscious patterns and is essentially a automated fight/flight response that originates in our brain that sends signals to our endocrine and nervous system.
Watch yourself in your relationships, as you are out and about in your daily life but also when you are consuming social media.
Through self-observation and mindfulness we can practice to become aware of our shadow aspects. It might take a while for you to develop this skill (when we are triggered it’s difficult to come back into our rational, adult mind) but even becoming conscious after the fact and take some time to reflect on a reaction is a massive step in the process. Consciousness opens up choice.
Because remember: when it’s hysterical, it’s historical. Meaning: when your reaction to an event or someone’s behavior is out of proportion it is usually rooted in the past and in your shadow.
B. Practice emotional inquiry and complete the emotional cycle
What am I feeling? (Check this list of emotions here)
Why am I feeling this?
What belief or story is attached to this emotion? (eg. I am not good enough, my feelings are not valid, I am not lovable, no one supports me, I will never be happy…)
Does this feeling or situation remind me of something in the past or my childhood?
Feel the emotion in your body. Connect to it and give it the space it needs to complete its cycle.
It’s really about developing a sense of curiosity for your inner emotional world and seeing your emotions as information.
C. Write your heart out: daily journaling
Stream of consciousness writing is like a raw window do yourself. It helps us learn to be honest with ourselves and we discover things from our unconscious we didn’t expect.
The pages are the space where we can’t bullshit ourselves.
The best ways:
You can also get started by using these prompts to identify your shadow parts:
What triggers me in life and my relationships?
When and how do I judge others? What do you dislike in others?
When and how do I judge myself? What do I not like about myself?
What or who do you feel resentment for?
What are things I complain about?
What are things I envy in others?
What are things I struggle with?
What do you find inspiring and fascinating in others?
Another great journaling practice is The Work by Byron Katie (here is a summary with the four questions, but I also recommend her book).
D. Sit with your shadow in meditation
Learning to sit with yourself in silence is essential in really getting to know yourself and your shadow. It is also the hardest thing to do for many people. But being able to just be with yourself, your thoughts and your feelings is powerful in getting in touch with your (wounded) shadow parts and sit with your emotions and inquiring deeper into your triggers.
If you are just getting started I highly recommend using Insight Timer.
Here is also a good guided meditation:
E. Dream analysis
Dreams are an ideal vehicle in which to confront the shadow because dreams provide a direct line of communication to the unconscious. Through your dreams, your unconscious is speaking with you. (By the way, Jung was a big fan of dream analysis)
Especially recurring dreams really means your shadow wants your attention and they offer a ton of important information.
The difficult part of dream work is remembering at least one of the at least half a dozen dreams we have each night.
Focus your attention on remembering and understanding your dreams before going to sleep. Make it your intention.
Put a pen and a notebook next to your bed. This way, if you wake up in the middle of the night and remember your dream, you can jot down a few notes on key words or images that may help you more fully recall the dream in the morning. Important: Don’t just write what happened but how you felt in the dream as well.
A great book to learn more about dream analysis is by Jungian analyst Robert Johnson called Inner Work: Using Dreams and Active Imagination for Personal Growth.
F. Analyze your favorite stories, myths and movies
A more intuitive way to explore your shadows is looking for symbols and archetypes in the stories you resonate with most. They directly speak to the unconscious without us knowing it. We like certain movies and hero’s because they mirror a part of our shadow self.
Make a list of your favorite movies and myths and jot down their rough storyline. Then think about the characteristics of your heroes and heroines and how they might relate to you, your unfulfilled potential or secret desires.
In order to understand complex storylines and their meanings better, I also recommend googling for myth/movie analysis or interpretations.
I have done this exercise a couple of times and what I find out about myself keeps surprising me! Try it!
This book is a great resource to learn more about this practice:
Movie Yoga - How Every Film Can Change Your Life by Tav Sparks
G. Inner Child Work
Since most of our shadows are created during childhood, that’s also where a lot of the healing and integration potential lies.
We essentially have to learn to reparent ourselves in order for our adult self to take the driver’s seat in our lives.
A great way to do inner child work is through guided meditations (see eg, this one on Insight Timer) and journaling practices (here are some good prompts to get started).
Here are two great books on the topic:
Homecoming: Reclaiming and Championing Your Inner Child by John Bradshaw
Reconciliation: Healing the Inner Child by Thich Nhat Hanh
Also, check out this intro post by The Holistic Psychologist:
And her video on the topic:
H. Breathwork + Plant Medicine
We get to explore our shadows very deeply when we are in altered states of consciousness, which we can access through transformational Breathwork or with Ayahuasca, Huachuma or Magic Mushrooms.
I have had really powerful experiences and insights with plant medicine and I keep practicing breathwork regularly to integrate my shadow parts. (If you are interested to explore breathwork, you can schedule a private session with me here).
The cool thing about breathwork is that you don’t need a shaman to do it, you don’t need to travel to Peru to do it and drink a liquid that will probably make you purge. You can do it online from the comfort of your own home and still experience transformational states of consciousness. It has changed my life in so many ways, which is why it is the practice I offer to the world.
This is IG livestream I did with my good friend Jonny a few months ago, titled WTF is Breathwork? - you can watch the replay here:
I. Therapy and Coaching
Shadow work on ourselves without any outside support is often quite limited. We all have blind spots that we don’t know that we have them and it often requires a light from outside to shine it into consciousness for us.
If you are really serious about healing your wounded parts and integrating your shadow, I highly recommend working with a professional.
It’s been very helpful on my own journey and I continue to get support from therapists and coaches.
A Personal Note:
Where I find shadow work falls short is when it comes to somatic or body-based practices to release stuck trauma and process emotions.
The concept is very mind-focused, which totally leaves out the parts our bodies and nervous system play in holding on to stress when dealing with challenging events and dysfunctional relationships especially during childhood.
In my own experience, doing breathwork, working with a therapist trained in somatic experiencing and learning emotional intelligence skills to work with emotions were essential for my integration and healing process.
(I will talk more about these practices soon.)
Further Resources
Owning Your Own Shadow: Understanding the Dark Side of the Psyche by Robert Johnson
Meeting the Shadow: The Hidden Power of the Dark Side of Human Nature by Connie Zweig
Momentum: A Shadow Work Guide & Journal by Quinn Barbour
King, Warrior, Magician, Lover: Rediscovering the Archetypes of the Mature Masculine by Robert Moore
To dive deeper into Carl Jung, I recommend these books:
Man and His Symbols by Carl Jung
Jung: A Very Short Introduction by Anthony Stevens
Jung: The Key Ideas by Ruth Snowden
Final Words
Authentic personal development that is meant to be long-term and go into depth, has to go via the path of integration of our split off shadow aspects. Once we dive deep into our shadows, we can finally start living a life of inner freedom.
We might not be responsible for what happened to us in the past but we are responsible for doing the inner work to become whole human beings again.
Facing the truth about ourselves can be very frightening and uncomfortable, but every shadow part we integrate holds a tremendous gift for us.
It’s a journey of a lifetime, not one that we can just check off a list. It’s not about getting rid of our shadows, but about bringing it into the light so that it can teach us and heal us.
Happy shadow-working! 🤙🏼
Conni
PS: If you are curious to explore and heal your shadow parts using Breathwork, you can book a private session with me here.
PPS: If you struggle with creative confidence and sharing your gifts/ideas with the world, check out my course and mentoring program - shadow work is a big part of it… 👇🏼
