I wanted to take some time to go a bit deeper into shadow work for those who may be unfamiliar. I talk about it a lot because it’s an important aspect of my practice, but if you’re newer to the concept or have not approached shadow work yet it may be confusing. To start off, we’ll be going a bit into the roots of the shadow work and Carl Jung’s research, and it’s use in psychoanalytic psychotherapy before we go into its more modern use and approach.
Shadow work is not just a spiritual or magical practice, the shadow work most people talk about today is built from a type of psychotherapy, usually quoted as starting in the 20th century and heavily inspired by Carl Jung’s work. Jung was said to believe the shadow self was the repressed side of the persona, the pieces the ego did not like or did not fit into the ‘ideal’ version. While Carl Jung had other work, we’ll be focusing more so on how his work has shaped how shadow work is approached today. We’ll be going into his work, and how it shaped shadow work as a practice today.
Important Vocab:
Below I’m going to go over some of the common concepts and ideas I’ll be touching through the rest of this post, for easy reference.
Persona: The personality you show the public openly. This will likely be traits that have been deemed as ‘good’ or ‘likable.’
Shadow Self: The repressed pieces of the persona, hidden or kept private. The shadow self is not inherently bad for you, though is more likely to be made of things you wouldn’t want others to know about you.
Collective Unconscious: Influences the shadow self. The collective unconscious references collective memories or impulses of society. And this could cover from smaller collective ideals like diet culture and beauty standards to stronger prejudices such as racism.
Shadow Work in Psychotherapy
The goal of shadow work is to take both of these sides and bring them together to better manage the inner workings and impulses of the mind. The shadow self is not necessarily bad, but it can hold bad habits we ignore, or even personal prejudices and intolerance. Jung believed that by doing shadow work and ‘assimilating’ the shadow to the persona people could heal themselves and approach their negative impulses towards others.
Now since this is not something that is truly tangible, it cannot be measure and while it is a type of psychotherapy there is actually very little to back up effectiveness in numbers. It is something I personally feel would require humans to be perfect to properly measure, as a lot of this is internal work. There is a lot of anecdotal data recorded by many, and it has become a very popular form of ‘self-therapy’ for those without access to therapist or other forms of mental health. Many compare it to concepts like Cognitive Behavioral Therapy, which helps you become aware of inaccurate or negative thinking so you can view challenging situations more clearly and respond to them in a more effective way. I’d say the biggest difference I see is CBT is structured and approached in limited sessions, and you work with someone else to get through it. In shadow work it is mostly approached by oneself and often isn’t limited or structured this way.
Shadow work is not a common practice, and few people are trained to deliver this type of therapy. It is much more common to see people take this on their own. Though I feel it would be negligent not to take the time to mental that sometimes it’s not ideal to do this on your own. While many people can, those who have trauma or other serious mental health concerns they will likely need help and guidance from a professional. It may lead to you approaching uncomfortable topics around their trauma.
Approaching Shadow Work
Starting shadow work requires a willingness to explore the shadow self and being willing to look at it and accept what you may see. It’s okay to feel uneasy doing it, or even just uncomfortable. After all these are parts of yourself you’ve hidden-and what’s scarier than not knowing who you actually are? Jung had a few ways for approaching the shadow self.
Dream Analysis: Jung believed dreams could hold symbols or themes to see if they can make connections for things they may ignore otherwise.
Journaling: There is no wrong way to approach journaling. No matter how you put your thoughts on paper, you should be able to use what you’ve been writing to try and notice patterns or themes. Prompts, writing about your day, however you decide to do so. Many buy prompt journals, you can find many themed for shadow work!
Psychoanalysis: Jung believed this was the ideal avenue for diving into the shadow self. Here an Analyst (Psychoanalytic Psychotherapy) would help you interpret dreams archetypes, symbols from their unconscious mind, and the underlying motives for their actions.
These are often still used today, and many approaches to shadow work are built from these concepts, modernized into ways we can understand it and work with it. Now we see a lot of focus in prompt journaling, where people use guided journals to walk themselves through questions and write out their thoughts and answers so that they can try and highlight the shadow. A lot of people like to buy shadow work journals, because it helps them organize these thoughts and they have a guide to follow when answering. Some people struggle to have an idea of where to start, they often feel intimidated by the vast options available to them, these pre-made journals take some of that intimidation away. They’re usually a mix of reflection and trying to highlight themes about oneself they may struggle to identify.
When it comes to trying to psychoanalyze yourself, it can sound somewhat silly. Most people would like to be able to say that they don’t need to psychoanalyze themselves, they already know why they do what they do. It’s not as simple as going “I feel sad at the concept of divorce, because my parents divorced, and it made me sad.” You’re actually going deeper into the micro-movements of these brain worms (this is a personal term, it is in no way scientific), seeing these smaller unhealed burrows you’ve ignored.
Your aim when you start to break down your actions is to try and find the theme that puts everything together and figure out why it’s the theme. If you work with an Analyst, they will typically work through finding an interpretation through your behavior and thoughts. They will try to highlight the unseen parts for you and bring them to light. If you do this for yourself the process can be a bit harder to try and approach. Realistically, you’re not just going “I have an issue with authority because my parents used too much authority.”
You’re going:
I’m noticing a pattern where days I have to interact with someone who’s exerting authority, or trying to establish authority, over me I get extremely irate, and it ruins my day.
Why do I feel this way with authority? What are the feelings it gives me?
Authority makes me upset, because it reminds me of times where I had none.
A prominent time I had no authority was in my childhood and adolescence. My parents believed children should be seen not heard, and would try to control the classes I took, my major in college, how I dressed or decorated my room. So now when people have authority over me like a boss or a cop, I feel combative because I expect them to take it to extremes and abuse their authority. I have an unhealthy reaction to authority because the fear and mistrust my parents gave me under the guise of having that authority.
Then you should move towards trying to counteract this behavior. What are ways you can make yourself more comfortable with authority? What are healthy ways to set a boundary with the authority figures you have to interact with?
The methods you use for shadow work may be different, but you’ll find yourself going down this similar path of thought. You’ll be slowly uncovering the subconscious actions you take and making them more conscious and trying to correct behaviors that negatively impact your life.
Common Prompts used in Shadow Work Journals:
“What aspects of yourself do you find most difficult to accept?”
“What fears or worries hold you back from pursuing the career of your dreams?”
“How do you tend to self sabotage? What might be the root cause of this?”
“Think of a core value you hold, and how do you act against it and why?”
“What kind of relationships do you feel the most uneasy with? Why do they make you uneasy?”
“How do you use power, and when would you abuse it?”
“Am I looking at this from a healthy perspective?”
“Am I living true to myself?”
“How do I feel when I wake up most days?”
“What am I thinking about before bed most nights?”
“Am I putting enough effort into my relationships?”
“Am I taking care of myself physically?”
“Am I too focused on things that are out of my control?”
“Am I achieving the Goals I’ve set for myself?”
Modern Approaches to Shadow Work
Everything comes back to balance; a lot of Carl Jung’s work did circle an idea of balance and achieving it with the self-like the idea of assimilating your shadow self with your persona. Now as time has gone on, we have adapted this idea to more modern workings. Some of the things Carl Jung used to promote we’ve seen now aren’t exactly as we saw then. This is common with many from the earlier days of psychology, but some of our key concepts with shadow work and its base come from him.
When it comes to the spiritual approach to shadow work we see today, there’s still an emphasis on the shadow self and the persona. We do see less of a focus on the unconscious collective that we see in Jung’s work, often times this is addressed as a part of the shadow self instead of a separate component.
With the shadow self and yourself, it’s important to remember you’re not ‘fixing’ either of them, you’re just achieving a balance between the two. One is not weighted higher than the other, they are equal in measure. Ones persona or shadow self are not condemned to be bad or good, they just are. Your persona may not always be ‘good’ versions of you-they’re just the version of you feel is more acceptable to the general public and will get you high regard among your peers. Some people have a twisted idea of what this is-think of your classic movie bully.
The persona isn’t nice or good it’s just ideal, and the shadow self isn’t bad it’s just misunderstood. The fix to this character is not to remove the entirety of the persona, it is to add the shadow self in to balance out these sides to a well-rounded individual. When we sit down with the concepts of ourselves, there will be pieces we try to bury deep within ourselves, locked beyond vaults and doors and deep staircases to nothingness. There will be things we feel shame in and regret or grief about. The important part is we show ourselves grace, and we be willing to sit with these grotesques’ pieces of ourselves, look at them and embrace them. You will have a hard time with shadow work if you just wish to go around the parts you don’t want, you have to be fully willing to do it even if you don’t like what you see.
Shadow work is not just accepting you may hate geese, and there’s a chance when you open the front door there will be geese in the yard. It’s opening the door, seeing the geese, and being okay with the fact the geese are there. It is not just ‘Oh, okay, I have this.” it’s ownership of it. “I have this, it is a part of me.” And healing it to be the best version of yourself, instead of the best presentation of yourself.
Shadow Work in Summary
Shadow work was originally coined by Swiss Psychoanalyst Carl Jung, as a type of therapy to try and help people accept the parts of themselves that they hid subconsciously. As it has grown in a spiritual practice it has become a way many practitioners try to improve their life and their interactions with the world around them. It is now focused on the principal of accepting the parts of ourselves we attempt to hide and balancing them out with healthy approaches and coping mechanisms.
While it can be a very helpful tool, there are cases where it is best done with a professional, or another type of therapy is used in approach. People with an extensive trauma history should work with a doctor before trying to dive into shadow work as it can force you to think a lot about your trauma, and possibly repressed trauma. This of course can be very upsetting, and you should make sure you’re in a good spot mentally, spiritually, and physically before diving in.
What are the overall benefits of shadow work? It’s actually hard to tell, as it’s a hard topic to measure in any sensible or tangible way. Realistically how do you measure and compare people healing their personal issues, especially when they’re all highly personal aspects of their own life? While it’s been overall reported to have good effects, we have not been able to record this in a meaningful way that accurately reflects the data. So, all of this is to say that the effects of shadow work are heavily subjective, but most commonly people report the following:
- Being able to identify and let go of negative personal traits, and negative traits they’ve learned from their environment.
- Learning to be open and accepting of themselves, and traits of themselves they’ve struggled with.
- Being more empathetic to those around them and being able to see the struggles they have with their shadow self.
- Approaching challenging emotions, such as grief, regret, or even trauma.
- An understanding on how the environment around them shapes their lives (how their childhood was, the area they live in, the prominent cultures and beliefs in that area, etc.) and how to counter act negative associations.
- Higher self-esteem and a stronger ability to accept oneself.
- Having a stronger understanding of their sense of self.
- Being able to form stronger relationships with others.
- Learning healthy ways to cope with strong feelings
- Being able to set boundaries appropriately.
- Ability to stop negative self-talk
Shadow work may not be a perfect fit for you, but hopefully with all of this you are able to better understand not only the roots of shadow work in psychology, but also the more common applications we see today. I will have more blogs dedicated to shadow work in the future, that go farther than we have here on the topic, but I felt this would be a good introduction for those completely unfamiliar with the concept and how it’s used.
Share your thoughts!