How I’ve used Shadow Work to Make Friends with Myself.

Shadow work is a concept developed by Psychoanalyst Carl Jung. He described the term “shadow Self” as the parts of a person that they hide, repress or ignore. Shadow work in itself is a process of exploring those parts of us and learning to integrate them within our psyche with the aim of recognising ourselves in our entirety. It encourages us to acknowledge the darker parts of us as who we are rather than view them as good or bad.

Shadow work requires us to bring our unconscious mind into the conscious and look deeply at how our repressed traits affect not only our life, but the lives of others too. Due to the difficulty of facing the parts of ourselves we do not like shadow work can be a triggering process and I recommend doing this under the guidance of a trauma-informed therapist.  

The unconscious mind stores all of the memories, thoughts and emotions of our past. It is within the unconscious that the shadow lives. The shadow self is hidden beneath our persona, the part of ourselves that we show the outer world. This part of us is considered to be a mask hiding both our negative and positive traits, developed in childhood.

Everything that we hide from our outer world is our shadow, a collection of unmet needs, desires, dislikes and conflicts held captive within our mind, safe with the inner child that lives inside of us. The shadow self plays a big part in our self-sabotaging behaviours. By never addressing our shadow we exacerbate the patterns that impact our lives in undesirable ways. This is why addressing our shadow is important for healing. The purpose of healing our shadow self is to bring all the parts of us we have denied ourselves into the light to be loved and healed.

Carl Jung believed that when we take the hidden or repressed parts of our internal world and balance them fully into our psyche, we can achieve a fully integrated state of consciousness. This is where the term “integrate your shadow” comes from. By confronting these opposing forces within we can increase our self-understanding and personal growth, knowing ourselves fully as whole beings. Jung concluded that through integrating our shadow we start the path to individuation, the process of acknowledging ourselves as a distinct individual. Individuation is thought to be key to personal growth, allowing people to gain a higher sense of self-awareness, identity and purpose.

How I Am Making Friends with My Shadow

I started shadow work with the support of a wonderful trauma-informed therapist who helped me uncover layers of myself that I had no idea were there. This sent me on my search for more of this part of me and soon I realised that I was a walking, talking, shadow. Acknowledging all these parts of me allowed me to see who I was in full, this was scary. I had become everything that I disliked in other people and my world was a mirror for my internal state.

I knew a lot about me had to change. The woman I had become at the trigger point for my healing was not who I wanted to be, I was miserable, controlling, fearful and full of anger. I developed an outlook on the world that was dark and negative, feeling that everything that went wrong in my external world was personal and my internal world felt like a living nightmare. As a product of this, I became unsociable and withdrew from my connections as a way of self-protection. I felt deeply lonely and isolated, misunderstood and unseen and became a workaholic to soothe my need for validation and a sense of self-worth.

While all this pain existed within me, there was something inside of me that just wanted connection and had a dream of a better way of existing. I chose to believe that this could not be my life and set about the process of diving deep into who I am, I decided I no longer wanted to exist or survive, I wanted to thrive and live. To do this the old me had to stay in the past, she was not coming forward with me, and a new me must be born.

Acknowledging the good parts of me was an easier task but the darker parts of me took time to sit with. In the beginning, I was very resistant to certain parts of myself. These were the parts of me that I resisted the most in others. Jung believed that the reason we are so affected by the worst traits in others is because we suppress those traits within ourselves. So, I took a look at this from my own perspective and found it to be true. This was where my work began. I started looking at those who had caused conflict in my life and what about their behaviours I disliked. I then went about finding the parts of me that looked similar both repressed and expressed, this exploration process helped me to understand why these traits felt so uncomfortable for me.

The parts about other people that I disliked, were very much alive within me. Once I could see this, I was able to see that I needed to discover how these traits felt for me within my body and why I had either repressed them or unconsciously expressed them. I discovered that many of my repressed traits were behaviours that I was heavily reprimanded for as a child and as a product of this I hid them from the world. As we grow these hidden parts of ourselves get harder and harder to ignore, life stressors come along and trigger us into the states that we want to deny and we repress the feelings and emotions that arise, perpetuating the cycle and birthing undesirable traits in their place.  

Sitting quietly next to the uncomfortable parts of me were the parts of me that begged to be seen but kept being shut off, the positive traits within me that I “just didn’t have time for” or was too afraid to allow myself to feel through fear of being hurt or taken advantage of. This was the part of me that loves childlike whimsy, creativity and imagination but the biggest part of my hidden positive shadow was my desire to express and feel love and intimacy.

Hiding these parts of me from the world meant I was not showing up authentically and this was what I wanted more than anything, to live into myself fully. I started offering the hidden or repressed parts of myself compassion through a process of self-love and inner child work and where I could see it in full within myself, I have been able to see it in full in others.

• You can read my blog on Inner Child work here

• You can read my blog on self-love here

The process of acknowledging the shadow parts of myself has allowed me to see myself as a whole person, bringing a higher sense of self-awareness and self-acceptance, skyrocketing my self-growth and development, slowly allowing me to make friends with myself. Through the process of integration and individuation, I am able to show up in my life in a more authentic state, working at fully aligning with my beliefs and values, living into my heart-centred nature, allowing myself to express my joys and my deep desire to give love fully, wholly and without the need for reciprocation. In turn, this has strengthened my relationships and I am able to connect to myself and others in a way I have never experienced.

Before I started shadow work, I felt that I was always true to myself, I believed I showed those around me who I really was but the further I walked into my shadow the more I could see how much I had hidden some of the most important parts of me from the world. Freeing the hidden parts of me has been a liberating experience, slowly helping me to become who I feel I am destined to be. The road is long and hard and I am still on it, integrating your shadow is a lifelong journey but making friends with my inner workings has felt like one of the most important things I have done on my healing journey.  

“Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.” - Carl Jung