Shadow work

3 Signs That It’s Time to Stop Running From Your Shadow and Face It Already

Should you allow a part of you to haunt you?

1. You Feel Empty

The shadow is a strange, unsettling subject most people don’t want to hear about. It’s something most people just want to run away from.

While many spiritual teachers approve of shadow work and feel it can improve a person’s life, others believe if you go looking for dark things, all you will find is more dark things.

If you are worried about what you might find during shadow work, then there is probably something you don’t want to find. There’s something you pushed aside never to remember that has grown to become a shadow, following and haunting you wherever you go.

The shadow is you. Should you allow a part of you to haunt you?

The shadow is the unconscious and the disowned parts of yourself that your ego wanted nothing to do with it. It’s the hidden parts of yourself that are not exposed to the light of your consciousness.

As children, we are born whole and complete, but that wholeness is short-lived when our caretakers tell us that certain things about ourselves are unacceptable. The minute you hear that something about you is “bad,” you have a reason to suppress, reject, ignore, deny, or push into the unconscious never to revisit.

But doing this causes you to feel empty inside because you’ve lost parts of yourself.

The goal of shadow work is integration. It is nothing but to make the unconscious conscious and the unacceptable parts of yourself acceptable. The integration of the unconscious leads to recovering the parts of yourself society said was unacceptable.

If you’ve been feeling empty, as if something is missing from your life, the entire universe is on your side, trying to help you feel whole again. But you must stop the running and face your shadow self.

Shadow work leads to inner healing and transformation, and all it takes is self-awareness.

The goal is to hold hands with your shadow and bring it out into the light or to shine a light on it so it ceases to exist.

Shadow work is nothing but to make the unconscious conscious and the unacceptable parts of yourself acceptable so you feel whole again.

2. You Have Many Regrets

We often underestimate the shadow, thinking it has no power over us but it does. Even though it’s unseen, it affects everything you do. It is the reason you do certain things in life without understanding why you did it.

The shadow is an inner fragmentation that occurs within you. It’s almost like two different people are operating your life.

When you deny an aspect of yourself, it doesn’t disappear. It fades away from your conscious awareness and lies quietly in the dark waiting for the right times to show its face and when it does, you may not be expecting it at all.

The shadow gets a life of its own and can affect your actions and reactions if you don’t pay attention to it.

When you have a big shadow it can take over you.

We have no control over any of this when we’re kids, but when we become adults, we should be able to handle life better, yet we keep falling into the same unhealthy patterns.

The shadow operates outside of your conscious awareness, in the form of unconscious and limiting beliefs.

A huge shadow can become an entity and affect your life in ways you could never understand. It will push you to act in ways you end up regretting.

We often project our shadows — our repressed anger, guilt, shame, and other things — onto others. We lash out at people for the behaviors we don’t like in ourselves.

If you find that you do things and regret them every time, it might not be you, but a different part of yourself that is acting on your behalf.

And that’s when it gets bad.

Every time you act out of your shadow, it grows bigger and bigger and then you start to project your issues onto others, which you end up regretting when it causes you to start unnecessary drama and push people away.

You have to pay attention to how you project yourself into the outside world. Because the universe works to make you feel whole again, when your shadow gets too big, people will become a mirror to show you the things lurking in your shadow.

To become aware of your shadow, you have to choose to see it. Once you see it, it’s no longer a shadow aspect because you’ve seen and dealt with it.

One of the biggest mistakes you can make with shadow work is to judge it once you see it. If you let the harsh inner critic come up and shame or blame the shadow, you are rejecting it all over again.

Your shadow was born from non-acceptance and rejection. It was created the moment you pushed it away. Antagonizing it even more only adds fuel to the fire.

The moment you see the things in your shadow, accept them as a part of you. Give it your love and compassion. Make peace with those aspects of yourself so it can rejoin the light.

For those negative and vicious aspects of yourself, you must still face and tame them.

Facing and taming vicious monsters and demons in the dark is not pretty. It’s scary, but in the end, when it’s done, it sets you free.

If you do things and regret them every time, it might not be you, but a different part of yourself that is acting on your behalf.

3. Something Calls Out to You

The things in the subconscious mind could be the shadow because you can’t see it and thus aren’t aware of it.

What goes into our subconscious is everything you reject about ourselves — the unacceptable and unwanted bits.

It isn’t only the sinister aspects of ourselves that end up in the subconscious shadow. Sometimes positive and great things about yourself can end up in the shadow, like your sensitivity which is a superpower, your empathy which is a special ability, and other gifts and talents that society tells you to snap out of when you tried to tap into it.

When you’ve repressed a gift, an ability, or a talent into the shadow, it will call to you because it’s God-given and holds power. Nothing will hold that kind of power back.

Separation and division are not the natural states of anything. Integration and wholeness are natural for humans and, because of this, the subconscious will continually try to get your attention to integrate what’s stuck in there. It does this through triggers.

Your triggers can show you your shadow self easily.

Triggers are messengers and an invitation to delve deeper into unconscious things to become conscious of something that is buried deep there. The messengers are the events that cause an extreme emotional reaction within you so you can get to the bottom of what you're feeling.

Naming triggers as such change them and decreases the effect they have on you. It becomes a learning experience when you’re triggered and you take the time to understand why something bothered you the way it did instead of reacting to it.

Repeating patterns in our lives also point us to aspects of our shadow.

The shadow wants you to become aware of it. It wants to be seen and accepted. Your shadow will call out to get your attention through the patterns and cycles that repeat in your life.

Within these patterns, you will find aspects of your shadow self that will keep showing up in different situations until you stop the running and look them in the eyes.

Shadow work shouldn’t be this huge scary thing that you run from for years and dread to do. Shadow work is simply becoming aware of what’s hidden and gradually embracing and healing those aspects of yourself.

When you begin your shadow work, you may feel the way you felt when you were forced to suppress or reject them, but once you overcome it, you meet a whole new side of you that you had no idea existed. You reconnect with your gifts, abilities, talents, and passion. You may even find your soul’s purpose because often most people can't find it because it's buried under a pile of shadows.

The self that is fractured will seek to become unified. It will seek to make you feel whole again and so you will be presented with opportunities to see your darkness and shine a light on it or bring it out of the darkness. Then there’ll be nothing to be afraid of.

Shadow work is truly the highest form of light work you can do.

Note: This article is only meant to provide spiritual guidance and light-hearted content.

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