How Doing Shadow Work for 10 Months Has Seriously Improved My Life
This intense inner work led me to greater self-acceptance, creativity, purpose, presence, and wholeness.
Sitting at our kitchen table, my friend asked, “What are your intentions for this mushroom trip?” I just want to get rid of all this darkness. “Greater self-acceptance,” I said. Though I had prepared my space for a zen-like psychedelic journey, I soon felt waves of self-judgment flooding my mind. Tossing around in bed, I endured a distinct sting from flashbacks, numerous moments of judgment towards myself and others.
My psyche zeroed in on what may be my biggest life challenge: high self-judgment. I also gained reverence for mind-altering substances and decided to seek more accountability.
Like most people, I pursued self-knowledge out of necessity; decades of repressed anger and emotional trauma found their way to the surface. My anxiety and stress levels reached an unfamiliar high. I carried ongoing loneliness and was burning out at my job. As the Covid lockdown curtain closed in, I took a sabbatical from work to pour into self-discovery.
Over the past year, I’ve been engaging in shadow work, depth therapy, Jungian psychology research, and personal experimentation.
Shadow work refers to the process of making our unconscious mind conscious so we can understand, heal, and accept our entire selves. Our unconscious mind fills with all the parts of ourselves we’ve repressed throughout our lives. Carl Jung described our lives as mostly projections of our unconscious mind (individual and collective).
When we don’t deal with our demons, they resurface in inconvenient, unpredictable ways.
I’ve uncovered many deep wounds by exploring my psyche, i.e., religious trauma, narcissistic abuse, sexual abuse, cultural misogyny, low self-worth, along with heaps of shame and anger. But I’ve also rediscovered brighter parts: creativity, leadership, sensitivity, self-awareness, and playfulness; I also reconnected with my love for writing and making music.
Though I’m still healing through trauma, here are two things I know for sure:
- Shadow work is intense: I recommend approaching this process with caution, respect, and great self-love, as you might prepare for a psychedelic trip.
- It’s better to be whole than good: The more fully we accept ourselves, the more deeply we can connect and lead fuller, freer, more loving lives.
“The privilege of a lifetime is to become who you truly are,” — Jung.
A Working Understanding of “Shadow Work”
At its core, shadow work means integrating all the parts of yourself that you’ve repressed: your unconscious mind. We experience conditioning from our environment throughout our lives, i.e., family, school, church, and communities. We learn that parts of ourselves are “unacceptable.” Like most young women, adults made me believe my angry feelings were inappropriate, so I buried them.
As adults, we get to decide if our early conditioning aligns with higher personal values.
“Shadow work is to make peace with the whole range of human emotion. The good news is that that bad part of yourself that you struggle with carries sacred wisdom to the evolution of your soul. That part of you will support you in unlocking an authenticity and an expression.” — Debbie Ford, New York Times best-selling author of “The Shadow Effect.”
What “Doing” Shadow Work Looks Like
Laying on my bed, I engaged with a guided anger-focused meditation; my male manager triggered me earlier that day, and I wanted to explore those feelings. Seeing deeper into the anger, it connected to another wound: patriarchal religious trauma. The normalized misogyny had made me feel disempowered as a woman; the pastor symbolized that repressed anger.
After journaling through this realization, I thought my “shadow work session” ended; But I felt new waves of pain once I got into the shower. I messed up too; I accepted those misogynist beliefs as truth.
Feeling overwhelmed by the seemingly endless layers of trauma, I prioritized accountability for my process. I soon found a trauma-trained therapist with who I felt safe.
The “Centre of Excellence” shadow work course creators highlight the need for self-love, self-compassion, and grounding strategies.* Additionally, they recommend connecting with an experienced friend or expert for support. *If you have low self-esteem, cultivating grounding strategies is especially important.
Here are a few methods I’ve explored:
- Active Imagination: This method explores creative activities such as dancing, writing poetry, or drawing using reflective questions.
- The “Villain” Method: In this activity, you choose a villain and explore what might make this person feel justified in their behaviors.
- Internal Family System: This psychotherapy model helps you explore and integrate different parts of your mind. — I often found the meanest parts of myself had been trying to protect me.
- Depth Psychology: This Jungian-based therapy approach incorporates exploring the unconscious mind using dreams, complexes, and archetypes. Unlike solutions-based therapy, depth therapy explores the impact of early conditioning with an emphasis on individuation.
- Dream Analysis/Tending: With this approach, you explore images, emotions, and happenings in your dreams from a psychological perspective.
- Psychedelics: With caution, a chaperone, and researched preparation, these substances can help you access your unconscious mind more directly.
Some other approaches people use include sound meditation, guided meditations, Voice Dialogue, exploring your triggers, or assessment-focused journaling.
Throughout these activities, I’ve often sobbed, felt disoriented, and experienced many moments of “release.” Like the anger meditation, I’ve sometimes struggled to contain the experience. Cultivating self-compassion has been an essential part of my journey.
My Shadow Work Experiences and Insights
Shadow work gets intense because what you discover might be incredibly painful. Early in my journey, my therapist helped me identify two narcissists in my birth family. This realization pierced to the core of my wounding: I unconsciously believed I needed to earn love. Recognizing the futility of these one-sided, narcissist relationships, I felt like I’d been screaming in the dark where no one could hear.
I didn’t just lose those two relationships; I am mourning an abusive childhood, the loss of self-love, and the person I may have been with more support. I questioned all of my relationships, discovering more narcissism and toxicity. Since then, I continue untangling the impact of narcissist abuse.
However, understanding the roots of my low self-worth has empowered me to rewrite my truths. My research, reparenting, and introspection have significantly strengthened my relationship with myself, the one that matters the most. Now I know that my high self-judgment is a trauma symptom; those voices of shame and blame aren’t who I am. I can talk back, speaking to myself with compassion instead.
After this enormous discovery, I felt eager to do more untangling and decided to do a magic mushroom microdose experiment. Every three days for one month, I would set my intentions, block out time to be with myself, and explore whatever emotions came up. Here are some of the self-realizations I discovered:
- I carried shame about being polyamorous and bisexual.
- I still believed my sensitivity and emotions were “weak” qualities.
- I repressed my creativity after criticisms from important people in my life.
- I felt embarrassed about having low self-worth and self-esteem.
- I hurt myself by using people-pleasing to feel safe in unsafe environments.
- My self-judgments left many inner scars, and I need to forgive myself.
- I felt ongoing loneliness with both myself and other people.
- I repressed “unladylike” strengths like leadership, bravery, and boldness.
- I struggled with perfectionism because I believed I needed to earn love.
- I felt shame for enjoying sex, being sexy, and “inspiring” abuse.
Additionally, I felt (and am still exploring) heaps of anger towards people who judged, abused, and projected unhelpful expectations or qualities onto me.
Throughout my inner work, I’ve fought to get the pain out as fast as possible, but I’m learning to honor the natural process of mourning and sadness. Our dark nights of the soul are just as valuable and beautiful as times of greater joy.
Here are some small changes I’ve made in the past year:
- I’m making music again, playing the keyboard, guitar, and singing.
- I’m self-validating more regularly rather than seeking external validation.
- I’m reconnecting with my femininity.
- I set healthy boundaries for my energy and strengthen relationships.
- I am rebuilding my self-worth with self-care and creative projects.
- I’m own my sensitivity and get clear about my emotional safety needs.
- I am more gentle with my creativity, connecting with a higher power.
- I explore new creative outlets even when I know I won’t be perfect at them.
- I focus on making “authentic impressions” instead of “good impressions.”
- I embrace and explore my anger more directly.
By honoring my emotions and inner self, I’m feeling healthier, more comfortable with setbacks, and at peace with my mysterious life adventure. My relationships with myself and others have changed for the better, though I still have a lot of work to do.
Perhaps my most remarkable insight: my healing journey won’t fit into a neat box; it’s an ongoing, messy process, and it’s beautiful.
Final Words
Since pursuing shadow work, I feel a greater sense of depth, more aware of intricacies, and connected to a higher purpose. I feel much healthier, more intuitive, accepting, loving, and empathetic. I more readily embrace the present moment, trusting the natural flow of my life.
While I spent decades trying to be a “good” person, I now view “wholeness” as a more desirable and meaningful life pursuit. By seeking to meet others’ expectations, I did a disservice to myself. Fragmenting myself to make people like me never led to fulfilling relationships.
“What’s the greater risk? Letting go of what people think — or letting go of how I feel, what I believe, and who I am?” says Brene Brown
If you’re pursuing deep inner work, I encourage you to trust yourself, your intuition, emotions, and the realness of your experiences. Our inner lives are just as valid and as the outer ones. Though the unknown feels uncomfortable and even scary, our freedom rewards us. We discover the truth of who we are as we release the layers of cultural conditioning.
As Thomas Moore said in “Dark Nights of the Soul,” by exploring our inner darkness, we find “the depths of loveliness, beauty, brilliance, creativity, and joy that lie at our core.”
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