You Have to Take A Look at Your Shadow Self

They are parts of you that won't be neglected for too long

We live in a world of duality. Water and fire, hot and cold, yin and yang, masculine and feminine, light and dark. Our shadow is part of who we are.

Our shadow consists of aspects of ourselves we and society do not accept. Envy. Jealousy. Rage. Lust. Sensitivity. The desire for power.

Anything we don’t admit as belonging to us, we stuff in the shadow. Everyone has a dark side to their personality. Everyone has a shadow.

What is The Shadow

The shadow or shadow work was first brought into the western world by psychologist Carl Jung.

For many people, the term shadow brings up all kinds of negative and dark associations. Because of these associations we have with the word shadow, it is easy to assume shadow work is a dark spiritual practice or inner work that involves the more negative and sinister aspects of our personality.

But the shadow is nothing to fear. The shadow is not evil at all.

Jung described the shadow as the unconscious or disowned parts of your personality — any parts of you that you do not see, acknowledge, or accept.

The shadow is any aspect that is not exposed to the light of our consciousness. Your shadow is born in your childhood as a byproduct of certain interactions you had with the people closest to you.

We are born whole, but that wholeness is short-lived because we are born into a society that is not yet fully evolved. This causes us to believe that some aspects of ourselves are acceptable and others are not. The aspects that are seen as unacceptable are rejected by our families.

We dissociate from what we disapprove of. This creates a split within a person.

Being dependent on our caregivers in the name of survival, we suppress the aspects that are disapproved, and we exaggerate the aspects that are approved.

For example, a sensitive crying little boy gets yelled at by the parent for being too sensitive. Because the sensitive side of him is not being accepted, the little boy now has a problem. He pushes aside the part of him that is not accepted. He shuts down what makes him sensitive.

He sees his sensitive side as a problem so he represses it and the day he represses that part of him is the day his shadow is born.

The shadow keeps growing and growing as you repress and repress.

Another example is an angry child who is upset about something. This child is born into a family where anger is frowned upon. Whenever the child gets angry, he is shamed or punished for it. He then tries to reject, dissociate, and disown the anger in any way that he can.

But the anger doesn't go away. It becomes subconscious. As an adult, this person might not have any awareness that he has any anger in him at all. He will not and cannot see himself clearly because he denies that aspect of himself.

He may later discover through shadow work that he is in fact angry and the anger has been coming up in passive-aggressive ways and hurting the people around him.

The shadow isn't just negative. The shadow contains both negative and positive qualities. The shadow contains so much potential, gifts, and talents that haven't been unearthed yet.

The positive aspects of a person can end up in the human shadow too.

Let's say that a girl is born with a definite sense of self. She knows who she is; she knows what she likes, she knows what she doesn't like, and she for sure isn't afraid to speak her mind.

But this little girl is raised in a family that thinks little girls should not be heard, and little girls should be sweet and not voice their opinions.

The aspect of her that is confident and assertive is rejected by her family, so for the sake of survival and societal groups, she also begins to reject those aspects of herself.

She denies that aspect of herself in order to be loved and accepted, so as an adult she will be sweet, quiet, and obedient. Her life will be painful because she has exiled parts of herself. She is divided. She has a shadow side.

But if a shadow is a positive quality, then why is it a part of the shadow? Why would anybody disown their gifts and talents? The reason positive aspects are contained in the shadow is that we are afraid to tap into it.

For so long I wanted to write and talk about the things people are so afraid and uncomfortable talking about — death, spiritual awakenings, shadow work, inner child work, dark night of the soul, astrology, and more but I was afraid those things aren't embraced by society.

I was afraid I would be seen as strange and weird. I decided I was better off writing about the things society was comfortable with. I thought it would be easier that way.

I pushed my desire to talk about difficult topics in the shadows. I suppressed that part of me that wanted to talk about the things I really enjoyed talking about. That part of me wasn't bad, but it ended up in the shadow.

Why We Resist Shadow Work

Shadow work is a controversial subject. While many spiritual teachers, life coaches, and psychologists love the idea of shadow work, others think it’s not a good thing at all.

The top argument about shadow work is that if you focus on shadows, all you get is more shadows. If you focus on things to be cleared from the subconscious, all you will find is more things to be cleared from the subconscious.

These types of opinions are based on a very limited understanding of consciousness, resistance, and the law of attraction. If it were true that positive focus created a positive person and a positive vibration, then it would stand true that somebody who is focused on something positive would have a purely clear and positive vibrational or auric field.

Just because you focus on the positive doesn’t take care of the icky stuff in your subconscious which is still there no matter how much positive things you focus on.

When we are resistant to the idea of shadow work, we are trying to avoid something. When you realize you are using positive focus to avoid something that feels negative to you, it’s time to release resistance to whatever you are trying to avoid.

To release resistance to something, you have to turn in the direction of it instead of away from it.

To acknowledge something you have suppressed in your subconscious mind by rejecting, disowning, or denying it, you have to come face to face with the pain of having had to fracture — and lose an aspect of yourself for the sake of being loved and accepted.

The original pain of rejection will come up every time you do shadow work. Before I started writing this article, the fear of being seen as weird or strange for writing about the shadow came up.

The same feelings of rejection and unacceptance you were met with the first time around by your parents and caregivers will come up when you begin your shadow work.

Shadow work makes us feel we will be exiled or punished again. This is why most people resist shadow work. We aren’t ready to take a look at the shadow, but you can't ignore the shadow forever.

We fear our shadow, so we resist it. But by becoming aware of it, we understand it, which is the number way to eliminate fear.

How The Shadow Affects You

What we put in our subconscious is everything we reject about ourselves — the unacceptable and unwanted bits. The minute you say something is unwanted or bad you have reason to suppress, ignore, and deny it. It becomes subconscious.

We can call the subconscious the shadow because we cannot see it clearly and thus are not aware of it and the conscious the light because we can see it clearly and thus are aware of it.

The shadow, even though it's unseen, affects you greatly. When we deny an aspect of ourselves it doesn't just disappear. It fades away from our conscious awareness.

The shadow is the reason we do certain things in life without understanding why we do it.

We become adults and should be able to handle life better, yet we keep falling in the same patterns and doing the same crap.

Your shadow operates outside of your conscious awareness in the form of unconscious and limiting beliefs. The shadow with a life of its own can affect your behavior and life experiences if left unchecked.

The shadow is inner fragmentation within you and it’s almost like two different people are operating inside of you.

Have you ever met the most gentle, sweetest, and kind person, and in the blink of an eye something happens, and this person turns into someone else. They become mean and scary; they throw the biggest tantrum and freak out.

How did this sweet person turn into a crazy psycho? This is because they have two parts of themselves operating and the shadow took over when they got triggered.

The Shadow is powerful. The shadow can affect you profoundly. It can turn your life upside down. It has the power to even destroy relationships.

Every time you act out of your shadow, it gets bigger and bigger.

How to Spot The Shadow

Separation and division are not the natural states of anything. Integration and wholeness are the natural states of humans, and because of this, the subconscious will continually try to get you to pay attention to it in order to integrate it.

It can be difficult to spot your shadow, especially the more unconscious we live and the more unaware we are of it. Here are a few ways to spot your shadow in action.

1. Projection

Many people tend to project their issues onto others instead of dealing with them themselves. We often project our repressed anger, guilt, shame, and other emotions we've told ourselves are bad onto others.

We lash out at people for behaviors in ourselves we don’t like. Pay attention to how you project yourself into the outside world. We normally project the way we feel onto others because they are a reflection of us.

2. Triggers

A trigger is a reminder of past trauma. The surface events that cause conflicts in our lives are not just triggers — they are messengers that are enabling us to be conscious of something that is buried deep within us.

Pay attention to your triggers. They can show you your wounds and your shadow self really easily. Catch your emotional triggers especially right before you act out.

3. Patterns

Pay attention to repeating patterns in your life. Repeating experiences are aspects of the shadow because the shadow mirrors itself into your reality to be seen and integrated.

It wants you to be aware of it. Within these patterns, you will find aspects of your shadow self. These repeating patterns will keep showing up in different situations until you are ready to look at it and break the cycle.

How to Do Shadow Work

Shadow work is nothing but to make the unconscious conscious and the unacceptable acceptable. The goal of shadow work is integration.

The integration of the unconscious leads to complete and total awareness.

The goal is to bring your shadow into the light. Or to shine a light onto the shadow. The more you shine a light on your shadow, the smaller it gets.

To do shadow work is to bring your shadow closer to you. It is part of who you are, after all. Here are simple ways to begin your shadow work.

1. Become aware of your shadow

As people, there are aspects of ourselves we are aware of and aspects we are entirely unaware of. To become aware of something you have to see it. Becoming aware is the same way we will see something that is suddenly illuminated in light.

When something is unconscious, we can’t see it. We are unaware of it the same way we can't see something in the darkness.

The first step to doing shadow work is to become aware of the shadow.

2. Don't shame the shadow

Once you become aware of your shadow self, don't shame or blame it. This is about love, compassion, and self-acceptance. Your shadow was born from non-acceptance. It was born the moment you began to push away aspects of yourself you deemed unacceptable for whatever reason.

Antagonizing the shadow some more only adds fuel to the fire. The shadow is part of who you are, so look at it from a place of love.

Love your shadow for all it is. Accept it as part of who you are.

3. Use Your Triggers

Naming triggers as such changes them. It makes it so you have stepped back from that emotional reaction and are observing your reaction instead of living them. Triggers are messengers and an invitation to delve deeper into unconscious things. Recognize them as such. They come to open your eyes to see things you have suppressed.

The messengers are the surface events that cause an extreme emotional reaction within you. These things are not happening to you, they are reflections of the deep unresolved wounds within you.

4. Review Your Childhood

This involves using journaling, meditation, or introspection to spot shadow aspects of yourself you may not be aware of.

Ask yourself, was I completely accepted as a child? What was expected of me and what behaviors and emotions were judged by my parents?

Those behaviors that were judged by our parents created some sort of shadow aspect within us. Once you find the answers to these questions, they will lead you to see the shadow to begin integrating it.

6. Observe Without Judgment

One of the biggest mistakes you can make while doing shadow work is to judge the shadow once you spot it. If you let the inner critic come up and judge the shadow, you are only making matters worse by making the shadow bigger and stronger.

When you see your shadow, acknowledge and observe it without judgment. Observe to understand and integrate.

The Bottom Line

Every human on earth has gone through this process of splitting themselves into parts — conscious and unconscious.

This self-rejection is the birth of self-hate and the emptiness we feel are the remainder of those aspects of ourselves we have suppressed, denied, and disowned and thus lost. But the entire universe is on our side to try to help us become whole again.

Every process of the universe is headed in the direction of growth and expansion. The self that is fractured seeks to become unified, so we will be presented with opportunities to see the aspects of ourselves we have suppressed, denied, and disowned.

You will be provided with every opportunity to confront your shadow self. So it doesn't really matter how far you run, or how well you think you can hide, your shadow will keep chasing you until you are willing to do the work that must be done.

Your work is to simply become aware of what has become unconscious. Shadow work can be painful, but it has to be done at some point in your life to live a fulfilling life.

Self-awareness does not come naturally to those who make a practice of avoiding pain because to become aware of those aspects you must stop trying to escape the pain and emptiness within you where those missing parts should be.

But it is also the key to a consciously aware and free life. The more you are aware of your shadow, the more embodied you are as a conscious being. No one ever reached enlightenment without confronting their shadow and exposing it to the light of consciousness.

Ultimately, shadow work is the work of bringing attention and love to the parts of yourself that have previously been rejected.

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

As for me — as you can see — I have made friends with all of my shadows, both positive and negative, and I am writing and talking about all the weirdest and strangest things.

The strange parts make me who I am. I no longer repress those aspects of myself. Learning to accept all of me was a choice I made, and I couldn’t be happier that I integrated my shadows. I hope this gives you courage.