What is Shadow Work?

Before we dive right into shadow work, let’s have a look at shadows. What is a shadow?

In the physical and material world a shadow is something that is absent of light. If you have an Object and you shine a light on it, the shape of the Object will cast a shadow on the surface it is standing on. Because the Object is in the way, light cannot go through it (unless the Object is transparent). And the opposite side of the Object, that is not facing the light source appears dark as well. Because the shapes and colors that are in the dark appear less visible, we don’t get a good picture of how it actually looks, until we shine the light on them. 

When it comes to emotions and healing emotional wounds shadows are those parts of ourselves that we don’t see – or rather the parts of ourselves that we once decided to abandon and disown.

To understand this better let’s take a look at how our internal shadows are created in the first place.

When we are babies, we are COMPLETELY dependent on our caregivers. There is no way we can survive on our own. It takes us a year to learn to barely walk, compared to a that horse is up and running in 20 minutes or a baby turtle that wobbles into the shores right after hatching. Instead our survival is dependent on our connection to our caregivers. Anything that severs the connection is a threat to our survival. 

In addition to that, we learn from our parents what is acceptable and what is not. As little children we are quite moldable and when we are shamed for feelings or certain traits in our personality, we believe that we are wrong instead of we did something wrong or that the parent was just stressed in that moment. Children easily make the reaction of the parents mean something about them, while in truth it means more about the parent and their own lack of capacity and knowledge.

All this sets us up to abandon parts of ourselves that were not approved of by our caregivers in order to re-build connection and safety with them.

Now let’s say your parent disapproves of you crying or showing anger. Disapproval is a threat to our survival. And because crying and showing anger is disapproved of, we reject, suppress and disown those emotions within ourselves. We might stop showing and feeling those emotions and decide (subconsciously of course) to always appear friendly and happy. And we feel intense shame when those emotions surface.

Or let’s say you like the color pink but you’re a little boy and your parents tell you pink is for girls and make you look weak. You reject, suppress and disown the part of you that really likes the color pink. You might even create an overly strong aversion to it as a form of overcompensation. 

This process of rejection, suppression and disowning the parts within ourselves that were not ok in our caregivers eyes is called fragmentation.

It is an internal split in our personality and psyche. But just because we split ourself away from a part of ourself, doesn’t mean the part is now gone. Instead we pushed it into the darkness and it became our shadow. 

The dangerous thing about the shadow is, that it is doing things without your conscious awareness.

It can come forth in forms of self-sabotage, unhealthy coping mechanisms (like overcompensation), addiction or a range of mental health and personality disorders just to name a few. Just because we suppressed it, doesn’t mean it’s not there. It has more of an effect in our lives than we give it credit for.

Ever wondered why you always mess up the last interviews for the jobs you wanted? Or why you take so much time to help everyone else around you but don’t seem to be able to take care of yourself? Or maybe you keep on getting into relationships where your partner is unfaithful? Or you keep on sabotaging your relationships? Or you can’t seem to make enough money to afford the life you dream of?
What is keeping you stuck are the shadow parts. 

The lesson here though isn’t to get rid of them, but to make them aware. To shine a light on them. Once we know what is keeping us stuck – once we know the original trauma behind our shadows – we can start to integrate them.

What does it mean to integrate a shadow?

Behind every shadow is an emotional wound.

The shadow is the you at age x when y happened and there was no resolve to find back to connection with your caregiver so you had to reject, suppress and disown a certain part of yourself. (This is also called trauma – and everything can be a trauma. I’m not talking about the big T trauma that is caused by physical abuse, rape, war, etc. Letting a baby „cry it out“ can be a trauma, because we learn that our needs don’t get met or that we can’t trust our closets people to be there for us and that we are not safe.)

I like to see my shadow as my inner little child that is hurt. The worst thing we can do, is to push them away. This is what caused fragmentation and the shadow in the first place. In order to heal this emotional wound, we need to pull it closer to us instead of away from us. We need to accept it fully and we need to stop making it feel wrong for how it feels. And we need to give it a sense of safety, connection and love.

Please know, that our shadows never want to hurt or sabotage you per se. They are doing the very thing that we learned to protect ourselves when we were young. They are a trauma response. Yet, when we are not aware of them, they can make us feel more like surviving than thriving and we will never get to the root of why and may fail to resolve certain problems in our lives that are rooted in that trauma.

Casting a light on your shadow is the first step into awareness and into change.

Much love and support,

Sarah