SHADOW WORK: A Counter-Intuitive Path To Personal Growth
BEYOND SELF-MASTERY
When I was in my youth, I tried to incorporate a myriad of personal development concepts into my life. I was desperate to make changes, and while some of these tactics were useful for a season…
It wasn’t long until I returned to the same old repetitive moods, thoughts, and relationship patterns.
Personal development culture typically places a strong emphasis on striving toward “self-mastery” in order to maximize your potential. Which has its place. But this framework also has a dark side: the implication that personal growth requires you to be ruthless with yourself. “Push harder!”, “Fight adversity!”, “Conquer bad habits!”, “Dominate resistance!” etc.
There are certainly occasions to “push through” inner resistance and “stand strong” in the face of adversity, but as a long term personal growth strategy, “self-mastery” is unsustainable. A master requires a slave.
This approach can add tremendous amounts of psychological pressure, trapping people in isolating cycles of striving, failing, and self-shaming. I’m all for intentionally working on yourself and learning to manage your actions and emotions, but in the long run, a forceful approach to personal growth can make things worse. And this is where I ended up.
It wasn’t until I engaged with Shadow Work that my deeply engrained patterns began to shift! And Shadow Work required flipping that whole personal development model on its head. Instead of mastering the seemingly unfortunate parts of yourself, you learn to listen to them.
This counter-intuitive process was so impactful that I wanted everyone to have access to it, and thus began my journey toward becoming a depth-oriented psychotherapist.
In the next few minutes, I will walk you through a simplified version of this psychological framework and offer some starting points for Shadow Work.
INNER MULTIPLICITY
We typically think of the self as being singular and individual. However, the human mind is the most complicated phenomenon we have come across - and it can be very useful to explore more nuanced frameworks for thinking about your inner life.
The reality is that your mind was formed (and continues to be formed) through your interactions with other people. This socialization process, combined with inherited biological traits (and a dose of mystery), intermingle to form the complexity of your inner life.
One of the most helpful ways to engage this complexity is to begin thinking about your mind as having multiple parts. Many of these parts are unconscious and often find themselves in a dynamic tension with one another. These internal tensions can manifest as mental health “symptoms” such as anxiety, depression, addiction, relational dysfunction, etc.
Different theories use different terms for these parts— Jungians work with “archetypes” and “complexes”, Psychoanalysts often talk about “internal objects”, Attachment Theory refers to “internal working models”, Internal Family Systems therapists talk about “protectors”, “exiles”, “managers” etc.
Regardless of the approach, learning to familiarize yourself with your inner multiplicity can bring a significant increase in self-awareness and personal agency!
THE SHADOW
One particularly helpful framework for exploring your inner world is through Jungian psychology, beginning with the concept of the Shadow.
This theory is based off the psychoanalytic revelation that mental distress is very often related to the repression of distressing thoughts, feelings, and relational dynamics.
The term “Shadow” is a metaphor representing the parts of your personality that have been split off and exiled into unconsciousness because they don’t fit with your idealized self-image.
Imagine the psychological equivalent to holding an upside down cup under water, which requires ongoing pressure. The moment your grip slips, the cup explodes out of the water.
Similarly, this estranged shadow-personality continues to impact your daily life, functioning somewhat autonomously, and often quite destructively, the more you attempt to keep it down.
It’s important to note that it is absolutely necessary to develop a Shadow. To become a constructive member of society you must undergo a process of social adaptation that allows you to function in your family and culture.
This requires the ability to keep certain animalistic urges, destructive proclivities, and regretful feelings outside of your awareness.
However, maturity demands deep introspection about the specific socialization process you were put through, followed by a certain amount of reorganization.
Oftentimes religious, cultural, or political communities place a strong emphasis (explicitly or implicitly) on following purity codes. These are essentially rigid social norms one must conform to. This forced alignment to an idealized image of goodness can reinforce the psychological process of repression (and Shadow formation).
Significant repression can inevitably lead to the psychological cup shooting out of the water in very destructive ways. I’m sure you can think of examples.
However, the Shadow doesn’t only consist of destructive anti-social impulses, but also positive aspects of the personality as well. Very often, the most beautiful idiosyncrasies that make one a unique individual are disowned during the process of development. Fitting in with the mould requires a level of conformity that tens to narrow and flatten your self-expression.
As Carl Jung claimed, the Shadow “does not consist only of morally reprehensible tendencies, but also displays a number of good qualities, such as normal instincts, appropriate reactions, realistic insights, creative impulses etc.”
Because of this, the Shadow holds untapped and valuable inner potential. But we can’t simply force it into the light. After all, a Shadow is illusive. Hidden. Unclear. Potentially dangerous. Accessing its riches requires receptivity and vulnerability.
Illustrating this point, the famous mythologist Joseph Campbell stated that, “The cave you fear to enter holds the treasure you seek.”
Bringing unconscious aspects of the shadow into awareness relieves internal tension and allows access to latent potentialities. Becoming familiar with the destructive parts of yourself (in a careful titrated manner) allows for more agency.
This integration process is why Shadow Work is so transformative. It helps you move toward a greater experience of wholeness!
SHADOW WORK
According to Jungian Analyst Lisa Marchiano, rather than strong arming yourself into the abyss of your psyche, the first step is simply to accept the premise that “maybe you are some things you’d rather not be.”
Ofcourseness
Getting to know the denied parts of yourself is essential, but the difficulty is that this often brings you into direct contact with shame. One of the primary reasons we remain stuck is that we do almost anything to distract or defend against the slightest hint of shame. This reinforces our defences and continues to perpetuate internal tension.
To help with this, a former professor of mine suggested developing a more gracious attitude of “ofcourseness”:
“Of course there are aspects of myself that I don’t like...”
“Of course I have had to adjust myself to my family and culture...”
“Of course my ideal version of myself isn’t fully accurate…”
It is essential to approach Shadow Work with a posture of self-compassion, to gently approach feelings of vulnerability, and to seek relational care as needed.
Life Story
Then take it upon yourself to start thinking deeply about your formative years. It can be helpful to write out your story in detail, dividing your life into epochs based on major developmental or emotional changes. Bringing a sense of narrative cohesion to your life has been proven to be tremendously healing.
Spend some time writing in a journal or discussing with your therapist:
Which aspects of myself were NOT welcome in my family growing up?
What did my Mother / Father / Caregiver give me? What did they take away?
What did my religious or cultural community look down upon?
What do I judge people most harshly for?
Persona
Another important step is to examine your ideal self. Carl Jung believed that the psyche evolves as a self-regulating system that naturally moves toward more homeostasis (or integration) during healthy development. He described the Shadow and the Persona as counterbalancing forces.
The Persona is the version of ourselves we believe will prove most acceptable to others. This is the part of us that necessarily navigates the social world, presenting itself as a shiny object by keeping the undesirable parts in the Shadow. It is the mask we learn to wear, and for some, eventually learn to remove.
Take some time to think honestly about how you wish to be viewed by the people in your life:
What version of myself do I try to present to the world?
How did I have to perform in high school?
Around whom do I shift my posture, vocabulary, and voice the most?
Who am I trying to be on social media?
Here & Now
The next step is to accept that much of your mental life functions unconsciously and automatically. Then, adopt an attitude of curiosity about how this plays out in your day to day life.
Begin to pay very close attention to your reactions in the here and now. Because the shadow is hidden, you can’t expect ten minutes of honest self-evaluation to reveal it. It is a dark and murky character, out of sight, but just around the corner. It most often reveals itself in your own reactions to situations or people in the present.
Begin to notice when:
You have a disproportionate negative reaction to something or someone.
You are triggered and fall into a repetitive negative thought pattern or behaviour.
Once again, you fall into the same conflict cycle with your partner or family member.
You experience a seemingly random and unexplainable mood such as depression, anxiety, sadness, anger etc.
Now, the trick is to refuse to simply accept your usual explanations and rationalizations. While there may be some truth to them, they are typically wrapped in projection. As the psychoanalyst Nancy McWilliams describes: “Projection is the process whereby what is inside is misunderstood as coming from outside.”
Oftentimes, the underdeveloped characteristics of ourselves that we most need to work on are identifiable in what we most despise in other people. It’s important to shift from accepting our surface explanations to engaging curiosity about these unconscious projections.
When you are feeling a heightened emotion, consciously take a second to pause and ask yourself:
What vulnerability was just triggered?
What deeper emotion may be lying beneath my automatic defensive emotion?
Who have I had this type of reaction with in the past?
Have I shifted into a different physiological state? What actions or emotions are typical when I am in this state?
CONCLUSION
As you bring greater curiosity to the underlying dynamics playing out in your psyche, you will begin to familiarize yourself with your Shadow. This will help you develop more personal honesty, which ultimately leads to more agency. You begin to transition from compulsive to conscious!
Here’s a related passage from Coming Home to Myself by Marion Woodman & Jill Mellick:
“The shadow is anything
we are sure we are not;
it is part of us we do not know,
sometimes do not want to know,
most times do not want to know.
We can hardly bear to look.
Look.
It may carry the best of the life
we have not lived.”
Finally, this work is not meant to be done in isolation. The last thing I want is to introduce yet another tool to keep you alone with your thoughts. Shadow Work is ideally meant to be done within a therapy process. I would encourage you to find a trusted therapist who is trained to work with unconscious processes.
It can be transformational to bring a skilled set of eyes and ears along for the ride, someone who can assist you in approaching the difficult feelings and hidden treasures of Shadow.
There is also an important quality of healing that comes through the relational process itself. Shame grows in secret and shrinks when exposed to attuned relationships. Individual Shadow Work is not a replacement for the relational right-brain to right-brain healing process available in an attuned therapeutic relationship.
If you would like to explore this concept further, send me an email and I can point you toward some great Shadow Work resources that explore this approach in more depth. If engaging Shadow Work in a therapeutic relationship sounds interesting to you, consider booking a free 20 minute consultation with me here!
