The Paradox of Shadow Work

Any time I’ve heard people in the spiritual community talk about Shadow Work, it’s always been with hushed serious tones; “Just wait until you get to Shadow Work….”. There is always a deep implication that Shadow Work is going to be scary and hard, it’s harrowing reputation is almost carried as a badge of honor by those who claim to have done it

But at the same time, when I ask people just what Shadow Work is, I’ve gotten very thin answers. So let’s talk about what Shadow Work REALLY is, and how it’s actually quite fun, and can be very enjoyable if done right.

The “Shadow” part of the work comes from Carl Jung, the Swiss psychoanalyst and father of “analytical psychology” and the “Collective Unconscious” to name just some of his work. As part of his work, Jung created the term “Shadow” to encompass our unconscious self and desires - the parts of us that we repress and treat as separate from our curated outward facing identity.

When we are talking about working with the Shadow, we specifically talking about the parts of us that experience guilt fear and shame, but very paradoxically we are looking at the parts of us that actually enjoy that guilt fear and shame. Now don’t worry, it’s completely healthy and we all have Shadow aspects, a great example off the bat is how quickly you have an answer to the question:

“What is one of your guilty pleasures?”

For me the first one that comes to mind is Ice Cream. Not only do I know that ice cream is not a healthy choice, I’m also lactose intolerant. Any time I decide to ‘indulge’ myself with a cookies and cream blizzard, I know I am ultimately going to get sick because of it….and I LOVE every second of it. The complete disregard of making a healthy choice for a snack, the added enjoyment in knowing I’m eating something that I “shouldn’t” be eating on so many levels, it all serves to elevate the enjoyment of the experience. It’s the small little rebellion against all the shoulds in the world.

That internal rebellion is the Shadow. We walk around all day saying “I shouldn’t have that ice cream, I know I shouldn’t” and in the process of ‘shoulding’ all over ourselves, we stuff the active desire down down down into the Shadow. The desire is still there, we’ve only convinced itself it isn’t because we are such responsible upstanding humans.

We do this with much more than ice cream. Our Shadow comes out every time we gossip, every time we make fun of an annoying customer we saw at a store to a friend when we get home. In a deeper way, it’s the shadow in action each time we lament and complain about that crappy life situation that seems to “always” happen to us, the way we feel self-righteously angry when we get into that same argument we’ve been having for years with someone.

The thing is, our Shadow actually enjoys the parts of our lives that our ego claims we hate. Now don’t worry, Shadow work isn’t about calling in more ‘bad’ stuff, it’s about making peace with the part of us that finds a little dark comfort in the same familiar roadblocks and headaches, to help loosen the Shadows grip on our conscious decisions. Let me work with another example:

Revenge Bedtime Procrastination

Have you ever had a day where your schedule was packed, you had a million things to do all over town, you barely got it all done, scraped together some leftovers, and by the time you sit down on the couch to relax you look at the clock and realize you should be heading to bed in a measly 15 minutes. Revenge Bedtime Procrastination is the name for the thing we do in this position where we choose to say “screw it, I earned this” and stay up till 2am watching TV or video games.

We know we are going to be tired tomorrow, we know work is going to stink because of how exhausted we will be, we know how good it would feel to just get in bed and relax, but we still choose to stay up late in spite of it all….and it feels amazing in the moment. That’s the Shadow.

In this situation we are indulging in the part of ourselves that is going to love having a reason to be grumpy tomorrow, it’s going to love lamenting the fact that life feels out of our control, the part of us that fully enjoys being completely irresponsible and all the consequences that will bring.

We spend so much time in our anxious mind worrying about what will happen if we miss that meeting, or can’t pay the bills, if we get yelled at if we are late, we play out countless numbers of fears every single day. We put so much energy into these fears, consciously hoping they never happen, but subconsciously wondering what would happen if they did. 

So what do we do about the Shadow?

The Work part is learning to embrace the Shadow and give it a seat at the table so to speak. We don’t have to act on the Shadows desires, that is absolutely not the point here, but we CAN give it the attention it wants in a mental container. We start small, when working with the Shadow, start with aspects of our life that have been more constant staples as opposed to things that are currently unfolding.

The things that frustrate us are exactly where the Shadow is hiding. Maybe you have a friend who is constantly late or blows you off all together whenever you make plans, can you feel the part of yourself that starts getting charged up in anticipation, the part of you that is actually waiting for the text that says they aren’t going to make it. In that unconscious way, we are LOOKING FORWARD to the thing we claim we don’t enjoy - so part of you must enjoy it.

This is where shame comes in. Shame is a tool created by the conscious ego to push the shadow down, because we don’t want to become it. In doing this work we can be confident that we aren’t going to become the Shadow, but we can give ourselves 5-10 minutes to really let the Shadow enjoy itself. Let it run wild, let it bask in how good it will feel to get the cancellation text you KNEW was coming. Spend some time with the Shadow honestly, then come back to your conscious self and see if you are as attached to that frustration.

A more intense example of this Work is dealing with fear of rejection. We can spend so much time thinking that a rejection is coming, “giving our power” to the fear. If we keep the fear stuffed in our unconscious, we are actually more likely to unconsciously sabotage a situation. We have so much energy going into this eventual rejection, we get to a point where we can’t take it and force the rejection to happen in the physical world. What would happen if we took some time, in a private and safe container to fully embrace the feelings of that rejection? To let the Shadow fully enjoy itself?

Fear is excitement without Breath

Fritz Perls, Father of Gestalt Theory gave us the amazing pearl of wisdom “Fear is excitement without breath. The body experiences the same sensations for both, because they are both rooted in the polarity of “what is going to happen?”. We experience this very directly every time we willingly get onto a roller coaster. As we are climbing up that first hill, our bodies are racing with both fear and excitement, and if you really think about it, it’s hard to separate the two during the experience.

When we are doing Shadow Work, our container is where we can turn our fear into excitement. We can feel all the anxiety burst, which deep down is what we really want. Anxiety sucks because it never has a climax, it’s getting on the roller coaster and just going up and up the first hill forever. By allowing ourselves to embrace the Shadow’s desires, we can be present for it’s complex waves of emotions, and release the need for the bursting to happen in our physical world.

We have to really lean into it. Allow yourself to admit that getting that rejection would feel deeply satisfying, it would confirm all the opinions of your low self esteem, it would hurt, and you would be so justified to experience that hurting. It would all go perfectly wrong exactly how you imagined it.

But won’t this manifest more bad stuff into my life?

If you are someone who does manifestation work, you might be worried that this practice will attract in more negative experiences, and the short answer is No: it will attract in what your conscious mind actually wants.

The thing with manifesting and the Shadow, is your Shadow is currently trying to manifest the things that your conscious mind doesn’t want. This is not to say you manifest every negative thing that ever happens to you - there is a difference between personal manifestation and global manifestation, and we often get sucked into the mire of what the more global collective unconscious is pulling into being.

That being said, working with the grip of the Shadow will help release unconscious blocks that are getting in the way of attracting the things you truly desire, and will help you from potentially sabotaging yourself when they show up.

In Closing

The concept of Shadow Work goes much deeper than I’m every going to be able to fit in a single blog, but this is a very comprehensive start. If you are interested in learning more, these are concepts we can talk about during the Remedy Meditation classes, as well as something we can dive deep into and create a personalized plan around through 1:1 Spiritual Mentoring with me.