Shadow Work is the practice of noticing the parts of yourself that are hidden. So, noticing the emotions you push down, the patterns you fall into without meaning to, and the old versions of you that formed during hard or confusing moments.

It includes the stuff you didn’t have the space, support, or safety to deal with at the time: old hurts, protective behaviors, childhood wounds, and even the identities or “masks” you learned to wear to get through life.

Shadow Work is the process of meeting these hidden parts with honesty and compassion. When we don’t know they’re there, they unconsciously influence or choices and behaviors.

The “Shadow” is an umbrella term that can cover these things in the subconscious:

• aspects of self — psychological complexes, survival strategies, identities you outgrew, and the childlike parts of you still carrying unmet needs

• feelings — suppressed emotions, wounds, trauma, stored fear, anger, grief, and (in some traditions) the soul-fragments left behind in overwhelming moments

In many spiritual and therapeutic traditions, the shadow isn’t “bad.” It’s simply unintegrated parts of you that got frozen in time.

Shadow Work is how we thaw those parts and then incorporate their needs and feelings back into our whole conscious decision making. Without doing this, we will continue to make choices that only partially fulfill us. Or worse, that seemingly self sabotage us.

Shadow Work is the ongoing practice of Re-Parenting, Inner Child work, Emotional Healing, and learning to sit with the parts of you that once felt too painful to look at. As you bring these pieces back into awareness, they stop operating from the dark and begin reintegrating into your life. This brings you much peace, clarity, strength, and self-trust.

Shadow Work isn’t about fixing yourself.
It’s about remembering yourself. All of yourself. And welcoming every piece, back home.

To watch my Diary of an Alchemist Vlog, where I show the process of doing Shadow Work, click here.

To learn about Emotional Healing, click here.

To learn more about me, click here.