How To Do Shadow Work To Support Your Healing Journey
Shadow Work For Healing
Have you ever found yourself feeling ashamed of, or confused by a part of yourself that felt unacceptable or even unwanted? Maybe you've felt the weight of intense feelings, suffered from low self-esteem, or even self harm, but have had a hard time identifying where these thoughts, feeling and behaviors are coming from.
Welcome to your shadow self. In the world of psychology, we understand the shadow self to be all of the experiences, feelings, thoughts, and parts of ourselves that live in our unconscious. The unconscious is buried deep in our psyche, not easily accessible with our conscious mind.
The unconscious is the realm where your automatic habits and behaviors reside, often operating on autopilot and outside the realm of your everyday waking consciousness. If you've ever wondered why you thought or did something without consciously choosing it, that's your unconscious running the show! And don't worry, it's not just you, we all have an unconscious shadow side.
Shadow work will help you dig deep into your unconscious, unearth the lost parts of yourself, and emerge more integrated, with a stronger sense of self-worth, and more capacity for self-love. In this article, we’ll dive into what shadow work is, its history, mental health benefits, and some practices to get you started on your shadow work healing journey.
What Is Shadow Work?
Shadow work is the act of exploring your unconscious mind to discover the darker, perhaps neglected, parts of yourself. It's a process that involves learning to recognize automatic thoughts, emotions, and behaviors, so you can tend to them and eventually change them. Sounds a bit mysterious right? Making the unseen, seen, is definitely a practice and a process. We'll dive into some practices below that can help you get started with shadow work, and discuss why working with a therapist for shadow work can be so beneficial.
When you invest time and energy into doing shadow work, and begin to make the unconscious conscious, you can uncover the long ago abandoned or forgotten parts of yourself. When you find these parts, you can get to know them and love them. Reclaiming your lost and abandoned parts is a practice of radical self-compassion! As you learn to love all of your self, and all of your parts, you bring your whole self into alignment. The result? A life lived with more peace, ease, compassion and love!
How To Start Practicing Shadow Work
Ready to start practicing shadow work? Let's dive in!
There are many practices for shadow work that can support you on your healing journey, here are a few of my favorite:
Journaling
Meditation
Reparenting Your Inner Child
Working With A Trained Therapist
Journaling
Journaling is one of my favorite practices for shadow work. It provides a safe space to uncover and examine suppressed thoughts and feelings. The key to journaling for shadow work is to get into a place where you are writing automatically, without consciously thinking about it. It's a practice for making the unconscious conscious, it's not a place to craft your finest writing or even complete thoughts. You are not writing anything to read again or share with anyone else. You might even consider shredding or burning your journals when you are done as a ritual of letting go. It will also help you be less self-conscious when you are writing, to know they will be disposed of when you're done.
By putting your thoughts onto paper, you can gain a deeper understanding of yourself and explore patterns and triggers that might have been hidden before. It's like shining a light on your shadow self, allowing you to uncover hidden aspects of your personality. When you journal, you engage the reflective and introspective parts of your brain, allowing for deeper self-awareness and understanding. My favorite resource for learning to write automatically and in support of your shadow work is Morning Pages, as taught in the book 'The Artist's Way' by Julia Cameron.
Meditation
Meditation is another powerful and beneficial technique that can support your shadow work healing journey. By taking the time to quiet your conscious mind and get curious about your inner world, you can gain access to a whole new realm of thoughts and emotions that are often hidden from your everyday awareness. This process not only helps you better understand and get to know yourself, but it also brings to light aspects of your shadow self that might have otherwise stayed buried in your unconscious.
Are you convinced you can't meditate, or don't know where to start? I hear this concern often! In addition to being a holistic psychotherapist, I am also a yoga and meditation teacher and want you to know that meditation is not about sitting in silence with no thoughts. It's actually an invitation to practice just sitting with yourself, and learning to love yourself when you're not 'doing' anything. It's a place to get curious and get to know yourself and your inner world, beyond just your thoughts. If you're new to meditation and curious about getting started, check out my guided meditations HERE.
Reparenting Your Inner Child
Reparenting your Inner Child is a deeply healing form of shadow work that involves connecting with the wounded parts of yourself and providing love, compassion, and nurturing to these parts. By doing so, you can help heal past traumas and find greater peace within. When you can identify the unmet needs of your childhood self, you can then learn how to provide the love, acceptance, and security your younger self may have lacked. By comforting and understanding the unhealed aspects of your inner child, you shine a light on the shadowy parts of your unconscious. This process can unearth deeply rooted patterns of behavior and emotional responses that have been carried over into adulthood. Through consistent practice, reparenting can lead to profound shifts, promoting self-love, inner peace, and a more attuned understanding of your whole self.
Working With a Trained Therapist
Working with a licensed therapist or counselor can also be invaluable on your shadow work journey. To state the obvious, you can't see what you can't see. Working with a therapist means you have someone to guide you in exploring your unconscious. It's like hiring a tour guide for your mind to help you get the most out of your experience!
A therapist can help you navigate your thoughts and feelings, provide insight and guidance, and offer a non-judgmental space for you to explore without fear. A therapist trained in shadow work can also help you identify blind spots or areas that may need additional support on your healing journey. This collaborative effort can lead to profound insights, healing, growth, and transformation. Having the support of a licensed therapist often accelerates the healing you can experience when doing shadow work.
All of our therapists here at The Holistic Counseling Center are trained in shadow work, and also personally practice shadow work. If you're looking for support, please schedule a free consultation call to learn more about our practice and how we can help!
The History of Shadow Work
Although Tiktok and other social media might suggest that shadow work is a new concept, it has actually been around for over a century if we're looking at the world of psychology, and much longer if we look at the world of yoga (we're talking thousands of years!). One of the founders of modern psychology, Carl Jung, first introduced the concept of the shadow in the early 1900s, and is considered the founder of shadow work. Jung believed that discovering, accepting and integrating our shadow self into our consciousness could help us achieve a state of wholeness, resulting in more peace, ease and an experience of true fulfillment in our life.
5 Benefits of Shadow Work
Shadow work is a lifelong process. If you're not already convinced that shadow work is for you, here are some benefits of doing shadow work that will hopefully inspire you!
Transform Self-Sabotage into Self-Care: Shadow work offers profound transformation by supporting you to unravel deeply rooted thoughts, emotions, and behaviors that no longer serve you. Once you identify how you self-sabotage you can consciously make new choices that are aligned with your present day self, not your outdated childhood programming.
Self-Awareness Brings Self-Love: Engaging in shadow work increases self-awareness as you explore every nook and cranny of your psyche to confront past traumas, negative beliefs, and old programming you inherited from childhood. When you can see yourself clearly, it’s so much easier to love yourself!
Rewire Your Brain: Shadow work creates new neural pathways in the brain for healing, helping you rewrite and rewire old patterns from old wounds that may be holding you back from your full potential.
Consciously Evolve: When you delve into your shadow, you invite and inspire deep personal growth. When you devote yourself to inner work, you can't help but evolve and transform.
Create A Life You Love: Shadow work empowers you to take control of your life, become aware of where you are self-sabotaging by repeating unconscious patterns, and consciously create a life you want to be living.
Is Shadow Work Safe?
Your unconscious mind has a remarkable way of shielding you from confronting things that you might not yet be prepared to process or handle. This natural defense mechanism serves to safeguard your well-being. When you engage in shadow work and encounter challenging aspects of yourself, you learn to embrace them at your own pace. Trust the process, your guide, your practices and the innate intelligence of our mind-body-spirit that is supporting and scaffolding your healing journey. Shadow work is the ultimate practice of learning how to trust and love yourself. You got this!
Benefits of Working With A Therapist For Shadow Work
Shadow work is not a quick fix or an easy process. Being human is a lifelong practice, and hopefully you will always be growing and getting to know new parts of yourself! If you are curious about shadow work and looking for support, I highly recommend working with one of our therapists to support your mental health healing and growth.
Working with one of our therapists during your shadow work journey offers several benefits:
Our therapists provide a safe and supportive environment where you can explore your deepest thoughts and emotions without fear of judgment. Our expertise and advanced training in counseling psychology and therapeutic techniques means we can guide you as you confront and integrate your shadow self.
We can help identify recurring patterns and unrecognized traumas that might be challenging to discern on your own.
Our therapists can provide reassurance and emotional support during the more difficult stages of shadow work, ensuring that you never feel alone during the process.
Ultimately, the objective perspective and professional guidance of a therapist can significantly deepen and enhance your shadow work experience, allowing you to heal and grow in a safe and supportive setting.
Therapy + Counseling For Shadow Work Healing in El Dorado Hills + Online in California
In case you can't tell, I'm a huge fan of shadow work, and deeply believe in the power of healing your unconscious programming to transform your life! Shadow work will support you in experiencing deep and lasting change in your world. As you learn to find, love, and integrate these lost and abandoned parts of yourself, old patterns, thoughts and feelings that cause pain and suffering can be healed and alchemized.
Are you ready to embrace your shadow and take the next step on your healing journey? Book a free consultation call to learn more about working with one of our therapists and how we can help!
We are currently accepting new clients for online counseling anywhere in California, and in-person therapy at our office in El Dorado Hills (just minutes from Folsom and short drive from Sacramento).
If you’re ready to get started, you can book a complimentary consultation call with our intake coordinator to learn more about our practice and get matched with one of our therapists.
We look forward to supporting you!
-Kim
Meet Kim
Kim Burris is a licensed holistic psychotherapist, founder of The Holistic Counseling Center, and author of ‘The First 90 Days After Birth.’
She honors the mind, body, spirit connection and offers evidence-based treatment with a heart centered approach, integrating the depth of western psychology with the heart and soul of eastern mysticism.
Kim and her team currently offer holistic counseling to individuals in El Dorado Hills, CA and online. Click HERE to book a no-cost consultation call.
