We all carry parts of ourselves we’ve pushed out of view. The sides we were told were too much, too soft, too angry, too inconvenient. These parts don’t disappear. They form what Carl Jung called the shadow self. Shadow work means turning toward what you’ve exiled; not to become someone new, but to remember who you were before you had to fragment yourself.
Integrating your shadow self isn’t about perfection.
It’s about reclaiming the parts you had to leave behind.
Because healing doesn’t always look like light.
Often, it begins in the dark.
This is the essence of shadow work.
Not fixing what’s broken, but restoring what you rejected to survive.
What Is the Shadow?
In Jungian psychology, the shadow refers to the unconscious parts of ourselves we suppress or deny. These aren’t always “dark” qualities in the way we usually think of darkness. Sometimes they’re our most vibrant traits – creativity, sexuality, confidence, power.
But if those traits were met with disapproval, punishment or silence, they were pushed out of reach. Not erased. Just buried.
Our shadow is formed in relationship to our earliest environments. As children, our deepest desire is to be loved and approved. So we learn what earns love and what brings distance.
We internalise the rules: don’t be too loud, too soft, don’t cry, don’t get angry, don’t need too much, don’t shine too bright.
So we become palatable, pleasant and compliant.
Or we become sharp, distant and hyper independent.
Whatever helped us belong, we reinforced.
If you were rewarded for being kind, helpful or easy going, your shadow might now hold your boundaries, your anger, your clarity. If you were praised for being strong or self sufficient, your shadow might hold your need, your tenderness, your grief.
The version of you that wasn’t allowed still exists.
It didn’t disappear, it just hid deep into your subconscious.
The shadow isn’t inherently bad. It’s protective, intelligent and built out of survival. But over time, it becomes limiting. Because what we hide from ourselves doesn’t stay quiet. It shows up in our triggers, shame, our patterns and projections. In the ways we sabotage love, numb pain, or abandon ourselves.
Whatever we exile eventually begins to define us.
Not through what we express, but through what we avoid.
That’s why shadow work matters.
What Is Shadow Work?
Shadow work is the process of becoming aware of what you’ve pushed away. It’s not about indulging your “dark side.” It’s about softening toward the parts of yourself you’ve disowned. Not to excuse or justify them, but to meet them with curiosity, honesty and care.
This isn’t about shame or blame.
Or about trying to fixing yourself either.
It’s about contact with the parts of you that got left behind.
Sometimes shadow work means facing what you’ve denied. But just as often, it means noticing what you’ve over identified with. The roles you’ve fused with. The qualities you believe define you: being the helper, the achiever, the calm one, the strong one.
These identities might have kept you safe – but they’re not the full story of who you are.
When we over identify with certain traits, we build our worth around them.
We become loyal to a performance.
We say, “This is just who I am.” But often, it’s who we learned to be, who we had to become. Underneath that, there might be anger, longing, grief, desire – parts of you waiting to be met.
Shadow work invites you back into relationship with the full spectrum of who you are. Not just the parts you’ve polished – but the ones you’ve hidden, denied or forgotten. The work isn’t about collapsing into the shadow. It’s about integrating it, so you can finally stop running from yourself.
The Pendulum Swing
What I often see in clients (and myself) is this: once you start to reclaim a shadow, they don’t land in balance. They swing to the other extreme, often leading to a sense of confusion.
The one who never said no becomes rigid and guarded.
The overachiever lets go and loses momentum to be busy.
The “nice one” finds their rage and doesn’t know how to contain it.
This is natural. The pendulum swing isn’t regression, it’s expression.
When a part has been silenced for years, it doesn’t emerge quietly.
It will likely overcompensate before it finds a centre. This is why external support to integrate a shadow becomes important; to have someone follow the process and help you maintain your centre through the mess.
That’s the rhythm of integration: From suppression to expression, from reactivity to regulation. Shadow work is not linear. It’s rhythmic. A cycle of contraction and expansion. Over time, the extremes soften. The parts learn to co-exist. That’s when real integration sets in.
The Moving Shadow
There’s a metaphor I like: when sunlight moves across a stained glass window, the shadows are refracted in different shapes and colour. The same light reveals different shadows each time. What once looked dark begins to shimmer. What felt fixed begins to move.
That’s what this work is. You don’t eliminate your shadow, instead you learn to see it from new perspectives. You begin to recognise its outlines. To sense when it’s pulling the strings. And catch it before it takes the wheel.
Eventually, it’s not about chasing your shadow. It becomes about welcoming it.
Signs You’re Meeting Your Shadow
- You feel irrationally reactive in certain situations.
- You’re triggered by traits in others you’ve disowned in yourself.
- You over explain, shut down or shape shift around others.
- You feel shame around qualities that are actually part of your truth.
- You sense the gap between who you are – and who you’ve learned to be.
These aren’t signs you’re doing it wrong. They’re signs you’re getting close.
Meeting your shadow isn’t always dramatic. Often, it’s subtle. It shows up in the tightening of your chest when someone sets a boundary you struggle to name for yourself. In the irritation you feel toward someone who seems too sensitive, too confident, too free. It shows up when you find yourself explaining who you are instead of simply being.
When you start to notice these reactions, something powerful is happening. You’re coming into contact with a part of yourself that hasn’t been met with love. You might feel overwhelmed. You might want to push it away. But if you can stay with it – just for a breath, just for a moment – you begin to see what’s underneath.
The anger that hides the grief.
The perfectionism that hides the fear.
The charm that hides the loneliness.
The smile that hides the pain.
Shadow work asks for honesty, not performance. It asks you to stay curious when you want to judge. To pause when you want to run. To notice the places where your reactions feel outsized and ask, “What part of me is waking up right now?”
These moments of discomfort are not detours. They are the work. They are the signs you’re meeting yourself more fully. Every time you choose presence over avoidance, you take one step closer to wholeness.
Reclaiming What You’ve Left Behind
You don’t meet the shadow in theory.
You meet it in emptiness and conflict.
In moments of grief, rupture or shame.
It’s rarely poetic, but it’s always honest.
The goal isn’t to become light and perfect; it’s to become whole. You begin to see that sensitivity isn’t weakness, and anger isn’t danger. The parts of you that once protected you no longer need to be outrun. What still holds wisdom no longer needs to be rejected.
This is where support matters. Shadow work is powerful, but it can be disorienting. Therapy or coaching offers structure. It helps you stay in contact without being overwhelmed, to have an anchor through the chaos.
In that meeting, something changes.
You don’t just perform a new self.
You trust who you already are.
Shadow work doesn’t end, but it does get easier. You learn how to stand beside what you once ran from. What were once monsters, become allies. You begin to have access to the right parts of yourself, at the right time. When to be soft, when to be hard, and everything in between.
You reclaim the parts that hid in the shadow.
And that – is the beginning of true freedom.
