Category: Shadow work

Shadow work is the process of going into your shadows (the unpleasant side of your life experience) to heal, learn, and grow. By doing shadow work, you illuminate hidden aspects of yourself such as traumas and dysfunctions. Bringing awareness to your dark side allows you to heal neglected parts of yourself that are causing damage under the surface, and ultimately become a more complete version of yourself.

Self-Integration: The Important Pathway To Inner Wholeness
Humans are inherently divided creatures, often caught in a perpetual inner conflict – Not always with the world around us, but within ourselves. The biggest wars rage on within us, battling with our minds, our demons, our traumas, our emotions, and our thoughts. Imagine if the energy spent on internal warfare was directed to a common goal. How much easier would life be?

As long as we’re in a constant state of conflict, we’re not efficient. Not only are we inefficient, but we also stir up a lot of negativity and reduce our quality of life. Imagine stepping on the gas while bogged in the mud. All you’re going to do is burn out because there’s an underlying issue that needs to first be resolved.

Well-being is an ecosystem, therefore when one component is dysfunctional, it brings down the entire collective. Disintegration is caused by denial, resistance, and suppression. Sometimes we disintegrate consciously, and at other times it’s an unconscious process.

This is why self-integration is a crucial stepping stone for anyone on a personal growth journey. Without it, you’re going to spin your wheels and exhaust yourself doing so. You will spend your energy on internal conflict rather than working together to progress your life.

Therefore, it’s important to find a balance amongst all dimensions of your life experience, external and internal, to discover inner stability and equanimity. It is only from here that you can feel the way you deserve – whole.
What does it mean to be self-integrated

Self-integration means finding balance within all aspects of your life by integrating the neglected parts of you and perceiving every aspect of yourself as an integral facet of the collective. Self-integration is the core objective of shadow work, and we can’t live life to its fullest if we only half show up.

Think of self-integration as the process of harmonizing different aspects of yourself including your thoughts, emotions, values, and behaviors into a cohesive whole. Harmonizing yourself allows you to thrive in all dimensions of your life without ignoring, suppressing, or denying who you are.

Unless all parts of you are oiled up and the gears are spinning smoothly, your life experience will fundamentally lack in some way. If one gear is jammed, it will disrupt the entire system.

For example, if your emotional health is fine but your social life sucks, this leads to an unbalanced life. While a lopsided life experience may not be your primary concern, a poor social life will adversely affect your emotional health, even though seemingly unrelated on the surface level.

Think about it this way… if your arm is broken but the rest of your body is fine, you can’t get on with your day and focus on what’s going well. I mean, you can try, but it probably won’t translate the way you think it will. Your arm is a part of your body, so the whole body suffers if one part of your body is dysfunctional.

Often we live our lives broken, neglected, traumatized, and unbalanced. We don’t like particular parts of ourselves, and we suck at other things, so instead of fixing what’s broken we focus on what’s not.

This is not a good idea because you need to view yourself as a collective.

Being self-integrated means being unified in all aspects of your life, internal and external. This means your mind isn’t scattered, nor have you abandoned any part of yourself as a result of conditioning or influence. You love all areas of your life experience and thrive within them because each area compliments one another, rather than competes.

Being disintegrated causes problems because each aspect of yourself competes rather than work in synergy. Each part of you functions as an individual rather than a team which leads to imbalance, conflict, and turmoil.

Imagine a project team where each team member pursues their own goals without considering the overall objectives of the project. Instead of collaborating synergistically, they end up working against each other. Tasks are duplicated, deadlines are missed, and overall productivity suffers because each individual is focused solely on their interests rather than the collective success of the team.

Your mind and emotions work the same way. When there is no cohesion, you end up being fragmented. Self-disintegration can lead to all sorts of issues in your life including:

Mental health issues: Self-disintegration often leads to mental health problems such as anxiety, depression, instability, and inner turmoil.

Poor decision-making: A disintegrated sense of self can impair your decision-making abilities. You may struggle to make choices that align with your true values and desires or feel conflicted when making decisions.

Relationship problems: Self-disintegration can cause you to project your inner conflicts onto others which leads to conflicts. This instability can also make it difficult to form and maintain healthy relationships.

Lack of direction: When you are not in touch with your core values, you may struggle to find purpose, or have clarity on where you’re going in life. This can lead to feelings of aimlessness and a lack of motivation.

Low self-esteem: A fragmented sense of self often results in low self-esteem. You may feel inadequate or unworthy, and constantly compare yourself to others rather than focusing on yourself.

Inconsistent behavior: Self-disintegration can cause inconsistent behavior and an incongruency in your behaviors and attitudes. You might have mood swings or act differently depending on the context, which isn’t in alignment with your true feelings.

Increased vulnerability to external influences: Without self-integration you are more susceptible to external influences. This can lead to adopting beliefs, behaviors, and lifestyles that are not truly aligned with your authentic self.

Chronic stress and burnout: The inner conflict and instability caused by self-disintegration can lead to chronic stress. Constantly grappling with a fragmented self can be exhausting, leading to burnout and overwhelm.

Impaired productivity: Self-integration is essential for productivity. Self-disintegration can make it difficult to innovate, perform effectively, or pursue passions.

Spiritual disconnect: If you’re on a spiritual path, self-disintegration can result in a feeling of disconnect from your beliefs and practices. This can lead to a lack of fulfillment in their spiritual journey.
How do people become disintegrated?

Disintegration often happens during childhood with conditioning as you adopt certain beliefs, behaviors, and norms, and chop off all the bits sticking out to fit into this ideal. Without awareness of these adopted or reinforced beliefs, they root deeper into your subconscious and manifest into more severe problems.

For many years, I hated who I was. I hated my skinny figure and buck teeth that were ridiculed in school. I hated my social skills – not knowing the slightest thing about talking with others or dating. It wasn’t until the end of high school that I hit a tipping point. Something must change because I was getting sucked into this pit of despair, and things weren’t looking up either.

So, I learned to develop a persona. Over the next few years, I gobbled down every personal development book I could find and started acting the part. I learned to play the game – that was to act in a way that aligned with who I wanted to be, but it wasn’t who I wanted to be…

Over the years, I became pretty good at it too. I became so good at wearing a mask of confidence and positivity, that I forgot how out of alignment it was with my true self. A deeper, wiser part of me was telling me to chill out and be congruent, but another part of me – driven by my desperation to be normal, wanted nothing to do with the person I once was.

So there was inner conflict.

I found myself living a better life, at least a life I thought I desired, but at the same time, I wasn’t feeling any happier. I still felt desperate. I still felt like I was lacking, and that something was fundamentally wrong with me.

The truth is that I abandoned a part of myself to fit into this box of who I should be. I discarded the traits and characteristics that were authentically me, in an attempt to crawl out of this hole.

It wasn’t until later on that I began reintegrating the abandoned aspects of myself, to find a happier balance. One where I developed the skills I needed to thrive, but I was also comfortable being myself.

Self-integration is to find a happy balance within your identity and to act in alignment with your true identity, not a mask. If you wear a mask, you form a shadow self, which is the neglected side of you that longs for recognition, but never sees the light of day.

Someone might be strong and assertive, but rude and lack compassion. Another person might be kind and loving, but timid and insecure. Some people will be highly logical, but not even remotely intuitive, and vice versa. Likewise, others might be overserious or overplayful without finding the right balance between them.

Even though some positive qualities are prevalent, they either overshadow or oppress others. This makes you a lopsided person who fares well in some things but lacks in others.

This is what self-integration is – to feel balanced amongst all dimensions of your life experience. No neglecting, no overcompensating. You’re a functional person who isn’t missing any core ingredients to create a wholesome human experience.

You want the full package.

You want wholeness, and to get it you need to find equilibrium in your identity, thoughts, emotions, and beliefs. This is a process and not a single act. Everyone can become more integrated.

Why you need to be aware of self-disintegration

Disintegration can occur from being pressured to ignore or suppress aspects of yourself. To self-integrate, you need to first recognize what you are good at, and what you aren’t.

By identifying your strengths and weaknesses, you will know what to integrate. Identifying traumas, painful memories, and characteristics that have been repressed is the first step toward self-integration.

Perhaps you were told to be tough as a child, so you repressed feelings of anger and sadness. Children are often shunned for expressing themselves, and this results in them suppressing aspects of their identities.

Children are especially vulnerable to disintegration because they have a lot of pressure to fit in. Until conscious efforts are made to heal, the individual will not have an integrated sense of self until they start working on themselves.

Sometimes boys are told that they must be tough or grown up. Due to this, they block out their feminine nature and become disintegrated. They become unevenly balanced with masculine characteristics which can evolve into toxic masculinity; a lack of empathy and understanding, and an aversion to anything deemed feminine, even though a healthy individual must have a balance of both masculine and feminine characteristics.

Likewise, a girl who is told to be more ladylike might comply, but this is at the sacrifice of other natural characteristics that they have, which causes her to disintegrate.

Someone might feel pressured to fit in with peers and disregard their gifts and natural abilities. Instead of finding equilibrium, they suppress elements of themselves that don’t immediately serve their social relationships. Of course, disintegrating aspects of yourself might have helped you in the immediate future, but in the long run, this causes problems.

Becoming aware of your suppressed characteristics and what you lack is the first step towards integration. Once you recognize the characteristics that are out of balance, you can begin integrating the authentic characteristics that were once cut out of the picture.

How to become more self-integrated

First off, you need to stop judging the traits, characteristics, and beliefs you deem to be inferior. As long as you judge aspects of yourself, these characteristics are going to remain hidden, otherwise, you will abandon them to fit into the box of who you’re supposed to be.

On that note, self-acceptance also plays a critical role in self-integration. By being fully present with your experience of consciousness by allowing everything to organically surface (including the thoughts and feelings you don’t want to experience) you will begin a process of integrating your shadows and naturally healing them.

Accepting your weaknesses might make you feel vulnerable, but have you ever considered that this vulnerability is a good thing? Instead of shoving these aspects under the surface to never be seen by the light of day, perhaps you should self-enquire.

Why do you feel vulnerable?

How do these aspects of self cause you to feel vulnerable?

How can you accept them as a part of self, without perceiving them as a weakness?

Learn to express yourself fully, in alignment with your authentic self without holding back. This can require some courage, especially if you have been deeply conditioned to be a certain way. It’s not always easy to show your true colors, especially if you never had.

Healing trauma for self-integration

Self-disintegration can be a mechanism to avoid pain.

Simply, to integrate yourself, you need to heal yourself. Disintegration often occurs from traumas. When people experience trauma, they split off from aspects of their identity as a protective mechanism.

We’ve all heard of the cases of individuals developing disassociative identity disorder, where they sacrifice a part of themselves to protect their innocence. One side takes the bullet for the other, leading to an extreme case of disintegration.

Again, this is an extreme case. Most people won’t develop DID, however, it illuminates what can happen when we become so disintegrated that we don’t recognize the other facets of self at play.

You may not have had to spit off, but you may have some unaccounted trauma that is impacting a part of your psyche, without realizing it’s there.

By recognizing the events that caused you to repress aspects of yourself, you can gently encourage them to resurface. By recognizing these wounds, you can understand what sort of effect they have had on you, and in what areas they have caused you to disconnect.

Self-integration and victimhood

Pay attention to your emotional reactions and how you feel in different situations. Irrational responses may indicate disintegration. This is the role of a trigger – a mechanism that shows you someone is touching a sore spot.

In this sense, when someone triggers you, they’re doing you a service. They’re bringing up something that was otherwise hidden from awareness. When you get triggered, you can either project, which is what most people do, or you can reflect by looking into this emotional reaction and trying to identify why you feel so agitated by something so little.

Over-emotional reactions to things can also indicate that something in you needs to be addressed. This can come in the form of anger, frustration, hatred, resentment, jealousy, sadness, bitterness, and any negative state of mind. Of course, in some situations, it’s completely normal to feel these emotions. This is where you want to recognize if it’s just you, or if everyone else experiences the same thing.

When you have a strong emotional response to something, explore the pain rather than avoid it. There is no easy way to do this. I suggest meditating and exploring these feelings of pain when they surface, and this may help you flush out unresolved traumas in your life.

Think back to your childhood and uncover any blockages that you may have had by examining their cause and effect. Remember that the keys to self-integration lie in recognition, acceptance, support, and encouragement.

The more you practice bringing out your submersed qualities and characteristics, the more well-rounded you will become as a person.
6 August 2024
The Art of Integrating Your Shadow Self
Unless you’re an exceptionally integrated person, there’s a part of you that you don’t like.

This part of you could be anything from particular personality traits to characteristics, attitudes, or behaviors. You may be ashamed of being a sensitive person, so you suck up the tears when something triggers an emotional response. Maybe you were shunned for acting a certain way, and now you believe that particular behavior is wrong.

In an attempt to be our best selves, we end up repressing aspects of who we are because we feel that we should be better than that.

And that’s how the shadow self is born: The rotten side of you that you don’t acknowledge. But it’s still there, and it’s always going to be there until you accept it, integrate it, and heal the wounds surrounding it.

The shadow self is a pretty complex topic, but if you’re on a healing journey, this is something that you need to know. By the end of this article, you’re going to have identified your shadow self and learned how to integrate it for a healthier sense of self.
What is the shadow self?

Shadow work is the act of integrating the shadow self. It’s a healing modality that works on the deeper levels of the subconscious mind (where our sense of self is spit off).

If you’re not familiar with shadow work, I highly recommend you read my guide to shadow work before moving on with this article. This is important to get a broader idea of what shadow work is, and what the process entails.

Your shadow self refers to the unconscious parts of your personality that were disowned. Imagine the shadow self as the side of you that you find unacceptable.

To properly understand the shadow self, we need to explore the multifaceted self. Here are some important terms I’m going to use in this article that you should know:

The self: Your human consciousness.

The lower self: Your characteristics and traits that are seen as undesirable, or bad. Your worst qualities.

The higher self: Your characteristics and traits that you see as desirable, or good. Your best qualities.

The authentic self: Your genuine traits, characteristics, and behaviors that are natural to you.

Your mask: Your social personality. The person you’re posing to be is usually mimicking your higher self.

Your shadow self: Parts of your authentic self that you don’t like, and conceal behind your mask.

Okay, glad to have cleared that up. Now onto trying to explain this mess…

Explaining this mess…

In the perfect world, we would all just be ourselves without labels or judgment, or trying to be someone else. But we’re not in the perfect world. We grow up believing that it’s necessary to have a certain image, so we cut off all the bits sticking out that don’t align with the image prescribed by our parents, culture, and society.

This isn’t necessarily a bad thing. We should strive to better ourselves and genuinely shift towards our higher selves.

But the keyword here is genuine.

For the most part, we take the shortcut. We pretend to be better people (because that’s what we’re supposed to be) without actually being better people. It’s a mask that we wear to the world and ourselves, to convince ourselves that we’re doing good.

Your mask might be all nice and shiny on the outside, but it’s a lie. Your mask is not your authentic self.

So instead of healing the wounds associated with your lower self, you paint the higher self over them.

Don’t worry, we all do it.

So let’s say you were punished by your parents when you were younger for expressing strong opinions or acting out of line. You grew up internalizing the belief that you can’t speak up and must always be civil in discussions. Therefore, you disowned that firey passionate attitude you once had.

Later on down the track, you might be quite passive, and not know how to speak up or assert your rights because that belief is now deeply ingrained. But you might find yourself getting triggered when you see other people speaking their truth because it’s illuminating an aspect of yourself that is still well and alive.

Your shadow is the authentic self that you disowned for whatever reason. You don’t like it, you felt you had to conform, you needed to survive, the reason isn’t important.

What’s important is to identify the incongruencies between your mask and your authentic self, and that’s the gap your shadow lives in.

What if your authentic self sucks?

Good question.

Often there are aspects of ourselves that we disown because they’re genuinely not good for us. These are usually characteristics that are associated with the lower self. On a personal growth journey, it’s only natural to want to evolve, and so you should.

But the problem lies in how we evolve.

Maybe those characteristics are things like aggression, narcissism, self-pity. You could say “These aspects are my authentic self, so does that mean I must be an aggressive, narcissistic, self-pitying asshole?”

No.

Attitudes and traits that come from the lower self are caused by wounds. You’re behaving in ways that don’t serve you or anyone else because they’re signaling an issue.

So if you heal the root cause, then the manifestation of this cause is going to change. Suddenly, you’re not going to be in alignment with that particular quality. You’ll be in alignment with a healthier, healed version of yourself.

Because the only genuine route to the higher self is through healing. When you heal the problems manifesting the lower self, naturally you will embody your higher self.

Difference between the shadow self and ego

Your ego refers to your sense of identity which shapes your self-image. It’s the part of you that navigates reality, which in this sense it’s more akin to your mask.

The shadow self comprises the unconscious aspects that the ego doesn’t acknowledge. Imagine it as a repository of suppressed emotions, desires, and traits that don’t align with your self-concept.

While the ego operates in your awareness, the shadow self is the unconscious counterpart influencing your behavior without your realization.
How the shadow self is born

The shadow self is born by not being congruent with your authentic desires and beliefs. Eventually, you ingrain characteristics that are not congruent with your authentic self, and this causes a separation of self.

In a nutshell, you act in a different way than how you want, because you’re supposed to. Therefore, you create a polarity between these two sides of you: Being a persona (or mask that you wear), and your authentic self.

Imagine you grew up in a conservative Christian household where there was a taboo about having romantic relationships. You were led to believe that it’s bad to be intimate with someone, even though you wanted to date. Because of this programming, you repress the side of you that wants to date because you believe it’s not acceptable behavior.

So you pretend to be someone who’s not authentic with your true self because you’re supposed to be a certain way. But the real you is still alive and kicking in the background.

Let’s say you value kindness and always strive to be helpful. After all, you know it’s the right thing to do.

Deep down, on the other hand, you might feel resentful or jealous towards successful people, and people who seem to have life so easy. Therefore, you might feel satisfied when those people experience difficulties, without consciously recognizing that you aren’t genuine with those values of kindness.

These hostile feelings are likely aspects of your shadow self, and come from a wounded part of you that you never healed. In this sense, shadow work would be the act of exploring that wound and healing it, so you become authentic with those values of kindness, and they’re no longer a mask.

Forming a shadow self through spiritual bypassing

Being your best self is important, but it can also be misconstrued.

When you create an aversion to your lower self, thus a persona of your higher self, this causes disintegration. This is a trap I see many people fall into, especially within the spiritual community.

You might believe that as a spiritual person, you need to be positive. In some cases, people will block out any feeling that doesn’t align with their version of being highly evolved, because they believe it would be shameful.

“After all, I’m an advanced spiritual person, I’m beyond ill feelings towards people, all I have is love for everyone.”

Translation: “I’m insecure and need to live by this image that people should have of me because I don’t feel worthy of love”

These people become the love and lighters where everything is always positive, but there’s a big ugly stain under the carpet that they’re ignoring. This stain is their shadow self, and as long as they block themselves from feeling human emotions that they disapprove of, they’re not being authentic.

So the whole positivity thing becomes a facade.

Forming a shadow self through cultural programming

Often, the shadow self is a product of cultural programming. Since the culture we live in has a huge influence over how we behave, act, and think, it’s also a great cause of disintegration.

After all, we all want to fit in. It’s a natural human instinct. But that drive to conform can also suck because we have to discard our differences to fit in the box.

Hostilities are also a big cause of disintegration, which can come from parents, peers, and work associates.

When someone is hostile towards a particular trait that you have, you’re likely to feel shame, guilt, or some negative emotion towards that particular trait.

Say some people at work are rude to you because you’re introverted. You might feel ashamed of being introverted, therefore you try to be more extroverted and disintegrate that authentic characteristic.

Let’s say your parents reprimanded you for expressing anger – so you became the nice guy. Or how about they got angry at you when you expressed an opinion that they didn’t love, so you were led to believe it was wrong?

Your shadow is as much a product of your surroundings, as these influences are usually the cause of its disintegration in the first place.
Identifying your shadow self

Now that you’re well aware of what the shadow self is, we’re going to look at how you can identify yours.

Because that’s the tricky part, it’s unconscious. It hides in the dark because you don’t want to look at its ugly face. Usually, we don’t even know that it exists until we flesh it out, so let’s explore some ways to do that.

Follow your triggers

Someone introverted might find loud or obnoxious people triggering. They have a disproportionate emotional reaction to the actual situation because they see aspects of themselves that they wish they had.

If you wish you were outgoing, you might find outgoing people to be triggering. If you wish you were successful but never created that reality for yourself, you might have hostile feelings towards successful people.

In my life, there is always a chad. Every workplace seems to have the confident, charming meathead that ladies seem to orbit around. For a long time, these types of people always got on my nerves. Just something about them that I couldn’t quite put my finger on.

It’s not that they were rude. Often they were super nice, which made me hate them even more. Fuck, they’re kind too?! Why can’t I find something that I hate about this person? I hated that.

Of course, I saw my shadow in these people. I saw an outgoing, confident version of myself who didn’t have self-esteem issues. That sounds dandy and all, what an inspiration, but there was a problem. I wasn’t that person who I knew I could be. Every time I saw this archetype, it reminded me of my shortfalls.

But that’s my shit. When you recognize that you have a trigger, you can identify a reflection of yourself that you have suppressed. Certain situations bring up a particular trait that you have suppressed (and feel you lack). Therefore, pay attention to your triggers and use them as a quick road to identifying your shadow self.

Discover if you project

Projection involves recognizing judgments towards others, which often mirror hidden aspects of your shadow self.

If you’re critical of other people, it’s probably your way of avoiding being critical of yourself. If you’re being snarky towards someone, I bet you it’s because you have those feelings towards yourself.

And what does this mean? There’s hidden treasure!

Not gold or anything like that, but that dark putrid sludge that hasn’t seen the light of day. Like the clump of slimy you pull out of your shower drain when it’s blocking up.

By examining strong emotional responses that seem uncalled for, you can find suppressed characteristics. This process of self-reflection allows for a deeper understanding of your shadow.

Identify reoccurring patterns

Look into the situations that seem to continuously repeat in your life.

Do you keep getting into toxic relationships? Are you always the underdog? Do people always take advantage of you? What seems to happen without fail in your life, and more importantly, do you wonder why?

Identifying your reoccurring patterns is a good way to discover aspects of your shadow self. And that shadow self is probably why you unconsciously keep walking into those situations or creating them yourself.

Discover your shadow archetype

What I want you to do is imagine the worst possible version of yourself.

Imagine your life went in a really bad direction, and you became the person you despise. Now paint a vivid picture of this person. What do they look like? What do they do? How do they act?

I see my shadow archetype as a pathetic beta male who has nothing going on in his life. This is my shadow archetype. I’ve done quite well crafting an adventurous life to get as far away from that reality as possible, because that’s an elephant in the room I’ve never wanted to deal with.

But why do I have such an aversion to that person, besides the obvious reasons? There are a lot of pathways my life could go down, so why pick that one in particular as my nightmare self? That’s because I have a fear of becoming that person.

No matter how cool and tough I feel I’ve become, there’s still a part of me that feels like that’s who I am. Since that side of me has been repressed to some extent, at least some of the qualities that I associated with it, that’s what my shadow looks like.

I need to retrace what qualities I disowned, and either accept them or heal the underlying cause driving them.

Now think about yours.

Integrating the shadow self

Now that you’ve discovered your shadow self, the next step is to integrate it. This means that you find a healthy balance with your shadow self where you’re not avoidant of it, but you’re also not indulgent.

You don’t want to become your shadow self. Otherwise, you’re sorta just going in circles. You want to strike a healthy balance where it can be expressed, but it doesn’t control you.

Be authentic

Since the shadow self is created by not being authentic to your true self, being authentic is a big step in the right direction. If you have the desire to do something or act in a certain way (as long as it’s in reason), then do it.

Start being congruent with the personality traits that you have dredged up into your conscious awareness. It might feel a little unnatural at first as you’ve crafted your life around a persona, but by expressing those hidden desires, you’re going to start integrating those shadows.

So ultimately, be authentic. You can’t get much simpler than that.

Embrace your shadow

Avoid self-judgment or harsh criticism of your disowned qualities. You’re likely seeing them through a bias filter.

Drill in better ways of looking at these particular traits. This may take some reprogramming, but if you stick with it, your perception of those traits will change.

I visualize myself meeting my shadow self, and giving him a big hug. I spend time with him, hold space for him, and show myself the compassion I never received from others. I find this to be a particularly effective technique that gets me every time.

Create space for genuine healing

Now that you’ve brought your shadow self to light, you can properly start healing the underlying causes of characteristics that are harmful.

If your shadow archetype is the prostitute, going around sleeping with countless people won’t do you any good. If your shadow archetype is the junkie, empowering yourself with as much cocaine as you can handle won’t do it either.

That’s because these particular characteristics are caused by wounds. You’re just escaping something deeper, so embodying escapism is just going to put you in a loop.

You want to heal the underlying wounds that cause these behaviors in the first place. With more visibility, these underlying wounds become easier to heal.

Find a healthy balance

The delicate dance of shadow work is to integrate these disowned traits without acting on them impulsively.

This involves acknowledging their presence without allowing them to control your actions. Find healthy ways to express these desires, and don’t overindulge.

When you strike a good balance, you’ll begin to integrate your shadow self in the best way possible, without allowing it to cause any harm or dysfunction in your life.
7 January 2024
How to Stop Projecting Your Insecurities
If you’re reading this article, I like you! It shows me that you’re committed to your growth. Arguably, most people aren’t interested in looking inward. They don’t want to discover if they’re the problem, because it’s easier to assume that the fault is with someone else. But where does this mentality lead us?

You may have come to realize that your social relationships are a reflection of who you are. If you seem to constantly have friction with people, especially with different people, it takes a special sort of person to think ‘Hey, maybe I’m the issue’.

This isn’t to say that you’re always at fault, not at all. Sometimes, your personality may combat with others, which is natural. Sometimes other people will be the issue. However, if you notice that your friction with others is a recurring pattern, then you’re likely projecting your issues onto them and interpreting them to be the issue.

We all have insecurities, and we all project them to some extent. We project as an unconscious avoidance mechanism. As long as you continue projecting, you’re not going to get to the root of the issue and instead continue in these painful circles of conflict you can’t seem to break.

Well, that changes here. Within 10 minutes, you’re going to have an in-depth understanding of what projecting is, why we do it, and how to stop it. This will help you illuminate and heal your emotional wounds which leads to happier, healthier relationships with everyone in your life.
What does it mean to project?

Have you ever accused someone of feeling a certain way, only to realize that you were the one dealing with those emotions? Are you tired of feeling misunderstood, pointing fingers, or playing the blame game?

It’s easy to get frustrated when people push your buttons, but what if the problem… is you?

Projecting is to assume other people are the issue when they may be your issues or insecurities. I think we’ve all had the experience where we’ve been feeling angry or upset and lashed out at someone thinking that they’re stirring the pot when they may have just been trying to help.

This is projecting. You’re externalizing your hurt and blaming someone else when it may have nothing to do with them.

A big part of shadow work is to recognize the small signs of dysfunction and follow them towards your hidden trauma. This is where I want to talk to you about projection. We all do it, one way or another, but most of us don’t realize we’re doing it.

If you’re on a path of personal growth, you need to realize when you’re projecting your insecurities onto other people so you can uncover the root cause of these painful emotions, and embark on a path of authentic healing.

Why do you project your insecurities?

Look at projection as a form of escapism. You’re denying your uncomfortable feelings or insecurities by casting them on a scapegoat. This is an unconscious mechanism to avoid looking at your issues.

The reason why you project is because your ego deflects your awareness away from yourself, in an attempt to protect a wound.

When you have trauma, a part of you doesn’t want to address it because it hurts to address it. If you feel incompetent at work, you may look for incompetence in others and point your awareness towards them (to make yourself feel better) instead of looking at your issues and working on them.

Let’s imagine you were geeky in school. During these years you were bullied, and resultingly have some residual trauma because you were bullied.

In an attempt to escape this shunned side of you that causes pain, you begin disintegrating the geeky, but authentic self because you’re ashamed of it. You do so by learning how to act cool and mimicking others who get along with others.

This despised side of you becomes the shadow self. Years later you’re perceived very differently because you disintegrated from your nerdy nature. But you never addressed the wound, instead you slapped a mask over it.

Now let’s say you meet someone geeky later on in life, and they’re comfortable in their skin. Without being aware of it, you start being rude or condescending to that person.

But why would you be cruel to someone you have so much in common with?

You’re projecting.

You can’t stand that this person is secure, while you created a false image to get away from it. This person reminds you of the person you don’t want to be which brings your awareness towards those hidden, neglected wounds. Therefore, you externalize your frustrations by taking it out on the person to avoid feeling ashamed of yourself.

This is how projection works.

You’re driving your attention away from your insecurities by taking the role of the perpetrator (rather than the victim you feel you are).

To paint a clearer picture, here are some examples of archetypes that project:

The jealous partner: Someone who feels insecure in their relationship might end up leaving their partner due to their anxiety about being cheated on. Instead of confronting these deeper insecurities, they accuse their partner of being unfaithful and make them out to be the culprit.

The gossiper: A coworker who often talks behind other people’s backs might accuse others of gossiping about them, or have a lot to hide him or herself. This person is projecting as a way to justify their behavior.

The criticizer: Someone who is self-critical might criticize others over minor details. This person is projecting the flaws that they see in themself, but are unable to address them.

The overreaching police officer: Some police officers will abuse their position of power, likely because they were bullied in school, or felt they had no power growing up.
Why you externalize your wounds

Projection operates below the level of conscious awareness. When you’re faced with thoughts or feelings that trigger painful emotions, your mind automatically externalizes these qualities onto someone else.

This externalization serves as a psychological release valve, deflecting the internal emotional tension outward, often without the individual even realizing what they’ve done.

The goal here is to be authentic in your expression and the way you feel. By getting to the root cause of these emotional leakages such as projection and triggers, you’re able to heal.

Here are some signs that someone is projecting:

Intense emotional reactions: When your emotional response seems disproportionately intense compared to the situation at hand, it could be a sign that you’re projecting.

Judgement: Ever meet someone, and you think ‘I don’t know why, but I just hate that guy’? An immediate, irrational dislike for someone often means that you’re seeing someone that you don’t like about yourself in them.

Blame shifting: If you’re quick to blame others for what’s going wrong in your life, you’re avoiding taking responsibility for your failures and putting them onto others to make you feel better.

Defensiveness: Becoming overly defensive when someone points out a particular trait or behavior likely means you’re projecting. You don’t want to be aware of the underlying cause, so you irrationally defend something you shouldn’t defend.

Fixation of others’ flaws: Obsessing over someone else’s shortcomings could mean you’re avoiding your own.

Projection in relationships: Patterns of blame, intense reactions, or persistent issues often indicate that projection is affecting your relationships. Take note if you keep getting into the same arguments or situations, and take responsibility for it.
Psychological benefits of projection (short-term)

Immediate emotional relief: Projecting your issues onto someone else can give you instant emotional relief, as you’re using someone else as a vent to their problems. Taking out your problems on someone else distances you from your internal conflict.

Preservation of self-image: When you project, you’re putting your undesirable qualities on others instead of looking at them yourself. This helps you maintain a more favorable or socially acceptable self-image of yourself.

Avoidance of accountability: Projection allows you to dodge responsibility for your actions or feelings by shifting the focus onto someone else. As long as someone else is to blame, you’re not accountable.

Psychological drawbacks of projection (long-term)

Impaired relationships: Consistently projecting can cause a lot of strain in your relationship, as the projected feelings are often incongruent with the other person’s reality. It’s also a good way to piss off other people, as they feel that the situation is unfair, but you won’t listen to reason.

Hindrance to personal growth: As projection is a way to avoid looking at deeper issues with yourself, projection acts as a block for personal growth. As long as you’re not aware of it, projection prevents you from reflecting and resolving your problems, which leads to stunted growth.

Increased anxiety: While projection can relieve you temporarily, you’re not fixing the root cause. This means the issue is just going to keep coming back up, and the underlying wound is not going to be healed, and you’re just going to pile on the internal tension.
How to stop projecting and heal your hidden wounds

Projection is a crutch. People usually do it for a sense of relief (like they’re winning an imaginary battle), but it becomes a pretty relentless cycle. Projection isn’t a good thing. It causes long-term problems in relationships and acts as a big fat barrier to your personal growth.

Time to break this cycle. When you recognize that you’re projecting, push yourself to not replicate the same behavior. Create other pathways forward and through situations where you would usually project.

Pay attention to those emotions, and see where they lead you. When you do that, you can start doing the healing by following the article below. Otherwise, here are some ways to be aware of when you’re projecting, and to put an end to this unhealthy habit.

Pay attention to your patterns: Recognizing that you’re projecting is the first step. First off, I would think about instances that continue to repeat themselves in your life. Maybe you constantly get into arguments with a family member, usually about the same thing. Perhaps you have the same triggers, the same relationship struggles… whatever it is, it happens like clockwork. This is a sign that you have a repeating pattern that you haven’t yet caught onto, and that’s a good place to start.

Find a healthy vent for your emotions: Part of why you project is because you aren’t finding a healthy outlet to express your emotions. When you’re feeling something undesirable such as anger, sadness, jealousy, or guilt, it’s important to find an outlet to purge those energies. The more you bottle those painful emotions in, the more they’re going to leak out in the form of triggers and projection. So find ways to vent and express yourself healthily. The more you do, the less you will project.

Identify your triggers: Your triggers are in the same boat as projection, because they both stem from a disintegrated sense of self. When you find yourself getting uncontrollably angry or frustrated at someone or something, use that as a time to reflect, feel, process, and discard those painful energies. The more you do this, the more aware you will be of your tendency to project, and the less you will feel the need to.

Take responsibility for your emotions: Taking responsibility for your feelings can make a significant difference in reducing projection. Instead of saying, “You make me feel insecure” try “I feel insecure when this happens.” Start taking real self-responsibility by looking into yourself, why you’re feeling a certain way, and what you can do about it instead of deferring responsibility.

Practice honest communication: The willingness to communicate openly and honestly can go a long way in resolving projected issues. If you find yourself projecting your insecurities onto your partner, have a frank discussion about what makes you feel insecure and how you both can address it.

Question your thoughts: If you’re having negative thoughts about someone else or yourself, stop when you’re feeling it. Question these thoughts and see if they’re congruent with the reality of the situation. See if they have been pulled out of proportion, or exaggerated to fit your narrative. This ability to question your train of thought and be a little rational about the situation can go a long way.

Be compassionate towards yourself: Stopping projection is a process that requires patience, and self-compassion. Forgive yourself when you catch yourself projecting and don’t beat yourself up about it. Of course, don’t take this as an excuse not to do the work, but realize that the process of discovering wounds and healing them can take time.
11 September 2023
104 Shadow Work Prompts To Explore Your Hidden Wounds
Everyone has a shadow: A neglected part of themselves that never sees the light of awareness.

This shadow might take the form of the insecure beta male that you strive to oppress. After all those years of being bullied, you’d never let anyone take advantage of you again. You’re a big strong man who has a lot to show, and that’s the image you would die to uphold.

Maybe it’s the drug-addicted loser you avoid looking at in the mirror, or the abhorrent whore, the shame to your family, the person who became a disastrous failure in life. So you work your ass off and flaunt your self-worth to make sure you never touch that image with a ten-foot pole.

Am I being a little harsh? Not as harsh as you are to yourself, because you’re your own worst critic, and that’s a big reason why you’re disintegrated. That pathetic, ugly, weak version of you still exists as your shadow self. It has been banished from your awareness and locked in the dark basement of your subconscious, but it’s not going away.

Your shadow is a very real part of you, and as long as you deny its existence, you’re never going to feel complete.

This is where shadow work prompts play a role in directing your awareness towards the side of you that you refuse to look at. Shadow work prompts are questions, or cues to help you confront the neglected parts of yourself so you can work through it.

It’s time to illuminate your shadows and make peace with them for growth, healing, and integration.

Why shadow work is necessary

Your shadows come in the form of past traumas and unresolved wounds that have never properly been dealt with. Instead of healing the root cause, you slapped on a mask and pretended to be someone you’re not in an attempt to cover up your ugly side.

After all, this is the quicker solution. At least it feels like a solution, for a while. But if you’re looking to truly become your best self, you need to be genuine. You need to be completely transparent with yourself and look your ugliness in its eyes, otherwise it will always be the yang to your yin.

This dark icky mess that you locked in the closet manifests into insecurities, distorted perceptions about reality and oneself, limiting belief systems, and a whole mountain of trash that does not serve you.

This manifestation is the shadow self; the broken, dysfunctional side of you. A portrait of your lower self.

The shadow self cannot be abandoned. Neglecting it just adds more fuel to the fire. Despising it just makes you despise yourself. The shadow self is a disintegrated part of who you are, but it’s still a part of yourself, so it should be treated as such.

Acknowledging your shadows is one part of the equation, but integrating them is another. This is where shadow work is necessary, as it’s the act of integrating the bits and pieces you once abandoned.

What are shadow work prompts?

Shadow work prompts are questions that are intended to help you bring awareness to your shadow self. They’re a key part of shadow work as they’re navigational tools to help you reflect, expose, and acknowledge undesirable aspects of your life experience.

In this sense, shadow work prompts are intended to dredge out unwanted emotions, feelings, and memories. They should trigger you, and cause you to reflect upon your life, facilitating the discovery of hidden aspects of yourself.

If I were to ask you why a particular conversation triggered you, or why you keep making the same mistakes in your romantic relationships, these questions might open a can of worms. You may acknowledge that you have a fear of commitment which is why you self-sabotage, which leads to more questions and deeper healing.

Don’t take a half-assed approach, but read each prompt and think about the questions. Observe if any buried feelings come up, if they trigger certain memories, or if these powerful cues flush anything to the surface that is worth investigating.

If a shadow work prompt does trigger a reaction, that means you’ve hit something worth looking at. Sit with whatever comes up and be present with whatever discomfort arises. Reflect on everything painful that surfaces until the emotions begin to lose power. This is how healing takes place, by allowing yourself to experience the discomfort and process it. Not by distracting yourself and escaping it.

The problem with avoidance

It’s easier to pretend your problems don’t exist than to put in the hard yards and do the healing. Healing is a painful process. It’s confronting. It can make you feel small. That’s why creating an image is a quicker solution and it’s usually the obvious solution too, but it’s not sustainable.

Most people live their lives wearing a mask to the world. Your job here is to take off that mask and look underneath it. You want to identify everything rotten with you, so you can start healing those wounds because they’re not going to heal themselves.

If you felt like you were a loser growing up, it’s easier to learn how to be cool and guard that image closely than to confront why you feel like a loser, and you can fool yourself pretty well too.

Likewise, if you’re generally a negative person, it’s easier to create a facade of light than to dig into why you see so much darkness within yourself.

Genuine healing is not straightforward. It can be a long journey to figure out what needs to be healed, let alone how to heal it. People tend to heal on the surface level but neglect the real stuff. This is where the substance is, and often you need to do some digging to get there.

Hiding behind a facade your whole life will inevitably cause more problems in the long run because your dysfunctions haven’t been resolved. We have created an incredibly superficial society where people believe that healing is skin deep, and live behind a facade of their higher self, rather than embarking on the long and often miserable journey to embody their higher self.

This is called spiritual bypassing, and it’s very important to acknowledge. You must be genuine with your process of healing if you want to heal.

Self-reflection: An invaluable for shadow work

Self-reflection is a critical aspect of shadow work. It’s the process of examining your thoughts, feelings, and behaviors to gain insight into yourself; where you can then apply the appropriate behavioral changes.

Self-reflection helps you to identify your triggers, discover reoccurring patterns, and discard limiting belief systems. It’s also a way to connect with your inner self, listen to your intuition, and gain a deeper understanding of your values and desires.

When reading the following shadow work prompts, it’s important to be honest with yourself. After all, you’re here for a reason, and some of these prompts might make you feel a bit tender… or perhaps cause some sort of emotional reaction. So do the work, as that is what will give you results in the long run.
Shadow work prompts for all situations

Some of these topics might not apply to you. Others you’ll find hit a resonating chord and make you think. Pick out the shadow work prompts that resonate with you and give them some heavy thought. When you read each cue, do the following to start integrating your shadow self.

Reflect on the question

Identify if there is something there that’s not serving you, and think about how you can resolve it

Identify if any uncomfortable emotions, memories, or feelings that arise and sit with them.

Visualize yourself helping that wounded version of you, and bringing him/her into yourself
Shadow work prompts for self-enquiry

What are some painful reocurring themes in your life?

Think about painful events that seem to repeatedly occur in your life. Do you have a pattern of getting into relationships with narcissists? Do you always seem to get caught in bad situations or get taken advantage of? Explore why you keep attracting those painful experiences into your life, and what you can do differently to ensure the same pattern doesn’t happen again.

If something went wrong recently, what could you do better next time?
Part of life is that things go wrong all the time. Maybe it’s an unexpected accident, injury, or argument. Perhaps you screwed up at work or in your relationship. If anything happened recently that didn’t go well, reflect on what you could have done to create a different outcome.

What aspects of your parents do you see in yourself?
Reflect on the common beliefs, traits, and characteristics you share with your parents. Are your beliefs unique to you, or were they adopted? You may have adopted some things from your parents that aren’t in your best interest, therefore, reflect on them to see what’s yours, and what isn’t.

Do you find yourself behaving in similar ways to your parents?

Are there any dysfunctions you may have adopted, and believe it’s normal?

In what ways did your parents influence you as a child?

What are your highest values that fill you will joy?

What are your core beliefs?
Core beliefs are often formed during childhood when our minds are squishy and impressionable, where they become deeply rooted in who we are. Take some time to reflect on the core beliefs that you hold, and think about whether they’re in your best interest. If they are holding you back, start to challenge them and replace them with positive beliefs.

Do you consider yourself to be a good person? Why/why not?

In what area of your life do you feel you have a block?
Think about areas where you struggle and can’t seem to get ahead. Look at what area of your life you struggle in the most, and think about why that is. A block I had when I was younger revolved around the inability to date and form meaningful relationships. Later on, I struggled with a financial block, in which I always seemed to struggle with money. It took a lot of introspection to identify that there were deeper layers to this pie.
Shadow work prompts for self-love

What negative beliefs about yourself do you entertain?

How do you see yourself in your own eyes?
Your self-image tells you a lot. If you feel like you’re not who you want to be by now, then there is probably something there that needs to be looked at.

How do you react when someone compliments you?

In what ways do you prioritize the needs of others over your own?

What past experiences have led you to feel unworthy?

What are some of the biggest challenges you had during childhood?

How do you internally speak to yourself when you make a mistake?

Do people in general seem to like you? Why/why not
Looking at yourself through a 3rd-person perspective can illuminate hidden aspects of yourself. If you think everyone dislikes you, you may be projecting those feelings when it could be far from the truth. Also, think about what would annoy you the most about yourself if you were interacting with yourself. This is a good way to get a different perspective into who you are, and where your biggest faults lie.

Do you find there’s resistance for you to work on yourself?

What’s preventing you from being your authentic self?

Embracing your authentic self is the ultimate goal of shadow work. It’s about accepting yourself fully, flaws and all, and living a life that’s true to your values. Do you mask your true identity out of fear of being seen, or are you comfortable in your skin?

What does your authentic self look like?

Why are you being someone who you don’t want to be?

What characteristics, traits, skills, and abilities do you need to develop to be in alignment with who you want to be?

How would it make you feel if people saw you for who you authentically are?

What childhood messages did you receive about self-worth and self-love?

Do the people in your life show self-love, or are they self-destructive?

How do you sabotage your efforts to care for yourself?

What would it look like to fully accept yourself? How would this impact your life?

What do you hate about yourself the most? Why do you dislike that/those particular aspects of yourself?

What are some small things you can do daily to take more care of yourself?
Shadow work prompts for relationships:

What recurring patterns do you notice in your relationships and where do they come from?
Look into your love life and the trends that seem to occur within it. Toxic partners, narcissists, interdependence, running away, conflicts, etc. What’s causing this behavior and what can you do to prevent it from happening again?

Do you make excuses not to see friends or family? Why not?

How often do you put off invitations to new opportunities?

How do you react when you feel rejected or abandoned by someone you care about?

What expectations do you have in relationships?

How do you communicate your needs and boundaries to others?

Were you ever betrayed by someone in the past? How do you think it affects your relationships moving forward?

In what ways do you idealize or devalue people in your life, and why?

How do you handle conflict in your relationships? What could you do differently?
If you have particularly painful arguments with someone, or perhaps did in the past where the worst side of you comes out, spend some time thinking about why this happened, how this side got the best of you, and how you can be the bigger person next time. When I was living with my mom after 5 years abroad, a side of me came out during our arguments that I had not seen in a long time. By reflecting on these experiences and aiming to be better, I could take steps to heal our relationship.

Is there someone you haven’t yet forgiven?
Forgiveness is a powerful tool in shadow work. Holding onto grudges is draining and prevents you from moving forward with your life. To practice forgiveness, start by forgiving yourself for any mistakes or shortcomings that you may have. Work on forgiving others who may have hurt you in the past by leveling with them and understanding their perspective.

Have you ever had your heart broken? How did it affect future relationships?

Are you affectionate in your relationships? If not, what do you think the barrier is?

Do you find that you’re needy or overattached?
Neediness and overattachment are signs that you don’t value yourself in a relationship, therefore idealizing the person you’re with. What do you think is the root cause of this behavior, and how can you empower yourself in the relationship?

Are you distant, avoidant, or don’t like to open up to your partners? Why do you think that is?

Do you find that your relationships are lustful, or genuine connections?

What did your parents believe about love?

What was your parent’s relationship like?

What role do trust and vulnerability play in your relationships?

How do your family dynamics influence your romantic relationships or friendships?

What do you fear the most about intimacy and closeness with others?
Shadow work prompts for trauma

What traumatic events from your past still affect you today, and how?

What childhood events do you still carry painful memories of?
Trauma often comes from childhood. These imprints can stay with you for a long time and turn into a distorted mess if neglected. The best way to see if you have childhood trauma is to probe your memories. If the memory is sensitive and brings up an emotional response, there’s probably an unhealed trauma there.

How do you cope with feelings of fear or anxiety related to past trauma?

What triggers remind you of past traumatic experiences, and how do you react?

In what ways has your trauma influenced your beliefs about yourself and the world?

What coping mechanisms did you develop as a result of your trauma, and are they still serving you?

What support systems do you have in place to help you heal from trauma? If you don’t have any, how can you create some?

How has your trauma affected your ability to trust others or yourself?

What aspects of your identity at attached to your trauma? How does this manifest?

Do you feel like a victim?
Feeling victimized is a natural response, however, it can become a trap if you stay there. If you feel like you’re a victim in life, what are some things you can do to empower yourself to get out of this limiting belief system?

What steps can you take to reclaim your sense of empowerment?
Shadow work prompts for insecurities

What are your biggest triggers?
Identifying your triggers is an essential step in shadow work. Triggers are events, situations, or people that get on your nerves and cause a disproportionate reaction, usually for an unknown reason. Maybe you became overly defensive when it wasn’t necessary. Perhaps a certain situation caused you to melt down. To identify your triggers, take some time to reflect on the situations that have triggered you, and dig into the emotional response.

What situations make you feel insecure?

How do you seek validation from others, and why?

Do you compare yourself with others often?
Comparison plays a big role in being insecure because you have something to prove. If there’s something you don’t like about yourself, such as your job, or the people you associate with, then something is broken. Therefore, have a look into the different departments of your life, and figure out if there’s anything you’re ashamed of.

What aspects of yourself do you feel you need to hide from others?

In what sort of situations do you feel most vulnerable?
If you have no hidden wounds you are probably self-assured, but it’s normal to feel vulnerable at specific times of your life. Job interviews, moving to a new place, social gatherings, dates. Look at why certain situations make you feel more vulnerable, and where that feeling of vulnerability comes from.

How do you respond to constructive criticism?
Do you usually get upset when someone gives you constructive feedback, or do you welcome it? Perhaps you get defensive and people are deliberately trying to bring you down. If constructive criticism hits a sore spot, think about why you take it so hard. Why do you feel like you need to be good at everything, and that you can’t take advice from other people without getting triggered? What do you think causes this?

When did you first start feeling insecure about yourself, and what caused it?

Do you project your insecurities onto other people?
You know when people use you as a scapegoat and dump their issues onto you? Then they won’t listen to reason and make it out that you’re the bad guy? That’s projecting; pushing your own emotions onto a victim so that you’re not at fault. Do you ever find yourself projecting, or blaming someone when it wasn’t their fault?

How often do you lie, or cover up truths?
Covering up truths or telling lies indicates that you have something to hide. And why do you have something to hide? Well, you really gotta ask yourself about that… Whatever it is, there are negative feelings beneath the surface, otherwise, you would have no intention of covering up the truth – either to yourself or other people. So look into your tendency to lie, and try to figure out where this need comes from.

What are you ashamed of?
Shame is often a root cause for repressing a part of yourself. If you’re ashamed of something, or someone made you feel a certain way about something you did, you are likely to reject that aspect of yourself. Think about whether there’s anything you’re ashamed of. What is it, and why are you ashamed of it? How can you take steps to let go of that shame and heal?

How often do you say things that aren’t necessarily true to feel better about yourself?

Do you tend to boast or talk about yourself a lot?

What is the most embarrassing thing that could happen to you?
Have you ever thought of a particular memory, or even a hypothetical situation and you feel the same physical manifestations as if it happened? Guess what? That means you’re discovering a wounded root that is causing these emotional reactions.

What sort of reactions are you trying to avoid from other people? How would these reactions make you feel?

Why do you care what other people think of you?

Do you have a big ego?
An inflated ego is usually a sign of overcompensating for something you’re insecure about. So see whether your ego is in check by reading the following prompts. If you find that your ego is more inflated than it should be, you need to take steps to balance it.

Do you have a superiority complex or think you’re better than other people?

Do you always want to be the center of attention, or do you shy away from it?

Are you overcompensating for anything?
For me, it wasn’t until my mid-twenties that I realized I had a people-pleaser problem. I do pride myself in being a genuinely kind person, but in the past, I would put every person before myself. So I needed to look into this behavior. When I did, I realized it came from the fear of disapproval – that I felt I needed to be liked by everyone as I never really felt it as a kid.

Do you get triggered when people talk down to you or treat you in a way that doesn’t live up to your self-image?

What is so important about being accepted by other people?

What strengths or positive qualities do you dismiss or downplay about yourself? Why do you do it?

What are your biggest regrets?
Is there something you regret and have a hard time thinking about it? If you have a hard time thinking about a particular memory, it means that you still have a wound. The only way to clean it is to spend time being present with those memories where you can process them.

Are there memories, experiences, or decisions that you’re not comfortable feeling?

What would it feel like to truly believe in your worth and abilities?
Shadow work prompts for manifestation

How often do you make excuses about creating your dream life?
Often there’s a good reason why you make excuses for doing things you should be doing. That’s because there is some sort of avoidance happening. Whatever it is, it’s not good, so it’s important to have a hard look at why you are avoiding certain things in your life that could improve your life.

What limiting beliefs do you hold about my ability to create the life I desire?

How do you feel when others achieve what you desire? What does this reveal about your beliefs?

What past experiences have shaped your beliefs about success and abundance?

How do you talk about your goals and dreams? What does this say about your beliefs?

What fears do you have about failure or success, and how do they hinder your manifestation efforts?

Do you self-sabotage in any areas of your life?
Self-sabotage is when you unconsciously prevent yourself from getting something you want because you believe you don’t deserve it. Sometimes people sabotage good job opportunities, relationships, and unconsciously push away things that are good for them. Look into whether you notice trends where you sabotage good things that are coming into your life. It’s important to acknowledge what was in your control, why you sabotaged yourself, and how you can make sure it doesn’t happen again.

Have you ever ruined a good job opportunity?

Have you messed up a good blooming relationship?

How often do you reject help, when it could help?

Do you tend to deny good things that are coming into your life like money, people, opportunities, and adventures?

How do you respond to setbacks or challenges along the way to achieving your goals?

Why do you think you avoid working on yourself or improving your life?

What habits or thought patterns contribute to your ability to manifest effectively?

How do you define success, and how does this definition influence your life experience?

What desires do you have trouble admitting to yourself? Why?

What would it feel like to fully believe in your power to manifest your dreams?
14 May 2023
Identifying Your Triggers: Unconscious Defense Mechanisms For Underlying Emotional Wounds
Sometimes, you will get triggered. After all, it’s a natural phenomenon, and you shouldn’t beat yourself up about it.

Despite how much work you’ve done on yourself, sooner or later you will bump into someone who redefines the word infuriating. But there’s nothing wrong with that. This person should be thanked, and for good reason.

A trigger doesn’t mean there’s anything wrong with you. All a trigger does is illuminate a sore spot. It’s an unconscious defense mechanism to divert your attention away from an emotional wound. In other words, someone is bringing up something painful to look at, so you snap back to avoid thinking about it.

It’s easier to neglect a wound than to take a long hard look at your dysfunction. Your ego wants to actively prevent you from healing the wound because it perceives the wound to be part of its (your) identity.

This is why you shouldn’t treat a trigger as something bad, nor should you treat someone who triggers you as being in the wrong.

Your triggers are your teachers. When you listen to these teachers rather than brush them away, you will uncover pathways into your hidden trauma, and use these triggers as catalysts for healing and transformation.

Triggers, our best teachers

While living in the United States, I was in a relationship with a beautiful woman who was a successful entrepreneur. For the most part, things were great. We genuinely enjoyed each other’s company, but something got on my nerves more than it should have.

Sometimes I felt frustrated because I thought she didn’t care about me. From my perspective, she never took the time to reach into my world when I was hurt or acknowledge what I was going through. This brought up feelings I didn’t want to feel; a wound of neglect.

After having a bad day one evening, we were hanging out and I commented on it a couple of times, but she didn’t see it as a big deal (and to be honest, it wasn’t). My ego told me a different story, however, and I became engrossed in this narrative that she didn’t care about me.

I felt I couldn’t express myself, and the only time I could was if I was prompted. So I grew more visibly upset throughout the night because I was feeling unacknowledged – like I was just there for her, but she wasn’t there for me.

Eventually, I stood up, said “You know what, I’m just going to leave”, and headed for the door. She looked shocked and snapped back “What’s your problem?” Which erupted into an argument.

We communicated and cleared the air. At a later date, however, the same wound began to resurface. She wanted me to meet some of her friends for a dinner arrangement. This happened to fall on the same day as a ceremony I wanted to attend. Reluctantly, I said I would go.

The night before the dinner arrangement, I withdrew and said I wanted to do my own thing, as I felt my desires weren’t acknowledged.

All I wanted was for her to acknowledge that I was sacrificing something I wanted to do, to make her happy. Then in my mind, I would have happily gone. She stormed out and things fell apart.

Later down the track, once again, everything was going well. Until I got a frantic call from her telling me that her dog had run away at a local park. I immediately called an Uber to get to her apartment, kept her on the phone as she was distressed, and met up with her.

It was a cold rainy night, and we spent hours searching for the dog. We finally got the dog back, and things started going downhill once again from there.

No thank you, no acknowledgment, and once again I was triggered. These painful emotions began boiling to the surface. I couldn’t contain my resentment I stormed out, telling her that she didn’t care about me. We stopped seeing each other from that moment.

This was a particularly painful relationship for me because it illuminated a hidden trauma, the feeling of neglect. Ironically, without experiencing this trigger, I would have never given this wound awareness and never worked on it.

Even though she genuinely tried to be there for me and didn’t see any issue, my inner child was always screaming “What about me? I’m a person too! Acknowledge me!”

Most people in a relationship won’t need the affirmation that they are cared for. In my case, however, the reality of the situation was distorted because of this emotional wound.

What is a trigger?

Have you ever had someone rub you the wrong way, without actually doing anything wrong? Maybe someone said something that provoked a disproportionate emotional reaction. There may have been no negative intent, but at the same time, you felt personally attacked.

Maybe when a friend cancels on you last minute, you may think ‘What an asshole! I would never treat a friend like that.’ A part of you feels betrayed, and that part takes over. However, you have no idea where these reactions came from. Why did it hurt so much?

These are triggers – unconscious, but disproportionate emotional outbursts that are brought on (or triggered) by an external event. The emotional reaction is generally irrational and tends to happen instantly.

A trigger usually comes in the form of an intense episode of anger, distress, or sadness. When you’re triggered, you may become hostile to someone because you feel like they’re deliberately trying to hurt you. An immature, unconscious part of you erupts because it feels you have been rubbed the wrong way.

When someone is triggered, it usually comes across as an overreaction to other people.

I’m sure you can recall times when someone overreacted to something so small – in which they were disproportionately upset and became irrational. Maybe you teased someone in good faith and they exploded. Perhaps you challenged someone’s opinion in good faith, and they took it the wrong way.

Can you think of any instances where you were triggered?
How are triggers created?

Think of a trigger as an emotional Band-Aid. Triggers are a mechanism to deter your attention from something undesirable to acknowledge. Therefore, a trigger often causes people to project their emotions rather than confront them.

If you experienced a traumatic event as a child, you didn’t have the emotional maturity to understand it – let alone deal with it. Therefore, the wound is pushed into the subconscious mind so you can get on with your life and return to it when you are emotionally mature enough to heal it.

This trauma never goes away. It might appear as it does, but it is stored in the emotional body like a poison that slowly rots away your well-being, inside out.

By the time we grow up, the wound has been buried, but it has never been healed. To keep this wound tucked away in the darkness, your ego becomes overly defensive. If anyone or anything brings your attention to this wound, the ego will attack whatever is doing so.

When someone touches on a trauma, you unconsciously snap back as a way to prevent yourself, or anyone else from opening up that wound.

Your ego says “That’s a can of worms I don’t want to open right now, so I’m going to divert your awareness from going inwards”. The ego is like the guard dog protecting a vulnerable baby. The intention is good, but it’s misguided.

This unconscious mechanism to project causes more harm in the long run as it prevents you from looking at the wound underneath the trigger.

Why do you need to look at your triggers?

Your triggers won’t just go away on their own. They are signals that there is something out of balance, and you need to work on those issues by feeling them, learning from them, and resolving them.

Trauma doesn’t just disappear on its own. It needs to be worked through. If you deflect every time someone brings you awareness to this wound, then you’re never bringing that wound into awareness to be healed.

This means the wound will remain. Unresolved wounds manifest in different ways. They may manifest as behavioral issues, emotional dysregulation, emotional blocks, depression, anxiety, and even mental illness. Think of trauma as a cancer cell that slowly spreads over time, causing more damage to you the longer it’s left unresolved.

For example, if you get triggered every time someone leaves, it’s probably covering up a wound of abandonment. If you allow the ego to take control every time you’re triggered, it’s doing its job perfectly – which is to cover up the wound and prevent you from being aware of it.

If you acknowledge those triggers and use them as invitations to do shadow work: which is to sit with the uncomfortable feelings that arise, reflect, and integrate your experiences, then you set yourself on a path of healing and growth, and use triggers as indicators that something needs healing.

Common triggers

Criticism: You might lash out when someone corrects you. This trigger often comes from core shame, where the person feels as if other people are constantly degrading them, or perhaps being overbearing when they may just be trying to help. “I know exactly what I’m doing, pick on someone else”.

Authority: People having authority over you may trigger a wound where you feel like people are always trying to take advantage of you. You may get upset or defensive when someone instructs you. This is often a sign that you didn’t have much say growing up. “I can make my own choices, you have no say”.

Boundary: If you felt you couldn’t stand up for yourself when you were younger, you may get triggered when you feel your boundaries are being infringed upon. For example, you might lash out when someone touches you rather than calmly asserting yourself. “I didn’t say you could touch me, go away!”

Compliance: Someone who respects rules may get triggered when they see someone break the rules. People with this wound may project when they see others breaking the rules, as it brings awareness to their true feelings of powerlessness. “You’re not allowed to break the rules if I’m not”.

Jealousy: You may meet a ‘type of person’ who just rubs you the wrong way for no apparent reason. I’ve had this with the alpha male archetype in different workplaces because it illuminated a desire of mine.

Abandonment: When someone leaves and doesn’t tell you why, or where, you may have an intense reaction of anxiety. You may lash out at the person, resent them, or jump to all sorts of conclusions due to a hidden abandonment wound.

Neglect: This trigger is often seen in people who didn’t get much attention growing up. People who dismiss you, ignore you, or just don’t pay attention to you incite a heavy emotional reaction, and you might believe they’re being rude or condescending.
Identifying triggers

The first step in healing a trigger is to become aware of it.

Having a disproportionate emotional reaction to whatever caused it indicates a trigger. If you find that you get riled up at things that don’t seem like such a big deal in retrospect, you’re probably being triggered.

The bigger the wound, the bigger the trigger. If you explode from something so little, that means you have a gaping hole in yourself that you need to patch up. Having a meltdown from something indicates more severe trauma than getting pissed off about it.

The more wounds you have, the more you will get triggered by different things. If you have a lot of unhealed trauma from different instances, you will likely be triggered often, by many different things.

So let’s look at how you can catch these triggers.

Pay attention to your reactions

How you react is a key indicator of your triggers. However, since emotional outbursts are usually unconscious, it can be hard to catch yourself when it happens. Most likely you will believe your response is justified, and you’re just reacting proportionately.

This is why it’s important to pay attention to your emotions, how you feel, and when something unpleasant surfaces. Instead of reacting to your unwanted feelings, try observing them, regardless of how upset you feel.

Think as rationally as possible every time you’re getting riled up, and instead of falling into impulse, breathe into the feelings and reflect on them. Not to say you can’t have justified emotional reactions, you’re human after all, but make sure you reflect each time you’re upset.

Once you make an effort of catching yourself when you’re triggered, you can begin healing the underlying wound.

Notice your reoccurring patterns

Triggers are often reocurring patterns, meaning similar situations will cause the same outcome. When a painful situation seems to repeat itself routinely in your life, it’s important to look at this pattern.

If something keeps happening over and over, it could involve trauma that is being illuminated. When this wound is being illuminated, you have a disproportionate emotional reaction. However, because this wound hasn’t been healed, you’re bound to continue repeating that reaction every time that mine is stepped on.

Look into the painful trends in your life, whether it’s from attracting a particular type of relationship or argument, being taken advantage of, being neglected, or personally attacked. What trends continue in your life, and is there a wound you can identify through it?

Look at what exactly triggered you

Can you pinpoint exactly what was said, or done that made you react in a certain way? Try to identify what caused the emotional reaction. Was it something that someone said? Did someone do something that brought up painful feelings?

When you have cultivated enough awareness about your triggers, you must cultivate a desire to heal them. Affirm to yourself that you want to see the wound. Your awareness will go inwards as long as you keep reinforcing this desire.

When you are well aware of your triggers by knowing what sorts of situations cause them and why you have them, we can begin the process of healing.

Healing the underlying wound

The only way to get rid of triggers once and for all is to heal the wounds that they’re covering up. This by no means is an easy practice, but like all healing, practice, patience, and perseverance are important keys.

Acknowledge that you’re probably distorting the reality of the situation due to your wounds. Use this knowledge as a springboard to launch into your emotions and work on them.

When you allow yourself to feel the pain fully without distracting yourself, projecting, or trying to escape it. Can you name the emotions you are feeling? Is it guilt, shame, jealousy, or resentment? Can you sit with those uncomfortable emotions without judging them or feeling ashamed of them?

Being present with an emotional reaction can be an unpleasant process. Because the emotional reaction is due to a wound, it may be painful to allow these associated thoughts and feelings to rise to the surface.

Feeling the hurt is like disinfecting the wound. You’re flushing out this pain, and acknowledging it. The more you sit with it, the less it will hurt with each consecutive time, and the less you will feel triggered when something brings you awareness to this emotion.

Furthermore, it’s important to show yourself compassion when you’re going through this process. Think of the inner child who just wants to be accepted. Self-love is so hard to do, especially when we have these gaping wounds because they allude us into thinking that the cure is outwards, but it’s not.

You also want to practice healthily expressing yourself. If someone does something that you take offense to, how can you manage your emotions to better handle the situation? How can you respond to the situation without exacerbating it?

When you build a habit of expressing yourself healthily – that is to allow yourself to be angry, sad, or hurt in an introspective, conscious way, the trigger loses power. Instead of bottling up the pain until it explodes, your emotional health becomes much easier to manage.

Dealing with triggered people

If you trigger someone else, first of all, realize that it’s not you at fault. Something you did pressed on a sensitive spot, which caused an emotional reaction. In this case, you may gently bring their attention to their disproportionate reaction, but when someone is fired up, they are unlikely to be rational.

Don’t try to make them see it. In most cases, this is just going to make the situation worse. Their trigger is a defense mechanism. Their ego will make you out to be the culprit because it’s trying to prevent you from opening up the wound.

Therefore if you’re telling them that they’re reacting this way because of a trigger, or that they’re at fault, they’re probably just going to get more triggered. In their eyes, you’re probably gaslighting them, or manipulating them into being wrong just to save yourself.

Instead, just understand.

Don’t react to their projection. Hold space for the person, be there for them, and don’t be judgemental. This may be difficult to do because you may feel wronged. When you lead with compassion and understanding, however, this is often a big self-reflection moment for people.

This is an appropriate time to gently talk to them about what happened – of course coming from a place of understanding and compassion. Not authority – saying I am right!

Knowing how to navigate triggers is a skill we should know. Generally, it will make social interactions easier, and it allows us to do the deeper shadow work and healing that is required to reach our highest timelines.
12 January 2023
How To Practice Shadow Work: A Guide For Self-Integration
How important is it to look like you’re doing well in life? You want to be seen as a winner in life because you’re the hero of your own story, it’s only natural. But are you suppressing everything less than photogenic due to your insecurities?

Are you hiding aspects of your identity from the world because you don’t want to be associated with them? You might fool the world, you might even fool yourself, but beyond this facade is a wounded, less-than-perfect you, and maybe, you just need to give him a little support.

We all have a shadow that lives undisrupted in the unconscious mind. This shadow represents the ugly side of who you are and shows its face when you drop the mask. You try to maintain an image that you’re successful, and mature, or that you have your life together to avoid looking at this shadow.

However, that shadow can’t simply be ignored because it’s a part of you.

Until you bring awareness to this shadow, it will always be there within you, showing its face in the form of dysfunction. It can be an uncomfortable process looking at your demons, but it’s also a liberating process. A process that’s necessary if you want to experience wholeness: Where you’re not constantly on the run from yourself.

Shadow work is the process of integrating the hidden aspects of yourself that aren’t so beautiful to look at. So let’s explore this practice so you know how to bring your dark side to the light, to become a more integrated person.
What is shadow work?

Shadow work is the process of integrating aspects of yourself that you have rejected. It’s an essential part of the healing process, and a necessary practice if you feel like you’re missing something in your life.

In other words, shadow work is the act of bringing light to hidden trauma, and integrating aspects of yourself that you once disowned.

Illuminating the darker, hidden aspects of yourself allows you to heal the wounds that have caused your shadows. If you’re not aware of them, how are you supposed to work on them?

Imagine the practice of shadow work as peeling off the mask you’ve been wearing your whole life – and scrubbing off the grime that has built up underneath it. These undesirable aspects of yourself have been rotting away underneath the pretty facade you’ve been wearing, as they haven’t seen the light of day.

Avoiding shadow work leads to issues such as disintegration and spiritual bypassing, which is to act as your higher self, but not be integral to it.

But you need to bring awareness to your ugly side and accept it as a part of who you are. This is where you can start healing it, and integrating it into yourself.

The benefits of shadow work

There are a lot of benefits to shadow work, and it’s a deeply rewarding process. Shadow work acts as a powerful platform for healing and integration, as real healing requires you to look at the ugly side of yourself. By confronting your inner demons, you gain a deeper understanding of:

Why you are the way you are, and what caused you to be this way

Your wounds. You more clearly see your trauma, what caused it, and how it is affecting your life

Your dysfunctional self-image, and why you see yourself in certain ways

You can identify limiting belief systems and begin to work on them.

If you don’t integrate your shadows, you create a divide between the higher self and the lower self, instead of recognizing that it is all the self.

This can have some serious consequences on your well-being.

Have you ever been triggered and exploded? You might be a gentle, kind person, but at times, something might overtake you. That’s because a repressed side of yourself is coming out, and instead of just having a normal reaction that is integral to who you are, the repressed side comes out in force.

By putting on a mask and covering up the wounds that cause you to feel a certain way in the first place, you never actually heal. This means there will always be some sort of dysfunction in your life. You might not notice it, but it will be there, and it will manifest in different ways until you get to the root issue.

Shadow work can also help you develop greater self-compassion. After all, it’s a journey of self-love that can lead to greater fulfillment and authenticity in your life.
What is shadow work helpful for?

letting go of painful memories and the associated emotions

Healing childhood trauma and deep-rooted wounds

Overcoming particular blocks in your life (relationships, money etc.)

Recognizing and correcting dysfunctional attitudes, behaviors and beliefs

Identifying harmful mindsets and perceptions

Discarding self-sabotaging belief systems

Spiritual growth and a better understanding of who you really are

Becoming more comfortable with yourself

Discovering passions and interests that have long been repressed

Gaining more clarity about your life situation

When is shadow work necessary?

When you experience something undesirable about yourself, whether it’s a thought, feeling or belief, it needs to be processed and understood

You find yourself frequently experiencing emotions like anger, jealousy, or shame, and you’re not sure why

You have an unexplained aversion or dislike to something (like meeting someone and instantly disliking them, but you’re not sure why)

You notice self-sabotaging behaviors such as avoidance of positive things, procrastination, addictions, or indecisiveness

When you notice a recurring pattern of issues in your relationships that seem to follow you

You’re always on edge but can’t pinpoint why

Past memories or traumas are repeatedly resurfacing, and you have an unconscious habit of pushing them away

There are some deeper insecurities that you know you need to address

When you get triggered by something, or see an ugly side of you come out that was unwarranted
Understanding the shadow-self

The shadow self is an analogy of your lower self and represents everything that’s wrong with you. In this sense, the shadow self is a reflection of everything that’s negative, painful, or undesirable about yourself. It’s the side of you that you’re trying to avoid.

Characteristics, behaviors, and attitudes that you perceive as inferior are disowned and consciously avoided (which creates the shadow self).

Anything that you see as contradictory to your beliefs about who you should be is repressed. This creates polarity within your sense of self.

As people tend to focus on being their best selves, they often end up completely abandoning anything that doesn’t resonate with their image of who they want to be. This is called spiritual bypassing – and it’s not a good thing.

True healing takes time. There’s no quick fix or way around it. When people try to become their best selves but refuse to do the dirty work, they end up pushing aspects of themselves into their shadow. What happens is the surface looks all nice and shiny, the person might be polite, charismatic, confident, and secure – but it’s just a play. Their persona is not integral to the way they feel.

This shadow eventually starts leaking out in the form of breakdowns, behavioral issues, and emotional issues – and manifests into all sorts of dysfunction in your life. How often have you gotten to know someone who seemed great, then bit by bit, you see more dysfunctions surfacing?

When your shadow is not integrated, you will have a feeling that something isn’t quite right, and wonder why you still have so many issues. But usually, you will have no idea what the cause is, because the surface looks clean. You can’t just pretend a part of you doesn’t exist. And if you do, then perhaps you won’t have to look at it, but it’s never actually going away.

When you’re fully healed, you don’t have a shadow self. You just have a self, which experiences all things pleasant and unpleasant, ‘good’ and ‘bad’, without labels or judgment. You’re not trying to escape a part of you, as you’re comfortable in your skin, and have an authentic expression.

How is the shadow self created?

Imagine you’re a kid, and a family member scolds you for expressing anger. Even though the intention might not be bad – you start believing that these emotions, or experiences are bad.

As a result, you learn to repress those emotions, and consciously avoid them every time they come up. So you start walking on eggshells and swallow it every time you feel upset. You begin to believe that this side of yourself shouldn’t be expressed, the more you repress it.

It’s not like you’re working on the root cause of these painful emotions that are causing your anger in the first place, or finding a healthy vent for them, you’re just shoving it out of awareness and covering it with a façade.

Since this aspect of yourself is repressed, this means you can’t work on it. Therefore, it continues doing damage under the surface until you bring this repressed part of yourself into awareness, and integrate it.

Another example is if you were bullied, or perhaps made fun of for crying in school. Due to the shame you experienced, you create the belief that crying is unacceptable, or unmanly. So you grow up repressing normal human emotions like sadness every time you feel it.

So what happens? It begins forming dysfunction, something you can’t quite put your finger on – because you haven’t associated the cause and effect. You might start having issues with mental health later down the track. You may start getting triggered by people, or having seemingly random emotional outbursts when someone rubs you the wrong way.

You may begin unconsciously avoiding any situation that could potentially bring up these sorts of emotions – which results in limitations in your life. There will be another unpleasant side of you that will keep showing its face because this shadow has never been understood and healed.

Discover your shadow self

By looking into your shadow, you can discover a lot about yourself. Are you insecure, but cover it up with a confident persona? Do you find yourself seething with anger sometimes, but manage to keep it under control? Are there aspects of your personality that you try to hide from people because you’re ashamed of them?

If you’re aware of this, then you’ve already made a great start. From here, you can pretend to be the highest version of yourself and neglect anything that doesn’t resonate with you. This might work for some time, but it’s going to cause more problems down the track.

Or you can look at the wounded, dysfunctional part of your psyche – and take action to heal those neglected parts of yourself. This is the path of genuine healing and transformation, not the quick Band-Aid fix.

Think about what the worst possible version of yourself would look like. You’re trying to build a picture of yourself if you went in a really bad direction, and became everything that you despise. This is your alter ego, the worst version of yourself, a portrait of your lower self.

Do you see yourself as a drug-addicted loser, an insecure beta male who just never gets it, a freak that nobody likes, or a colossal failure to your parents, wife, or loved ones? Does it sting to see yourself in this light? Good, it should.

Build an accurate image of what the lowest version of yourself looks like. The more it hurts thinking about this version of yourself, the more shame or guilt you feel, the better. So use your emotions as a compass, because it means you’re hitting on a sore point.

What do you look like?

What is your personality like?

What does your lifestyle look like?

What sort of things do you do?

How are you with other people?

What is it about yourself that you just can’t stand?
Healing the discarded aspects of self

Shadow work isn’t something you do. It’s the process of sitting with your emotions, reflecting on the negative things you’re feeling, and eroding your past trauma.

To integrate your shadow self, you first need to cultivate an awareness of what you’ve repressed and explore it. This can be a particularly uncomfortable process, but it’s necessary. Use your shadow avatar that you just created to dig into what you’re feeling, and why you’re feeling it.

After being aware of what aspects of self have been repressed, you need to accept those parts of yourself and show yourself compassion, love, and understanding. The healing is a byproduct of being aware of your pain points, looking into them, and sitting with the emotions until they no longer sting.

In the same sense, you’re always doing shadow work, as long as you’re conscious about it every time something painful comes up. On the other hand, if you decide to put on a façade that you’re perfectly fine, you’re not going to explore your shadows and the same patterns are going to reoccur in your life.

If you’re pissed off because you got screwed over by a client, shadow work is sitting with those emotions, inspecting why you feel so frustrated, and organically letting go of the resentment you’re feeling.

So when you are feeling something painful, it’s good to minimize distractions and avoid escaping those feelings. This is why it’s good to give yourself an audience by meditating, journaling, or simply just by sitting with your thoughts and going through the motions in silence.

The shadow work cycle of awareness

Integrate the experience

When something comes up, you need to reflect on it. Every painful emotion that surfaces, spend some time introspecting, feeling it, and integrating the experience of why it’s there, and what you can learn from it.

Probe your pain points

Probing is to seek understanding about why you are the way you are. This is done by poking around on your wounds to see what comes up, and what needs to be worked on. Probing is the inquisitive, learning part where you bring repressed aspects of yourself to the surface, and provoke an emotional reaction.

Heal the open wounds

Healing is the act of expunging energies from your body. It’s an essential part of the shadow work process and creates space for integration. This is the charged, painful part of the healing process. It’s when you feel a build-up of painful energy, and get it all out.

How to make your shadow work process more effective

Allow yourself to be vulnerable

If your walls are up, you’re just preventing yourself from doing the hard work. Let yourself be vulnerable and allow your inner (wounded) child to come out, so that the real work can be done.

Be authentic

Being authentic is to be true to what you feel, instead of beating around the bush. If you feel like crying, cry. If you feel painful emotions come up, acknowledge them. You need to make a practice of being in tune with your emotional body, and processing everything uncomfortable that comes up.

Be honest with yourself

Be honest about who you are and what you need to work on. This includes being sincere about your traumas, what hurt you, and the things you’re feeling. If you’re just pretending that all is fine and dandy, you’re not going to get anywhere in the shadow work process.

Humanize the experience

Be real with yourself. Don’t think you’re a robot that always has it all under control. Recognize that you’re not perfect, that it’s hard, and this humanization will make it much easier on yourself.
Best shadow work practices

Now that we’ve looked at some techniques and processes to integrate your shadow self, now we’re going to look at practices you can do to aid this process. Start doing these practices when needed, and every time you see your shadows surface, you can further integrate them into who you are.

The more you make a habit of integrating your shadow self every time it comes up, the less of an appearance it will make. What this means is that you won’t have the same triggers and setbacks anymore. After a while, you’ll realize that you feel good.

You’re not ashamed of yourself anymore. You can express yourself in a healthy way. What you were trying to get away from is gone, and it’s not an issue anymore, which opens up a much healthier expression of self. Bit by bit, build the habit of sitting down with these unpleasant feelings, exploring them, and processing them.

Watch your triggers

Your shadow often comes out through triggers. Triggers are essentially a leakage of your unconscious mind, and occur when someone presses on a sore point that has been covered up. Triggers can take the form of lashing out, having an emotional outburst, or having some sort of reaction that isn’t proportional to the cause.

By being aware when you’re having these reactions, you can start to uncover why you’re having such a big reaction to something that most people see as such a little deal. This will point you in the direction of your discomfort, where you can feel those emotions, sit when them, and heal them.

Engage in inner dialog

Do you ever just talk to yourself and create a dialog? It’s a good way to really animate a thought process, and flush it all out. If you’re feeling a certain way, or something has come up that you don’t like, I suggest talking about it with yourself. Allow yourself to vent and get it off your chest. Seriously… give it a try. I go into more depth about this in the article below.

Learning Self-Compassion When You’re Feeling Unsupported

Make a habit of writing in a journal

Personally, I keep a shadow journal which is a collection of all my dark and painful thoughts, feelings, beliefs, and so forth. By keeping a journal and recording your healing process, you are bound to catch a lot of things that come up, and more easily find patterns and triggers.

Writing down all your negative thoughts and feelings when you’re experiencing them will give you more clarity, organization, and help when doing the dirty work.

Express yourself through an artistic medium

Do something creative that channels your subconscious mind. It doesn’t really matter what you do, as long as the medium allows you to get into that flow state. By getting into that flow state, you express a part of yourself that doesn’t get expressed much.

By doing this, you bypass the conscious mind, and this is great for inspecting what comes out. Likewise, it acts as a purge, as you’re releasing pent energy and expressing yourself through a particular medium which is healing in itself.

Practice a meditative discipline

Things like meditation, attending healing ceremonies, and yoga are great ways to encourage your shadow to come to the surface. Usually, we distract ourselves and try to avoid looking at the shadow self, so by making a practice of looking deep into yourself, it’s going to be easier to see your shadow and work on it.

New to meditation and not sure where to start? I wrote a complete guide for meditation which you can find by following the link below.

Use shadow work prompts

Shadow work prompts are questions, keywords, or phrases intended to trigger certain thought processes and facilitate introspection. By reading through prompts and seeing if any painful emotions surface, you can make a habit of sitting with those emotions, processing the experience, and letting the trauma go.

Prompts can really be anything, and they’re a great way to probe around and find out if you have hidden wounds that need healing. I write an article dedicated to shadow work prompts which you can find below. So if you’re looking to dive deeper into your healing right now, follow the link below.

26 powerful shadow work prompts to confront your inner demons
24 August 2022