OVERVIEW: This in-depth guide explores the nature of Jung’s shadow, provides shadow work exercises for beginners, and shares insights for integrating the shadow.
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It’s always standing right behind us, just out of view. In any direct light, we cast a shadow.
The shadow is a psychological term for everything we can’t see in ourselves.
Exploring your shadow can lead to greater authenticity, internal strength, creativity, energy, awakening, and more.
Shadow work is essential for anyone interested in self-knowledge and psychological development.
In this guide, we’ll address the following questions:
- What is the shadow?
- What is shadow work and what are the benefits?
- How do you get started with shadow work exercises?
- What are the key principles for integrating your shadow?
Let’s jump right in …
What is the Shadow?
The shadow is a critical psychological insight from the work of psychiatrist Carl Jung.
The shadow is the “dark side” of our personality because it consists chiefly of primitive, negative human emotions and impulses, such as rage, envy, greed, selfishness, desire, and the striving for power.
Everything we deny in ourselves—whatever we perceive as inferior, evil, or unacceptable—becomes part of the shadow.
Anything incompatible with our chosen conscious attitude about ourselves relegates to this dark side.
The Shadow is the Disowned Self
This shadow self represents the parts of us we no longer claim to be our own, including both inherent negative and positive qualities.
Whatever we disown gets relegated to our unconscious.
Jung found that the psyche is comprised of both conscious and unconscious material. This “psychic material” includes thoughts, feelings, images, attitudes, motivations, judgments, and impulses.
Conscious material is the stuff we know about ourselves. Unconscious material is all of the stuff we don’t know. Generally, there’s FAR more unconscious material hiding from us.
What is Shadow Work?
Shadow work is the process of getting to know the parts of yourself that you’re not currently aware of (unconscious).
All the stuff we tucked away in our early development—the attributes, attitudes, impulses, and qualities incompatible with our self-identity—are brought to the surface.
Through shadow work, this disowned material is brought into consciousness (the conscious mind) so that we can ultimately accept these traits, impulses, and attributes.
To simplify the process, we can break shadow work into two stages:
Stage 1: Get to know one’s shadow (bring this psychic material to our awareness)
Stage 2: Integrate the shadow (make this material a part of us)
When we begin this process, we tend to be what Jung called one-sided.
That is, we’re initially cut off from many aspects of ourselves.
Shadow work helps resolve this one-sidedness. (Don’t worry if this sounds too abstract; it will become clearer as we progress through this guide.)
The goals of shadow work are to:
- Harmonize the opposing tensions within the psyche (become less one-sided),
- Build consciousness (become more aware of who we are), and
- Move toward psychic wholeness (symbolized by returning home to one’s Self).
The benefits of going through this inner process are profound (covered below).
Regular shadow work is an integral part of psychological development.
From Le Chemin des Écoliers (1861)
How the Shadow Forms in Childhood
Every young child knows kindness, love, and generosity. However, they also express anger, selfishness, and greed.
These emotions are part of our shared human experience. However, as we grow up, something happens. Traits associated with “being good” are accepted, while others linked to “being bad” are rejected.
We all have basic human needs, which are biological and instinctual. These needs include physiological, safety, security, belonging, and esteem. When we expressed certain parts of ourselves as children, our environment provided negative cues.
Maybe we got angry and threw a tantrum. Our parents reprimanded the outburst and sent us to our room. Or perhaps we acted boldly, playfully, spontaneously, or silly in our first-grade classroom. Our teacher shamed us for our lack of decorum in front of the class and told us to sit down.
Whenever we experienced this conflict, it threatened one of our basic needs. Would the disapproval of our parents threaten our safety? Would the disapproval of our teachers and classmates jeopardize our need to belong?
We adjusted our behavior to gratify our needs and learned to adapt to the external world.
Where Do Our Disowned Parts Go?
In the first twenty years of our lives, all the unaccepted or discouraged parts of us are bundled together and swept out of view (outside our conscious awareness). However, these unexamined or disowned aspects of our personality don’t go away.
Although we deny them (consciously) in our attempt to cast them out, we can’t get rid of them.
Instead, we repress them and they become part of what Jung called the personal unconscious. (Think of the personal unconscious as everything we don’t know about ourselves.)
Essentially, we can’t eliminate our shadow. It stays with us as our dark brother or sister. Trouble arises when we fail to see it. For then, to be sure, it is standing right behind us.
As poet Robert Bly says in A Little Book of the Human Shadow, the child puts all these unwanted parts into an invisible bag and drags it behind him.
This repression of unwanted parts creates what Jung called the archetypal shadow.
As Jung writes in Psychology and Alchemy:
There is no light without shadow and no psychic wholeness without imperfection.
My First Experience with the Disowned Self
Most of us go to great lengths to protect our self-image from anything unflattering or unfamiliar. So it’s easier to observe another’s shadow before acknowledging one’s own.
Years ago, I was the authorized biographer of a well-known spiritual teacher in America.
Through my research and private interviews with this teacher, it became abundantly clear that he was not the person he presented to the public.
The contrast was so stark that it felt unreconcilable. Yet, it was clear that he genuinely believed the conscious image he maintained of himself. (Ultimately, I don’t think he was a charlatan or con man.)
Observing this teacher’s shadow helped me understand how someone can show gifts in one area of life while remaining unaware of deceitful behavior in other areas.
Every human being is susceptible to this phenomenon.
Carl Jung’s Map of the Psyche
Carl Jung’s Map of the Psyche (Simplified)
This simplified diagram highlights some of the core principles in Jung’s model of the psyche related to the shadow.
Ego: Our conscious self or self-identity—who we consciously perceive ourselves to be.
Persona: Our social mask. Our persona (personae for plural) is how we interact with the outside world before doing shadow work. It represents the roles we play.
Unconscious: Everything within us that’s outside of our conscious awareness. While the ego and persona are relatively conscious, the following archetypes remain unconscious when we start our journey:
Shadow: Everything about our personality that we are presently cut off from. This “dark side” is sometimes called the shadow self or the disowned self.
Anima-Animus: The anima represents the feminine aspect of a man’s psyche while the animus represents the masculine aspect of a woman’s psyche.
The Self: One’s true self—the divine, organizing principle within us.
In Jungian psychology, getting to know one’s shadow is the first stage toward returning home to the Self and experiencing wholeness.
(For a more detailed look at Carl Jung’s Map of the Psyche, see The Individuation Process: A Beginner’s Guide to Jungian Psychology.)
The Cost of Ignoring One’s Shadow
The ancient Greeks understood the need to honor all parts of the psyche and worshiped them as autonomous gods and goddesses.
The Greeks knew a god or goddess you ignored became the one who turned against you and destroyed you.
Any part we disown within us eventually turns against us. The shadow represents a collection of these disowned parts.
So here’s the problem: The shadow self can operate largely independently without our awareness.
It’s as if our conscious self goes on autopilot while the unconscious shadow self assumes control.1Bargh, J. A., & Morsella, E. (2008). The Unconscious Mind. Perspectives on psychological science: a journal of the Association for Psychological Science, 3(1), 73–79. doi:10.1111/j.1745-6916.2008.00064.x
What Happens When Your Shadow is Ignored?
When we’re divorced from our dark side, we:
- Do things we wouldn’t voluntarily do and later regret (if we catch it).
- Feel anxious or depressed and we don’t know why.
- Engage in self-sabotage or self-loathing.
- Say things we wouldn’t otherwise say.
- Swing from ego inflation (grandiosity) to ego deflation (insecurity).
- Act self-absorbed (lack awareness of how our actions influence others).
- Have low self-esteem because of a persistent critical inner voice.
- Struggle in our relationships (with frequent conflicts).
Remaining unconscious of the shadow hurts our relationships with our spouses, family, and friends. It also impacts our professional relationships and leadership abilities.
When we don’t know our shadow, we engage in a never-ending cycle of self-deception.
Ultimately, when the disowned self is left unintegrated, we are in a psychic war within ourselves.
An Illustration: The Fate of Dr. Jekyll
Do you remember Robert Louis Stevenson’s Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde?
Dr. Jekyll was a respectable gentleman (the “good,” conscious side of the personality).
He took a potion to separate his darker impulses, creating a creature free of conscience named Mr. Hyde (the personal shadow).
Dr. Jekyll could not control the actions of his darker half, leading him to commit unscrupulous acts, including murder.
Such is the fate of anyone who denies their shadow, although often not so severe.
What Happens When You Repress Your Shadow
So what happens to all the parts of ourselves we sweep out of view?
Whatever qualities we deny in ourselves, we see in others. In psychoanalysis, this is called projection.
We project onto others anything we bury within us. That is, we see our shadow in others.
For example, if you get irritated when someone is rude, it’s a good bet you haven’t owned your rudeness. This doesn’t mean the person isn’t being rude to you. However, if rudeness wasn’t a part of you, someone else’s rudeness wouldn’t bother you so much.
This process doesn’t happen consciously. We generally aren’t aware of our projections. The ego uses this mechanism to defend itself and protect its perceived self-identity.
As Jung writes in Alchemical Studies:2CG Jung. “The Philosophical Tree” (1945). In CW 13: Alchemical Studies. P.335.
A man who is unconscious of himself acts in a blind, instinctive way and is in addition fooled by all the illusions that arise when he sees everything that he is not conscious of in himself coming to meet him from outside as projections upon his neighbour.
Jung explains how when we repress our shadow, we project these qualities we don’t know about ourselves onto others. These projections distort reality, creating a boundary between how we perceive ourselves and who we are.
Six Powerful Benefits of Jungian Shadow Work
The shadow isn’t a popular topic (although, to a small degree, that’s starting to change).
In Alchemical Studies, Jung notes why shadow work is unpopular:3C.G. Jung, “The Philosophical Tree,” CW 13: Alchemical Studies, 1945, para 335.
Filling the conscious mind with ideal conceptions is a characteristic of Western theosophy, but not the confrontation with the shadow and the world of darkness. One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious. The latter procedure, however, is disagreeable and therefore not popular.
Who enjoys owning their flaws, weaknesses, selfishness, nastiness, hate, and so on?
Who eagerly looks to dive into the unknown and lean into personal tension and discomfort?
Focusing on our strengths is more “life-affirming.” However, exploring our shadow side gives us tremendous opportunities for growth and development.
Let’s look at six benefits one can experience from doing Jungian shadow work:
1 – Greater Internal Strength
This is often referred to as confidence or “high self-esteem.” With shadow work, a lot of your insecurities and neurotic tendencies fall away. You drop the need to defend your self-identity (persona).
The result is that your natural confidence returns and you become “okay” with yourself (self-accepting).
As you integrate your shadow side and come to terms with your darker half, you see yourself more clearly. You become infinitely stronger, more grounded, secure, fully human, and whole.
2 – Improved Relationships
It is easier to accept the shadow in others when you can accept your darkness.
As a result, other people’s behavior won’t trigger you as easily. You’ll also have an easier time communicating with others.
You may notice an improvement in your relationships with your spouse, family members, friends, and business associates. This alone is a huge reason to do shadow work.
3 – Enhanced Energy and Physical Health
Dragging around this invisible bag of stuff behind us is draining. It is exhausting to continually repress and suppress all of the parts of ourselves that we don’t want to face.
Fatigue and lethargy plague the unexamined life. Mental suppression and repressed emotions can lead to physical pain, disease, and addictive behaviors.
Dr. John Sarno healed thousands of patients of chronic back pain by helping them acknowledge the repressed rage in their unconscious.4John Sarno, Healing Back Pain: The Mind-Body Connection, 2010.
With shadow work, you liberate a tremendous reservoir of psychic energy you unconsciously invested in protecting yourself. This can greatly improve your physical, mental, and emotional health.
This inner work can help you develop inner strength and a greater sense of balance, preparing you to embrace life’s challenges.
4 – Clearer Perception of Yourself
In seeing others and yourself as you are—without distortions brought on by self-deception—you’ll have a clearer lens with which to view the world.
As you integrate your shadow, you’re approaching your authentic Self, which gives you a more realistic assessment of who you are.
You won’t perceive yourself as too great (inflated) or too small (deflated). When you’re genuinely self-aware, you can assess your environment more accurately from a state of neutrality.
You’ll see others and evaluate situations with greater clarity and understanding.
5 – Psychological Integration and Maturity
As long as we deny the shadow archetype and repress certain parts of ourselves, we will not experience a sense of wholeness, integration, and internal unity.
How can we feel a sense of wholeness and balance with a divided mind?
Developmental research suggests that only a small percentage (less than 5%) ever reach mature psychological development.5Cook-Greuter, Susanne R.. “Nine Levels Of Increasing Embrace In Ego Development: A Full-Spectrum Theory Of Vertical Growth And Meaning Making.” (2014).
Psychological maturity is rare. Integrating the shadow brings one step closer to realizing a sense of wholeness. Developmental psychology persuasively argues that shadow work is critical to achieving mature adulthood.
6 – Greater Creativity
One of the profound benefits of this psychological process is that it unlocks more of your creative potential.
Creativeness, as humanistic psychologists like Abraham Maslow and Carl Rogers found, is a spontaneous occurrence in mentally healthy (integrated) individuals.6Abraham Maslow, The Farther Reaches of Human Nature. 1971.,7Carl Rogers, On Becoming a Person, 1995.
Jung found that all his patients began engaging in self-expression—drawing, painting, dancing, sculpting, fictional writing, etc—at a certain stage of inner work.
Five Tips for Beginners Doing Shadow Work
If you’re going to begin shadow work, here are Five things that will make it easier to approach your disowned self:
1 – Center Yourself
This is perhaps the most important thing to do before you engage in shadow work. Yet, it’s rarely (if ever) mentioned in literature.
If you attempt to know your shadow when you’re not centered, you won’t get constructive results. Instead, you’ll encounter ego resistance.
The shadow self represents a cluster of various parts hidden within your psyche.
Only from your Center can you get to know these parts. If one of these parts is “blended” with you, it will hijack the process. You’ll be judgmental, critical, or confused, inhibiting your ability to observe and integrate your shadow.
Before working with the shadow archetype, you want to be calm, clear, and neutral. That is, you want to be in your Center.
2 – Cultivate Self-Compassion
When doing shadow work, it is helpful to cultivate a sense of unconditional friendliness with one’s self. In Buddhism, this is called Maitri.
Examining our darker side can be challenging without friendliness and self-compassion. If you’re hard on yourself when you make mistakes, it can be difficult to confront your shadow.
If you’re accustomed to feelings of shame or guilt, transmute these emotions with friendliness, self-acceptance, and self-compassion.
Start by accepting your humanness. Remember that we ALL have a shadow—”Everyone is in the soup together,” as Jung used to say.
You may find it helpful to connect to your heart:
- Place your attention on your heart.
- Breathe in and acknowledge your heart.
- Breathe out and say to your heart, “Thank you.”
It’s a simple Buddhist practice offered by Vietnamese Buddhist monk Thich Nhat Hanh.8Thich Nhat Hanh, True Love: A Practice for Awakening the Heart, 2006.
3 – Develop Self-Awareness
Seeing the shadow requires a self-reflective mindset. We observe our behaviors, thoughts, feelings, impulses, and attitudes and then reflect on our reactions.
Meditation training can help foster nonjudgmental awareness—the ability to stay aware of the present moment without involving the inner critic or other modes of judgment.
Self-awareness and self-reflection are precursors to shadow work because they help us observe and evaluate feelings and emotional reactions without judgment or criticism.
Ultimately, self-awareness will observe your shadow. So dive in and get messy!
4 – Be Courageously Honest
Self-honesty and integrity are also prerequisites for shadow work.
It’s easy to praise these qualities, but true self-honesty means being willing to recognize unpleasant aspects of one’s behavior and personality.
Accepting one’s disowned parts can often be uncomfortable, which is why the ego invests so much energy in repressing them.
Seeing and accepting your insecure selfishness and tyrannical nasty parts can be challenging for people. Observing your hidden attitudes, behaviors, dark thoughts, and emotions takes inner courage.
The rewards are worth the discomfort, as these honest confrontations with your shadow help heal the splits in your psyche.
5 – Record Your Discoveries
It’s fascinating how some of our disowned parts want to remain out of our view.
Similar to how our dreams slip out of focus moments after awakening, our disowned parts can be elusive. One remedy is to maintain a shadow journal where you record your discoveries about yourself.
Writing your insights and reviewing them later helps encode the discovery into your conscious mind.
Five Powerful Shadow Work Exercises
Are you ready to get started? Here are five shadow work exercises for beginners:
Exercise 1: Watch Your Emotional Reactions
Remember that the unconscious is elusive; it hides behind us. Our defense mechanisms are designed to keep the shadow self repressed and out of view.
The more you pay attention to your emotional reactions, the more frequently you will catch your shadow. Remember, we tend to project our disowned parts onto other people.
One of the best ways to do shadow work is to pay attention to your emotional reactions toward others.
Sure, your colleague might be aggressive, arrogant, inconsiderate, or impatient, but if you don’t have those same qualities within you, you won’t have a strong reaction to their behavior.
Train Yourself to Observe Your Reactions
If you’re paying close attention, you can train yourself to notice your shadow when you witness strong, negative emotional responses to others.
As Jung writes in Memories, Dreams, Reflections:9Carl Jung, Memories, Dreams, Reflections, 1989, page 246.
Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves.
But we rarely have time to work with those emotions on the spot. Ultimately, it helps to take five or ten minutes to reflect on your interactions with others and your related reactions.
Whatever bothers you in another is likely a disowned part within yourself. Focus on what and who evokes an emotional charge in you. It doesn’t matter what the emotion is; it’s a clue you are denying something within you.
Exercise 2: Challenge the Good Part/Bad Part
Many people identify themselves as ” good people.” As children, we were praised for being “good boys” or “good girls,” and that identification stuck with us. This intensified the split between our conscious self-identity and the shadow.
As soon as you think to yourself “I’m a good person,” your mind will immediately start to edit out all of the things you do/think/say that aren’t consistent with this statement.
As a result, people who think of themselves as “good people” invariably cause much suffering to themselves and others. And worse still, they don’t even know it! (That is, they are cut off from their true thoughts, feelings, and behaviors hidden in their unconscious.)
It works the other way too: If you think you’re a “bad person,” your mind will filter out many positive attributes you probably have. This is sometimes called the “golden shadow.”
List Your Personality Traits
Make a list of all of your positive qualities. Then, highlight the opposite. Try to identify the opposite within yourself.
For example, if you define yourself as disciplined, you’re likely repressing your laziness. The lazy part is hiding in the shadows.
The parts you disown influence your behavior and attitudes, constantly creating internal tension. So, in this case, try identifying with this lazy part. See it. Accept it. Make friends with it. It’s okay to be lazy, too.
This type of ego confrontation is an integral part of shadow work.
Exercise 3: Shadow Work Questions
As mentioned above, journaling can help encode insights into conscious awareness. It can also be used more actively as a tool for shadow work.
Personally, I found automatic writing the most effective means of using a journal for inner work. With automatic writing, you capture your stream of consciousness on the page without mental editing, judging, or commentary.
However, I understand that some people prefer more structure. Journal prompts and questions can, therefore, be useful.
Shadow Work Question for Beginners
Here’s a list of 15 shadow prompts to help get you started:
- What did I have an emotional reaction to today?
- What’s behind that reaction?
- Do those feelings relate to anything in my past?
- What did I judge in myself today?
- Where did I learn this judgment (in my past)?
- What did I judge in others today?
- Can I observe and acknowledge these same qualities within myself?
- What am I most afraid of?
- What feelings am I trying to avoid?
- Why am I afraid of these feelings?
- What am most ashamed of?
- How do I sabotage myself?
- What do I do when I’m trying to avoid something that makes me uncomfortable?
- How am I similar to my parents?
- What qualities are in my parents that I seek to avoid?
There are many ways to approach these journal prompts and questions.
You can pick a time in the evening to reflect on your day. Select a few questions and work with them for a few weeks (or longer). The more you bring awareness to these questions, the more your mind will get used to inner analysis.
The shadow is often depicted in shadowy figures in one’s dreams
Exercise 4: Engage in Inner Dialogue
Many forms of inner work require you to actively dialogue with yourself.
At first, this might seem strange since many believe “only crazy people talk to themselves.” But we ALL have many subpersonalities—numerous unrecognized, autonomous parts in our minds.
Jung called these subpersonalities archetypes. Many different integrated psychologies offer ways of working with these disparate parts, including:
- Jung’s Active Imagination10C.G. Jung, Jung on Active Imagination, 1997.
- Schwartz’s Internal Family Systems11Jay Earley, Self-Therapy, 2012.
- Stone and Winkleman’s Voice Di alogue12Hal Stone and Sidra Stone, Embracing Our Selves: The Voice Dialogue Manual, 1998.
- Assagioli’s Psychosynthesis13Roberto Assagioli, Psychosynthesis: A Manual of Principles and Techniques, 1971.
When we don’t pay attention to these parts—one or many aspects of our shadow—they can greatly influence our attitudes and behaviors.
Talk to Your “Parts”
Have you ever done or said something and then wondered why you did or said it? A part of your psyche was taking charge.
Every so-called “accident” is a subpersonality hijacking your behavior. Our disowned parts aren’t always trying to hurt us, but they often harm us when we ignore or deny them.
We can integrate many of these parts into our conscious selves by dialoguing with these parts in our imagination or a journal. Then, they become our allies instead of our enemies.
Jung called this form of shadow work active imagination.
Exercise 5: The 3-2-1 Shadow Process
Finally, if you want a step-by-step shadow work exercise, try the 3-2-1 Shadow Process developed by integral philosophy Ken Wilber in Integral Life Practice.
Here are the five basic steps:
Step 1: Choose what you want to work with.
It’s often easier to begin with someone you have difficulty with (e.g., partner, relative, boss).
This person may irritate, disturb, annoy, or upset you. Or maybe you feel attracted to, obsessed with, infatuated with, or possessive about this person.
Choose someone with whom you have a strong emotional charge, whether positive or negative.
Step 2: Face it.
Now, imagine this person. Describe those qualities that most upset you, or the characteristics you are most attracted to using 3rd-person language (he, she, it).
Talk about them out loud or write them down in a journal. Express your feelings.
Don’t calculate say the right thing. There is no need to be nice. The person you are describing will never see this.
Step 3: Talk to it.
Dialogue with this person in your imagination. Speak in the 2nd person to this person (using “you” language).
Talk directly to this person as if he or she was there. Tell them what bothers you about them.
Ask them questions such as:
- Why are you doing this to me?
- What do you want from me?
- What are you trying to show me?
- What do you have to teach me?
Imagine their response to these questions. Speak that imaginary response out loud. Record the conversation in your journal if you like.
Step 4: Be it.
Become this person. Take on the qualities that either annoy or fascinate you. Embody the traits you described in step 2. Use 1st-person language ( I, me, mine).
This may feel awkward, and it should. You are taking on the exact traits you have been denying in yourself.
Use statements such as:
- I am angry.
- I am jealous.
- I am radiant.
Fill in the blank with whatever qualities you are working with: “I am __________.”
Step 5: Notice these disowned qualities in yourself.
Experience the part of you that is this trait. Avoid making the process abstract or conceptual: just BE it.
Now you can re-own and integrate this quality in yourself.
What is Shadow Integration?
Shadow integration is the process of bringing these disowned parts of yourself back into consciousness and making them a part of you.
Each disowned part, once integrated, makes you less fragmented. (Less anxious and less internal tension.)
For example, let’s say you get angry when you see someone lying. You think to yourself, “I would never lie like that.” After confronting this aspect of your shadow, you come to terms with the fact that you lie quite often too—including lying to yourself. Now, when someone else lies, you notice it without getting angry anymore.
Each step taken in integrating the shadow archetype brings you closer to wholeness. In the process, your personality changes and develops.
Integrating one’s shadow, however, takes time and patience. It requires many confrontations with one’s ego.
As each psychic tension gets resolved, you become more balanced and “okay” with yourself. The value of this okayness is difficult to express in words.
Shadow Integration and Ego Confrontations
We dismantle our current conscious self-identity to learn about and integrate our shadow. We do this by deliberately challenging our self-identity—”ego confrontations”—using various methods.
We begin to confront our ego and its identity construct. Through each confrontation, we chisel away at the ego construct formed during childhood and young adulthood.
But this self-identity can be formidable. It was forged over many years and via constant subconscious programming, conditioning, and repetition.
As such, we must peel away these layers of conditioning slowly, carefully, and patiently. Otherwise, we will be at an even greater war with ourselves.
Each internal confrontation can turn into boundless resistance:
“No, I’m simply not like that.”
Resistance stalls shadow integration. This resistance keeps the ego’s old self-identity intact. But with patience and sincerity, we chip away at this false construct.
The process can be challenging, dark, and foreboding, or it can be enlivening, liberating, and grounding. Our experience with shadow work largely depends on our level of resistance, which varies from person to person.
Five Factors that Determine Resistance to Shadow Work
This isn’t meant to be an exhaustive list, but here are five relevant factors that determine one’s level of internal resistance related to integrating the shadow:
Sincerity: Do you sincerely want to integrate your shadow?
Perhaps the single most important attribute for successful shadow integration is sincerity. That is, you have to genuinely want to get to know yourself. (This represents the “moral effort” Jung spoke of.)
Many folks think or act like they want to know their shadow, but they just give it lip service. Their internal Trickster is playing a game with them.
They might read books about the shadow, or post quotes from Jung on social media. They truly think they are doing shadow work. But on a day-to-day basis, they aren’t applying any methods. There are no real ego confrontations taking place. As a consequence, their level of self-deception only increases. No real progress is made.
Curiosity: Are you curious about yourself?
Some people are genuinely curious about themselves. They aren’t interested in maintaining a rigid self-identity; they value self-knowledge.
“Good” stuff, “ugly” stuff — as long as it brings them closer to themselves, they’re in for the ride.
This curiosity naturally curbs one’s internal resistance.
Effort: What’s your level of commitment?
It’s easy to fall back into old patterns. However, doing shadow work requires commitment and persistence, or what Jung called moral effort.
In Aion, Jung explains:14C.G. Jung, Aion. CW 9, Part II: page 14.
The shadow is a moral problem that challenges the whole ego-personality, for no one can become conscious of the shadow without considerable moral effort. To become conscious of it involves recognizing the dark aspects of the personality as present and real. This act is the essential condition for any kind of self-knowledge.
As Jung stresses, dedication to one’s will and intention is necessary to develop self-knowledge and build consciousness.
It takes commitment to catch one’s disowned self whenever the opportunity arises—even when one doesn’t want to.
This commitment translates to applying will/discipline to stick with each daily ego confrontation as opportunities arise.
Energy: Do you have sufficient attention to spare?
If your attention is scattered on many things (professional, financial, social, amusement), it will be challenging to devote the time and attention (mental energy) necessary to doing inner work.
So there’s a time to engage in this process; and time to wait.
For this reason, Jung’s “Inward Turn” often occurs in the second half of life when the individual is already established in their career and family life.
Investing mental energy in shadow work is difficult, for instance, if you’re starting a family or a new career.
The Center: Are you able to observe yourself?
Finally, as I mentioned earlier, shadow work is nearly impossible when we are out of the Center.
The truth is the average person is “possessed” by one subpersonality or another from moment to moment. In analytical psychology, these subpersonalities are called Jungian archetypes. The Taoists call them “ghosts and spirits.” Ultimately, none of them are the real you (Self).
Learning how to move toward the Center is an invaluable practice with many subtleties. It helps you access the neutral Observer that sees all without reactions or resistance.
The KEY to Integrating Your Shadow
Ultimately, shadow work and integrating your shadow comes down to one primary thing: acceptance.
Can you accept the reality of the insights that arise through inner work? Or, will your ego ultimately reject these truths?
Initially, the conscious mind often wants to reject the disowned parts of ourselves. It wants to keep its current self-identity intact. On the internal hero’s journey, the hero almost always refuses the “call to adventure”—initially.
In the absence of acceptance, we face insurmountable resistance. However, through internal observation and the persistence of watching our patterns and triggers day by day, reality begins to settle in.
As psychological maturity develops, you become “softer” and more understanding with yourself. Acceptance of what is becomes easier and more natural. The results bring more fluidity to one’s life.
While “peeling layers of an onion” may be an overused metaphor, it is certainly apt for this psychological process.
When the Veils Begin to Drop Away…
As you progress with shadow work, you begin to notice all of the tensions you were subconsciously holding. Some internal tensions were partly known to you, and others slowly arose within your awareness over time.
As you continue integrating your shadow, these tensions eventually resolve and disappear. The seemingly endless psychic infighting harmonizes.
Over time, your identity becomes less rigid and more fluid. You no longer hold any self-identity so closely.
In essence, you’ve initiated a process to undo what the Taoists called acquired conditioning. The ego construct and its self-identity get dismantled, piece by piece. As a result, you experience less one-sidedness and more wholeness.
Shadow work helps you dismantle the false self, paving the way to closer contact with your true Self.
Finally, here’s some inspiring commentary on Jung and accepting one’s shadow side from philosopher Alan Watts:
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Book Recommendations
Here are my favorite books directly related to shadow work:
Owning Your Own Shadow by Robert Johnson
The first book I recommend to anyone interested in learning about this topic is by Robert Johnson. Johnson has a gift for communicating difficult concepts to lay readers. The book provides a theoretical foundation for beginning shadow work.
Shadow and Evil in Fairy Tales by Marie-Louise von Franz
Marie-Louise von Franz was Jung’s closest student—his protege. An accomplished analyst, von Franz focused on exploring the psyche through myths and fairy tales. Shadow and Evil in Fairy Tales provides an enlightening inside look at the psyche. (I recommend all of her work to those interested in shadow work and understanding the psyche.)
King Warrior Magician Lover by Robert Moore and Douglas Gillette
Moore and Gillette’s King Warrior Magician Lover highlights the primary behavioral patterns (archetypes) of mature adulthood and the bipolar shadow archetypes that dominate most behavior. In my opinion, it is a must-read for anyone doing shadow work. See my guide to King Warrior Magician Lover here.
A Little Book on the Human Shadow by Robert Bly
Master poet Robert Bly provides a vivid illustration of the shadow side of human nature through beautiful prose in this concise 81-page book.
How to Be an Adult by David Richo
This is an important book for every adult, regardless of age. Richo’s little book is packed with concise psychological practices for dealing with negative emotions and growing into adulthood.
Read Next
A Beginner’s Guide to Jung’s Individuation Process