At some point during your healing journey, you will be forced to face your shadow. Like Thanos, it’s inevitable. I really wish it wasn’t as life would be much easier, but that’s not the case, so we have to deal with it. For those unfamiliar with the term, Betterup.com describes shadow work as “working with your unconscious mind to uncover the parts of yourself that you repress and hide from yourself. This can include trauma or parts of your personality that you subconsciously consider undesirable.” Simply put, it’s the parts of yourself that you don’t want to show the world.
Most of us go through life trying to distance ourselves from our shadows as much as possible. I don’t know about you, but I certainly wasn’t taught about my shadow while growing up. It wasn’t until my ayahuasca journey that I was forced to face my shadow, and only after that is when I actually heard the term for the first time. Shadow work can be done without psychedelics by the way, but psychedelics can certainly help bring your shadow to the surface faster than conventional methods.
Facing your shadow is not easy, especially if you’re new to exploring your consciousness. It can be a very emotional experience as well. You are essentially bringing the parts of yourself that you hate directly to the surface. You then not only acknowledge its existence but you accept it as part of you and show it love and compassion. This helps you show up more authentically in daily life and understand why you act the way you do.
Everybody’s shadow is inherently different, but the concept is still the same. For me, my shadow is the part of me that believes my emotions are invalid, that I don’t deserve to be loved, and that I need to continually suffer by holding on to all of my shame and guilt. There are probably more parts of my shadow I have yet to uncover, but those are the big ones for now. Based on that description, you can understand why he kind of fucking sucks (just kidding shadow, love you, buddy). It makes sense why you would want to distance yourself from something like that though.
Your shadow is and will always be part of you, whether you like it or not. Only once you fully recognize your shadow can you begin to understand it. For me, a lot of it stems from the emotional abuse I went through as a child. A large portion of what I do during meditation or when I journal is go back to all of those times I felt that way as a child and give myself the love and compassion I didn’t give myself back then. This doesn’t make my shadow go away, as that’s not the goal. It helps me accept my shadow as part of me and not something I need to hide from.
I hope everyone finds the courage to face their shadow one day. If you don’t know where to start, I recommend first just trying to become more aware of your emotions and reactions throughout the day. Once you can recognize your emotions, you can start to figure out where they’re coming from. Whenever you feel intense emotions, don’t run from them, judge them, or dismiss them. Instead, sit with them and question why whatever just happened made you feel that way. If you need help with that, check out this post I wrote about asking why.