Whenever I heard or read about shadow-work earlier in my life, I often thought of it as focusing on the negative, as if it meant that we must direct our energy towards darker aspects of our lives, constantly living in a state of pessimism. Anyway, in our world, there is already a weird attraction to having this sort of attitude, and we don’t need to give it a label.
But forgetting for a moment about what Carl Yung meant by it, even if he was the one who coined the phrase, I can say that it is not about retaining a negative outlook at all. It is about recognizing that you have that attitude and that it is the cause of negative effects in your life. It is about seeing this, owning it, and choosing differently.
When I started my own journey with shadow-work in earnest, I had a full life at that point. I had a successful career and a family. I was older, and driven by expectations I learned from my culture, my community and my family. I can respect the rules which dictate how we should live in harmony with others. I’m more precisely referring to other’s expectations of what it means to be successful, to be loved, and to be accepted.
First, I had to recognize without prejudice that I wasn’t particularly happy with the way of things, and how I enabled them. The more I delved into the weeds, I discovered how each of my choices directed my steps to the place I found myself. For example, I had mistakenly adopted the views of others instead of choosing those of my own, with little effort to discern theirs from my independent perspective. More often than not, this was due to my feelings of inadequacy, shame, and fear of abandonment; feelings I developed in my childhood. I also learned to understand my efforts to discredit myself for fear of being shunned by those in my circle.
These are the deeper aspects of being self-accountable. For not only am I training myself to become more self-aware, I’m learning to accept my faults, and to see them as malleable, and unfixed. I can transcend my own inadequacies but only if I’m willing to take responsibility for them. Despite what happens to a person, we have a special ability to respond in any way we choose. But it helps to know why we choose what we do.
In my book, I talk a little about our fundamental urge to fit in to a social structure because often our survival depends on it. This urge is deeply ingrained in us, and many of us will do anything to stay in the good graces of others around us. Yet when we do, we often sacrifice our personal ambitions and talents on the altar of security. There are a minority of us who seek to try to abandon rules we don’t feel align with our beliefs or desires, but risk being excluded, thrown-out or maligned by those very groups which we depend on for support.
The issue here is not really whether our choices are good or bad, which frankly is a judgement that is no one’s jurisdiction but your own. The issue lies with your attachment to the choices you make and the emotional consequences of going against the crowd. In my case, I usually took an independent view of things, and voiced my ideas too broadly to an unempathetic audience. So in my youth, I practiced keeping to myself, and learning to make other people happy so I could feel safe. Recognizing this came at a cost. But the fears that kept me chained to a lifestyle, to certain relationships, or to my career choices had to be seen. This renewed clarity gave me the leverage to formulate new pathways, and alternative means of survival which brought greater satisfaction.
Shadow-work teaches us to look at our lives with eyes wide open, allowing us to see the truth behind our day-to-day interactions, and not to vilify ourselves, but to educate and course correct. Shadow-work engenders deeper insight into the past that rules our thoughts and behavior of today, enabling introspection into ideas and mental patterns that resist change which have caused us to repeat harmful patterns in our lives.
An interesting consequence of this work produces a sense of freedom. The mental and emotional attachments we think protect us are often the chains that keep us bound to unhealthy lives. We begin to see that to cut these chains means to see them for the voluntary anchors they are. Once we see them, they don’t have the power to hold us anymore and we can choose to retrain ourselves to think and feel differently. It can be likened to driving down a mountain road in the fog when suddenly the fog lifts, and we can see the deep and long valley below.
But to do shadow-work, you have to cultivate a sense of awareness. Most of our mental strain comes from regretting the past and fearing the future. The middle road of the present contains a safety that softens the day, bringing moments into view that unless you’re being chased by a bear, allows for gentle reflection of breath and silence. Meditation can be thought of as mind training, a sort of escape into yourself. To benefit from this practice, we must trust in the process. Training our mind not to follow our thoughts makes us aware of our thoughts, and this is the first step to transformation.
Then, as in my own experience, if a profound insight captures our attention, it behooves us to choose what to do about it. We can either accept we have an issue, or not. But if we do accept our responsibility for the issue, we can decide to change it. For me, I practiced using affirmations and self-hypnosis, reframing the old ideas to serve me better. With consistency and determination, I re-educated myself with ideas that transformed my belief structure to systematically reprogram my life. After a spell, I made new relationships, created new career opportunities for myself, and built a new life in a new place. I crossed an ocean to build the life I wanted, and in my new perspective, could expand to a whole new level of being, no longer trapped in outdated notions of safety and security that held no real promise but servitude.
Shadow-work did this for me, and I know it can do the same for you. When we use awareness to acknowledge what doesn’t serve us, then choose to re-align ourselves to serve another purpose, we extend our inner focus to true self-transformation.