What is shadow work? (And how to do it.)

The breakthrough inner work you need to fulfill your purpose

Photo by Giorgio Trovato on Unsplash

An essential tool to find your purpose and make it your career is shadow work. That is, facing those parts of yourself you’d rather shove in a box and pretend didn’t exist.

Without doing this work, limiting patterns of self-doubt will block you from embracing your true gifts and desires. Fears of failure, judgment or making the ‘wrong’ choice will stop you from taking the strategic risks necessary to create a business you love.

The bigger truth is there’s so much more available to you. You have a purpose and gifts you’re meant to give, to help others. You’re meant to earn money through your passion, if that’s what your heart longs for.

Your dreams are your destiny.

Creating a life of fulfillment, abundance and purpose isn’t just about getting what you want. It’s the personal growth curriculum your soul signed up for before incarnating. Your journey is about learning the lessons and as you do, receiving the blessings.

Before we get started, if you’re new here, my name is Suzanne, and I’m a spiritual life coach who helps ambitious women find their purpose and make it their career.

My work guides you to heal emotionally, create a strong mindset and take practical action to make money while following your heart.

The shadow is a term coined by psychologist Carl Jung, and it refers to both our deepest wounds and the parts of ourselves that we repress or deny.

Our deepest wounds have us believing we’re flawed, unlovable, undeserving people.

These wounds often begin in childhood, but can sometimes develop later in life.

Perhaps you were bullied or experienced a traumatic life event that created a wound. Or perhaps you experienced a failure that you haven’t processed, that now stops you from courageously taking the strategic risks required to make money with your truest gifts.

Left unnoticed, these wounds shrink the world you live in, creating feelings of being stuck, powerless or uncertain.

You always know what you want. Lack of self-belief creates the illusion confusion.

Releasing these pains through shadow work gives you resilience, courage and confidence.

You’ll stop interpreting interactions from the lens of the wounded self to understand that most things in life aren’t so personal.

Sometimes other people act unconsciously from their own unhealed wounds, or their personalities simply don’t mesh with ours.

Other times, like with failure, it’s totally impersonal, but we take it personally because we feel incapable. These feelings of unworthiness stop you from objectively assessing the situation to identify your next step, and instead keep you trapped in self-doubt, thinking things like, “I’m not capable of achieving my goals.”

Yes, you most certainly are capable. You’re just identifying with a limiting thought, and the associated emotional pain is stopping you from expanding into your next level.

Healing that pain at the root frees your creative energy to solve whatever problem is blocking you from achieving your goal rather than stagnating in emotional turbulence.

As a note of caution, you can absolutely do too much shadow work.

Shadow work can become a way to procrastinate. The catharsis it involves can become addicting, and sometimes people unnecessarily reprocess — and reopen — old wounds.

Sometimes you need to do shadow work to release old pain. Sometimes you can simply change your mindset. When I help clients with this, my answer is always, “it depends.”

My personal rules of thumb that indicate a need for shadow work are:

1. An event causes a disproportionate emotional reaction OR

2. You’re stuck in a repeating loop of thought or behavioral patterns even after working on your mindset.

Shadow work is about communicating with your soul through its language of symbols.

It’s about understanding that not only are your emotions symbolic, but so are many problems and patterns you experience.

When I guide clients through shadow work, we don’t analyze problems logically or literally, but look at them as if analyzing a dream. You think about what a problem represents, and seek to understand the unaddressed, subconscious spiritual need or longing fueling that problem.

A basic shadow work how-to:

1. Notice painful emotions.

So-called negative emotions are one access point into the shadow. They help you illuminate the location of wounds so you can better examine them.

Paid subscribers, check out the “Journal prompts to understand your emotions” in the archive, in addition to this week’s detailed shadow work how-to.

For example, I used to struggle when dealing with failure in my business. When a blog or video or course launch didn’t perform the way I wanted it to, I’d get really sad and doubt my ability to realize my dreams.

I’d process these feelings on a surface level and then go back to work without digging deeper to reverse this emotionally exhausting pattern.

Eventually I realized that more growth was available. I didn’t have to feel this way.

I could fail, a blog or launch could flop, and I could be okay. Just because I’m sensitive doesn’t mean I need to get super emotional over every little blip in my business and make it mean more than it did.

I realized I could become more solid within myself and change my relationship with failure and disappointment.

So I dug deeper. I connected with my emotions. I did my shadow work process.

And it changed my life.

Now when something doesn’t go the way I want it to, instead of wondering what’s wrong with me…

My mindset is, “okay, this didn’t work. What’s next?”

The mindset shift is key, but without the deeper healing work, a hurricane of emotional pain makes our minds spiral, entrapping us in negative thoughts that aren’t true. (Sending so many prayers to those affected by Hurricanes Helene and Milton.)

Clearing the emotional root is often necessary before changing your mindset.

When you feel an emotion, ask yourself:

• What am I feeling?

• Why am I feeling this?

• Stop, breathe and wait for answers.

This is how you unlock transformational growth that allows you to fulfill your purpose.

2. Become the observer.

Continuing the hurricane analogy, becoming the observer is the difference between watching the hurricane and spiraling inside of it. You must first notice you’re in the hurricane before you can do anything about it.

The shadow, by nature, is subconscious, which means identifying it can be tricky. It’s such an integral part of how you interact with the world — it’s just ‘how life is,’ or ‘who I am.’ This is why it’s powerful to work with a coach like me to help you create awareness and break patterns.

With time, as you learn more about yourself, you’ll move through issues faster. You’ll identify a few main events or themes that you’ll continue to unravel as you grow, deeper and deeper like an onion. This work is cyclical, not linear.

As you observe your emotions instead of react to them, you’ll begin to notice core beliefs fueling the pain.

Common shadow beliefs include:

• I’m not good enough.

• I’m unloveable.

• I’m flawed.

• I need to prove myself.

• My feelings aren’t valid.

• I’m responsible for everyone and everything. I should be able to do everything on my own.

• Why can’t I just be normal?

Think about these beliefs and how they may be influencing you to respond to situations in ways that are frankly beneath you.

Journaling Club members, access your detailed how-to and powerful prompts for releasing negative patterns here.

3. Investigate with compassion.

Doing shadow work with compassion can be difficult. It’s easy to blame yourself or others, or have so much compassion for others that you neglect to validate your experiences.

While part of the process includes recognizing how others’ behaviors affected you, shadow work is about working on your relationship with yourself.

There’s a lot more that goes into it, but this is a deep, subtle practice and today I wanted to give you a simple foundation.

Ways to practice shadow work:

• Journal.
  Journaling is a powerful way to feel emotions and empty your head of the thoughts crashing around. Releasing thoughts from your head onto paper is a magical alchemy. If you’re not sure how to journal, or your practice isn’t transforming your life as much as it could be, join the Journaling Club so I can help you illuminate the shadow to fulfill your potential.

• Write a letter.

  You don’t have to send it, but pour your feelings onto paper. Explore why you feel certain ways and tell the person in mind how you feel. This is a good way to validate yourself and your emotions, particularly if you grew up thinking your feelings weren’t valid. Consider burning the letter after you write it as a symbolic release.

• Meditate.
  The way I teach meditation, by sitting with your feelings, connects people to powerful insights about why they feel the way they do. You can also talk to your inner child, ask your higher self for guidance or work with the memories and images that arise during shadow work.

• Express your emotions.
  Write about them. Move. Make art. Experience yourself as whole, loved, and lovable. The shadow thrives on secrecy. Bring the hidden parts of yourself to light and bathe them in self-love. Even if the process hurts, know that it’s okay. Everybody experiences pain.

• Inner child work.
  This one is lengthy, so I’ll share my powerful 5-step process another time. Comment below if you want to learn.

Growing into your full potential requires accepting every part of yourself.

Finding your purpose and realizing your dream of making it your career is about seeing what you’re capable of when you fully back yourself.

Overcoming past pain and fear is part of the process. Becoming a spiritually powerful person requires inner mastery.

In order to receive success, financial abundance and recognition, you must first cultivate those conditions inside yourself.

It starts with recognizing the incredible value of your gifts, which naturally happens when you love, value and trust yourself.

My job is to help you on that journey.

This week in the Journaling Club, you’ll explore prompts specifically designed to create confidence around your biggest dreams, goals and desires.

This is the only membership for ambitious creatives who want to find their purpose and create success by following their hearts.

Each week, you receive 5 sets of powerful journal prompts guiding you through the inner work of creating a business or career based on your truest gifts.

At just $2 a week, this is an insane value for self-coaching, community and support to fulfill your potential.

*This is not therapy, and I am not a therapist. Pursue this work at your own discretion.

Let me know your reflections in the comments!

All the love,

Suzanne

PS — Learn exactly how to do this work with the Shadow work workshop, which includes 2 videos and an audio session where I guide a client through the process.

PPS — Get personalized support to find your purpose and make it your career through my 1:1 coaching program. Reply to this email (or DM me in Substack) “I’m interested,” to learn more. Only 2 spaces available.