Dancing with our shadows

awakening the unconscious

Haleakalā National Park — February 2023

Imagine yourself sitting around a campfire with all the parts of you that you’re most proud of and work hard to shine a light on — your kind self, your hardworking self, your generous self, your thoughtful self. You happily sit among them, leading the group in campfire songs.

In the darkness lurks the parts of you that you’ve worked hard to keep away from this perfectly assembled inner circle. Every so often, there’s a disturbance in the woods — a trigger from the outside world — that scares one of these banished parts and sends them running towards the campfire for safety. You greet them with resistance, demanding they go back to the depths of the forest where they belong. As you watch them slink back to their hiding spot, you return to the campfire, turning your attention back to the company of your favorites. You’re temporarily relieved that the unwelcomed part is gone, but you know they’ll be back.

That roaring fire doesn’t seem as bright and glorious as it did before. What felt like a sense of inner peace has morphed into a state of hypervigilance. And eventually, you’re right. At the sight of a new trigger from an interaction in the outside world, another exiled part comes running for solace. On and on it goes, new trigger events awakening old stories in us, haunting us at seemingly the most inconvenient times.

awakening the unconscious

Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will rule your life and you will call it Fate.

— Carl Jung

The idea of the shadow was first introduced to mainstream consciousness by Swiss psychiatrist, Carl Jung, who believed that our psyches are comprised of the conscious and unconscious mind.

The latter manifests as our shadows, the aspects of ourselves we resent and reject — parts that we’ve deemed unlovable, unworthy, and get in the way of our otherwise fine life. We exile these “ugly” parts to the depths of the forest for all types of reasons — to avoid pain, to “maintain” the peace, to be productive. Shadow work emerged as an approach of turning inward and sitting with these parts we avoid at all costs.

Our shadows come in many forms: the angry self that’s been suppressed for fear of judgment from others, the hardened self that’s been hurt by former friends, the worthless self that’s been made to feel inadequate. We’re told we’re too loud, too sensitive, too much — and so we shrink, making ourselves small and suppressing the most unlovable parts of us.

So, how do we make the unconscious conscious? Day-to-day, these shadows that cause us grief — despite being suppressed — often manifest through the judgments of our inner critic. Understanding what parts of us our inner critic spends the most time criticizing holds the key to unlocking our darkest shadows.

meeting our shadows

One of my greatest fears has been not fulfilling my potential. When I was young, I suppose my inner critic took this to mean that she would protect me from this fate at all costs, ensuring that I was optimally productive and made the most of every hour of every day. This fear drove me to benchmark my worth based on how productive I was on any given day. I was obsessed with ways to do more in less time, reeled in by the latest and greatest productivity hacks. I took on more by day and wondered how I didn’t get to everything by night.

The trouble was that I was largely driven by external validation so I’d find myself committing to things under a false illusion that I wanted to do them when in reality I was just should-ing myself.

A fear of falling short of my potential

+ an impossibly long to do list driven by shoulds

+ a loud inner critic

= a very chaotic inner world

It had never occurred to me that my drive towards hyper productivity may have been an attempt to mask an underlying fear until I was introduced to shadow work. As I began excavating, unearthing unconscious shadows, I realized my inner critic had developed an obsession with productivity to protect me from the shadow of not being good enough. Growing up, I often found myself as the only Asian American girl in the room, questioning whether I belonged and seeking ways to defy stereotypes to prove myself worthy.

When I joined the workforce, I also became the youngest, least experienced person in the room, intensifying this shadow in new ways. As a defense mechanism, I learned to become Serious, draining my work self of all my playful and creative energy to ensure I wouldn’t be found out. If I took myself and the work seriously, surely they wouldn’t find out I didn’t belong. Once, during a dry run of a client presentation in a room of suits, I got the feedback to “be less serious” from one of the most serious people I knew. It’s working, I thought as I deprived my colleagues from getting to know the most energizing parts of me.

As I pivoted industries, I pushed this shadow deeper into the woods, subduing the anxiety of inadequacy by raising my hand for more and more ways to demonstrate my “value,” overworking myself in the process. Now, after years of exiling this fear of not being good enough, I was getting underneath what drove this shadow. I visited limiting stories written long ago about who I could be and where I belonged. Somewhere along the way, in an attempt to fuel my ambition while preserving my ego, I began to equate my output with how worthy I was, careful not to take on anything too risky that would set me on the path to worthlessness.

My fear of being rejected and unwanted had manifested as a shadow of incompetence. By bringing awareness and loving witness to the fear, I began to develop a more secure relationship with work and effort, untangling my worth from my output and productivity.

lifecycle of a shadow

Darkness cannot drive out darkness, only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate, only love can do that.

— Martin Luther King

The challenging thing about shadow work is that we’ve become accustom to pushing these parts of ourself deeper and deeper into the forest. Most of us are used to suppressing our shadows, which can manifest as procrastination and avoidance, binge drinking, spending time with others rather than spending time alone, seeking novelty and thrill — anything but turning inward for fear of what you’ll find.

Yet, shadows have an interesting way of unveiling themselves, surfacing as old thoughts that emerge as a byproduct of unfelt feelings. Like a child being excluded from a campfire, these parts feel left out and abandoned. With enough force from an external trigger, they rebel.

The ultimate goal of shadow work is three-fold:

1. Excavate parts of our suppressed selves

2. Face our shadow parts with loving kindness

3. Shine a light on and integrate our shadow parts

It’s natural to feel disdain for the negative thoughts and uncomfortable sensations that arise in our body when we face these buried parts, but only by shining a light and putting a loving witness on our shadows can we begin to dissolve our inner conflict.

We do everything in our power to avoid feeling emotions through as to not pull ourselves into a funk, but that resistance is what fuels the thoughts to live on, playing on repeat. Self leadership is giving yourself the permission to own up to these shameful parts and transform the inner turmoil into a unified partnership. All parts of you ultimately just want what’s best for you.

dancing with the shadows

Between stimulus and response there is a space. In that space is our power to choose our response. In our response lies our growth and our freedom.

— Viktor Frankl

If you’re new to shadow work and are interested in calling your shadows into light, there are various entry points to get started. Here are some that worked for me:

1. If you’re in touch with your inner critic, tune into the frequency of its criticisms. Our inner critics serve to protect us from our shadows. What’s yours trying to protect you from?

2. Bring awareness to your triggers. Get curious about the spectrum of what triggers you. What was the catalyst? What sensations do you feel in your body? When’s the first time you remember feeling this way?

3. Explore modalities to find one that’s most resonant with you. The approaches that I’ve found to be most intuitive are doing parts work via No Bad Parts meditations (Internal Family Systems) and Existential Kink meditations.

4. Work with a somatic coach or therapist. If you have particularly dark shadows that you’d like to work with, find a somatic (mind and body-informed) practitioner to partner with.

Our inner critics and bodies hold so much wisdom — allow them to guide you in your journey towards shining a light on your shadows and opening up your inner circle around the campfire.

Thanks for reading — let me know in the comments what shadows you’ve welcomed (or hope to invite) to your campfire. Or say hi on Twitter!

If you enjoyed this essay, check out a related essay: A lifetime of should-ing.

Thanks to Ryan, Mel Song, and Dennis Xiao for helping me shape this idea and to

Diana Demco

and

Chris Wong

for reviewing drafts of this essay.