Are You Nervous To Do Shadow Work?

Shadow work is the transformative process of exploring and healing what’s at the subconscious roots of the entrenched repeating patterns and struggles in your life so that you can shift them at their subconscious roots and gain a greater sense of compassionate self-understanding and personal empowerment.

But, some people feel nervous or hesitant to do shadow work.

In this talk, I explain what people usually find when doing shadow work and why it’s incredibly empowering, healing and transformational and very rarely scary.

Transcript

Do you have feelings that seem to come out of nowhere?

Thoughts that you know don't totally make sense but you can't stop thinking?

Somewhat irrational fears and worries that bother you from time to time or frustrating repeating patterns in your life?

Maybe you even self-sabotage or have behaviors and motivations that feel baffling to you.

This is all really normal.

And often the most frustrating thing is,

Is that you've tried to change these patterns but to no avail.

You've thought about them,

Talked about them and analyzed them.

Maybe you even tried self-help or therapy but you can't seem to use your intellect or your willpower to create lasting shifts.

Shadow work is the transformative process of exploring and healing what's at the roots of these patterns and issues in your life so that you can finally shift them and gain a greater sense of compassionate self-understanding and personal empowerment.

Doing shadow work in an effective and trauma-informed way can help you unpack the emotional baggage that's been holding you back.

And it can help you achieve a more authentic and fulfilling life while also growing in self-acceptance.

It's truly amazing when done well.

But some people feel nervous or hesitant to do shadow work.

So I'm Karenna with Hello Inner Light and I specialize in an emotional processing technique that helps people connect with their subconscious or shadow aspects in a profoundly healing and transformative way.

And people tell me all the time,

I wanna work with you but I'm worried of what I'll find.

Some people are worried that they might uncover something dark or disturbing in their subconscious.

Some people are afraid of feeling emotions that may be overwhelming.

And some are just intimidated because shadow work sounds unfamiliar or off-putting.

And I totally understand those worries but since I journey with people into their subconscious literally every day as a part of my work,

Let me give you a little more detail about what people usually find when doing shadow work and why it's incredibly empowering,

Healing and very rarely scary.

So what do people experience when doing shadow work?

The term shadow refers to the aspects of ourselves that have been shoved into our subconscious.

This can include unprocessed emotions from the past such as fears,

Insecurities,

Feelings of shame or unworthiness and other uncomfortable or overwhelming feelings.

And it can also include natural desires and traits that we may have been judged or rejected or criticized for having.

For example,

It's a very natural human thing to feel rage when your boundaries are crossed or when you witness injustice.

But if rage wasn't allowed in your family or your personal power was smothered when you were a kid,

Your rageful part will likely be banished to your shadow.

So large parts of your inner child exist in your shadow as well as your limiting beliefs and your core sense of self.

But truly most of what you find in your shadow are parts of yourself or your consciousness that are carrying the burden of unprocessed pain and old wounds from the past.

I call these parts of you vulnerable and wounded parts.

And even if you do find quote unquote darker aspects or impulses in your subconscious,

They're mostly born from these wounded or vulnerable parts trying to deal with their pain in less than ideal ways.

Your darker impulses are these vulnerable parts burdened with pain lashing out or acting up because they feel desperate for relief.

But when we effectively do shadow work,

We help these parts heal and process that pain so they no longer have to lash out in desperation.

Instead,

They can feel supported and seen and valued,

Which allows them to come out of the shadow as you grow in self-compassion,

Self-understanding and wholeness.

Another thing I like to point out about what's going on in your shadow or your subconscious is that because our society is how it is,

We've often been conditioned to repress or deny large parts of our inner knowing,

Our gut feelings,

Our creativity and playfulness and intuition and personal power.

So there are all sorts of beautiful and powerful aspects of yourself that you get to reclaim when you do shadow work.

This is called your golden shadow and it's the authentic and brilliant parts of you that couldn't safely exist in restrictive family structures or institutions and you get to reconnect with these parts.

There's also an inner wisdom and an inner knowing that exists in our subconscious that is deeper than the knowing of our minds.

And there's one other thing that's incredibly common to experience during shadow work and that's tapping into feelings or knowings that are just under the surface of your consciousness but you haven't acknowledged them yet.

So when I do shadow work with people,

I commonly hear some version of,

Part of me has known I was feeling this way and now I can finally admit it,

What a relief.

Or I felt for a while that something was off about this and I finally understand why.

It feels so good to acknowledge that.

Or I'm realizing how deeply the situation actually upset me and I feel so much more understanding and compassion for myself.

We call this the unthought known and it's the things that deep down you know to be true but you haven't allowed yourself to actually admit to it or you haven't allowed yourself to think the unthought known and this is totally normal.

We all do this to bigger and lesser degrees and it's rarely about big repressed traumas or suppressed memories of overwhelming experiences.

These are realities that are alive within us and they need to be acknowledged so they can be shifted and healed.

They're not usually scary but they're not superficial either.

Connecting with these deeper truths allows you to stop carrying the unconscious emotional baggage attached to them around all the time and it helps guide you into a deeper relationship with your authentic self that is within you,

Guiding you.

There's a deep perspective shift and an emotional shift that naturally occurs when we allow ourselves to truly acknowledge and feel these things that have been inside us and have been affecting our lives.

So most of us carry a lot of these unthought knowns within us because we live in a culture that loves to minimize,

Judge,

Repress and deny our very real and natural feelings,

Needs and reactions to life.

We minimize how difficult things are or how vulnerable we feel or how much something hurts us just in order to survive or because we simply don't know what else to do or we aren't fully ready to face it head on because it feels too overwhelming and then we identify with the part of us that minimizes everything.

So it feels true to us that those things aren't really a big deal but these old emotions,

Wounds,

Traits,

Limiting beliefs and implicit narratives in our shadow have a lot of power over our lives when they go unexamined.

Current neuroscience tells us that 95% of our thoughts,

Feelings,

Motivations and desires originate in our subconscious which is an incredibly high percentage and when we fail to acknowledge and heal these shadow aspects,

Their power in our lives becomes actually stronger but in order to truly heal and truly connect with our inner knowing and authentic self,

We have to be honest about how we're actually feeling.

This minimizing and denying ultimately doesn't do us much good.

The truth is is that our conscious minds can tell us anything.

They can make up any story and they're usually the part that's doing the minimizing but our bodies remember,

Our bodies and our subconscious psyches continue to hold onto the things that haven't been acknowledged and processed and this means that our bodies can help us reconnect with our authentic selves and guide us towards deepening our self-awareness and healing.

When we can drop into our bodies and our subconscious psyches and honestly face and deal with how we actually feel about things,

How things are actually affecting us,

The result is usually deep relief.

All of that being said,

Repressed memories can sometimes surface when doing any type of body-centered emotional processing.

It's not entirely impossible although it's very,

Very rare but the truth is when practicing shadow work in a safe and effective way,

Your psyche will never show you anything that you're not ready to face so there's an inherent safety net in this work.

There's a degree of inner safety that's required to face big and scary things and those big and scary things won't consciously come forward until that inner safety is established and even when clients have faced old traumatic memories when working with me,

It brings that same sense of deep release and transformation and increased wholeness and authenticity when they're worked through so it's generally a huge net gain even if it feels really intense in some moments but again,

Repressed memories like that are extremely rare.

Mostly,

The journey into your subconscious is about acknowledging,

Understanding and processing emotions that felt and may even still feel overwhelming,

Confusing and vulnerable.

You're helping those vulnerable and wounded parts of your psyche heal and it results in greater self-understanding,

Self-compassion,

Wholeness and deep relief.

This type of body-centered shadow work is the best way I know to deal with the core emotional issues and core sense of self that pervade everything you feel,

Think and perceive every day.

If you wanna truly transform your old patterns and limiting beliefs,

Getting beneath the surface of your conscious mind is necessary.

I hope that this has helped you understand a bit more about what's going on beneath the surface in your psyche and hopefully it's helped you understand the power and importance of connecting with the deeper parts of you that are calling out for healing.

Thank you so much for joining me.

Reviews

Wonderful and cathartic, exactly what I needed in this moment to open my heart and release all the negative thoughts.
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