What Is Shadow Work?

In this episode, I speak about Shadow Work and how it can help us to uncover deeply rooted conditionings and stories that keep repeating themselves in our lives though we have done a lot of inner work.
We dive into the dynamics of shadow work and how it is actually a work that brings us closer to the light, beyond spiritual bypassing.

Transcript

Welcome to the Inner Transformation Academy,

The podcast where we believe that another world is possible through the power of shadow work and inner transformation.

By embracing our inner journeys and working together,

We can create a new paradigm and a future we are proud to leave for the next generations to come.

I'm Munira Latrasch,

Your host on this path of discovery and your partner in exploring how we can transform ourselves in our world to set the stage for a regenerative future our hearts know is possible.

And together we dive into questions like what do we need to transform ourselves in our world?

And what steps do we need to take?

How can shadow work and inner transformation pave the way?

And how do we collectively create a new paradigm?

And what blocks us from pursuing this,

Although we know where we need to go?

We explore these questions and more in every episode of this podcast.

In today's episode,

I want to talk about shadow work and why it is part of inner transformation and why it's so important in our spiritual journey to look at the shadows.

I also want to myth bust a few preconceptions about what shadow work is thought of and what it's not.

So first of all,

Let me share a little bit about my own shadow work journey with you.

So there have been many moments in my life that led me to shadow work.

But I think the main topic was that I felt I was stuck.

I felt stuck in my own relationships.

I felt like there's some repeating patterns in my relationships.

If I looked back into every relationship,

I could see there's certain patterns that keep repeating themselves.

And because of that,

I knew it can't be the partner.

It has to be me.

Because why sometimes,

You know,

You find a new person,

You let that person into your life.

And this is what happened to me.

And I thought,

Wow,

This guy is so different.

This is such a different person.

And then in the end,

When I'm in the middle of the relationship,

I'm noticing,

No,

It's the same thing.

What happened?

Like,

How could I be so wrong?

How could I not see specific patterns from the beginning?

And so it was clear to me,

There must be something that I just don't see.

There must be something hidden from me so much that I just can't understand what it is.

And with that question,

It kind of led me into shadow work.

But also,

I've experienced quite a lot of trauma in my childhood.

And I've done a ton of work,

Trauma work,

Over the past more than 15 years.

And although I've done a lot,

And I feel like there was so much healing happening,

I felt that it still had a big grip on me.

And especially in relationship topics,

I could find my trauma coming up again.

And so much so that I didn't know,

Is it me?

Is it my trauma?

Do I just have to work even more on my healing?

Or is there something to it that in the relationship,

Something is not working out?

And with all the spiritual practices I did,

And with all the therapy,

And all the body work,

And all the yoga,

I just felt stuck.

And then the third topic where I found shadow work was actually in business.

I've been working in the business world for,

Yeah,

Over 20 years now.

And although my work now is very different than when I was really in the corporate world,

You know,

I started working in the corporate world.

And then I shifted towards transforming the corporate world.

But still,

Like,

I could see certain mechanisms,

Like being a leader,

And noticing that although I want to lead differently,

Without power gains,

Without power gains,

Power gains,

And I want to empower people,

I could see myself not doing it always.

I could see myself in these moments,

Observing that I was controlling in certain moments that I didn't really empower another person.

I saw all these questions,

Like all these,

You know,

I felt like just stuck in these mechanisms that I could see,

You know,

And I think through awareness work,

Through training,

Mindfulness,

And emotional intelligence,

And becoming more and more aware,

I could see those things.

But I couldn't break them.

I couldn't change them.

I felt stuck in them.

And this is how shadow work came into my life.

I just kept asking the question,

What am I missing?

And then,

Yeah,

Out of luck,

I found this book about spiritual bypassing.

And,

You know,

It just blew my mind.

It was very eye-opening to read it.

And this book was by Robert Augustus Masters,

Who then became my shadow work teacher,

And still is,

And who I've done a lot of deep work with myself,

But also,

I began an apprenticeship with him.

And I'm still apprenticing with him after four years.

And yeah,

That work changed my life.

And it really was the one missing piece for me to overcome some of those mechanisms.

And that's why I'm here.

And that's why I'm sharing this with you today.

So what did I learn about shadow work?

And I want to use this episode to also give a little bit more of an introduction to understand a little bit more about it.

So the first thing is,

Like,

A lot of people think shadow work is something negative.

It's,

You know,

Going into the dark stuff.

And,

You know,

It's like,

It's exactly what a lot of people want to avoid with spirituality,

Just following the light.

And actually,

I would say,

It's the other way.

A lot of people think that's a dark shit.

But actually,

Shadow work is the opposite.

My experience with shadow work is,

It's actually bringing us towards the light.

And it's not doing that by avoiding the painful stuff,

Or avoiding certain things we don't want to see,

Or the discomfort.

Actually,

It goes right into the core,

Where the issue is.

And through that,

You know,

In the process of shadow work,

It's what I see a lot with my clients,

Is actually after that,

After going through it,

We feel more present,

Feel more light,

We feel actually more spiritually connected,

But also just more authentic.

I feel like shadow work is the no bullshit way of spirituality,

Because we're not pretending.

It's,

It's,

It brings us to an embodied experience of what it means to be in a higher frequency,

If you want to say so.

But without pretending,

There's no pain.

Shadow work is,

Is a gateway,

Is a gateway to see all those things that we're blind to.

So if you want to say so,

For me,

It was a little bit like you have glasses on,

And you see the world through those glasses.

And then when you do shadow work,

It's like,

You can put your glasses off.

And then all of a sudden,

You see things like I saw my relationship dynamics.

And I was like,

Wow,

How did I not see this before?

Like,

It's so obvious now that I see it.

But how was I not seeing it before I did this work?

This is kind of like the essence of shadow work,

In my point of view.

And so how,

How can shadow work help us in our day to day,

You know,

Problems that we have,

Maybe it can be something like you feel blocked,

You actually know already what your passion is,

And what you want to go forward.

But you feel blocked,

You feel like you don't have the energy,

Or you feel stuck in it.

Or you have a certain addiction,

And you want to get rid of it.

But no matter what you do,

You keep coming back to that addiction.

Or you have a trauma.

And you see this trauma playing out in your relationships over and over again.

And you just recognize that it doesn't really matter who the partner is,

It's,

It keeps repeating in your life.

Or maybe it's a situation at work,

Where you feel like you have the same issues with colleagues over and over again,

Or with friends.

So these are all good signs to know,

Oh,

Maybe I should do shadow work.

But it's also in generally the sign when you avoid your pain at all costs all the time.

And actually spirituality became not just a way to,

You know,

Connect with ourselves more,

But also actually to disconnect,

Because it became an escape.

It became an escape,

Where we're trying not to look into certain things,

Because they're painful.

And because,

You know,

We just want to avoid them.

And when we do that,

That's the thing,

The topics don't go away,

The pain doesn't go away,

If we avoid it.

Actually,

It's the other way around,

It stays,

And it becomes stronger and stronger.

So in a way,

You could say,

If we don't look at the shadow,

It just becomes bigger.

We become more dysfunctional in a way.

And this dysfunction,

Yeah,

Can lead us to a life where we struggle,

Where we struggle a lot,

And we just don't know why we struggle.

Or we have this,

You know,

Kind of relationships,

But we just feel that something is wrong.

You know,

We just feel something needs to be different.

And this is,

You know,

This is when we know,

Okay,

Something else is behind it.

And that something else very often is the shadow.

So what can we learn about the shadow,

Like just to going a little bit deeper.

And so one of the things to learn about the shadow and to understand about the shadow is that we all have shadows.

It's not like,

You know,

It's not some people have it,

Others don't,

We all have them.

We all have shadows.

And how are shadows created?

They are created by situations that have happened in our early childhood,

For example,

It's conditioning.

And to explain conditioning,

Conditioning is a way of seeing the world,

And a way of thinking about the world and a way of reacting to certain situations.

It's not,

Why is it conditioning?

I call it conditioning,

Because it's not,

We're not choosing to react in a certain way,

It just happens to us.

We observe ourselves reacting the same way over and over again.

And we don't understand why we're doing it.

Or maybe looking back,

We see,

Okay,

I've again reacted the same way,

Although I didn't want to react like this.

So shadow work is about understanding the dynamics and the conditioning of our inner landscape.

And sometimes that can be,

You know,

Caused by traumatic situation in our childhood,

But it doesn't always have to be traumatic.

I'll give you another example.

A lot of people say,

Well,

I had a good childhood,

All was good in my childhood.

So I don't have any trauma.

But trauma can look very different in very different ways.

So what can also be traumatic for us or create an imprint in us is when,

For example,

Our parents never showed any negative emotions in front of us,

Which a lot of parents do to protect their children,

Right?

If they fight,

They don't want the children to see them fighting.

So what they do very often is they have this perfect picture in front of the children,

But in the background,

They're actually fighting,

They have a conflict that is not spoken out.

And as children,

We feel that,

Like we feel the unspoken stuff as well.

We don't just feel what is spoken out.

And so what it does in these moments is we feel something else is going on.

And but what we see is something different.

And what it does is it confuses us.

It confuses us to we're feeling something else than the reality that is shown to us.

So one of the things that can happen through that is that we stop trusting our own intuition or our own emotions,

Because clearly they can't be trusted if we feel something,

But we see something else.

That's an example.

Another example is when we have a specific moment in our childhood where we felt abandoned by our parents,

By our friends,

Someone forgot us,

You know,

Or we were sent to a ski trip with the class and everything.

And it's a shock for us to be to feel abandoned in that moment by our parents.

So there can be many,

Many ways of how our conditioning takes place.

And I want to say one more thing.

And this might be a little bit more tricky to explain.

I actually can't even explain it myself fully.

But my experience with working with people is sometimes conditioning can be created by the generations before us.

So it means there's a certain conditioning.

Let's say our mother has never spoken about feelings with us,

Because her mother has never done that before.

And the mother before also didn't do that.

So sometimes it can be a generational trauma that hasn't even started in our lifetime.

That's sometimes why it's so hard to even understand that it's there.

That has been,

You know,

Evolving over generations and that we took on unconsciously without even it being spoken out.

But we're reliving the same pattern as our mother did and as her mother did and as her mother did.

And there's another aspect if you believe in past lives or not,

But I just want to mention it.

And it doesn't really actually doesn't really matter if we believe in it or not.

But sometimes people remember things in their sessions that feel like they're from past lives.

Or they definitely know it's not from their life.

And,

You know,

No one really knows how the psyche of a person works and how spirituality in the multidimensional way of being that we are works.

But sometimes it can be something that you feel like that's from another lifetime.

And shadow work can also like,

You know,

Tap into this because some shadows can happen from that,

You know,

Like almost the imprint that our soul has that plays out over and over again over multiple lifetimes.

Whatever it is.

So it can be a classical childhood trauma.

It can be a very simple situation in childhood.

It can be generational trauma.

It can be past lives,

Whatever.

So what shadows are,

Are these conditionings,

These dynamics in our inner landscape that we don't know about.

We are blind to them.

And very often we're blind to them because they became so normalized in our life.

You know,

That's just who we are,

We would say.

Or I've always been like this.

These are like expressions that we say.

And in a way that makes it impossible for us to see them.

Very often we're too close to them because we've lived them.

That's our reality.

That's our normal life that we don't see that maybe that's not who we really are.

Maybe the opposite is the case.

Maybe those shadows are playing out a dynamic so strongly that actually we are not even the driver of our own car of life.

But those dynamics are.

And this is,

I think,

The fascinating thing about shadows,

Right?

Like to see,

Am I driving the car of my life?

Or is it actually my conditioning and dynamics that are driving my whole experience in life?

And so basically what shadow work does is it helps us decondition these old wounds.

That we have sometimes,

You know,

Carried for generations.

It helps us to explore the unconscious.

So what we do is we're diving deep into the suppressed or even hidden emotions and beliefs and patterns.

And through that we can see what is it really that influences our behavior,

Our thoughts,

And how we see the world or a certain situation.

What is it?

It also helps us,

Shadow work helps us in the depth to confront our inner conflicts.

So it helps us to understand,

Is there an inner conflict that plays out inside of me?

And so,

For example,

How you can see if you have an inner conflict inside of you is if you feel you can't really,

You don't really know what to do and you feel drawn between two things.

There's two voices literally speaking inside of you.

So what shadow work does is we're confronting those inner conflicts.

Very often those inner conflicts are the reason why,

For example,

We feel like we're losing energy all the time.

We're out of energy all the time.

That's a sign maybe that we're losing energy because we have these inner conflicts that are inside of us.

It's when we have no clarity,

When we can't make a decision or feel like we're clear,

But there's so much discussion in our head where we feel like we're crowded by thoughts.

So what shadow work does is it helps us to face and acknowledge all the aspects in ourselves,

All the parts in ourselves that we maybe deny or avoid,

Especially the parts in us that we judge a lot.

And then shadow work helps us to integrate disowned parts.

What are disowned parts?

These are parts that we literally rejected or said,

You are not part of me.

In the world that we live in,

We have a certain picture of what it means to be a good person.

In the spirituality,

We have this picture of,

Oh,

If I'm spiritual,

I shouldn't be angry.

I shouldn't be sad.

I shouldn't feel depressed.

And that's exactly what we disown in that moment.

So this is a classical spiritual bypassing when we just want to go to the higher frequency.

And every time we feel pain,

We feel sadness,

We feel anger,

We judge it,

We suppress it.

We tell ourselves,

If I would be spiritual enough or ascended enough,

I wouldn't feel that way.

And that is actually also a little bit,

Because that's the picture we are shown a lot by spiritual teachers that have it all together all the time.

And they are shiny and look beautiful and have abundance and money and all of that.

And so the idea of spirituality became more and more where,

If you're really spiritual,

If you're highly evolved,

You're not suffering.

And what shadow work does is actually it helps us to accept ourselves in our wholeness and also our imperfections and all the emotions.

Because one example is anger.

Anger is actually an amazing emotion.

Actually,

Anger shows us a lot about a situation.

And it's a driver for change because anger says,

Stop it.

This is not OK.

This needs to change.

So this is powerful energy.

But if we feel like anger is only something negative,

We suppress it.

And then usually it comes out in a way that we don't want anger to be.

So it means in a hurtful way or we suppress it.

And then we feel like we're not doing it right.

And then we feel like we're losing it.

And of course,

I'm not talking about that kind of anger that is hurtful to others.

But what shadows do is we suppress,

For example,

The anger so much because we judge it so much.

We reject it.

We disown it inside of us so that,

For example,

We keep having these situations when someone else screams at us.

Or someone else lets their anger out on us in which way it is.

You know,

We feel invaded all the time.

We feel our boundaries are crossed all the time.

These are all ways of basically our being showing us that there's something disintegrated inside of us.

And it's actually a really empowering thing,

For example,

To be connected with your anger again.

One of the most powerful experiences for me was to reconnect with my own anger because for me,

Anger was hurtful.

I experienced anger as a child as something very hurtful,

Dangerous even.

So for me,

Anger was completely suppressed and I denied it inside of me.

I rejected it.

I disowned it.

And if someone else in front of me got angry,

I couldn't handle it.

I had to leave the room.

I couldn't be in a room with anger,

Not even with healthy anger until I connected back with my anger and then I could discern which anger is,

You know,

Hurtful anger and disintegrated anger and which anger is actually good anger.

Not just for myself,

But also in others.

And what shadow work can also help us with is healing past wounds.

So very often,

You know,

When we have these difficult emotions,

It has a lot to do with past traumas,

With deep wounds.

Yeah,

That basically those like past traumas and wounds,

They contribute to forming the shadow.

Yeah.

And when we look into the shadow,

When we work with the shadow,

Actually we can heal those parts that are wounded.

And not only can we heal them,

But we can find a deeper understanding of this woundedness.

And that's actually something a lot of us avoid.

We are like,

No,

I don't want to go that deep into my shadow trauma.

I remember I,

You know,

I experienced this trauma and I knew,

Okay,

I was traumatized as a child,

But then as an adult,

I was like,

I'm okay.

I get along.

I'm functional.

I have a job.

I have a career.

Everything is good.

I don't have to dig up the past.

The past is the past.

It's over and I'm good.

So I thought,

But actually what I didn't know is that the past trauma was having a grip on me and it had a grip on me in the work I did and how I worked.

It had a grip on me in my relationships.

I just couldn't see it.

I was blind to it because it was in the shadow.

I couldn't see it.

And then,

You know,

How it is sometimes with things that we just put in a box and we don't want to see,

Sometimes there's these moments when they just come all out at the same time.

And this is what happened to me.

They all came out at the same time.

And I was like re-traumatized,

If you want to say so,

By a very,

Very difficult situation.

And the box just went open and I saw the whole thing.

And then I knew,

Okay,

I just bottled up the trauma.

And actually the part that I thought was really good about me,

You know,

Functioning was actually a trauma response because I became so good in functioning.

I was a high achiever.

I was the good girl.

I did it all right.

And that was exactly my trauma response.

Because what I did with that was splitting up those parts of me that are vulnerable,

That are sensitive,

That,

You know,

Need a break sometimes,

That feel exhausted.

Because I kept pushing myself because I became so perfectly functional.

And from the outside,

I was successful.

But actually looking back at my life 10 years ago,

I know I wasn't successful.

I wasn't functional.

Actually,

I was the most dysfunctional I could ever have been.

And now that I integrated my trauma and also allow myself to be vulnerable and sensitive,

I can see how much more I am really me,

How much less I'm driven by unconscious mechanics,

And how much more I really have a freedom to choose.

And this is the power of healing our past wounds.

And what Shadow Work can also help us is it can give us a deeper,

Deeper understanding of ourselves,

You know,

Inner transformation.

Part of inner transformation is to have a deeper,

Deeper rooted understanding of who we are.

And that means who are we authentically.

Shadow Work also helps us to understand our deepest purpose,

You know,

Not the purpose that we write as one sentence in a book that we have come out with as a mental concept.

So what Shadow Work does,

It gives us a deeper insight into who we are on a deep inner level.

And if you want to say so,

Not just inside of us,

But basically connected with something higher,

You know,

That's like the deepest way of connecting with our heart and our actual contribution that we have in this life.

That's,

You know,

Everyone who already started this journey of what's my purpose knows that when we start with this journey,

It's very intellectual.

But the deeper we go in looking for our purpose,

The more we know that we only scratched the surface when we started.

And then the more we ask that question,

The deeper the answer gets until it's almost not,

Not possible to say it in words.

And when we come to that place,

We know that purpose is something that can't be grasped by the mind.

That's where the purpose really lies.

And I hope I don't say this in a very complicated way.

And I hope you can follow me.

But that's my experience with Shadow Work.

Like we know ourselves better in the deepest depths.

And I think one of the powerful things about Shadow Work is it's psycho-spiritual.

So it is psychological work as well,

But it's also a deep spiritual work.

It helps us to go into the deepest spiritual expression that we can have in life.

So a lot of things that I've answered about Shadow Work and yeah,

The power of uncovering shadows and you can see that there's a lot to know about it.

And I hope I could give you a little bit of an overview.

And maybe lastly,

So let's say you want to do Shadow Work and you don't know what to do.

So here are a few steps that you can make to start your own Shadow Work.

So the first step is to acknowledge your shadows and to really understand your shadows.

To not be ignorant to them,

But really,

Really try to connect with them and see them.

And this is sometimes a really hard one.

Sometimes we need someone else to help us to even see them at first,

Right?

Because we're blind to that.

And then the second step is to identify the patterns and conditionings of the shadow.

Like how is the shadow shaping your beliefs and behaviors?

The more we become intimate with our shadow,

The more we can see the patterns and conditioning.

And then to really explore your inner landscape,

To connect with the emotions and the deeper level of the shadow.

And to confront your shadows,

You know,

Like to really see how you can really go into confrontation with your shadows.

And that is how you can ultimately embrace your authentic self.

There's a lot of amazing books around Shadow Work if you want to dive deeper.

And of course,

I can highly recommend all the books that Robert Augustus Masters has written,

From Spiritual Bypassing to the book Knowing Your Shadow,

To For the Man Who is Listening to Be a Man,

Which is this book about the masculine in the shadow world,

To Emotional Intimacy,

Which is a book around how to be intimate in a conscious way in relationships.

And if you want to dive even deeper,

I'm offering three-day Shadow Work groups and also one-to-one Shadow Work.

So feel free to sign up for that.

I'm gonna add the link to it in the notes.

And also Robert,

My teacher,

He is still offering sessions and groups on a regular base.

And if you want to work with him directly,

I can just highly recommend that.

There's also lots of other people who address Shadow Work out there.

But because I know this work specifically from my own experience very well,

I recommend this.

And please,

If you have any questions around Shadow Work,

Something that you would like me to answer in the next episode,

Go ahead and let me know.

And I'm super happy to do another episode about it.

I will,

In the near future,

Publish an episode about the Inner Critic and also another episode about being a High Achiever.

So these are the two that are coming.

But if you have a specific wish,

Please let me know.