Are there parts of who you are that you hide from the world? Maybe even things you try to hide from yourself? Perhaps you hold a grudge toward a friend or feel envious of your sibling’s job or relationship. Instead of facing these uncomfortable feelings head-on, you bury them deep down.

It’s something we’re all guilty of, and according to influential psychologist and writer Carl Jung, this tendency to repress certain parts of ourselves contributes to something we all have—our shadow. It is the part of ourselves that we try to reject or deny.

Ignoring your shadow doesn’t make it go away. It can show up in passive-aggressive behavior, judgment, projection, or emotional burnout. Ironically, the very parts we try to hide—the shadow—can end up taking control. 

Jung believed we should develop a healthy relationship with our shadow instead of neglecting it. This is called shadow work. In this article, we’ll explore what shadow work is and how it can help you live a more authentic and grounded life.

The theory behind Jungian shadow work

To understand the power our shadow has over our actions and emotions, we need to look further into Jung’s theory of the human psyche. Jung believed that the human psyche was divided into three parts:

The Ego: Our conscious self and identity, which organizes all the thoughts, intuitions, feelings, and sensations that are not repressed.

The Personal Unconscious: The place where forgotten or repressed memories and feelings live, which we cannot access. This is also where the shadow lives.

The Collective Unconscious: A shared human blueprint, where all the features of our personalities are present in the collective unconscious at birth.

As our personality is shaped by the environment we grow up in, we express some things and repress others. The ego, maintaining control over our conscious processes, enables us to express ourselves, while our shadow absorbs everything we repress and hide from the world.

Understanding the shadow self

The more we fear judgment and push our negative sides away, the darker the shadow becomes. Because it is part of who we are, it cannot be repressed forever. Jung believed that when ignored for too long, our shadow can start to take over, showing up through negative or destructive behavior.

For example, imagine you’re spending time with a group of friends. Someone might say something you strongly disagree with, but you hold back from confronting them in the moment because you don’t want to disrupt anything or cause a scene. But the thoughts and feelings you suppress in that moment don’t disappear. They become part of your shadow.

Since the shadow gets stronger the more we try to repress it, if that friend keeps saying things that annoy you and you keep staying quiet, eventually you’ll lose control and have an outburst that surprises or upsets everyone. It might look like you suddenly losing your temper and yelling or even breaking down in tears.

This kind of outburst can often be traced back to your childhood. Maybe, growing up, you weren’t taught how to express negative feelings in a healthy way. Instead, you learned to avoid confrontation and never start an argument—so those negative emotions stayed bottled up inside you with nowhere to go, until one day they just erupted.

Preventing emotional outbursts like these from happening means acknowledging and assimilating our shadow selves. This is called shadow work.

Shadow work aims to show us the parts of our personality that we have suppressed, while providing us with tools to love and accept them. Our shadow self is not evil. It is better seen as our self-protective nature that helped us conceal things from our parents or cultural upbringing because we were afraid of upsetting others.

Shadow work made easy: 4 steps to begin

There are several shadow work techniques we can use to heal and grow into a more balanced version of ourselves. They help us fight the negative emotions that emerge from repressed parts of our personal unconscious, which our shadow has absorbed.

In the next sections, we’re going to discuss four techniques that will help kickstart your shadow work journey and set you on a path towards a healthier relationship with your shadow self.

1. Ask yourself questions to improve your self-reflection

The goal of self-reflective questions is to encourage conversation with our shadow. Think of it like shining a torch in a large, dark room. We won’t see everything right away, but we will begin to get an idea of what we couldn’t see before.

Here are some sample questions to get you started:

What traits in others am I triggered by the most?

Our emotionally charged reactions to others often reflect parts of ourselves that we have neglected and repressed. We may find that what bothers us when others do it is something we are ashamed of doing ourselves.

In what situations do I hide my true feelings?

We may find that, around certain people and in certain contexts, we hold back our true feelings. While this can be useful in professional settings, if we also hide our true feelings from romantic partners or close friends, we may be suppressing too much of ourselves, for reasons we don’t yet understand.

What do I believe about how other people perceive me?

What we believe others think of us is often a reflection of how we feel about ourselves. Our shadow speaks through the opinions we imagine others have of us. This can cause us to lash out, instead of thinking more deeply about these projected beliefs.

What part of me have I tried to silence, deny, or forget?

Our shadow holds many past experiences as well as personal qualities we are ashamed of. Reflecting on these hidden parts can teach us about what drives our behavior in daily life and what is holding us back.

2. Observe your reactions and emotions

Watching your emotions and reactions helps you stay calm instead of reacting right away. When we react too quickly, our feelings take over, and it’s harder to see what’s really bothering us.

Behaving this way can repress whatever it is that’s causing us to react angrily, jealously, anxiously, or whichever negative emotion it is. This causes our shadow to darken, as it absorbs more of our repressed feelings and thoughts.

Start by labelling the negative emotions you experience. Giving a name to these emotions makes them easier to observe objectively.

Pay attention to the negative emotions that come up most frequently. Consider the context in which they are felt. This is engaging with your shadow because you’re no longer leaving the repressed parts in darkness. You’re shining a light on them.

Once you’ve learned to observe your emotions and reactions more carefully, you will be more equipped to listen to your inner dialogue.

3. Engage with your inner dialogue

We all internalize voices in childhood that we carry into adulthood. These are the voices of our parents and our cultural upbringings. These voices may be helpful, critical, damaging, incorrect, or loving. The point is that when we internalize them, we often forget where we heard them in the first place.

Tension arises when we grow into adulthood, make new relationships, and perhaps begin to disagree with these messages. This creates a conflict between what we have internalized and what we have learned about ourselves since then. The more we neglect to listen to these voices and where they have come from, the more our shadow takes over our personalities, causing our inner dialogue to become overwhelmingly self-critical. We need to learn to talk back to these internalized voices.

Meditation and journaling are two ways we can strike up this conversation. When we meditate, we create space for the voices to be heard. We can observe how it makes us feel in the moment and let these thoughts come and go. This attunes us to how our inner voices sound and what they focus on.

As we begin to hear this voice more clearly, we learn more about what it is trying to tell us. Often, this voice is trying to protect us, but we need to understand what it is trying to protect us from and why it is doing it in this specific way.

This is where journaling can be useful, as a more active way of engaging with our inner dialogue. It helps us to both listen and respond to our inner voice, which helps create a healthier relationship with our shadow.

4. Start a Shadow Work Journal

A powerful and deeply personal endeavor, your shadow work journal can become one of the most important documents of your journey towards self-awareness and healing. Here are some tips for keeping a shadow work journal productively and intentionally:

Create your space

Self-reflection is best done when we are comfortable and at ease. When writing in your shadow journal, choose a space you feel comfortable in, and writing materials (phone, notebook, computer, etc.) that you prefer.

Set your intention

Clarify with yourself what you are here to do.  You can start with a short affirmation like “I am here to better understand myself and I am not here to judge.” A curious and compassionate mindset is beneficial for shadow work.

Use prompts

The blank page can be intimidating. Fortunately, shadow work journal prompts can help you get started by giving your journaling sessions some direction. Use the above question prompts for self-reflection as writing inspiration and then build on what you discover as you write.

Practice consistency

We always get better with regular practice and your shadow work journal will be no different. Try to set aside a day or two in the week, preferably at the same time and for the same duration, to write in your shadow journal. And if the words don’t come, don’t force it. Inspiration doesn’t run on schedule, but it can be encouraged with one.

Observe, but don’t edit

Your shadow work journal isn’t a piece of writing for an assignment or publication. Let the ideas flow and write without inhibition. Encourage a creative flow state without judgment. Sometimes your expression will be messy, perhaps even incoherent. This is the state in which we let our shadow speak through our writing. Observe what comes out in this unfiltered state but respect your shadow’s expression by leaving it as it is.

Start discovering and embracing your shadow

By now, you hopefully understand the theory behind Jung’s shadow and have some useful tips to start doing your own shadow work. If you’re serious about deeply investigating your shadow self and uncovering the hidden parts of your personality, please consider talking to a therapist experienced in analytical psychology and shadow work. Self-reflection is most safely achieved under the guidance of a professional.

If you’d like to discover some deeper insights into your personality from a Jungian perspective, consider taking our archetype test to find out which archetype you are.

For more self-discovery approaches and tools, view our discovery tests page.