5 Elements of Shadow Work You Must Incorporate to Become Your Highest Self

In order to become your highest self, you must embrace your darkest self

Illustration: Dániel Taylor

Along with the rest of the health and wellness world, the quest for self-improvement — some would go as far as enlightenment — has popularized in recent years. Who doesn’t want to be the best version of themselves? The image of a fully-integrated, all-knowing self is appealing for many reasons.

But, as many have called attention to in recent years, the personal growth movement often sugarcoats the process, promoting positive thinking and self-care more often than it promotes the hard, nitty-gritty internal work. To grow, we have to recognize and embrace the darkest parts of ourselves.

The quest to become our highest self isn’t about cherry-picking our best qualities and nurturing those attributes. It’s about seeing yourself, the beautiful and the ugly, and learning how to be your best version of that whole self.

This is where shadow work comes in.

What Is Shadow Work?

“What is not brought to consciousness, comes to us as fate.” — Carl Jung

When I first heard about shadow work, it seemed counter-intuitive. To become your best self, integrate your worst self? I’d much rather reject my worst self and embrace my highest self. But as the saying goes, what you resist persists.

Shadow work is the process of exploring and uncovering the darkest parts of your subconscious mind. Your “shadow self” is the representation of your subconscious mind. Whether you realize it or not, your shadow self is constantly influencing your thoughts and behavior, reminding you of old wounds and masquerading repressed feelings as logical thoughts.

Psychiatrist Carl Jung coined the term shadow self, describing it as that which the ego rejects. It is the hidden, repressed part of our psyche, full of emotions, desires, and beliefs we have been taught are wrong or bad, so we pretend they are not there.

The problem with ignoring our shadow self is that it works best in the dark.

When we attempt to repress the shadow self, it subconsciously manifests itself in our thoughts and actions, making it even more pernicious. After all, we cannot fix our behavior if we do not know the root cause. Jung believed this manifestation usually occurs in the form of projection. That which we judge and hate most in others is often that which we fruitlessly repress in ourselves.

According to Jung’s model, the shadow is not the origin of all evil, prejudice, and hate, as one might think. The true origin of all evil is our failure to recognize and integrate the shadow. Once we can accomplish this monumental feat, we can evolve as individuals and as a collective society.

Shadow work is a crucial step in everyone’s journey of self-discovery and personal growth. Without integrating the shadow, it will continue to haunt our psyche and manifest itself in our behavior. In order to become our highest self, we must learn to look at ourselves in our entirety and accept the whole picture. This includes embracing our darkest self.

How Do We Integrate Our Shadow?

Unfortunately, there is no one-size-fits-all for shadow work. I do not prescribe to the notion that anyone can follow a standard step-by-step process and successfully integrate their shadow self. However, there are several key elements to shadow work that will propel your progress or get you started on the right path.

Everyone has different shadow elements and different backstories for those elements. Everyone will have a different journey of finding and embracing their unique shadow.

1. Your shadow self is part of you. But it doesn’t define you.

This is perhaps the most important fact to remember as you engage in shadow work. As you uncover your inner shadows, you must be willing to accept them. But you cannot grow disheartened and believe your shadows make you a “bad” person. Carl Jung believed the source of all evil was not our shadows but the repression of our shadows. Everyone has a shadow self, even the purest, kindest people.

By the same token, you can accept your shadows without letting them control you or your behavior. For example, if you realized your propensity for selfishness, you wouldn’t say “Ah, well, I suppose I am just a selfish person.” Shadow work doesn’t ask you to accept your darkness as your defining characteristic. It requires you to integrate your shadow so that you are empowered to control it instead of letting it control you.

It is equally harmful to repress the shadow self as it is to willingly let it blossom. If your shadow is in your conscious awareness and you continue to let it control you, it is no longer your shadow. It is just you.

2. Journal your revelations.

As you discover hidden parts of yourself, it is crucial to write it out. I failed to write down my self-revelations early in the shadow work journey. I felt there was no point. I meditated internally on my shadow self, so why should I write about it? This poor habit came back to bite me later. I found myself rediscovering parts of my shadow I had recognized previously and forgotten about. Shadow work isn’t effective if you don’t remember what you find.

Journaling about every self-discovery, big and small, helps you thoroughly explore that part of yourself and remember what you’ve discovered. No matter where I am or what I’m doing, if something dawns on me, I make a quick note of it so I can journal it out later.

Whatever strategy works best for you, journaling during this process is very important.

3. Pay attention to your reactions.

This is the single most important part of shadow work. Without it, you cannot fully explore your shadow self. The shadow manifests itself in our response to stressful situations or foreign environments more than it manifests anywhere else. When you meet someone very different from yourself, what is your first thought? When you are placed under a lot of pressure, how do you behave?

Our behavior and thoughts under pressure are often knee-jerk responses. When stressed, we are less likely to think about our response and more likely to do, say, or think the first thing that comes into our mind. This instinctive reaction is often a product of our shadow self.

Training yourself to slow down and observe your reactions takes a lot of time and even more self-compassion. It will not happen immediately. But when it does, you will discover a great deal about your shadow.

4. Don’t second guess or intellectualize your intuition.

When you recognize an aspect of your shadow self, it is tempting to question its existence. I’ve done this many times, hyper-analyzing past behavior and thinking of evidence against what I know in my heart to be true.

Shadow work is not a process of validation. It is a process of uncovering what you’ve repressed over many years. You probably won’t like what you find. I certainly didn’t. But in order to reap the benefits of shadow work, it’s imperative to trust your instincts.

When you see your shadow self, don’t second guess yourself and don’t intellectualize your behavior. If our shadow self was rational, we wouldn’t try so hard to repress it.

5. Shadow Work Is a Lifetime Process

Shadow work is not a once-in-you-lifetime journey. Once you start your shadow work journey, you’ll be on that journey for the rest of your life. Integrating the shadow is not something to be accomplished or completed.

Don’t let this fact dishearten you. Like personal growth, there is always more work to be done, but that does mean the work isn’t worth doing.

These tips alone do not encompass everything shadow work requires. Shadow work is different for every person, so each individual will find a unique path that works best for them. That being said, with these tips in mind, you may have an easier time avoiding the mistakes I made early in my shadow work journey.

No one wants to admit they’re selfish, judgmental, or paranoid. We want to be our best selves. But in order to be our best selves, we must embrace our darkest selves. It’s paradoxical, but as long as we deny our shadow, it will have a subconscious hold on us.