A few nights ago I was looking at the first full moon of the year. The sky was clear and the moonlight was strong, it was reflecting off the water and lighting up different parts of the woods. Yet, there were still some parts of the woods that were shadowy and dark. This got me thinking about the concept of shadow in psychotherapy and counselling. ‘Shadow work’ has become a popularised term in contemporary culture with many people on social media offering this even though it has been stripped of its theoretical roots and clinical depth. In psychotherapy, shadow work refers to the psychological process of gradually and gently recognising, exploring and, eventually, integrating aspects of the self that have been disowned or repressed. These aspects are usually those which a person has decided are unacceptable within one’s relational and cultural context.
The concept of the shadow originates in the work of Carl Jung, a Swiss psychotherapist, psychologist and founder of the school of analytical psychology, who described it as “the thing a person has no wish to be” in his book ‘Aion: Researches into the Phenomenology of the Self’. The shadow encompasses qualities, affects, impulses and capacities that a person cannot or will not identify with. Importantly, these aspects are not inherently pathological. Rather, they are frequently the result of early relational environments in which certain expressions of self were met with disapproval to some degree.
One’s shadow can often show up in day-to-day life, for example a person may look at another person and state how unacceptable they are for a certain behaviour. “Where’s he going dressed like that?” “She’s only doing that for attention” or “Look at the state of them are ways a person’s shadow could show up. What one finds so unacceptable in another is quite often what they had to hide about themselves in the shadowy depths of their own psyche. Jung highlighted that the shadow is a universal psychological phenomenon. He wrote in his book ‘Psychology and Religion’ that ‘Everyone carries a shadow, and the less it is embodied in the individual’s conscious life, the blacker and denser it is”. From a therapeutic perspective, this statement captures something that we might all have a sense of in our lives, what is not consciously acknowledged does not disappear. Instead, it can shape behaviour indirectly, often through projection, repetition and physical expression.
Projection is often an unconscious defence mechanism where one attributes one’s own unacceptable feelings, thoughts or traits to someone else, avoiding self-awareness and responsibility. For example, a person who accuses their partner of cheating because they are tempted to cheat themself. It is an ingenious way in which the human mind can cope with difficult emotions by making them seem external. Yet, it distorts reality and can harm relationships.
The shadow can also influence one’s day to day life in the repetition of patterns. A person might say “Nothing ever works out for me, I am so unlucky” or “I always end up dating bad people”. While things like this may seem out of one’s control on the surface, it is often a person’s shadow finding expression in indirect ways in the person’s life. Jung believed that repetition arises when aspects of the self remain unlived. One’s shadow does not disappear when unacknowledged or unaddressed, in fact it usually pushes for expression more strongly and leaks out in ways that seem like coincidence or out of control in life. In some of the most challenging circumstances, if trauma was the thing that led to some of a person’s shadow being created, then repetition can lead a person to seek out and re-experience trauma time and again. In the book ‘Contexts of Being’, the authors Robert Stolorow and George Atwood insightfully state that expressions of one’s shadow are not pathological or an illness rather they are “…emotional truths that could not find a relational home.”
The shadow can also express itself physically through experiences like rashes, pains and a variety of other ways that a medical doctor might say they can’t find a cause for after exhausting their approaches. Irritable bowel syndrome, tachycardia, tightness in the throat, back pain, twitches, blushing, chest tightness, poor sleep, shallow breath, migraines and being unable to go to the toilet are just a few of the things that clients might find inadvertently addressed by attending to their shadow in psychotherapy and counselling. Many psychological professionals have recognised that the body can reflect what the mind is not yet able to interpret or express. Sometimes, the concept of the body holding the score or correlation equaling causation, made famous by Bessell Van Der Kolk and Gabor Maté respectively, are referenced as if the mind and body are separate entities operating independently of each other. This is not true in the least. In my experience working with clients, the mind and body are one. Neuroscience would also support that the mind and body are one and constantly operate bi-directionally, so addressing both in therapy is always a powerful way to work with the shadow.
As we all face into another year, it could be useful to take a moment to reflect on our shadows. As I stood looking at the full moon and the shadows last week, I couldn’t help but wonder, what is so important to us that we would sacrifice an aspect of ourself and relegate it to the darkest place in our existence? I think relationship is the answer here, and to be even more specific, love. From our very first breath we all learn how to get our needs met. Initially through sounds; think of children screaming and a parent having to check if it is related to hunger, a dirty nappy or something else until they find the reason. For all of us, parents, siblings and other relationships in the world in general, will have led us to make assumptions about how we can get our needs and wants met. In this process we will all have relegated aspects of our expression to our shadow in the pursuit of connection, and most of the time, intuitively and ingeniously so.
In psychotherapy and counselling sessions, a safe relationship with a non-judgemental person who is trained to be present to their client can offer the right conditions for identification, exploration and integration of one’s shadow. I have found a client nearly always comes to therapy with a sense of something ‘wrong’ in their life accompanied by a hope that change is possible. If we are honest with ourselves, we usually have at least an inkling of our unique shadows. It is in the therapy relationship that a person can have the courage to bare themselves fully in the presence of another. We have a tendency to think we are all so unique in our ways of being, yet we can discover in therapy that we are very cliché in many ways and we all have humanity in common. A need for safety, inclusion and love exists within us all. Therapy can be a safe place to fully experience one’s needs, learn how best to express them and honour one’s self in the process. Therapy can support a person to bring their ‘stuff’ to the surface, become the fullest version of one’s self and live a life with ease and intention. In his ‘Collected Works Vol. 10’ Jung captured this well when he wrote “Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate”.
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