Empaths and Shadow Work

“Shadow work is the path of the heart warrior.” Carl Jung

Shadow work may seem a bit daunting at first but it’s quite simply really.  It’s about seeking what is controlling your life from the unconscious, making it conscious so that you understand and integrate those hidden parts of you.  It is important to understand that not only are your so called negative traits hidden in the shadow but also your positive traits and by integrating those traits into our conscious mind we can have more control over our lives instead of feeling that something unknown is taking us in a direction that we don’t really want to go in.

Shadow work is very important for Empaths as, with many of us, we felt the need to bury our gifts as children because they made others around us feel uncomfortable.  Imagine as a child you voiced your knowing that someone was lying, and as a result of that you were chastised by your parents, with them saying that you were being rude, so you made the decision to never mention that again.  Or as a child you loved to be alone in nature, but you saw that your mother was disappointed in you that you weren’t out playing with your friends, the socially expected behaviour.  Both of these are Empath traits, so you chose to repress them so that you would not lose your parents love.  That is how we begin to form our Shadow.

 ‘Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.’
Carl Jung

Spiritual Bypassing

Suppressing our so called negative emotions really doesn’t help us, this actually has a name which is ‘Spiritual Bypassing’.  This is when we deem emotions such as anger, rage, jealousy, sadness, disgust as negative, unenlightened, shameful, of a low vibration or something to ‘run away’ from or ‘cleanse’ out of the self.

With the situation around ‘New Age’ thinking these days, you will need to be aware that the push with ‘positive thinking’ is not necessary helpful towards your spiritual growth.  By forcing yourself to thinking positively all the time, we are actually repressing our Shadow self even further.  You will know that you are repressing your Shadow when you experience feeling confused about who you are and what you want, feeling disassociated, disconnected or numb.  Other signs are being destructive when in the grip of an emotion,  and having unfulfilling relationships.

Ashley Turner explains, “In the spiritual and yoga communities, the emphasis is often on positivity.  Sometimes called spiritual bypassing – this is the tendency to overlook or minimise our very real human flaws.  We are encouraged to ‘meditate our way out of’ difficult emotions or habits.  The focus is on getting better, being happier, moving up and out of our current circumstances toward enlightenment, miracles or bliss.”

Some of the techniques that you may be using now that you may be using to spiritually bypass and repressing shadow work are:

Positive thinking: 

“It’s not that bad.  Look on the bright side”, “I am so strong – this can’t affect me!”.

Meditation:

“Let all thoughts and emotions go, you are pure awareness, where there is no pain, no personality”.

Law of Attraction:

“Your vibration creates your experiences. Stay high-vibe at all times”, “You called in all your experiences to you”.

When used to create spiritual bypassing, these techniques can leave you feeling shame and/or guilt and that there is something wrong with you because it doesn’t help you to achieve a life of freedom and compassion.

“Everyone carries a shadow, and the less it is embodied in the individual’s conscious life, the blacker and denser it is.” ― C.G. Jung

Benefits of Shadow Work

When you work with integrating your Shadow, there will be moments of awakening that will lead you to become more authentic, creative and will give you more emotional freedom.  Other benefits of Shadow Work include, better communication and relationships because you will be coming from your authentic self and you will be acting from a space of compassion.  Also, it will improve your ability to set healthy boundaries and give you an enhanced state of wellbeing.

Another benefit of Shadow Work is the achievement of psychological maturity.  Most of us exist in a state of mental and emotional immaturity with parts of us split-off and disowned and experiencing destructive behaviour when triggered because it is actually our Shadow that is in control. When we make conscious and integrate these unrealised parts of ourselves we can then experience wholeness, stability and balance.

So how does it work? 

I use the techniques that I have been trained in to help you uncover what is in your Shadow and we work together to integrate those traits into your conscious mind from your subconscious mind.  We may then use a practise to help you ‘real’ise those traits to make them even more real.  Shadow Work is a very personal therapy and everyone is different and will experience it differently, so one-on-one sessions are the way to go.  If Shadow Work is about making the unconscious conscious then I have been doing Shadow Work for years, both with Past Life Therapy and Rebirthing, both these processes are about making the unconscious  conscious and integrating them into our self-awareness. 

Drawbacks of Shadow Work

With all its benefits it does have some bumps along the road.  Shadow Work may bring up repressed emotions from childhood and may take some time to process these emotions.  There will be a need to integrate these emotions and may seem daunting at first. 

Shadow Work can make you see your life differently and you may want to change certain parts of it which may cause some upheaval.  When we do Shadow Work our stories will change, for example “I was a difficult child” may become “I was emotionally neglected by my parents”, and these kinds of narrative changes may have wide-ranging implications in your life.

From a global point of view, we know the saying “our inner world reflects our outer world’, therefore as we integrate our own shadow, this will be reflected in the outer world as more truth will be revealed across the planet.  Empaths are here to create more light in the world and Shadow Work is a very powerful way to do this.  Even if you don’t know why you are here, Shadow Work is a great place to start, as you reveal your gifts through Shadow Work you will reveal your authentic, creative self and be a light for others.