CW: Discussions of trauma
2400 words | 8.5 minute read
Photo by Denys Argyriou
There’s a trend going around on social media, a trend I find quite dangerous in its lack of nuance. It’s been going around for some years now, every now and then flaring up into discourse with people all shouting the same (uninformed) thing at once. So, I thought I’d write a post about it to share whenever this conversation inevitably comes up again.
What is the topic? Shadow work—namely, the claims that to be a ‘true’ witch (whatever the hell that is, but that’s a topic for another day), one must do shadow work. As just one example, this particular blog that says we need to do it to ‘be better’.
Firstly, what we nowadays call witchcraft (essentially used as a catch-all for magic in many spheres, even if this is inaccurate) has been around for millennia. As I’ll show momentarily, the history of shadow work is much, much shorter than that. Do people really think that our magic-practicing ancestors were doing deep introspective work before casting spells, whether that was for better crops or, more nefariously, to compel someone to love them? If the latter is anything to go by—and there are many examples of this in the Greek Magical Papyri—then they weren’t. Does that mean that their magic was less valid? That is a rhetorical question, of course, so I need not answer it.
This means that the notion that witches need to do shadow work does not hold up historically. However, that’s not, on its own, a reason to not do it in general: there are plenty of neopagan faiths, like Wicca, that have been created quite recently in the grand scheme of things, but are still valid practices that bring people a lot of spiritual and mental fulfilment.
Instead, I am going to argue from a trauma-informed psychological perspective about why not everyone can actually do shadow work for their own safety—at least not on their own or at this moment in time.
What Is The Shadow?
The concept of the shadow comes from the work of Carl Jung, a Swiss psychiatrist who founded the field of analytical psychology. Born in 1875, he was initially inspired by the work of Sigmund Freud. However, he became disenchanted by him, and eventually they parted ways in 1913. It should be noted here that Jung has also been extensively criticised for his misogyny, his racism, and his anti-Semitism during the Second World War, as well as that the work on archetypes that made him famous could be considered Eurocentric1.
However, this does not stop his work from being highly influential. In analytic psychology, there is an emphasis on these aforementioned archetypes as well as more of a depathologisation of the client’s experiences than in Freudian psychoanalysis. In the theory behind this type of therapy, the Self (capitalised purposefully here) is the totality of body and mind, never fully accessible, but acting as a guide for the process of the therapeutic relationship. The end goal is something called ‘individuation’, an ever-growing process of self-discovery that helps to bring together the conscious and unconscious mind, stopping the person from disavowing parts of themselves that they have repressed through hatred, such as the shadow.
So what is the shadow self2? As Connie Zweig and Jeremiah Abrams write in the introduction to Meeting the Shadow: The Hidden Power of the Dark Side of Human Nature:
“It is that part of the unconscious that is complementary to the ego and represents those characteristics that the conscious personality does not wish to acknowledge and therefore neglects, forgets, and buries, only to discover them in uncomfortable confrontations with others”
The shadow, as they describe, lurks beneath the surface of consciousness as the holder of all the traits, emotions, and thoughts that we have disavowed and repressed. This process begins in childhood, where we learn what is acceptable and what is not from first our parents and then from wider society. Like sponges, we soak up these messages and our personality develops based upon them. It is through this process of socialisation that the shadow forms: we push down and out that which we are told is negative or ‘wrong’3. It becomes a personality of its own, eventually fully formed, but it exists outside of our conscious reach without specific work to bring it into awareness, which I will come to shortly.
The problem, however, is this: that which is suppressed in such a way does not stay down, and that by not knowing our shadows, we do not know ourselves in full. If we look closely at our everyday experiences, we can begin to find the shadow self surfacing in a variety of places. As William A. Miller writes in his essay ‘Finding the Shadow in Daily Life’ within the same volume quoted before:
“There are at least five effective pathways for traveling inward to gain insight into the composition of our shadow: (1) soliciting feedback from others as to how they perceive us; (2) uncovering the content of our projections; (3) examining our “slips” of tongue and behavior, and investigating what is really occurring when we are perceived other than we intended to be perceived; (4) considering our humor and our identifications; and (5) studying our dreams, daydreams, and fantasies.”
Most of us are unaware of our shadows by their very unconscious nature, but these are the areas in which they become most apparent to us if we know where to look. For those looking to recognise their shadow self to better reach a state of individuation (or, more appropriately, to start the process of individuation, as it is never fully complete), we can begin to find it in our projections, our fantasies, and even our senses of humour.
What Is Shadow Work?
As far as I can tell, the term shadow work was coined by Connie Zweig and Jeremiah Abrams in Meeting the Shadow. It is now a term that floats around quite widely within New Age, spiritual, and witchcraft communities. Many people will opine on how we all need to do it. But it is rarely explained what this actually means.
Shadow work is essentially a form of therapy. While Zweig and Abrams say that this should preferably be undertaken with a therapist or guide, many are now turning to journal prompts, Tarot spreads, and guided meditations to do the work on their own. As Zweig and Abram write, shadow work is:
“the conscious and intentional process of admitting to that which we have chosen to ignore or repress. Therapy requires us to take up what we have rejected previously in the service of our ego-ideal, and to establish a new personal order that accounts for our destructive side.”
Shadow work, then, is the process we go through to meet with the shadow self, uncover its hidden depths, and begin to assimilate it into the conscious mind in order to stop ourselves from being ruled by it in secret.
As already stated, those who discuss shadow work online tend to mean a self-directed process. Promoters of this form of self-therapy argue that the benefits of shadow work are magnificent, helping them feel more whole and healed. As the author of The Shadow Work Workbook: A Life-Changing Guide to Integrate Your Shadow Self, Release Emotional Blocks and Heal Your Inner Child, Rachel Porter, writes:
“You will be richly rewarded if you dare to face your shadow self. Exploring your shadow self leads to authenticity, personal awakening, and greater creativity. However, among the greatest rewards are a sense of inner peace and wisdom. This kind of growth will not only transform you, but it will lead to a more meaningful life.”
However, there is a cost to this self-fulfilment. Facing the shadow inevitably means facing the parts of ourselves that we do not like. They were repressed into an unconscious personality for a reason. These are the parts of us that we would find the most disgusting, the most difficult to confront, and the most triggering. Zweig and Abrams write about thesShadow that “[w]e cannot look directly into this hidden domain. The shadow by nature is difficult to apprehend. It is dangerous, disorderly, and forever in hiding, as if the light of consciousness would steal its very life”.
This is a naturally harrowing process, as one can imagine. Bringing the shadow to light brings forth a lot of emotional pain, memories that the brain wished to forget, and reckonings with ourselves that we’d rather not have. Porter writes:
“one cannot do shadow work without the willingness to experience emotional pain, which is why we have a shadow aspect. Some things are too painful to deal with, so we suppress them… It is for this reason that doing shadow work can be painful. We are uncovering our hidden pains…”
This hopefully gives an idea on how deeply difficult shadow work can be. It can dig up all kinds of buried feelings and even long-forgotten traumas (or those that were ‘rationalised’ away). It is in this that we find the problem I wish to address.
When You Shouldn’t Do Shadow Work
While Jungian analytic psychotherapy has, in recent years, been studied more and is proven to be clinically effective in an average of 90 sessions4, this is therapy that 1) moves beyond ‘just’ shadow work and 2) is done with a trained psychotherapist. Shadow work, however, is hardly ever recommended to be done with a therapist: instead, seekers of their shadow self are encouraged to carry out tasks on their own5.
However, the problem lies in the aforementioned psychological difficulties that shadow work can cause. If it is deeply upsetting at times for people without trauma and/or significant mental illness, what would the effect be for those with such experiences? In a word: disastrous.
As a blogger writes for Columbus Art Therapy, “[y]ou could open Pandora’s box, need more support, and make your condition worse. Absolutely. Especially when there are aspects in there that you weren’t aware of”. Furthermore, they write:
You don’t realize how traumatic [your childhood] actually was and how much influence it’s having on your life now, so if you’re not ready for that, it can be not just an existential crisis but, you know, the concept of having a nervous breakdown over it.
So, it’s not the kind of thing that should be done outside of a therapeutic context.
And again, a blog post for Taproot Therapy says shadow work should be avoided by those with complex trauma, experiences of dissociation, and without a concrete safety system around them—preferably one including a therapist.
Now, I’m not usually one to prop up the medical industrial complex without criticisms—of which there are many that are very valid—but I think the emphasis of having a therapist to oversee a shadow work process is very important. If these tasks truly do dig deep into the unconscious psyche, they need some form of supervision, a safe space to discuss these experiences with someone trained to help you process whatever they reveal (and not just someone branding themselves a ‘coach’ of some kind without any training). I say this explicitly for people who are in a psychological position to do this work.
For those of us with complex trauma and/or a history of dissociation (or even psychosis, OCD, and other serious mental health conditions)? It’s not advisable, and I think there is a real problem with this being pushed as something ‘every witch must do’. When serious harm can occur to someone, to push the narrative that you can only be a ‘proper’ witch if you do this is reckless at best.
It’s perfectly fine that some people can’t do shadow work—at least until they’re in the position to be gently guided through it. What isn’t fine is people putting pressure of newbie witches to undergo a process that could potentially damage them.
We owe our community more than that, and trying to force people through a process you found helpful (although if you’re trying to use peer pressure on others to do it, I question how ‘healed’ you actually are) when it could seriously endanger their wellbeing is not being in right relationship with one another.
I opened with an example from a witch telling us we need to do shadow work to ‘be better’. I’d argue that we need to stop pushing this particular narrative. That is what will make you and the community you’re in better.
Footnotes
- This doesn’t mean we should abandon Jung’s work by any means: it has certainly helped many people, and he isn’t alive any longer to profit off his work or acclaim in a way that harms different communities (unlike an author who should not be named). However, it is important to share these facts so we can come to a more rounded perspective on Jung and his work, and to understand why some might reject him on this basis.
- The small S is purposeful here: the Self, as I just discussed, is a concept in Jung’s analytic psychology that means something very specific, but the shadow is frequently referred to as a small-s self in the way we would consider our conscious personalities to be a ‘self’, too. A bit confusing, but nevertheless, that’s how the language is used.
- This even happens to traits that most would consider positive but are still reinforced to the child as unacceptable. For instance, some families encourage traditional academic skills in maths and English, and denigrate creative talents like painting. In this instance, a child may suppress their innate creativity in order to better conform to their parents’ wishes.
- Which is apparently cost-effective compared to other therapies, leading me to question even more than usual why, in the UK, we’re given 6 or maybe 12 sessions of CBT unless we’re extremely lucky!
- I’ll say here that I could not find any empirical evidence of shadow work’s effectiveness. This may be because it is relatively new and more within the region of ‘self help’ than more traditional forms of therapy. Lacking empirical evidence doesn’t negate what anecdotal evidence says, however: many people claim to feel better and have a greater sense of wellbeing from doing shadow work, and I do not mean to piss on anyone’s parade when I talk about the lack of evidence within science. It just shows we need further, more intensive, research of shadow work as a form of (self-)therapy.
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