The Psychology of your 20s - 449. The psychology of your shadow self

Episode Date: August 23, 2026

What is the shadow self? And how do we meet ours? In today's episode we explore what it means to get curious about the shadow parts of ourselves. We take a grounded look at shadow work - where the idea came from, the layers of our psyche, and how the repressed parts of ourselves show up.  We explore:•        What Jung meant by the shadow and the persona•        How the dark or disowned parts of ourselves can develop•        Why anger, neediness, ambition, or confidence can feel uncomfortable to acknowledge•        The role of projection, triggers and repeated patterns•        How to approach shadow work cautiously and with curiosity Watch on Netflix: HERE Follow Jemma on Instagram: @jemmasbeg Follow the podcast on Instagram: @thatpsychologypodcast Subscribe on Substack: @thepsychologyofyour20s For business: [e-mail]  Our favourite sources: The book I spoke about: HERE The YouTube video: HERE  The Psychology of your 20s is not a substitute for professional mental health help. If you are struggling, distressed or require personalised advice, please reach out to your doctor or a licensed psychologist.   See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is an I-Heart podcast. Guaranteed Human. Behind every night spent making the kids' lunches, there's a lot of suspense. Will they finally eat the veggies? Will the pastos survive the first bite? Will the lunchbox come home empty, half full, or come home at all?

And will you finish episode 8 before you're done slicing the cucumbers? Get Bell Pure Fiber Internet with Craved Netflix and Disney Plus from $94 a month. Price guaranteed for two years on Internet with a two-year term and auto pay credit. Visit bell.za for details and to check availability. Bell, connection is everything. I survived nine months in captivity, and I've spent my life exploring how other people survive what should have destroyed them. I'm Elizabeth Smart, and these are the survivor files.

Every week, I'm with survivors who live through the unthinkable, abducted, stalked, controlled, and nearly silenced. These are stories about what it takes to make it out alive. Listen to The Survivor Files with Elizabeth Smart on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. If your bookshelf and your For You page are equally important to your personality, welcome home. Pro Society is a weekly podcast that's part book club, part group chat for anyone who thinks Pride and Prejudice and Love Island deserve the same level of discourse. Each week, we're connecting the dots between books, the internet, and pop culture with your favorite writers, book talk creators, and plenty of overthought. opinions. Yeah, I'm obsessed.

I'm obsessed. Listen to pro society on the Iheart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Hoda Kotbby, host of the podcast, Joy 101 with Hoda Kotby. You know, I'm always searching for inspiration and useful tools to maximize joy. Like when my friend Henry Winkler offered advice to aspiring actors and really anybody hoping to stand out. You're not hired just to fill time and space.

You're hired to fill the space. with you. Listen to Joy 101 with Hoda Kotby on the I Heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. On the new podcast Solita, we share the messy reality of traveling alone as a woman. I can wait four hours for the next bus or this random dude is offering me a ride on his motorcycle. I chose option B. I'm Julie Pinero and I travel by myself because it's a rare space where I can say yes without asking anyone else first. I'm on a mission to reclaim the word Solita, trading the pity for possibility. Listen to Solita on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hello everybody, I'm Gemma Spike, and welcome back to the psychology of your 20s, the podcast where we talk through the biggest changes, moments and transitions of our 20s, and what they mean for our psychology.

Hello everybody, welcome back to the show. Welcome back to the podcast. Thank you for joining me. Wherever you are in the world, it is very great to have you here. Today, I have another bonus episode for you. If you are new to this corner of the podcast in our bonus episodes, we basically fact check and myth bust psychology concepts that you may have heard kind of swirling around the internet a little bit. And we basically provide you with the real research, the real history, and the real history and the real science behind what they mean. We've done personality tests, we've done Stockholm syndrome, narcissism, Maslow's hierarchy of needs, so many things. But today we are turning our sights and our attention to shadow work. Shadow work is a practice that is focused on what we call

the shadow self or just the shadow and how this part of us influences our behavior unconsciously. If you have ever done any kind of psychotherapy or psychoanalysis, you're probably very familiar with this concept or idea. But it's become exceedingly popular in recent years as people have kind of been searching for deeper ways of meeting and knowing themselves. This approach is definitely an interesting one because it kind of promises a good deal of epiphanies and it really promises the possibility of suddenly uncovering some really deep truths about why you are the way you are and, you know, who you are. And, you know, for a lot of us,

that's comforting that there's this thing out there that can suddenly reveal why we self-sabotage, why we act in the way that we do. But I think you also should be prepared to find out some stuff you might not want to know about who you are. So let's break down just what shadow work really entails from the most basic principles to some of the more advanced practices. So I think the first thing you should know is what the shadow actually is. I gave a brief explanation, but the shadow essentially represents the aspects of yourself that you don't like and that you don't want to be associated with and therefore find it very difficult to acknowledge and recognize. The first thing you should know about shadow work is who created it. That's a great

place to start. The idea came from Carl Jung, who we have been mentioning a lot recently. So if you're a frequent listener, I'm sorry, but also I don't know how much to revisit for the basics, but simply, Carl Jung was a Swiss psychiatrist. He was a psychoanalyst, and he developed analytical psychology, which is the school of psychological thought, which is very much focused on the unconscious mind. and the realization of our true self through a lifelong process that he called individuation. Now, Jung's approach was very deep, it was very inward focused, it was very much concerned with symbols and dreams, and he had a lot of similarities to Freud. I say similarities, he actually originally trained under Sigmund Freud, the grandfather of

modern psychology, and you'll know that if you listen to our Freud episode. and at the time he was kind of considered his successor. You know, the baton was going to be passed from Jung, oh, sorry, from Freud to Jung. But they eventually parted ways professionally and personally they had these series of major disagreements. They had beef, as we would say in the modern day. Beef is probably an understatement.

The way they expressed these disagreements was that they would write these like research papers and these articles and acting magazines and journals back and forth and back and forth obviously about the other one, about the other person. And the reason for this disagreement was that Freud was also focused on the unconscious mind, but he was very much focused on sexual and aggressive impulses. And he saw the unconscious largely as this place where there was repressed material from early childhood that we had to to dig at. And Jung kind of agreed in some ways. He said the unconscious mind was important. There were definitely things there that we couldn't access. But he thought that the

idea that a lot of those impulses were sexual or aggressive was too narrow. You know, he really wanted to expand this idea and he wanted to talk about symbols and religion and myths and dreams and what he called the collective unconscious. The collective unconscious was this. idea that beyond our own individual unconscious, there is a deeper level, a deeper layer of shared psychological patterns that all humans inherit. And these patterns show up across cultures, across time, across history, and he labeled them as the archetypes. So the archetypes, this is the first critical thing you need to understand if you want to get into shadow work, are these instinctual patterns that are common amongst.

every single culture, every single human across history. He basically believed that we all have this built-in psychological software or psychological patterns that shape the human mind and shape the human experience. For example, every single human has the self, which brings all of our personality together. Every single human has a shadow, which we're talking about today. They have a persona, which is what they kind of use to cover up the parts of themselves that they don't like. And then there's something called the anima and the animus, which we're going to reserve for a whole separate episode. Now, those are the four components of like the unconscious mind,

basically not the unconscious mind, but our architecture as humans, as feeling humans. And then there are these additional aspects which are called the archetypes. And this is how each of these different parts, is channeled. So the archetypes are the templates or patterns that shape how we experience certain roles or themes in our lives. So the common ones that you might hear people talk about include the caregiver, the hero, the jester, the lover, the ruler, the rebel. This is actually where personality tests like Maya Briggs come from. If you've ever done a personality test

and it's given you a, you know, four-letter acronym that is meant to describe everything about who you are, know that this came from Jung and his work with archetypes and the shadows. So you've encountered the theory before. But each of these archetypes, and I gave you a couple, you know, the hero, the jester, etc., they each seek something different and they have a different role in society and for us personally. Their role is either to provide structure, to connect to others to leave a mark or to provide wisdom. Within that, each archetype then seeks something and embodies this role as a way to obtain the thing it seeks. So for example, the ruler archetype creates order in society and what they really deep down want as a ruler is control. They really need control

to feel psychologically safe. The outlaw is another archetype and they really need liberation. So they seek liberation through everything that they do. The every man seeks belonging. The artist seeks innovation. We typically lean towards one and we see these archetypes in nearly every society and they play out again and again and again. However, we can shift between them. We lean towards one, but we shift between them. So if you have what Jung would call like a healthy, mature personality, you could be and you could embody the ruler when you were leading a project, but you could also embody the caregiver when you are comforting a friend. You could embody the explorer when you are travelling. Now, each of these archetypes has kind of a light expression, which is like the general

way that they present. But there is also a shadow expression that develops when the role becomes over-identified with and when we become obsessed with what our archetype seeks. And it's then the role of the persona to kind of cover up how it goes about seeking them in these kind of darker parts of ourselves. So the caregiver, for example, in its lighter form, is about compassion and support and generosity and looking after others. But when it becomes ego driven, it can turn into overgiving, people pleasing, codependency, needing to be needed in order to feel worthy. The shadow side then takes a step further and can involve resentment, using care as a way to gain approval or power,

needing control through caring for others. And that shadow side is the stuff that we don't want to acknowledge when we speak about ourselves as a caring person. We don't want to acknowledge, and we rarely will acknowledge how that behavior and that desire can sometimes become ugly. I'll give you another example. The hero archetype is another one that you might. hear about a lot.

In its outward facing form, it's about courage, it's about growth and facing challenges. But when this becomes ego-driven, it can turn into needing to prove ourselves, constantly pushing, seeing everything as a battle that we have to win. And the shadow side of that shows up as arrogance, hyper-competitiveness, maybe hurting others or an inability to ask for help. The final one I should talk about, I'm going to give one more example. I feel like examples are the best way to make this known is the jester. Now the jester brings humour and lightness and connection,

but when it becomes a rigidly fixed identity, it can turn into deflecting everything with jokes, avoiding vulnerability, needing to be liked at all times. And then the shadow side of this might include deep insecurity, using humor aggressively, deep, deep loneliness that we don't want to look at. These behaviors where we try and cover up this deeper side of us are the persona.

The persona acts as a psychological protective mask that kind of covers up this raw, unfiltered, often maybe socially unacceptable part of us, which lives in the shadow. Our persona is what reflects what we think and we or we know we ought to be doing. It reflects our societal expectations and norms. and who we kind of wish we could be that we know we are not. So those are the components of the shadow. And really at the end of the day, the shadow is like,

is the kind of stuff you keep in the basement. And it's important to know that doesn't necessarily mean all these things are horrible and evil and awful. It's, I don't know, it's just the parts of yourself that you don't want to see, including parts that could actually be quite great. we all have this we all you meet your mom your dad your sister your brother your cousin we have a shadow and it's we've shoved away parts of ourselves that we don't think will be accepted and that we aren't

willing to accept there's also something that we should mention which is the collective shadow this is like the dark side of society this is the stuff that opposes our shared values that we don't want to acknowledge exists but does it is revenge it is violence it is the need for power it is deep suffering and atrocities. We wish society wasn't like this. We have some deep hope that maybe society will one day not be like this, but we also know that this is just part of human behavior, where there is light, there is also darkness, where there is good in humanity, there is also bad, and that is the shadow. That is the evil of society that we don't want to look at either. So that's the critical kind of core stuff you should know. Returning to the personal shadow,

how does it develop and how can it or how can they present? So it's important to think about your childhood self here and think, or just think about a child in general. Children, we have this wide range of emotions and needs and impulses and behaviors. And when we're young, we experience these in like the rawest, most purest form. You know, when you're angry, you're angry. When you're jealous, when you're tired, you're tired. we want control, we want attention, we want love. As we grow up, we learn that this isn't

entirely acceptable and that it won't necessarily make people like us. So we suppress organic reactions in favor of belonging and acceptance. Now over time, we split ourselves into the part of us that keeps us safe and accepted by the group and attached to society. And the other part of us that is ugly and would rather remain unseen. And there's what we see is our, or what we know is our true self. It's probably not, but we feel like this awful evil part of us that nobody should ever see is our true self, so we should keep it out of sight and out of mind. The thing is, is that just because we try to disown these parts of ourselves does not mean they cease to exist. That is a tale as old as time. Those parts of yourself that you don't like, the just

jealousy, the anger, the selfishness, like they're still there. It's like energy in a way. It can't be destroyed. It can only be converted. And this part of ourself converts in unexpected ways. One of the main ways these impulses and our true personality can be converted or seep out is through something called projection. This is where we notice, we judge or we overact to something in someone else because of how it touches something unresolved in us. For example, we might see somebody posting a lot on Instagram and they look really hot and they're showing off the house they just bought and they're their accomplishments and they've achieved a lot. And our instinctual reaction is to kind of roll our eyes and to criticize them and to find something

that is wrong with that picture and a reason why they are evil, awful and don't deserve it. Now, is this an issue with them or with us? Does their behavior actually impact us? No. But their confidence indirectly impacts us because we've internalized societal messages to do with humility and not showing off. And their confidence, their outwardness, feels unbearable to witness because it requires us to acknowledge that we would never feel comfortable enough doing that ourselves and that we are maybe missing out. Another example is becoming very irritated by someone who was very needy or sensitive. Yes, maybe it is annoying.

And maybe you don't want to look further into it. But shadow work would maybe take that sense of annoyance you have about something that doesn't really impact you and interrogate it and expand on it and say, well, you know, you've spent years and years denying your own needs and your own sensitivity that you think is shameful. So when you see it in somebody else, you see the alternative that you didn't have to suffer, that you didn't have to suppress, and you realize the burden that you've carried, and the only way to not feel terrible about the fact that you've carried that burden for so long is to dismiss that behavior in somebody else. Sometimes the size of our reaction to somebody else's actions and emotions and life is the greatest indicator that we've suppressed such a feeling in ourselves,

and we cannot come to terms with that. Another way our shadow self presents beyond our reactions to the behaviors of others is through repeated patterns of behavior that continuously lead to outcomes that we are not happy with. And yet, despite that, the behavior cannot be broken, it cannot be avoided. We keep doing it despite all of our best attempts. Cheating, lying, letting ourselves down are some big examples, but it can also be more subtle. A particularly familiar example of this is constantly choosing emotionally unavailable people

or people who are sincerely bad for you and not knowing why. And I say choosing because it often actually doesn't even feel like a choice. It just happens. It just always ends the same way. And you just for the life of you, you look around and you're like, how did I get here? I promised I wasn't going to do this again. I can't figure out why I always find myself in these situations.

shadow work would see that pattern and know there is a hidden experience at at play. There is a deep belief perhaps that, you know, I'm not the kind of person who can ask for more or who deserves more than this because asking them to love me as I am is already too much. You know, there's a part of us that thinks that asking for anything more than the bad would be greedy and people who are greedy are bad people. people who are like me should just take what they can get. Or perhaps, you know, if I choose emotionally unavailable people, this type of love, you know, is the kind of love I can understand.

And so if they leave me, it won't hurt as much because I knew they won't ever fully in it. It won't be as unexpected as an emotionally available person leaving me. And therefore, my ego can be protected. And the ugly parts of me that might come out during love will never have to come out. So these behaviours can exist in everything, literally everything, something, like anything. Anything that you continue to do that you're like, I don't like that I'm doing this and yet I can't stop. Anything that you like secretly just like without any warning, like hate and other people

is a big, big sign that the shadow is at play. The shadow is secretive. You know, the persona we can identify. We can kind of see the thing that's trying to cover everything else up. But the thing that's pulling the strings behind it requires a lot more effort to see. And it requires stepping beyond the ego and beyond the conscious mind. And particularly the self-conscious mind so that we can look into the danger zone and so that we can actually know ourselves. By coming to terms of the parts of ourselves we would rather not know.

Now, you may be asking yourself, you know, Gemma, if our shadow, and our shadow self survives by being imperceivable, how do we perceive what doesn't want to be perceived? How can we see the shadow if the shadow doesn't want to be found? Well, we've known to this already, but the shadow self leaves clues. And we're going to talk about them after the short break. Behind every night spent making the kids lunches,

there's a lot of suspense. Will they finally eat the veggies? Will the pesto survive the first bite? Will the lunchbox come home empty, half full, or come home at all? And will you finish episode 8 before you're done slicing the cucumbers? Get Bell Pure Fiber Internet with craved Netflix and Disney Plus from $94 a month. Price guaranteed for two years on internet with a two-year term and auto pay credit. Visit bell.orgia for details and to check availability.

Bell, connection is everything. When I was 14 years old, I was kidnapped and held captive for nine months. I survived, and I've spent my life exploring how other people survive what should have destroyed them. I'm Elizabeth Smart, and these are the Survivor Files. I just remember this low, taunting voice next to my ear saying, shut up, don't say anything. Every week, I'm with survivors who live through the unthinkable. I knew if he woke up, without a doubt, he was going to hurt me. I started feeling that there was something.

someone at the end of my bed and I just started screaming. They are abducted, stalked, controlled and nearly silenced. But these aren't stories about what's taken from them. There's stories about what it takes to make it out alive. Listen to the Survivor Files with Elizabeth Smart on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. If your bookshelf and your For You page are equally important to your personality, welcome home. This is Prose Society, the weekly podcast that's part book club, part group chat for thought daughters,

pop culture obsessives, and anyone who thinks Pride and Prejudice and Love Island deserve the same level of discourse. I'm Eli Rallo and every week we're connecting the dots between books, the internet, and the conversations everyone can't stop having. I'm going to have to look up this story. I'm obsessed. I'm obsessed. From bestselling authors and your favorite book talk creators to the latest pop culture moments, nothing is off the table. It's like if you can hide some real messages inside compelling characters, then that is the Trojan horse. Whether you're looking for literary deep dives, smart pop culture conversations,

or a community of readers who love to think a little too much, you're in the right place. Listen to Pro Society on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. See you between the pages. Hey, this is Hayes Davenport. And Sean Clements. We host the podcast Hollywood Handbook on the Big. money players network. Our show is extremely accessible to first-time listeners. Each week we talk to someone in show business, aka the biz, and try to help them with their careers and see what

they have to offer us. Everyone has a good time and no one gets mad at their publicists for letting them do our show. We've had a lot of great guests like Sarah Sherman. Not that great. Actually, can you help me shape this? How about we flip it on his head, right? How about we flip this script? Okay. What is the surprise woman? Actually, you think. is the straight man is actually the one who's acting weird. Adam Scott, ugh. This entire time you've been expecting Adam Sandler to come to visit the show. I would never expect, I would never set expectations for something like that to happen.

It seems like you did. If the universe allows for something like that to happen, I'm open to it. I'm always going to accept. You know, Danny McBride, fine. Yeah, it's all this fragile masculinity exuding. I could smell it walking down the hallway, to be honest with you. I was like, is that weed? Nope. It's fragile masculinity. Ben Stiller, no. Because a lot of times out of context, people don't get it or even know what a circle is. You know what I mean? Like, you're like, oh, what's a state. Everyone's so dumb. And fake. Right. Fake and also not interested. Or just like, oh, I've got my life. I don't care about your life. And a lot of other big shots that wouldn't be where they are

without us. Oh, and by the way, Will Ferrell told us personally he loves the show and he wants to be a guest on every episode, but he's just so busy. Listen to Hollywood Handbook on the IHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. On the new podcast Solita, we share the messy reality of traveling alone as a woman. I can wait four hours for the next bus or this random dude is offering me a ride on his motorcycle. I chose option B. I'm Julie Pinero, and I travel by myself because it's a rare space. where I can say yes without asking anyone else first. I'm on a mission to reclaim the word solita, trading the pity for possibility. Every time I tried to be alone, I kept meeting people, and they were like, you smiled at us.

Not a lot of people smile around here. It's when you're alone that you're most receptive to the world as it is and not the lies you're sold about it. It can be a time where you push your limits, change your mind, or wake up to a new version of yourself. So whether you're a solo travel veteran or you're too nervous to book your first trip, I hope you listen to Solita on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Shadow Work is freaking hard work.

Because what Shadow Work asks you to do is to notice irrational reactions, repeated patterns, anger, disappointment, resentment that seems to have no origin. It asks you to notice limiting and cruel beliefs, desires that become jealousy. It asks you to identify ways you keep self-sabotaging. And then it says, look at these parts of you that you wish you weren't and go backwards. Work backwards from here. Deconstruct the persona until you find what is underneath the mask. It basically puts us on this line of questioning which says, if I now know this part of me exists, it must exist for a reason, and often that reason is

protection. What is my worst fear here? And when and why did I learn to be so afraid of it? And why am I so certain that it will happen? And therefore, why do I construct all these things around it to keep that locked away and to prevent it from ever occurring by acting out in ways, doing things that I don't necessarily want to do. Like we said, a lot of our encounters with the shadow do come from projection. Basically, you see something in someone else that you don't like. That says something about you. But it's so much easier to see the perceived flaws of others than ourselves. And so that strange hatred, that strange jealousy or fear or whatever it is, is pointing towards the shadow. Jung also believe that your dreams are a very important place to encounter the shadow. To him,

he did a lot of work on himself with this, but to him and to us, I think we know it. One of the only times, some of the only times that we are relaxed enough to encounter the things that we are suppressing or hiding is when we are literally asleep and our conscious brain can't come in and say, nope, don't think about that one. To him, a dream was never a dream. Ever. Ever. It was a sign. from your deep subconscious that required interrogation. In our dreams, you know, the shadow is often the same gender as the dreaming ego. And things happen that reveal what we secretly want and what we secretly don't like about ourselves.

So as I said, these moments are called encountering the shadow. Once we've encountered the shadow and we've kind of brushed up against these parts that we really are like, oh, I don't know if I like that. and myself. Only then can we actually begin to do something about it and can we begin to assimilate the shadow, assimilate the shadow, which is to say incorporate the shadow into our conscious awareness to create better fundamental self-awareness, thereby kind of providing a way for us to know ourselves even deeper. Now, in the words of Jung, the interrogation of the shadow or the realization of the personal unconscious and how it endeavors to influence us is like the task

of a lifetime. It's ugly work, it's brutal work, it's messy work, it is absolutely essential. In his words, he basically said, the privilege of a lifetime is to become who you truly are. And only when you acknowledge the worst parts of yourself and the worst parts of humanity, can you say that you have done that? Can you say that you know who you are? The thing is, despite the shadow being seen as this reservoir of darkness and all the things we wish nobody knew, the shadow is also the seat of our creativity. And it's the seat of our ability to relate to the world and to relate to the best, but also the worst in others. Our shadow, also, finally enough, contains our potential. I don't think, I haven't mentioned this yet, but it's such a critical part of this.

there is this amazing article that was published by the Society of Analytical Psychology, and it talks about how the shadow contains all sorts of qualities, capacities and potential, which if not recognized and taken ownership over will mean that you maintain essentially a state of impoverishment within your personality. And you deprive yourself of your destiny, of a source of energy, of a bridge to connection, dreams. For example, a person might believe that to be assertive is to be selfish or arrogant. So they go through life being pushed around by others and deep down, seething with resentment. That in turn makes them feel guilty and that is an ugly part of themselves they don't want to

talk about. They don't want to acknowledge that they have the capacity for these things, but therefore by not acknowledging that, they aren't able to use that to their advantage. The shadow needs to bring this stuff to the surface. It's also important to say this kind of of work can be really emotionally intense and painful. It often requires us to go back into childhood, to go back into our belief system and when we were taught that we weren't enough or that we couldn't do that, that part of us was ugly. And a lot of people talk about the pain of doing that as the whole point. The only way to confront these deep parts of yourself is to question the ego and question the persona and therefore, you know, challenge it, which is not going to like.

some people can engage with these kind of gentle, reflective practices and they find them helpful. I've never been that person. And I probably never will be. And I think what the shadow, like shadow work really does is it says, let's take a freaking knife to that. Let's, let's just ripple this up and just like really get down into the dirt and wrestle with who I am so that I can be better for myself and for others. So it sounds quite violent. I think it psychologically is. And that's why I don't think, and neither did Jung. You didn't think that shadow work was for everyone. And I think there are certain situations where it can get us further detached from our true selves if we become obsessive, obsessive with all these things that we're

doing because as much as it's important to interrogate our behavior, sometimes things are just random. Sometimes you just do things because that's just how you responded. And sometimes you just don't like people. Sometimes you just make mistakes. Sometimes you're unpleasant. It's just not any deeper than that. There is a difference between gently, as gently as you can, but attempting to meet a hidden part of yourself with no judgment, with the only goal to know yourself deeper, the good and the bad, and pursuing shadow work because you want to completely eradicate every single part, of you that is bad or awful or that is in your way. That is impossible. You, every single human, need these aspects of themselves. It is what balances us. It is who we are. It's what makes us

difference. It's part of our human psychology. So there does come a point where over-interrogating your beliefs and your ideas about yourself and your bad behavior and your hidden self is is harmful. And I think it's harmful when we feel like everything needs to be seen through that explanation or when we just use it as a further way to shame ourselves. And shame is how you get here in the first place. Shame is how you get to a place where your identity and your personality and your mind has split. So working with a psychotherapist, I was going to say a psychologist, but a psychotherapist

specifically is what can really help you to do this safely and in a constructive way. psychotherapy, psychoanalytic therapy is a whole set, a whole discipline of psychology that just attempts to sit with the unconscious mind and the shadow, and it is informed by the work of Jung and Freud, and guess what, it's not for everyone. It's not for everyone, but if it is for you, having somebody who's trained in this can support you and just holding your experience, looking at it, allowing you to examine it without needing to get into that state of preoccupation. and it means that you can actually discover who you are rather than feeling overwhelmed

by a painful, painful list of insights that you just don't know how to deal with. And again, I want to say this. Like, it's not for everyone. Shadow work is not meant to be this endless excavation of your deepest, darkest feelings, the excavation of them and the removal of them. It's not meant to become a hobby of suspecting yourself

or being suspicious of the deeper meaning behind your actions. The point is to acknowledge when your current patterns of feeling and behaving aren't working for you anymore and getting curious about how you can work through these with enough compassion that they don't control your life, but you acknowledge your capacity to have these parts of you. Rather than eliminating them, shadow work is about bringing them into conscious awareness with curiosity so that you can understand yourself better. and integration in this context means actually seeing these ugly sides of humanity and sides of you and not saying that's okay and not saying I completely approve of that but saying I get why I got there

and I get why I was ashamed of that and I get why society doesn't like this but also if I don't want this to influence my behavior in poor ways I have to be able to sit with this and acknowledge that this is just part of who I am and I think that's why a lot of people seek out shadow work because they are tired of repeating the same pattern of behavior and not understanding why they're doing it and their only way of counteracting it being shame and fear and suppression. They just want a more holistic understanding of their identity. But be prepared to find things that you don't want to find that have been buried, buried, buried, buried, buried, and it's not the treasure kind of buried. Or maybe it is, depending on how you see it.

but it's not going to be fun to be like, oh, this thing and the reason I'm not behaving the way that I want to, and the reason that all these things have happened in my life is because of this deep wound or this deep thing that I've suppressed. So be prepared for that. Also, be mindful not to start doing that same level of interrogation for other people and psychoanalizing everything they do or say just because you've gotten some basic idea of shadow work and psychoanalytical psychology. how other people's shadow is projected is actually quite frankly none of your business unless what they do activates your own shadow in which case that is of your concern but it is only what you have ownership over that you can be that i think you can pass judgment on or that you can you know psychoanalyze or explain so as we wrap up i want to recommend a few other

resources there's only so much we can do in a 30 minute episode i hope i've covered the basics for you. If you want to go further, the book meeting the shadow is so good. It will, when I read it, I would read like a passage and then I'd have to sit in silence for like five minutes. It took me a while to finish it. I read it a couple years ago. It's great, though. It's like the best guide other than Carl Jung's original works, obviously, on this topic. And they also have exercises in there as well. And then there is a video on the YouTube channel eternalized, which I used to love, love, love when I was in high school. And the video is called The Shadow Carl Jung's Warning to the World. That is just amazing. And he breaks down the personal

shadow. He also breaks down the collective shadow a little bit more. But what he really gets into is that this core idea, the journey of a lifetime is to know oneself. And you have to be able to sit with the ugly parts of oneself in order to do that and to understand why you don't have the life that you want and how to get there. So I'm going to leave some little descriptions, oh, leave the link, sorry, in the description to those below. I hope you've enjoyed this episode. I hope it's brought you some more knowledge.

Thank you to our research and Libby Corbett for her assistance with this episode. A reminder, you can follow us on Instagram at That Psychology Podcast. Make sure that you are following along or subscribe so that you get notified when new episodes are released and you have something to listen to on your Monday morning commute or on your Saturday, Sunday morning runs. What else do I need to say? All the usual stuff. All the usual stuff.

You can watch us on Netflix. But yeah, you can watch episodes, not like this one, but all of our other episodes on Netflix. This is a special bonus episode. So they're just for my audio only fans, but you can watch other episodes on Netflix. And you can just find everything else that we're up to in the description. But until next time, be safe, be kind, be gentle to yourself. Be kind and gentle to your shadow. We will talk very, very soon.

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