Is Shadow Work Evil? The Truth About It
You’ve likely heard the term shadow work and are now wondering, “is shadow work evil”? I admit when I first heard it, I didn’t get a good feeling in the pit of my stomach. I thought that anything to do with darkness was evil.
But now, after expanding my own consciousness and learning exactly what it is, I can say that it definitely isn’t evil. In fact, it’s quite the opposite.
Shadow work is a tool that you can use to help you in your life and when used properly it can change your life in a big way.
What Is Your Shadow?
Your shadow is the hidden aspects of yourself that you may consider “bad” or “negative”. There is nothing wrong or bad with your shadow. It is only the judgment that you place upon it that makes it feel that way.
Your shadow is the parts of you that you don’t want to look at. These were most likely formed in your childhood. Your shadow may not be anything “bad” but if someone told you they were, then you may have taken that on as your truth especially if you were young.
Everyone has a shadow because everyone has had experiences on earth. Some experiences are more profound than others and some stay with you longer because of how they made you feel. Your shadow is those experiences that made you feel ashamed, embarrassed, angry, guilty, or any of those lower emotions.
These experiences had a big impact on you and when you are young, you likely didn’t know what to do with them. So, they became a part of your shadow. They became the things that you didn’t want to look at and likely don’t know what to do with.
This is whereas an adult, shadow work comes in. You understand life much better and are ready to integrate and look at the things that shaped you and your beliefs when you were younger.
What Is Shadow Work?
Shadow work is basically looking at your shadow and feeling the feelings that are coming up for you. It is looking at all those things that you may have stuffed down in the past because they were too painful to look at or that you felt ashamed of. It is looking at the aspects that you consider “bad” or “negative”.
Shadow work is quite a brave thing to do because it is so uncomfortable. So, if you are reading this, good for you for doing the inner work! Many people will not look at their shadows for fear of what they will see. When you do shadow work, you bring the darkness into the light to be seen and healed.
Is Shadow Work Evil?
No, shadow work isn’t evil. Shadow work is bringing hidden aspects to the surface, to be transmuted into the light. I think it’s more evil to not do shadow work because when you keep denying a part of yourself and stuffing it down, it hurts you and others around you.
There is polarity on earth so there is light and dark. Integrating both the light and dark is bringing both parts of yourself together. It is no longer pushing away aspects of yourself because you think they are wrong or bad. It is accepting everything about yourself, no matter how painful they are to face.
When you do shadow work, you allow yourself to bring any fragments of yourself back to you. You allow yourself to fully love yourself and every part of you. It helps you to accept yourself fully.
This helps you in so many areas of your life. When you love every part of yourself (including the ‘dark’ parts), your life goes differently. You manifest faster because you aren’t resisting any part of yourself. Your relationships are better because you aren’t projecting your stuff onto someone else. Everything flows smoother.
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Why Is Shadow Work Considered “Dark”
Shadow work has been given a bad name of being “evil” or “dark” because it’s misunderstood. Some teachings go too far one way, especially with the law of attraction, and say that you should only focus on positive things. This puts you out of balance.
You need to focus on both polarities and integrate both of them, the light and the dark. Ignoring your emotions doesn’t help you in the long term. There is a difference between doing shadow work and living in your negative emotions. You don’t want to dwell on them, only look at them to release them. It’s about balance.
Shadow work is also feared because it’s uncomfortable. It’s not easy to integrate your shadow and feel uncomfortable emotions. However, just because it’s uncomfortable, it certainly doesn’t make it evil.
What Happens When You Suppress Your Shadow?
• Low Self-Esteem
Your self-esteem can drop when you ignore your shadow because you are essentially rejecting a part of yourself. The more you stuff down your emotions and not look at them, the more it signals that they are “wrong” or “bad.” Of course, they aren’t. But in turn, you begin to associate yourself with being “wrong” or “bad” which lowers your self-esteem.
• Projecting Onto Others
One of the most common ways that suppressing your shadow shows up is by projection onto others. When you hold stuff inside and don’t do the work to clear it, it can come out onto others. It may not even come out onto the person you have an issue with but some random stranger. The shadow comes out when it is too painful to keep being held inside.
• Victim Mentality
Another way that suppressing your shadow can show up is in a victim mentality. It can come through as “poor me”, “I have it worse than others” or in many different ways.
This is a distraction from the real issue. Your ego may look for ways to justify why it feels bad instead of doing the work of looking at its shadow. This is often because it can be very uncomfortable doing shadow work.
• Anxiety, Fear, and Depression
When you aren’t acknowledging your shadow, it can show up as anxiety, fear, or depression. If you have fear of doing shadow work, then that vibration shows up in other areas of your life and you may feel fearful of doing other things.
Or you may feel powerless (which is the same as depression) because you feel like your shadow is in control of your life and not you. Doing shadow work allows you to take your power back.
• Anger
When you stuff down emotions that want to come up and you don’t allow them, you can get angry. You have intense energy inside of you it wants to move. When it’s not allowed to, it aggravates it even more. It wants to be expressed!
So, if you are feeling anger, it’s worth it to look at your shadow and see what wants to come out. What needs to be looked at right now so that you can release this anger?
I found that journaling out your feelings is a really helpful and healthy way to release them. It is much better than stuffing them down and projecting them onto someone else. I’m speaking from personal experience of doing both.
• Feeling Stuck (No Forward Movement)
Not doing shadow work can hold you back because if there is something that needs to be looked at and cleared and until you do, you can’t move forward. Think of it like a roadblock. The roadblock will lift once you do the shadow work, but if you keep trying to push forward, you’ll be met with resistance.
One of the best ways to move forward is by journaling. I created My Discovery Journal to help you look at your shadow and other aspects that are keeping you stuck. Once you see them only then can you move forward. It’s hard to move forward if you don’t know why you are stuck in the first place.
Click HERE to get all the details of My Discovery Journal.
• Self-Sabotage
Another really important reason to do shadow work and not suppress it is that it can lead to self-sabotage. If you are holding a bunch of pain inside of you and not releasing it, you will self-sabotage (subconsciously) to create the same scenario that your shadow is holding within it. You see, you have that vibration within you, so it will play itself out in the outside world until you clear it.
Once you look at your shadow and release it, then you no longer carry that energy within you, and you won’t be playing it out in your physical world. You won’t be self-sabotaging your efforts because you’ve cleared the energy of it.
• Physical Pain
Your body and mind are connected and when you suppress your emotions, the energy moves around in your body and causes physical pain. Once again, it wants to be released and since it has no opening to leave out of, it will go wherever it can to get some relief.
I’ve experienced this more times than I can count. When I was holding something in, I had physical pain. When I released it, I had an almost instant relief from that pain. Of course, some things released easier than others.
Your pain is a messenger. It isn’t here to punish you, only to deliver information. It lets you know what is going on with you and your body never lies.
If you start to get physical pain, it’s a good idea to sit down and do some shadow work. Look at where the pain is coming from and how it makes you feel. Because how it makes you feel is an indication of what you are stuffing down.
For example, if your physical pain makes you feel stiff and inflexible, it’s worth it to ask your mind, “where in my life am I being inflexible?” Then take the steps to ease some of that tension.
Benefits of Doing Shadow Work
#1 Benefit of Doing Shadow Work – Deeper Connection to Yourself
Your shadow is you and when you do shadow work you get to know yourself better. It helps you to understand why you do things the way you do and what purpose it is serving you. It allows you to see things from a new perspective that you may not have been aware of until now.
#2 Benefit of Doing Shadow Work – Faster Manifesting
Shadow work helps you to manifest faster because it helps you to release resistance and stuck emotions. If you are resisting your heavy emotions, then you carry the vibration of “resistance” within your energy. Therefore, you’ll attract more things to resist.
If you are trying to manifest and nothing is happening, it might be time to do some shadow work to release resistance.
#3 Benefit of Doing Shadow Work – Less Anxiety and Stress
If you are holding shadow aspects within you that are filled with anxiety and stress and you don’t look at them, that energy stays within you. You’ll find that doing shadow work isn’t as scary or as uncomfortable as you thought and that the resistance of doing it is much worse than actually doing it. Clearing away that vibration from you leads to more peace and less stress in all aspects of your life.
#4 Benefit of Doing Shadow Work – Better Relationships
Shadow work helps you to see your patterns and why you do the things you do. Not in a way of judgment but in a way to help you. When you can know yourself at this level, it helps you to understand how you are in relationships. This in turn, affects how you act in relationships and can lead to better, more balanced relationships.
#5 Benefit of Doing Shadow Work – Emotional Healing
Doing shadow work leads to emotional healing. Everyone has wounds within them, and shadow work brings these wounds to the surface where they can be looked at and healed.
These wounds may be from long ago and it is easier to understand them when you are an adult than when you were a kid. You may be holding onto stuff from when you were a kid that confused you as to why it happened and now as an adult, you have a much broader perspective on it which helps you to release it.
How to Do Shadow Work
It’s important to not do shadow work when you are completely depressed, for example, if you are going through a dark night of the soul. You don’t want to spiral downwards from doing this work.
You want to be able to do this work at a time when you are ready and willing to feel uncomfortable things. It’s best to do this when you are level headed and not after a traumatic event or when you are in an extremely low energy.
I created a couple of blog posts to get you started doing shadow work today:
Powerful Shadow Work Journaling Prompts You Need to Try
How to Do Shadow Work for Beginners
Final Thoughts – Is Shadow Work Evil?
Your shadow isn’t evil, and neither is shadow work. Shadow work has tremendous benefits for you and for other people in your life. It can help you to heal and move forward with your life, and release any lower states of vibration that you find yourself in. It also helps you to manifest faster because you release resistance and clear out old energy.
~Meghan
