Shadow Work Guide | 5 Steps

by Amy Alward | Feb 11, 2023 | Self Care Toolbox

What is Shadow Work? 

Shadow work sounds mysterious. It isn’t. Get started on solid footing with this simple guide. 

It is pretty mundane stuff, because it is all about change and healing old wounds or patterns.  Shadow work means finding the pieces of yourself that you judged and rejected. We all have those bits, the personality quirks or desires that friends (or family, or teachers, or strangers) mocked or even criticized. Seen from their point of view, we realize our “errors” and suppress or reject ourselves. We carefully pack the “errors” and “failures” away out of sight, saying “that is not ME!” 

Shadow work means going to that box of wounds and rejection. It means carefully sorting through it. It is metaphysical Marie Condo! With discernment and clarity, we can review what’s in the box. 

Some things were never ours in the first place. We can let go of these. This kind of change is usually easy, and the full resolution of the wound can be profound. 

We will also find some dark spots. These twisted parts of our rejected identities can never go away. They ARE the authentic self. These rejected bits of self do need healing and revision. Sometimes you need to re-parent them into maturity, so that they can return to health. The key is, they first need you to unpack, embrace, and then gently return them to wholeness. They can and do transform magically, in the light and warmth of our own acceptance and unconditional love. 

How Can this Shadow Work Guide Help Me? 

See? Shadow work isn’t all that mysterious.

Hard work? Sure, it can be. It can be very deep work. 

Shadow work requires scrutiny of our faults and most rejected parts. Then we do the work to love and accept them anyway. For this reason, I’ve put this shadow work guide together–may it speed your path. 

Please note, part of this shadow work guide is laying the groundwork to be READY for shadow work. You may know you need to do this work, but healing may take time. Preparation, planning, and training should happen first. In addition, you will need to nourish and strengthen before getting started. You are climbing Everest, running a marathon, and having a baby all at once with this work. Go slowly and carefully. This stuff is a commitment, and the road is long. 

The dark in the box of “you”–the part of you that scared you so much you locked it up tight? That shadow self needs your compassion and love (not fear and anger). That takes preparation and practice with easier steps first. 

5-Step Shadow Work Guide

Shadow Work Guide Step One: Help is Here! 

The first step in the shadow work guide is knowing that you need to do shadow work. Most of our unenlightened behaviors are driven by a past trauma. They are sometimes learned from your parents, or they learned them from their parents. However, all the dysfunctional behaviors take root from trauma. It isn’t that you have a character flaw, you have a bad coping tool–and that can always be resolved and healed. 

I Recognize I Need to Heal 

The first step? See where you are going wrong (or even that you are going wrong) before you can change. Usually, this realization is the start of any shadow journey: knowing we need to change in order to heal. With shadow work, we heal and move on with more grace, more love, more compassion. This grace and compassion start inside us and then easily overflows to others as we transform. Huh. Maybe it is pretty magical after all. 

Side Note 

Please note that when I talk about “errors” in quotations, this is part of the shadow concept.  We often resolve dissonance within ourselves by telling ourselves convenient untruths and misperceptions. Bits of ourselves get rejected and we claim that they don’t belong to us. We think of them as “wrong”. This is an untruth. Anything that is yours, can be made whole and beautiful. It isn’t “wrong” as much as misapplied, overused, or revealing a trauma. 

When I talk about going wrong, I am talking about finding behavior in yourself that goes against your personal, authentic values. Making choices that clash with personal values will create unending heartache. This wound will become more obvious until you resolve the underlying dissonance. That transformation is the essence of shadow work. The feeling that we are not who we think, or that we are constantly sabotaging ourselves, is the flashing neon sign that there are misperceptions hiding in our psyches, asking for our love, attention, and healing. Our shadows sabotage us until we learn to transform and accept them. 

Discomfort and HOW to Start? 

When you know this is happening, the discomfort can be overwhelming. 

My first caution (step one) is to recognize that you are already on the path to resolving and transforming your shadows: you noticed them! This first step is to have faith in yourself that you will continue to work at this issue until it is resolved. You can and will change. It may be hard work. The journey may be long, but the destination to resolution will NOT be reached the day you realize you have work to do. You must do the work first. 

Know that it usually takes a team and multiple approaches to truly resolve the most traumatic issues. If you have determined to change and heal, that team is already on the way. There is a right place and right time to this sort of healing journey. Do shadow work at the right time in the right way. Be patient. Have faith in yourself. Plan your journey carefully–this is a marathon not a sprint. 

Shadow Work Guide Step 2: Seek Supports 

Keep your eyes out for the supports that are coming now that you’ve decided to meet your shadows face to face. I write this shadow work guide from my own experience with “the work”. My journey started with a tattoo artist who believed me when I said I needed a spiritual tattoo and it needed to happen TONIGHT! 

Deep Trouble Means Help is Here! 

I resorted to self-harm to cope and shut down when my shadows had driven me too far. It had been getting dangerous, and I realized I needed a new approach. The road ahead seemed so desperately long, but I learned, then promised myself to never punish my “errors” again. As the adult in my own life, I committed to love and parent my “errors” the way they had needed all along. I would love my failures and embrace them just as firmly as every success and triumph. 

I got a tattoo where I would see it all the time, to remind me that even the most broken, angry, frustrated, hurt, ill-tempered, impatient bits of ME were worthy of love–ALWAYS. And that the love they really craved? It was from me. Not from outside of me. 

That shadow journey goes on, Friends. I continue to unravel those bits of twisted personality and “errors”. They served me well as good coping mechanisms for trauma, but really don’t serve me well in a life authentically lived. 

Gather a Team 

There is no end to this journey–so have the right help and guides. None of us travels the road alone. Know that this year’s team may not be next year’s team.  For me, that night, the tattoo artist (who did the right kind of work and who was willing to support me in my journey) was an essential team mate. Later, the team was Zen teachers, Reiki teachers, shamanic practice teachers, and therapists. Yes, please have a medical and spiritual team! Go do some reading on Jung and Jungian theory If you really want to find out more about the shadows. 

Sometimes help comes from the random kindness of strangers, or out of the blue from people you only meet once. Pay attention when a book falls off the shelf and opens to the right page. Maybe you learn to meditate, or eat right, and need a nutritionist to help you. Help might come from a dance teacher or a driving instructor. There is no limit to the right team at the right time. Be open to needing help when you reparent the parts of you that were stunted and told they were “bad” (by YOU). 

Find the Strength or Bring More Power

Every human on earth had parents that could not parent them the way they needed. You probably learned some things about parenting yourself that are very wrong and need to be dismantled. You will need help to see those things and help to learn new ways. Others who have experience can help a lot when we try things that feel odd because they are new. 

Metaphysically, this may also mean getting a source of strength. 

As a shamanic practitioner, I can retrieve animal spirits to offer added strength to those on life journeys. In my Reiki practice, I often call on the help of Archangels and Ascended Masters (yes, Jesus is in my posse for those that just wondered, as is Buddha). Teaching meditation and metaphysics, I help you bring in a spiritual team of personal guides, teachers, guardian angels and work with them consciously.  The spiritual team to support you through your personal journey is ALWAYS present; they are already with you. You just don’t remember right now, as you sit here in your body. They are there. The tools you can use to strengthen your presence in your body simply wait for you. 

Look for your tools. Gather your support around you. Ask for help. Steer into the healing when opportunities arise. 

Shadow Work Guide Step 3:  Make Friends with YOU 

If you are on the journey outlined in this shadow work guide, there are parts of you locked away, rejected. Those parts get twisted when you reject them as “not ME”. You may even get to the point that those rejected bits of inner child start throwing tantrums in your regular life. 

Shadows and Addictions 

Many forms of addiction.

The result is we pick up addictive behaviors to keep them sedated with brain chemistry. I don’t just mean substance abuse, there are LOADS of things to use as a void filler. However, the void exists inside us. It happens when parts of our most precious, true self have been rejected and told they are not good enough to be part of the whole. They cannot go away any more than you could send your stomach or hand away. 

If you have read this far, you probably have some of these rejected bits of self. This means, you probably have an inner void you just can’t seem to fill. You could be the most successful, popular, wealthy, loved person on earth and still have a hole somewhere inside. The bit that is missing? It is YOU, my friend. The void calls to you, because only you can heal it. 

That void requires attention at some point. All addictions are rooted in soothing and coping. All addictions try to plug voids left by the creation of rejected shadows. They eventually spiral out of control until we become sick and tired of being sick and tired–and the effort to change feels less difficult than staying in the chaos of a tantrum-throwing shadow-identity. It is time to bring the shadow back into the fold. Now is the time to love yourself, befriend yourself, reparent yourself into wholeness. Sure, it takes a lifetime, but it starts with being willing to find out who you REALLY are. 

Trusting Yourself has to Come First 

You must have faith in yourself to walk this path. At some level, you must love yourself to do the work. You must trust your true self enough to want to work to become who you are (warts and all sometimes). If you are fractured and haunted by your shadows, you may have gone so far away from yourself that you don’t even know who you are right now. That makes doing the shadow work easy, meaning we start at the beginning: make friends with yourself, date yourself, and get to know you the way you would get to know an attractive stranger. 

Spend time alone with yourself in silence. Sit with yourself on good days AND on bad days, and everything in between. Take yourself on activities and observe your own strengths and weaknesses. Treat yourself with the same care you would give a small child: have patience with yourself when learning new things, recognize that exhaustion leads to tantrums, and learn to redirect positively as you parent yourself (instead of scolding or mentally beating yourself up). 

Making Friends with Yourself 

Offer yourself the love you crave from others. Create opportunities to show yourself kindness. Then also weather some trials and tribulations together–start small. 

I suggest something new so the stakes can be low and unrelated to what is already going on in your life. Take on a new task or goal with the understanding that the fear or challenge may bring out the worst parts of your shadows. Keep the rules simple: do something every day that is new (or a little scary) that will help your long term health/growth. Volunteer with a new group. Step out of your normal, comfortable community. Do these things with one primary goal: to observe yourself in the new situation as honestly as possible. Use the new situation to remove the filters of who you want to be or who you wish you were–just be there as authentically as possible and watch. When you are ready, try to change up old patterns and make some new choices. Remember, keep the stakes low. 

This part of things is about learning who you are and making friends with that person. We will get to resolving shadows and making deep changes later in the process. Be patient. 

The Goal is Compassion for YOURSELF

Overall, the point of this step is to go into your earnest shadow work (the metaphysical bits) with a good understanding of your own honest strengths and weaknesses. You are ready to head into the shadows when you trust and like your authentic self (at least at some level). When you are ready to embrace your worst flaws, accidents, and failures without fear or judgment, THEN the shadow work begins in earnest. This is the essence of shadow work. You find the wounded child within the shadows and bring her back to life.

If you do not have the strength to greet your shadows with love–because you are on friendly, loving terms with yourself–then your attention is needed on just learning to be on good terms with your best features (friends). This is essential. If you aren’t here with yourself on your healing journey, then now is not the time to go confronting shadows face to face. It is time to court and fall in love with your authentic self, and reparent yourself into a trusting, loving relationship. 

Shadow Work Guide Step 4: Hygiene 

A lot of folks talk about energy and shadows by throwing around scary terms. They treat this like a horror movie. Pretty soon, everyone’s imagination is running wild down the street buck-naked and screaming. We don’t take that approach here. The shadow work guide recommends you work in love, the opposite of fear. Remember, that when you shine a light on a shadow, what remains is the brilliant light. For that reason, I don’t talk about boundaries or other terms that could light the path of fear, I talk about hygiene. Hygiene. Yes, the same hygiene as if you cleaned a wound or did surgery in a hospital operating room. 

When you Expose the Inside to the Outside – FACTs 

When we open a body (whether physical or metaphysical/emotional/mental) there is always a chance of cross-contamination or infection. Those sorts of innard-exposing healing practices are done in clean, controlled environments. Because that is sensible and is more about physics and facts than superstition and imaginings. 

Surgery is not done in clean rooms with sterilized instruments because we fear the evil of bacteria is “going to get us”. We attend to hygiene because exposing our tender insides to outside things brings whatever else is in the environment into the open wound. Many of those outside things do not belong inside the body. When they enter, they can cause illness, infection, and poor surgical outcomes. 

Our metaphysical bodies are much the same. Some stuff that can get inside will not serve you. It is easier to never let it in by doing wound work in a clean, controlled environment in the first place. The alternative is to work with the open wound in an uncontrolled space. When we close things up in those conditions, there will certainly be complications. Welcome to a prolonged healing journey of chasing down, eradicating, and evicting the inappropriate stuff that never belonged on the inside. 

It is easier to prevent entry of what is not needed–than to let it in and chase it down for eviction. Not serving you on the inside is also not the same as being wicked, bad, evil or out to get you. Is that full trash bag in your kitchen evil just because it is not needed in your cooking? I suppose it could be if you left it long enough! In general, the idea is to prevent what is not needed to help healing from ever getting inside. That means hygienic boundaries. 

Boundaries and Hygiene – Traffic Cop 

Good boundaries are a lot like healthy cell walls, or healthy skin. What is not energetically helpful is kept outside-not because it is evil, dark, demonic or “gonna get you”. It is prevented entry because it is not helpful on the inside. 

Without bacteria your body cannot properly digest food, but the bacteria that helps in the gut could really cause harm. Gut bacteria introduced to an exposed bone during surgery might be fatal. Hygiene is about appropriate precautions to improve outcomes and support health. This is also true of metaphysical hygiene. 

When you do shadow work, you visit the darkest, most rejected parts of your psyche. Good energetic hygiene practices can help you make those journeys with ease and success. A clean surgical suite does the same for surgical outcomes, which is why it is a standard practice. As a metaphysical healer, you are the traffic cop for your healing space. You discern what is needed and what is not needed. This must happen without judgment or fear but with clarity and compassion. 

If you use terms like “demonic”, “evil”, “dark energy” with judgment and rejection, then you set your work up for poor outcomes. Deep healing (as shadow work always is), requires a clean room of unconditional love and compassion. Boundaries can keep out inappropriate energies. At the same time, these hygienic boundaries must also welcome what must be brought in to provide the healing. We humans get judgey and sometimes keep the wrong stuff out. Shadow work requires an open heart and an open mind. You work with all energy that wishes to heal, even if they seem scary or revolting at first. 

Under the Scary Mask of a Shadow 

These rejected bits of self, like children who are afraid of further rejection, often dress themselves up in whatever costume or pageantry will goad you to reject them. When you meditate to embrace them, they will hide behind trees in rotting zombie suits or other images. Your job? Embrace them and love them anyway, in your mind’s eye. They will try to scare you off, so they don’t have to be hurt anymore by your rejection. 

If you approach this work, you must embrace your worst nightmare and see what is under the scary mask. Once you do, these bits of shadow, the bits of rejected self will heal and transform. If you are stuck seeing energy (or your bits of self) in terms of black/white or good/evil or angelic/demonic, you will never get to meet your most painful parts that ache for the removal of your judgment. All parts of you are worthy of compassion and love. All of us are worthy of redemption. Only you can offer yourself the transformation of your inner voids. 

Hygiene as a Practice 

If you aren’t ready to see your healing space as a clean room, without judging what shows up there–then do some work on hygiene. It is time to adjust your approach and see the universe in different terms. Some of us have these good/evil beliefs hard-wired into our belief systems. I invite you to deconstruct those approaches. Evolve into a kinder, more compassionate way of seeing the way things work. If you want to find out more about energetic hygiene, take a Reiki class from me. My goal as a Reiki teacher is showing students how to work hygienically and powerfully with energy. 

This part is essential to doing deep work and change for your own healing. Until you get this integrated into your approach, please do not try to resolve shadows on your own. 

Shadow Work Guide Step 5: Journey NOT Destination 

This shadow work guide journey is not a destination. We, as beings in a body, never resolve all of our shadows. More always remains. It is possible to resolve the main tasks of a lifetime, of this consciousness, in this body.  Then guess what? We leave this body, this consciousness, this life. So–if your aim is to become fully enlightened in this lifetime, understand the result of that is ending the time in this body. Be careful what you ask for, Human. The Universe is benevolent and very apt to give you what you truly wish for, what you truly believe. 

We’re All on the Same Path 

I am not an enlightened Guru with all the answers. These tips appear because I have walked the path of redemption for a long time. I employ these tips and sometimes (with the grace of Creator, my spiritual posse, my medical team, and my chosen family) I make some progress.  A more flawed and scarred and twisted human with a lot of shadows to resolve you will seldom meet. I am on the path as well, my friend, and I learn to heal. 

There is no destination, we aren’t complete when we meet a healing goal. The next one pops up when we are ready. We all learn to become human one step and one healing at a time. It is beautiful and excruciating. Yes, it is hard work! The work is also incredibly rewarding. There is nothing like the feeling when you make progress on something that has haunted your family line for generations. However, those sorts of victories are generally not where we start. We start with the little boo-boos, and metaphysical hugs. 

Start Small 

Start small. Practice. You will fire walk in no time.

Because the journey and work never ends, it is a practice. We learn how to do the work over time. Experience teaches how to use the right tools for the right job. Over time, we build a powerful and varied toolbox for life-altering healing shifts and changes. Since it never ends, the best advice I could give is to not be in too much of a hurry to get “done”. Be in a hurry to start, but not too worried about how much ground you cover at first. Master the other things on the list first.

Know that the right healing will come at the right time. The chances of success are increased when you are aware of your journey–looking for the support you need. With these tools in hand, you are ready to make it better BEFORE the moments of crisis that always come. That is the way of the shadow. Ignore it long enough, and it will hit you with a big enough crisis, you won’t be able to ignore it any more. 

Need Support? 

If you have questions about this Shadow Work Guide, drop it in the comments and I’ll answer as I can. Let me know if you want a workshop or an event around this topic–happy to get more content going.

Have a more personal question? set up a consultation with me here, or use the form on our connect page to ask for what you need.  You can find more of my metaphysical writings on my blog (returning soon), or videos on my YouTube channel. I hope to hear from you! 

Also, please go visit the Whole Self Unity Channel, for more content like this in video form.