Is Shadow Work Really as Life Changing as People Say it is?
Do you keep seeing people talking about Shadow Work like it’s the answer to all of life’s problems?
Are you wondering if Shadow Work really can change your life, or if it’s just an overhyped New Age Spirituality fad?
Do you want to change your life, but are unsure where to even begin?
Are you looking for a way to heal yourself, but can’t afford expensive therapists or online courses?
Well, you can stop wondering, and start taking action!
I’m here to answer your questions and teach you all about the potential benefits of Shadow Work. If you are interested in finding out how to actually do Shadow Work, see my main Shadow Work article.
A short summary of the benefits of Shadow Work
This is a long article, because there are so many potential benefits! To help you decide whether Shadow Work is right for you or not (at a glance), I’ve compiled a short list of the main benefits.
Shadow Work can:
Prevent you from becoming triggered or outraged by other people’s behaviour, life choices or beliefs
Stop you from getting sucked into self-righteous arguments with random strangers on the internet
Prevent you from allowing other people to ruin your day, or even worse, cause you to loose sleep
Allow you to release yourself from the compulsive need to swoop in and rescue the struggling, or educate the ignorant
Allow you to go through life without ever feeling the need to judge, “call out”, “cancel”, or criticise others
Free you from the need to label yourself or others, and put everything into neat little boxes
Help you to stop conforming to other people’s expectations, physically altering yourself, working yourself to death and consuming mindlessly…. Just to “pass”, “fit in”, “be accepted”, or seem “normal”, “popular”, “wealthy”, “successful” etc
Teach you how to listen to your body and give it exactly what it needs
Allow you to live a long, healthy life, with stable physical and mental health
Teach you how to love and accept every part of yourself, unconditionally and without judgement or shame
Help you to develop such powerful intuition, that you never have to feel anxious about anything, or question your life choices
These are just some of the benefits of Shadow Work! Read on to learn about all the ways it may help you. For more information on what Shadow Work is and how to actually do it, see my main Shadow Work article.
Find self-awareness, forgiveness and acceptance through Shadow Work
Self-awareness through Shadow Work
Cultivating awareness of yourself and your wounds is the key to inner peace. When you forgive yourself and accept yourself exactly as you are, you stop seeking acceptance and validation from others.
This allows you to genuinely stop caring what other people think of you. So you stop trying to be perceived as clever, informed, funny, attractive, wealthy, popular, cool, helpful, productive, fashionable, etc. This is unbelievably liberating.
When you understand the reasons for your dysfunctional patterns of beliefs and behaviours, you have the power to change them. You can start to catch yourself becoming triggered and slipping into those patterns, and stop yourself from doing it again.
Every time you manage to stop yourself, the pain lessens, and it gets easier.
Self-forgiveness through Shadow Work
Our “demons”, the “worst” parts of ourselves, the parts that we run away from and try to hide from others…
Are usually nowhere near as bad as we think they are.
Once we drag those dusty skeletons out and into the light, we can see them for the wounds they are. Then we can start to forgive ourselves for the unhealthy coping mechanisms we developed from early childhood. As a result of trauma we did not choose, nor deserve.
We can forgive ourselves for not knowing better. For making the wrong choices, trusting the wrong people, and giving away our power. We can grieve for the loving, supportive family we never had. Or the person we might have become if trauma hadn’t stunted our physical, emotional and spiritual development.
When we can forgive ourselves for being broken by circumstances outside of our control, we can accept that there is nothing inherently “wrong”, “bad” or “unfixable” about us.
Rather than trying to change ourselves to seem acceptable to others, we can instead make the choice to accept ourselves exactly as we are.
Unmasking and Learning how to Rest and Care for Yourself
Unmasking through Shadow Work
Shadow Work allows us to once and for all drop the crushingly heavy mask of “normality”, “productivity” and “functionality”.
Traumatised people are unknowingly forced to wear this mask in order to be considered acceptable and valued by society. Our culture glorifies “hustling”, “pushing through”, and popping pills to rid ourselves of inconvenient symptoms. It nornalises numbing out and being nothing more than a productive little worker bee for the capitalist money machine.
It shames people who struggle to appear constantly poductive, self-contained, functional and able bodied. Especially when those people have no option but to rely on government financial support.
We exhaust and contort ourselves to fit society’s insane expectations of perpetual productivity and growth. Regardless of our personal circumstances, financial situation, mental health, physical ability etc. When we drop the mask and allow ourselves to simply, unapologetically, be, we find the breathing space we need to actually heal.
Learning how to rest through Shadow Work
We are constantly glued to our screens and our social media accounts these days. We have unprecedented access to information, and so many different ways of connecting. Yet in many ways we are more disconnected, confused and isolated than ever.
We think this is normal. In reality, the constant bombardment of distressing and dysregulationg information we receive on a daily basis, is deeply unhealthy. Our Ancestors, until very recently, did not have to carry the weight of the entire world on their shoulders.
Woke people will even try to shame you and call you “privileged” for not “staying informed” or “caring about political issues”. But the fact is that putting our energy into these things doesn’t make us smarter or better. We only think it does. The smarter people are the ones who recognise how divisive and dysregulating this is, and choose to opt out.
The fact is that our nervous systems can only become regulated in rest, slowness, quiet and nature.
Unfortunately, so few of us understand this. Our society does not consider it “normal” or “productive” to just sit quietly with your own thoughts, or rest your body. Or to put the phone away and just spend a few hours relaxing in nature.
The true currency of the universe is not money, but energy. Shadow work teaches us that we are worthy, and that protecting our peace and well-being should always be our highest priority. Regardless of family and social obligations, and other people’s expectations.
In this age of constant motion and perpetual growth, rest is a revolutionary act. Learning how to rest without guilt, and set boundaries to protect our own energy, is truly sacred work.
Healing from Consumerism through Shadow Work
Consumer Culture thives on insecurity
When you no longer see yourself as fundamentally “broken” or “inferior”, you stop defining your worth based solely on superficial external characteristics. Like physical appearance, popularity, wealth, career, status, postcode, etc.
You stop needing products, clothing, and constant newness to fill the void. Or make you feel more beautiful, rich, popular, carefree, etc. Like the shiny, happy people in the ads.
Marketing completely stops working on you. You realise that industries like advertising, film, media, fashion, beauty, fitness, wellness, etc, literally only survive by exploiting people’s insecurities about their physical appearance and social status.
Healing the “Scarcity Mindset” through Shadow Work
Shadow Work allows you to stop getting caught up in the manufactured scarcity mindset. This is the belief that everyone is forced to compete with each other for limited resources. To work themselves to death, just to “provide the best” for their family or “keep up with the Joneses”. You realise that you probably don’t need a lot of the things you thought you did. Like a new Iphone every year, or a brand new car.
Buying and consuming less products, is not only more sustainable, ethical and better for the planet. It’s also much better for your budget (especially in these times of soaring costs of living).
It’s not just about buying or using less, it’s about being happy with less, or older items. And grateful for what you do have. This is characteristic modern humans seem to have largely bred out.
Spiritual and physical decluttering through Shadow Work
As your Shadow Work practice helps you to clean out your spiritual clutter, you may also feel the urge to declutter your possessions and simplify your lifestyle.
Common side effects may include:
Letting go of things which no longer serve you
Spending more time in nature
Doing and making more things for yourself, instead of paying for convenience
Saying NO to obligations and expectations of constant activity, growth and productivity
Self-acceptance through Shadow Work
The self-awareness and acceptance we gain from doing Shadow Work, releases us from feeling like we have to sacrifice our needs or our self expression.
We let go of the idea of needing to meet the expectations or demands of friends, family, peers, coworkers, employers, and society. Societal expectations include beliefs about who we’re supposed to be, or how we’re supposed to look, act, think, feel or behave. Shadow Work allows us to see that the only person who needs to accept us, is us.
As you start accepting yourself as you are, you will probably also start to become more happy (or at least comfortable) with your natural self.
You may realise that ageing is actually a privilege, not an embarrassment. That the grey hairs on your head, lines on your face, and scars on your body, show a life lived. They are nothing to be ashamed of, disguised, or hidden away. That it is your differences, not your perfections, which make you beautiful and unique.
You may also start to develop or refine your own personal style, instead of just following what’s in fashion. You will realise that wearing clothes which make you feel happy and physically comfortable, is far more important than being “on trend”. Opting out of the fast fashion cycle of human and planetary exploitation, is one of the most powerful changes we can make as consumers.
Healing from Triggers, Outrage and Judgement through Shadow Work
Shadow Work allows you to release your trauma/shame. It teaches you to accept and validate yourself, and allow yourself to exist exactly as you are. Through this healing process, you stop being triggered by other people’s behaviour and beliefs. This allows you to sidestep their attempts to gaslight, label, manipulate, control, or suck you into petty arguments.
Identify other people’s triggers with Shadow Work
Shadow Work shows us that the way people treat others, is actually a reflection of the way they subconsciously feel about themselves. Their own shadows are very much in the driver’s seat.
When a person attacks, abuses, judges, labels or shames someone else, it’s because they’re projecting. They project these negative or hidden parts of themselves onto the other. So they don’t ever have to face those aspects of themselves or deal with their own trauma, pain and shame.
When you can step outside of your own trauma and victimhood, you stop being triggered by other people’s behaviour.
You realise that pretty much every human is subconsciously acting through their own wounds/trauma. With little to no self-awareness or control. Even (especially) people who “mean well” or feel deeply justified and self righteous. Like Evangelical Christians, militant vegans, woke people, and anyone else who subscribes to extremist ideologies.
You stop taking anything anyone says or does personally, because you realise that it’s not actually about you, and it never was. Instead of becoming triggered and projecting, or lashing out at them, you can choose to instead accept and forgive them for it. Because you can see it for the wound it is, instead of a moral/intellectual failing you can judge and shame them for.
This is so freeing, words absolutely cannot do it justice. Although it does tend to make social media seem a little redundant when you don’t feel the need to rescue everyone. Or comment on other people’s behaviour or beliefs. Or prove how intelligent and informed you are.
Learn how to walk away and protect your peace with Shadow Work
There’s no point arguing with or trying to educate people who are not aware of how their trauma drives them. Nothing you say can ever change their mind, so you learn to stop wasting you time and energy on them.
Developing the ability to let things go, is how you protect your peace. When you allow yourself to be constantly outraged, angered or upset by other people’s beliefs and behaviours, you’re giving away a huge amount of your power. Your energy is extremely precious, wasting it on other people keeps you sick, small and separated.
Healing your body and reconnecting with your intuition
Trauma is stored in the body, Shadow Work releases it
Trauma is held in your bones muscles and other tissues, while the conscious mind remains blissfully unaware, as a protective mechanism. This is why repressing parts of ourselves or the emotional pain we have suffered, will always eventually show up as physical body and nervous/immune system symptoms.
The most common symptoms relate to chronic pain, fatigue, dysautonomia, autoimmunity, anxiety, depression, and other “mental illnesses”. But trauma can show up in any body part or system. Or multiple at once, sometimes severely, and with a scarily fast decline in mobility and quality of life.
Usually, the higher the level of unresolved trauma or toxic stress, the more spectacular the level and rate of debility/disability.
Feeling unsupported often leads to chronic pain in the lower back, hips and pelvis. Carrying more than you can handle leads to neck and shoulder problems. Chronic stress causes jaw pain and headaches.
Western medicine is not equipped to recognise or treat trauma related health issues
Western medicine definitely has its place. It’s great at treating severe injuries and infections, as well as acute illnesses. Unfortunately western medicine absolutely sucks when it comes to chronic illness prevention, diagnosis and recovery.
Most modern medical and pharmaceutical treatments for chronic physical and mental illnesses, are designed to chemically suppress or mask symptoms. Rather than addressing the root cause of the problem (trauma).
This “medicine” is actually the complete opposite of healing, because symptoms are actually very important messengers from our bodies. They tell us where we are doing things (or holding onto things) which are hurting us.
We need to learn to listen to what our symptoms are trying to tell us, and change our beliefs and behaviours, if we ever want to heal. Numbing or suppressing is only going to force your body to turn up the severity in the hope that you will finally listen.
Unfortunately most of us don’t know how to listen to our bodies. This is because western medicine and capitalistic society gaslight us from an early age. These institutions lead us to believe that its normal and healthy to ignore pain and other symptoms and “push through”. Or just pop a pill so we can get on with our day and not inconvenience anyone.
Because if you’re not being “productive” by making more money for your employer, you’re essentially worthless to society.
Learn to listen to your body and develop your intuition through Shadow Work
When you heal your trauma, you are allowing yourself to reconnect with the feelings in your body. With patience and compassion, you can learn how to listen to what your body is telling you.
This not only allows you to intuitively heal yourself from chronic health issues. It also allows you to prevent other illnesses from occurring in the future. This is because you stop constantly pushing your body, way beyond its limits.
Shadow work helps us to reset our internal guidance system (intuition) which allows us to make better, healthier choices. It also reduces anxiety and depression, by bringing us out of victim mode. This automatically works to regulate our nervous/immune system.
I was always deeply anxious and hypervigilant, due to my childhood trauma. I experienced insomnia and anxiety even as a young child. I was diagnosed with Generalised Anxiety Disorder at age 28 after a nervous breakdown caused by extreme family dysfunction.
Despite my history, my intuition is now so good, that I no longer experience anxiety about possible future events. I literally do not worry about bad things which could potentially happen.
Whenever I start to have a fear or worry about something which may or may not happen, I stop myself from going into the fear and becoming trapped in the cycle.
Instead, I tune into my body and listen. I always receive a crystal clear verbal answer in my body/soul, which tells me whether the thing I’m worried about will happen or not. The answer is never wrong, and 99% of the time, the fear is completely ungrounded.
As someone who now lives without anxiety, hypervigilance and insomnia, I think it’s really interesting to note just how much our own “logical” brains can work against us.
Listen to your gut with Shadow Work
Most people don’t know this, but our nervous/immune system, “gut feelings” and intuition, are all one and the same. The vast majority of our nervous/immune system is actually located in the gut. Gut feelings are infinitely more intelligent than “logical” thoughts.
When we go against our gut feelings, we experience anxiety. The physical symptoms of anxiety are our body’s way of trying to force us to realise that we are making poor choices and hurting ourselves. Even when the things we are doing seem outwardly normal or socially acceptable, they can still be extremely harmful to us (like hussle culture).
If we keep making poor choices, because we’re socially conditioned to not listen to our body, we eventually become chronically ill and depressed.
Depression and chronic illness happen when your nervous system enters freeze state and shuts down almost entirely. Your body is exhausted from screaming at you to listen (probably for years) and not being heard. Depression and chronic illness are how your body forces you to stop and remove yourself from overwhelming, abusive and traumatic situations, for your own good.
I’m going to share a great quote which I really love. I can’t seem to find an official attribution for it (if you find one please let me know). According to Inspire Wellness and Nutrition it was adapted from a Cherokee proverb:
“If you listen to your body when it whispers, you won’t have to hear it scream”
Cherokee proverb
Self Awareness and Personal Responsibility
Living in traumatised victim mode prevents self-awareness
I was so deeply disconnected from my body and my own needs, that I lost many years of my life to chronic illness. Then I had to almost die, twice, before I finally got the message:
That my compulsive need to rescue, support and take care of other people at my own expense, was actually causing ALL of my chronic health problems.
Double organ failure, organ removal, broken ribs, and (three weeks later) major abdominal surgery, were truly horrible experiences. I’ll always carry the physical scars, most notably the one from sternum to pelvis…
But they sure did snap me out of codependent victim mode, teach me how to finally listen to my body, and care about my own needs. They allowed me to finally acknowledge and release my repressed anger and trauma, and stop blaming others for the way I allowed them to treat me.
Shadow Work could prevent major chronic illness
Strange as it probably sounds, I’m actually really grateful. Because I’m still alive, and because those near death experiences kick-started my intuitive Shadow Work journey. However, if I’d known about Shadow Work earlier, I don’t believe my health would have ever gotten that bad. I would never have given so much of myself and my energy away to other people, that it literally nearly killed me.
My poor body had been screaming at me, trying to communicate all of this with me for over twenty years. The screams came in the form of mysterious widespread chronic pain, autoimmunity and random multisystemic chronic illness symptoms. But I never made the connection.
None of my countless doctors over the years ever suggested that my “mystery illness” could be related to childhood trauma or toxic stress either. They just threw pills at me which masked some of the symptoms, while creating more side effects, requiring more pills. At my worst point I was taking 25 pills a day, including prescription opioid painkillers.
Chronic illness is not some nebulous mystery
I had always been secretly resentful of family and friends for constantly dumping all their problems/trauma on me. I just couldn’t figure out how stop it from happening.
They were always demanding my emotional labour regardless of what I was dealing with myself – often including serious illness. They never stopped emotionally blackmailing me or steamrolling my boundaries. This made it easy for me to feel like a victim.
It wasn’t until I was in the emergency room with an inflamed gallbladder, multiple bile duct obstruction and liver failure, that I finally saw the truth.
It was only when a close family member did it to me yet again, on the phone, while I was lying in a hospital bed, literally dying, that the penny finally dropped.
That phone call was the biggest wakeup call I’ve ever experienced. It was deeply traumatic at the time, but I’m also incredibly grateful for the experience. The sheer injustice of it, at such a vulnerable time, allowed me to finally release a flood of sacred rage. Which I’d been bottling up (evidently in my gallbladder) over my entire lifetime.
Your own behaviours and beliefs could be making and keeping you sick
I finally realised that I was actually, literally killing myself by suppressing my anger and my own needs.
I was the one who was constantly allowing my ‘loved ones’ to keep trauma dumping, sucking the life out of me emotionally, and repeatedly smashing my boundaries. The few ‘loved ones’ who were still around and didn’t outright abandon me when I became severely chronically ill and disabled five years earlier, anyway.
It’s amazing how quickly toxic people will drop a compulsive caretaker when the caretaker eventually burns out, falls apart and needs help themselves.
I’m genuinely not bitter though, ‘losing’ those people was actually one of the greatest gifts I’ve ever received. Now I know exactly who my real friends and family are.
This is NOT victim blaming. It’s radical self-awareness and accountability. If you’re triggered by the idea that you are responsible for the state of your own health, that’s a sure sign Shadow Work is called for. See my main article on Shadow Work to find out how to heal this trigger.
Subconscious choices are still choices
From early childhood, my abusive mother conditioned me to give too much to others. She made me believe I was “unlovable”, “a burden”, “worthless”, etc. Unless I suppressed all of my own needs, and became the emotional caretaker (mother figure) of the entire family.
She taught me that my value lay in my ability to to self-abandon. That is was my job to save everyone, manage their emotions, and rescue them from the consequences of their own choices. When I did all this, she seemed to hate me less, so it became my default behaviour. I developed into a chronic people pleaser.
I didn’t make a choice to become like that as a small child, it was a survival mechanism/trauma response. But as an adult, I repeatedly made the subconscious choice to repeat that same self-sacrificing, caretaking, people pleasing behaviour pattern.
My wakeup call showed me that I wasn’t a helpless victim with no power to change my fate.
I finally acknowledged that it was actually my fault for choosing to keep giving people more opportunities to take advantage of me.
It was my fault for always dropping everything and “making myself available” for others at the first hint of their petty self-imposed crises.
It was my fault for always giving them access to my healing energy. Especially when I didn’t even have enough for myself, to the point of severe physical illness and almost death.
Of course that kind of behaviour was never going to be sustainable!
You have the power to change your narrative
When I realised that I was the one making the choices which had made and kept me sick, then nearly killed me… It gave me the power to rewrite my narrative and alter my future.
It allowed me to work on my feelings about my own worthiness, set very strong boundaries, and stop behaving in ways which would surely kill me.
My health has only continued to improve and stabilise, with no major relapses in four years.
I’ve managed to heal physical issues I never imagined could be healed. Issues which doctors told me couldn’t be healed.
I have even released my fear of a chronic illness relapse and becoming disabled again. I know that I’ll never burn myself out caring for others, to the point of death, ever again.
You can change your relationship with your body
I do still live with chronic pain due to undiagnosed juvenile arthritis which went untreated for 10 years. Until I was old enough to get a job and pay for a chiropractor myself.
However, pain doesn’t rule my life like it used to. I no longer feel like a victim of my pain.
I used to get so angry and frustrated at my body for always “fighting me” and “letting me down”. I used to ask myself “what did I do to deserve this?” and “why is this happening to me?”.
The truth is that I was doing it to myself. I was flogging a nearly dead horse, and getting angry at it for not doing better.
When I experience pain now, I stop whatever I’m doing and just sit with it, without judgement. I ask my body what it needs from me. I try to identify what I am doing or holding onto, in order to cause this pain. Then I try to figure out if there’s anything I need to change about my behaviour or beliefs, to heal the pain.
I also look to physical considerations. Do I need my heat pad? Should I lie down, or rest? Do I need to apply some magnesium oil or comfrey balm? Should I do some trigger point release or gentle stretching? Have I been pushing myself too hard?
When I experience fatigue or low energy, I rest my body without blame, shame or judgement.
I treat my body with love and respect, and take responsibility for how my choices affect my physical and mental health. My body rewards me with stable health and powerful intuition.
Nervous System Regulation and Healing Hypervigilance through Shadow Work
Developmental trauma dysregulates the nervous/immune system, which leads to all kinds of chronic physical and mental illnesses in adulthood. Like the ones I experienced. Shadow Work allows you to actively process, release and integrate your trauma, which heals the dysregulation.
If you grew up with a parent who was unsafe and/or unpredictable, you’re probably dealing with some degree of hypervigilance (unless you use numbing out and not caring about anything as a coping strategy).
Hypervigilance is the state where you find yourself constantly on edge, scanning for danger, walking on eggshells, and waiting for the other shoe to drop. Long term, this usually results in anxiety disorders, dysautonomia, chronic fatigue/pain and autoimmune conditions.
You may also become addicted to you own stress hormones, so you either keep busy all the time, or seek out things which trigger you (like doomscrolling and starting arguments with strangers on the internet), and feel deeply uncomfortable or bored by anything or anyone safe or predictable.
Unsafe Parenting causes hypervigilance around safety
Physical danger
If you felt physically unsafe as a child, you may have developed hypervigilance around physical safety. This can cause adult behaviours like obsessing about personal safety, home security, road safety, germs and illness, etc. You may worry that you left the stove or iron on every time you leave the house, or constantly fear for the safety of your loved ones.
Obsessive Compulsive Disorder is the pathologising name we give survivors of trauma who experience hypervigilance.
I grew up in a physically unsafe environment, and it started early.
My earliest memory is of my mother setting the curtains on fire in my nursery as a two year old.
She “accidentally” caused an explosion about a year later, in a caravan where I was sleeping. With three other people also asleep inside, including another little girl. She was badly burnt, I and the others escaped relatively unscathed. We visited her in hospital afterward. She waited until my dad was out of earshot, then told me “this was supposed to be you”, while pointing at her burns and bandages.
Unsafe parenting also includes neglect
Even if children are not in obvious immediate physical danger, neglect also leads to hypervigilance.
My parents lived the s*x, drugs and rock ‘n’ roll lifestyle. Children having needs of their own, or parents having to get jobs to support the family, was generally seen as a burden and hindrance to the parents having fun.
We rarely had a sober, responsible parent around when they were needed. We kids spent countless hours just sitting in the car, while our dad played in bands at pubs and other gigs. Or our parents were at wild late night parties in the bush.
I was probably about 6 or 7 when I started “babysitting” my 3 year old sister like this, which is a hell of a lot of responsibility for a kid. Especially in the middle of the Australian bush, at night.
I always made sure to keep the doors locked and quickly wind up the windows any time a drunken stranger approached the car. My mother also made sure to instill in me the fear of being abducted, raped and murdered, from an early age.
When we got a little bit older and moved to the city, they brought us in to the gigs in pubs and bars. I spent a lot of time and energy fighting off the advances of drunk adult men, because I looked several years older than my age.
Being in the car with parents drink/drug driving home from gigs and parties, was also a common experience.
Hypervigilance around safety can lead to substance issues
Even as a child, I always struggled to fall asleep and stay asleep. I even developed this weird thing after the caravan incident. If I was sleeping and heard a noise, I’d experience a bright white flash of light behind my eyes. This would instantly wake me up, so I could figure out what the noise was and assess the situation for potential danger.
This is really not surprising, considering my experiences. This actually persisted until I healed my trauma a few years ago.
I also developed issues with alcohol use pretty early on (age 13), to numb the anxiety of never feeling safe anywhere, including my own home. As well as to help me cope with the unacknowledged chronic pain, insomnia etc. I didn’t actually get to experience the feeling of safety until well into my thirties, and it took a lot of hard work to get there.
These are just some specific examples, but my cumulative childhood experiences led to me feeling unsafe in every situation as an adult. I was always on the lookout for potential dangers or threats, in my environment, and the people around me. I struggled with severe anxiety and insomnia. I literally did not know how to feel safe, comfortable, or relaxed, without alcohol.
Unpredictable Parenting causes hypervigilance around other people’s moods
Extreme Empathy is a trauma response
If you experienced emotional abuse, neglect, or unpredictable parenting as a child, you may also be hypervigilant about how ther people feel. This includes identifying people’s emotions, behaviours, energies and motives, and responding accordingly.
You may consider yourself to be an extreme empath, which is a fixed personality trait. The truth is that we only become such experts at reading people, because we had to. Our safety depended on our ability to interpret and anticipate an unpredictable parent’s behaviour. This began in early childhood, as a subconscious survival mechanism.
As a result, you may believe that it’s your job to figure out what’s wrong with other people, and find ways to fix them. You may believe that making others feel better is more important than acknowledging your own needs. You may push yourself to the point of burnout or chronic illness making sure everyone else is ok. Like I did.
Women are actually socially conditioned to be people pleasers at the cost of their own health. This is why chronic illnesses and autoimmune disorders disproportionately affect women.
Childhood emotional abuse usually leads to extremely high or low empathy
In addition to my parents being physically unsafe and neglectful, my mother was also emotionally abusive and extremely unpredictable/unstable. The facade presented, or words spoken, often did not match the energy or subtle non verbal cues I picked up on.
I became a master of deciphering not only her body language, facial expressions, tone of voice etc, but also her energetic signature.
This was important, because the energy never lied. Even if she used “kind words” and a soothing tone (usually in front of strangers or outsiders, to mask the abuse), I could still feel the malice seeping out of her energetic body.
It became my nature to read her energy and react accordingly, suppressing my needs to keep her placated at all times, and protect myself from the repercussions of angering or upsetting her hair trigger. I carried this dynamic into every relationship I’ve ever had.
Of course, on the other side of the coin, are the people who developed extremely low empathy. Remember that emotional abuse also includes overindulging and convincing a child they’re perfect. Shadow work is much more difficult for these people, because they are rarely able to identify that there’s even anything amiss with their beliefs and behaviours.
Broken people have the advantage of knowing they’re broken.
Having a “good enough” parent with mental health issues can cause the same result
Even if your parents loved you and weren’t abusive or neglectful, unfortunately ‘just’ having a parent with mental health issues, can cause the exact same behaviour patterns.
People with mental health issues are inherently unstable. No matter how hard they try to avoid letting it affect their children, it will always seep in somehow. Even seemingly innocuous things like saying “thanks for cheering me up kiddo”, can cause trauma.
When children are made to feel responsible for regulating the parent’s emotions, they learn to suppress their own needs. As a result, they will often fail to develop any sense of self worth, and spend their entire lives trying to fix other people.
Trauma responses are often confused with personality traits
We assume these caretaker and empath traits are our “personality”, but they’re actually just a collection of trauma responses and survival mechanisms.
When I accepted that none of this was my fault, that the way I grew up was messed up, and that I deserved better, it allowed me to see how those experiences had shaped my “personality”. This awareness allowed me to change my beliefs about myself and my worth, and the way I allowed people to treat me.
I’m still a highly sensitive empath, I just have very strong boundaries now. My personality has changed beyond recognition though.
I’m very happy to say that I’m no longer a people pleaser. I have learnt to accept the discomfort which comes from letting others down, and prioritise my own peace and needs first. If anyone gets upset at me for doing this now, I know they’re not a healthy person to be around. Including (especially) family.
Setting Healthy Boundaries and Managing Unhealthy Relationships
Healthy individuals and families have strong boundaries
Shadow Work allows you to know, respect, accept and value yourself. This means you can easily enforce the boundaries you need to protect your peace and energy. Even when it comes to family. Especially when it comes to family.
If your family dynamic does not have healthy boundaries, it is impossible to have a healthy relationship with them. If family members do not respect your boundaries, it is impossible to have a healthy relationship with them.
Boundaries are useless if you don’t enforce them
After my near death experiences, I stopped resenting people for taking advantage of me, because I stopped letting them take advantage.
I stopped getting upset about people letting me down, because I stopped giving them more opportunities to let me down.
I stopped getting triggered by them trauma dumping and steamrolling my boundaries, because I stopped allowing the kind of contact which made boundary breaking possible. This was usually phone calls.
I’d actually already developed a phobia of talking on the phone by that point, because of all the trauma dumping and emotional blackmail, when I was already extremely sick.
You are responsible for creating boundaries around your own behaviour
Think of it like this:
If a dog tries to bite you every time you go to pet it, at some point it becomes your fault for not just leaving it the f*ck alone and walking away.
Some people are like that dog.
You can’t change their behaviour, no matter how hard you ask, plead or demand. All you can do is walk away to protect yourself. Even (especially) if they’re family.
The dog probably tries to bite because its owner abuses it or trained it to bite, but that is not our problem. It is not our job to figure out why it keeps trying to bite us.
It’s not our job to fix the dog, or stop it from biting, or teach it the error of its ways, or extract an apology from it, or have it euthanised. It’s not even our goddam dog!
All we need to know is that the dog is dangerous, and we should stay away for our own safety.
Boundaries are something we create for ourselves, not other people. If you keep angrily blaming the dog but refuse to leave it alone, or politely ask the dog to stop trying to bite every time you put your hand out…
You’re really just asking to get bitten eventually, aren’t you?
That’s not how boundaries work.
Boundaries are not about how you expect people to treat you
Boundaries are about who and what we are prepared to allow into our personal energy field, NOT how we expect others to treat us. Notice how one puts you firmly in control, while the other leaves you at the mercy of other people doing the right thing by you?
This probably seems counter-intuitive, especially in triggered woke cancel culture…
But expecting other people (especially toxic or abusive ones) to take responsibility for their behaviour, validate us, and treat us with respect, is actually a form of codependent self-harm.
When we do this, we are giving away so much of our power to toxic people, who will always find ways to use it to trigger, manipulate and control us.
You cannot expect anyone one else to manage your triggers, or to treat you the way you want them to. Especially strangers on the internet. Sure, it would be nice, but that’s just not how the world works.
Ending or reducing contact in unhealthy relationships
If your family (or anyone else in your life) is abusive, manipulative, toxic etc, it is your responsibility to remove yourself from the situation, as soon as you possibly can. Or at least reduce contact to a level you feel is manageable. Only you can remove yourself from harm.
Obviously leaving entirely takes longer and is far more difficult when you are financially dependent on these types of people. I am in no way shaming victims of domestic violence or coercive control, I absolutely acknowledge the barriers to leaving. However, leaving should always be the goal. Especially if children are involved. Staying long term is never a viable option.
This isn’t victim blaming, it’s just encouraging people to take personal responsibility for their own health and safety, based on repeated lived experiences. This actually empowers survivors of abuse and neglect, and prevents them from being targeted for further abuse.
Healing doesn’t mean that you keep exposing yourself to people who are incapable of not hurting you. Like that bitey dog. Healing means developing and enforcing strong boundaries to protect your peace, health and sanity.
If this means cutting people out of your life entirely, or drastically reducing contact and emotional attachment, so be it.
Cutting contact with toxic families is actually healthy and normal
There’s absolutely nothing wrong with cutting contact with very toxic or abusive family members who refuse to respect your boundaries.
It’s actually the most healthy choice in many dysfunctional family dynamics.
If people don’t know how to act like family, they don’t get to call themselves family, and you don’t owe them anything.
The same goes for anyone you’re close with. If you always show up for people, but they’re not there for you the one time you really need them, and you somehow survive it without them…
You learn that you don’t actually need them. You realise that they never really cared about you, and only maintained the relationship for what you could give them.
Its impossible to heal in the same environment which made you sick, and this extends to relationships as well as physical environments.
Reparenting
Reparenting goes hand in hand with shadow work. It involves looking at the unhealthy and dysfunctional ways you were parented. Then trying to give your inner child all the love, acceptance, validation, guidance and support it missed out on during those crucial years of early development.
It also involves having fun and learning how to play again, because trauma deprives you of having a real childhood. It’s a form of radical self-care.
Reparenting involves looking at the areas in your childhood where you were let down, forgiving yourself and acknowledging that you deserved better. Then releasing the shame you were made to feel. For having needs, costing your parents money, being different or “too sensitive”, wanting a different life for yourself, taking up space, etc.
Intergenerational Trauma
Shadow work allows you to reparent yourself, while understanding that your parents didn’t know how to parent you appropriately or in healthy ways. Your parents were too traumatised by their own abusive, neglectful, or dysfunctional parents, and prevailing societal constructs.
Your grandparents didn’t know how raise your parents in healthy ways, because they didn’t have healthy relationships with their parents either.
Dysfunctional patterns often go back several centuries or even millennia, and are known as intergenerational trauma.
Shadow Work allows you to see that what happened to you is not your fault, nor is it your parents fault. This creates a space where you can work towards not only forgiving yourself, but forgiving them too.
Forgiving others is something you do for your own peace. They don’t even need to know about it, and it definitely doesn’t mean they’re safe to have in your life.
Holding onto repressed anger about the past uses up a lot of precious energy and makes us sick. Choosing to release the anger and find acceptance, stops the energy drain.
Shadow Work doesn’t have to be all gruelling emotional journeys, part of reparenting can (and should) be allowing yourself to slow down, unplug and enjoy some of the more simple pleasures in life.
It’s important to find a balance between shadow work, and time for peace, rest and fun. Learning how to rest and care for yourself (especially after a lifetime of being gaslit to believe you don’t deserve to) is deeply healing.
Final thoughts on the benefits of Shadow Work
Shadow Work is a “practice” for a reason. You have to work hard to be good at it, and you only get out what you are willing to put in.
If you are prepared to put in the effort, incorporating Shadow Work practices into your life can be utterly transformative. It can revolutionise the way you see yourself and the world around you, and how you show up and interact with others.
Shadow Work can improve your physical and mental health, increase your life expectancy, and bring a deep sense of peace, acceptance, and self love. It allows you to change your narrative, and with it, your future.
With compassion, patience and practice, you can break the cycle of hundreds (if not thousands) of years of intergenerational trauma.
When you heal yourself, you heal the wounds of your entire lineage. This includes long dead ancestors, and those who will not be born until long after you’re gone. When you heal yourself, you bring healing to the entire world.
It’s definitely not what I would call a pleasant journey, but it is a vital one.
Humanity is very broken by the collective global trauma of Organised Religion, Colonisation and Capitalism. But we are well on the way to dismantling these abusive societal constructs.
We just need as many people as possible to do this work. To step up as the healers in their lineages, and help to create a better world for everyone who comes after us.
Do you know of any other benefits to Shadow Work? I’d love to hear them in the comments!
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