What do we mean by ‘Healing The Shadow’?

Our shadow is formed from the parts of ourselves that we have hidden away out of sight, through shame, fear, guilt or a need to be liked and not ‘rock the boat’. You can find a wealth of further information about this on our page about The Shadow.

The aim of shadow work is to reclaim the gold that has been hidden away in our shadow, along with these unwanted behaviours.

For example, if we’ve hidden away our ‘selfishness’ we may have lost touch with our ability to take good care of ourselves. If we have hidden away our ‘neediness’ we may have lost touch with our ability to connect with others and accept their support. If we have hidden away our anger we may have lost touch with our sense of power and agency in the world, and our ability to make a difference. 

So shadow work supports clients in getting to know these lost parts of themselves and reclaiming and reintegrating the parts which are valuable to them. However, to bring such shadows out into the light usually comes with huge risks.

These parts were put away because it wasn’t safe to show them – sometimes our very existence depended on us hiding them away. So potentially bringing such sides of ourselves out of shadow could be detrimental to our psychological well-being and lead to further pain, repression and denial.

In our work we recognise that before aspects of the personality can safely be brought out of shadow, there is a need for the original wound which caused the loss of this aspect of ourselves to be explored and healed. For this reason we have chosen the term Healing The Shadow for our work. We believe it is a term which best conveys this essential aspect of the work we do.

‘Healing The Shadow’ is the trademarked name for our training organisation, and for the client work we and our trained practitioners offer.