Okay so, shadow work. Let’s talk about it properly because I think the internet has done this one a bit dirty.
You’ve seen the term everywhere by now. It’s on TikTok with a moody filter and a journal prompt overlay. It’s the caption under someone’s “healing era” photo. It’s become one of those words that gets used so much it stops meaning anything, which is a shame, because underneath the buzzword there’s something genuinely useful. Genuinely simple, actually, once you stop dressing it up.
So let’s strip it back. What is it actually.
The boring, honest definition
Shadow work is just looking at the parts of yourself you’ve decided not to look at.
That’s it. That’s the whole thing. Everyone’s got bits of themselves they’ve pushed out of view, not because those bits are evil or shameful exactly, just because somewhere along the way it felt easier or safer to not deal with them. Could be anger you were taught not to show. Could be jealousy you’re embarrassed to admit you feel. Could be the version of you that’s needy, or controlling, or scared, or petty, all the stuff that doesn’t fit the picture of who you think you’re supposed to be.
The “shadow” isn’t some demonic alter ego waiting to take over. It’s just the stuff in the dark corner of the room you haven’t turned the light on for yet. That’s genuinely it. No altar required, no dramatic confrontation with your inner demon, just… turning the light on. Eventually. In your own time.
Why it feels heavier than it needs to be
Here’s where I think the online version of shadow work goes wrong. It’s been packaged as this intense, almost theatrical process. Light a candle, journal by candlelight, confront your inner child, do battle with your trauma. And look, if that ritual stuff helps you, genuinely, keep doing it. I’m not knocking the candle.
But the actual mechanism underneath all that performance is way less dramatic than it’s made out to be. Shadow work, most of the time, looks like this: you have a reaction to something. A strong one. Maybe you get defensive when a friend gives you feedback. Maybe you feel a flash of jealousy when someone else gets recognised for something. Maybe you snap at your partner over something small and you don’t quite know why it hit that hard.
And instead of brushing past that reaction, you pause on it for two extra seconds and ask, huh, why did that land the way it did.
That’s the whole practice. Pausing two extra seconds. You don’t need a journal for that. You don’t need a full moon. You just need to be a little bit willing to be uncomfortable with yourself for a moment, which, fair warning, is genuinely uncomfortable. That part’s true. It’s just not heavy in the way it’s been marketed as heavy.
The bit nobody tells you, it’s not a one-time thing
I think this is the part that actually matters most, so let me say it clearly. Shadow work isn’t a project with an end date. You don’t do it for six weeks and graduate. You don’t read 13 prompts off a downloadable PDF and come out the other side fully integrated, whole, healed, done.
It’s more like… maintenance. Ongoing. You’ll think you’ve dealt with something, and then six months later it shows up again in a completely different context and you go, oh, hi, you again. That’s not failure. That’s not you doing it wrong. That’s just how it works, because you keep growing and changing, and the parts of yourself you haven’t looked at yet don’t stay the same shape forever either.
I think people get discouraged because they expect shadow work to be a one-and-done thing, like cleaning out a closet. It’s more like tending a garden. You don’t finish gardening. You just keep showing up to it.
So where do you actually start
Honestly, you probably already have.
If you’ve ever caught yourself overreacting to something small and thought, why did that bother me so much, that’s shadow work. If you’ve ever noticed a pattern repeating across different relationships and started wondering if maybe it’s not everyone else, maybe there’s a thread running through it that’s actually you, that’s shadow work. If you’ve ever felt a flash of something ugly, like envy, or resentment, or pettiness, and instead of immediately shoving it down you let yourself sit with it for a second and asked what it was actually about, congratulations, you’ve been doing the thing the internet has turned into a whole aesthetic.
You don’t need a framework to start. You don’t need a guide, a course, a specific journal, none of it. What you need is just a willingness to not immediately look away from yourself when something uncomfortable shows up. That’s the doorway. Everything else is just decoration around it.
And if you want decoration, genuinely, go for it. Candles are nice. Journaling helps a lot of people. But don’t let the absence of the aesthetic stop you from doing the actual thing, because the actual thing is just paying attention. You can do that anywhere. You’re probably already doing it more than you realise.
If this resonated, there’s more of this kind of thinking over on the Woo & Wonder podcast. And if you ever want to go deeper one on one, Soul Sessions is here whenever the time feels right.
No pressure. No rush. Just an open door.
