What is my Shadow Self?

In shadow healing, we address both Light and Dark shadows,

Light Shadow: refers to aspects of ourselves that we are proud of and embrace, yet there may still be untapped or unintegrated parts.

Example, You ae proud of being a compassionate person, but there are times, when you are exhausted because of overgiving and not allowing yourself to express other emotions. The "light" shadow here is that your compassion is a good trait, but that also leads you to have no boundaries, people pleasing personality and no space to express other emotions like anger, which can cause harm in the long run.

Dark Shadow: refers to the unconscious, hidden, or repressed parts of ourselves that we tend to avoid, reject, or suppress.

Example: You might hide from certain emotions (like fear or vulnerability) because they were deemed "weak" or "bad" in your upbringing. This dark shadow might keep you from building deep, meaningful connections.

Healing the Dark and Light Shadows helps you recognise, accept and integrate these parts into your conscious self

To help understand Shadow Self, giving an example which is common to most of us,

Identifying and Embracing the shadow self in the context of Anger

Identifying: You may not realise that anger is an inherent part of yourself and not situation based. You may deny or suppress your anger, seeing it as "wrong." since you have always been taught that you should always be calm, kind, and composed. Anger, in this case, becomes a shadow because it is something you do not want to acknowledge or accept about themselves.

Understanding: Through therapy you realize anger as part of yourself and it often arises from unmet needs or boundaries being crossed.

Embracing: Through tools in therapy, you learn that instead of repressing it, you can now express anger healthily, use it to set boundaries or make necessary changes.

This process help you integrate anger as a useful and authentic part of yourself.