This article explains the unhealed shadow self and aspects of how to accept and heal.
Most of us go to great lengths to protect our self-image from unflattering.
Your unhealed shadow self is your dark side, and it’s the part or aspect of you that you don’t openly show everyone.
Every human being is susceptible to this shadow self. Exploring your shadow self can lead to greater authenticity and personal awakening.
Remember the shadow self is elusive; it hides behind us. Our defense mechanisms keep our shadow self repressed and out of view. Pay attention to your behavior and emotions.
THIS DOES NOT MEAN the same as having good behavior. If you are in church or school, you should behave maturely. So, doing shadow work IS NOT an invitation to misbehave publically or privately.
Only those closest to you or those you believe you have authority over will ever see your shadow self.
You may not be aware of your shadow, but it’s present in each of us.
The shadow self that part of you that you refuse to see in yourself, though you know it’s there. It’s your dark side, disowned and repressed self, and parts of you that you don’t fully claim as your own.
Make peace with your shadow self so you can experience a peaceful life. Be aware of it so that you can start the healing process. This is called shadow work.
Any part we disown within us turns against us. Remaining unconscious of the it hurts our relationships with our spouses, family, and friends, impacting our professional associations and leadership abilities.
Shadow work involves confronting the repressed parts, bringing its hidden aspects out, and accepting and understanding it. Take care not to shame, blame, or judge it.
Related: How Ego Controls You
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What Is Meant By Shadow Self?
The shadow self is a term that comes straight out of Jungian psychology. Carl Jung basically said, “Hey, you’ve got a part of yourself you don’t want to admit exists,” and he was right.
The shadow self is the part of you that holds everything you repress—your anger, envy, insecurity, fear, all the stuff society told you not to feel or show. But just because you ignore it doesn’t mean it disappears.
In fact, the more you push it down, the more control it ends up having over you without you realizing it. That’s the shadow self. It’s made up of the traits and emotions you’ve disowned to survive socially.
And here’s the thing most people get wrong: they think the shadow self is all negative. Not true. It also hides your suppressed strengths—assertiveness, ambition, confidence—that got buried under guilt or shame.
So while people are out there pretending to be perfect, their unacknowledged shadow is driving the bus—and usually crashing it. You can either face your shadow self and integrate it, or let it sabotage your life on autopilot.
Your call.
Not Everyone See’s Your Shadow Self
Sometimes, no one sees your shadow because you believe it is too bad for anyone to witness.
The truth is we all have ugly parts of our personalities. It never gets integrated into your being, so it stays off to the side until an event triggers it.
In essence, the shadow self is often the truth of who you are. The reason it is hidden is that it is painful to look at. The shadow self is an aspect of ourselves that we do not like or are ashamed of.
Your entire shadow self is not bad. Yes, parts of it are, but not all. We hide it because we believe it may cause us pain and suffering. Acceptance and transmutation is the work to be done.
During childhood, you’re taught to suppress parts of yourself to fit in school, your sports team or club, or your family. We cut off parts of ourselves so we could survive in the group. Shadow work involves reintegrating yourself so you can be a whole being.
Perhaps you were assertive as a child and were challenged by your parents or authority figures. Maybe you asked to have your needs met, and a parent yelled at you.
Maybe you were generous, kind, and thoughtful, yet people took advantage of these natural tendencies, so you decided to cut them out.
Not all parts are negative.
Related: Why A Healthy Ego Is A Good Thing
The shadow aspects is a psychological term for everything we can’t see in ourselves.
Anything that is deemed wrong or immoral by society, all that is frowned upon by our family or peers, all the traits that, when initially expressed, were ridiculed, shunned, or met with some form of punishment.
Right now, the unhealed aspects of ourselves are causing all the significant destruction on the planet. To destroy means to cause deliberate, irreparable damage.
The shadow self seeks to destroy anything beautiful, peaceful, well-functioning, and safe. It does this because its primary function is to sabotage.
You can see this in The Lord of The Rings & Hobbit movies. Good civilizations lived in relative peace and prosperity, order and cleanliness, and evil societies were dirty, full of disease, crime, violence, and sloppy.
Think about it. Where would you rather live? Rivendell or Mordor?
What creates these civilizations is the conscious awareness of their inhabitants and their ability to work together collectively towards a common purpose or goal.
The shadow self is unconscious and is a master at the art of projection. Projection means to project unpleasant feelings or emotions onto another person instead of admitting to or dealing with them.
Unifying our unhealed, dark parts is known as “shadow work” and is critical to becoming a “whole being.”
We only operate as a partial being when we hide or suppress parts of ourselves. Being spiritual doesn’t mean being perfect and without fault.
Being spiritual means accepting, integrating, and allowing all parts of us to be as one. Preferably a “healed” one.
You are a biological creature, and you are designed to grow and mature naturally. However, some people will get in your way.
When the life force is obstructed in its development, do ingredients of anger, rage, or hate to connect with it?
Related: What Are My Negative Emotions Telling Me?
Shadow Behavior Examples And Signs
- Rage
- Envy
- Greed
- Selfishness
- Laziness
- Cruelty
- Hatred of self and others
- Pettiness
- Acting out negative emotional triggers
- Hunger for power
- Mercilessly judging others
- Projecting your issues onto others
- Trolling on social media
- Taking your emotions out on people you believe are under you
If you keep getting emotionally triggered by the same stuff over and over again, that’s not random—that’s your unhealed shadow running the show.
Overreactions usually mean there’s something deeper you’re not dealing with. You’re not mad because someone cut you off in traffic—you’re mad because you’ve got buried anger you’ve never handled.
Same with relationships. If you keep ending up in toxic dynamics or playing the victim or rescuer role, it’s not bad luck—it’s a pattern rooted in unresolved internal crap. Self-sabotage?
That’s just your shadow keeping you in a familiar place, because growth feels threatening.
You’ll procrastinate, underprice yourself, or quit early—not because you’re lazy, but because some part of you is afraid of being seen, judged, or failing. And then there’s projection—seeing in others what you refuse to see in yourself. If you constantly judge people for being selfish, arrogant, or fake, chances are you’ve got those traits in your blind spot too.
That’s the shadow. It’s like a mirror you don’t want to look into, but until you do, it’s going to control your results, your mindset, and your relationships.
What is Shadow Work?
Shadow work acknowledges all parts of the psyche, bringing what is in the dark (unconscious/unacknowledged) into the light.
It actualizes living a multi-faceted life that incorporates the good, the bad, the beautiful, the ugly, the embarrassing, and the uncertain.
The more concealed it is, the more secret an influence it will have on you. When you are prepared to shine a light on the repressed parts of yourself known as your shadow, you must be ready to accept what you discover.
The shadow self is an unhealed part of you that is unconscious and split off/separate from your conscious Self. The unhealed shadow self often is a saboteur of your goals and successes in life.
The shadow self is very individualistic with its plan, which is at odds with your conscious intentions. Essentially, it is what you most don’t want to be, the polar opposite of your conscious Self.
The shadow self exists in your psyche and is part of your energetic, psychic body. It’s with you but often remains dormant or lingering in the background until it is triggered.
It is a creation – of your conscious Self – created by negative and even traumatic experiences.
It is held in an “energetic containing device” of “bad” experiences that constantly run in your conscious self’s background.
So even when things are going well, there is a pessimistic part of you waiting and preparing for the next bad thing to happen in the background of your mind.
Healing Through Shadow Work: A Workbook for Self-Transformation Book - Amazon Link.
How to Heal The Shadow Aspects
The cure is to heal the split between persona and shadow to give a complete self or ego. To give a whole, healthy mind, not a split and broken mind. The cure to this is to reunite their mind and their body.
- The first step is to become aware and acknowledge its existence. This requires honest introspection and self-reflection. Journaling, meditation, or therapy can be helpful tools for this process.
- Take time to identify the specific traits, emotions, or behaviors that make up your shadow self. What aspects of yourself do you tend to deny or suppress? What triggers these feelings or behaviors?
- Embrace it with self with compassion and acceptance. Recognize that these aspects are a natural part of being human and that everyone has a shadow side. Avoid judging or condemning yourself for these feelings.
- Instead of trying to repress or ignore it, work on integrating it into your conscious awareness. This involves acknowledging and accepting these aspects of yourself without allowing them to control or dictate your behavior.
- It involves confronting and exploring the deeper roots of your shadow self. This can involve techniques such as dream analysis, guided visualization, inner child work, or working with a therapist or counselor.
- Practice self-compassion and self-love throughout the healing process. Treat yourself with kindness and understanding as you confront difficult emotions and experiences.
- Work on healing any past traumas or wounds that may be contributing. This may involve forgiveness, inner child work, or other therapeutic techniques.
- Cultivate mindfulness practices to help you stay present and aware of your thoughts, emotions, and behaviors. Mindfulness can help you recognize when your shadow self is influencing your actions and choose a more conscious response.
- Explore creative outlets such as art, music, dance, or writing as a way to express and process in a healthy way.
- Don’t hesitate to seek support from friends, family, or mental health professionals as you navigate your healing journey. Having a supportive community can provide encouragement and guidance along the way.
The best way to see your shadow is to watch your adverse reactions to people and situations. When I began my shadow work, I noticed who and what triggered me to give my power away.
I always felt terrible after getting triggered and reacting negatively.
One thing that helped me was daily stillness. Some call this meditation, and others call it prayer.
How the Unhealed Shadow Affects You
The unhealed shadow doesn’t just sit quietly in a corner—it leaks into every area of your life and wrecks your results.
Mentally, it can manifest as anxiety, depression, and emotional chaos. You’re not just stressed—you’re in constant conflict with the parts of yourself you’re trying to avoid.
That’s exhausting. In relationships, it shows up as drama, codependency, or emotional withdrawal. You either chase people who mirror your wounds or push away the ones who actually care. Career-wise, you might have all the skills but still feel stuck.
Why? Because that voice in your head—your shadow—keeps whispering that you’re not good enough, smart enough, or ready yet. That’s imposter syndrome, and it’s not about competence—it’s about identity.
And the real kicker? You can’t be fully yourself if you’re hiding parts of who you are. That leads to burnout, disconnection, and always feeling like something’s missing. Bottom line: if you don’t face the shadow, it runs your life from the background while you wonder why nothing feels aligned.
Root Causes
The shadow doesn’t show up out of nowhere—it’s built, usually early, and brick by brick. Childhood trauma and emotional neglect are the foundation. When you’re a kid, you’re wired to adapt to survive, not to be authentic.
So if being angry, sad, loud, or even ambitious got you punished, ignored, or rejected, you learned to shut that part of yourself down. That doesn’t mean it vanished—it just went underground.
Then you add cultural and family conditioning on top. Maybe you were told “real men don’t cry” or “good girls don’t speak up.” Boom—more pieces of your true self get buried just to fit in. The result?
A fragmented identity that looks good on the outside but feels hollow on the inside. And every time you suppress an emotion or experience because it’s uncomfortable, inconvenient, or unacceptable, you’re just deepening the split. People think they’re being strong by ignoring this stuff.
They’re not. They’re just building a time bomb that eventually explodes through burnout, breakdown, or blowing up relationships.
The root cause isn’t weakness—it’s survival. But if you want to thrive, you’ve got to go back and reclaim what you buried.
Embrace Your Shadow
What caused suffering in human beings was some aspect of the psyche, an aspect of their selves that has been repressed, denied, and split off.
This caused a whole and complete ego, an accurate self-image, to become distorted or reduced to a small inaccurate self-image, often called the persona, which was split from the repressed and denied material called the shadow.
This split is the primary cause of human suffering.
The cure is to heal this split between persona and shadow to give a complete self or ego. To give a whole, healthy mind, not a split and broken mind.
The Psycho Therapeutic approach attempts to unite the narrow persona and repressed shadow to give a whole and healthy mind.
The typical person has become inauthentic and unhappy because they dissociate or split their mind from their body.
They say, “I am a mind, but I have a body.”
They treat their body as separate from themselves.
The cure to this is to reunite their mind and their body.
Unite thinking and feeling.
Common Challenges and Missteps
When people start doing shadow work, they hit walls fast—and most of them aren’t ready for it. First, there’s spiritual bypassing.
That’s when someone tries to skip the hard inner work by slapping positive affirmations on top of unhealed pain. “Everything happens for a reason,” they say, while ignoring deep resentment or trauma.
It’s fake progress. You’re not transcending—you’re just avoiding. Then there’s the discomfort piece. Real shadow work isn’t journaling by candlelight and feeling zen—it’s brutal. You’ll see parts of yourself you don’t like, and most people run the second it gets hard.
They say, “This isn’t working,” but really, they just don’t want to face their own reflection. And on the flip side, you’ve got people who over-identify with their shadow. They discover their anger, pain, or darkness and wear it like a badge—“This is just who I am.” No, it’s not.
That’s just the part of you that never got integrated. The goal isn’t to become your shadow or deny it—it’s to own it without letting it run your life. Anything less is just another form of hiding.
Final Thoughts
At the end of the day, your unhealed shadow isn’t the enemy—it’s the parts of you that were never given a voice. Ignoring it doesn’t make it go away; it just lets it run your life in ways you don’t see until it’s too late—burned out, broken relationships, stalled progress.
Facing your shadow takes guts. It means being honest about who you are, not just who you pretend to be.
But if you’re willing to do the work—if you can sit in the discomfort, drop the masks, and stop running—you unlock a level of clarity and power that most people never access.
You stop reacting and start choosing. You stop hiding and start leading. And that’s when real transformation happens—not by avoiding the darkness, but by walking straight into it and owning it.
You might want to read my article next: ⇒Michael Tsarion YouTube where he discusses the shadow self.
