Connecting to Our Inner Wisdom Through the Unconscious Shadow
Updated: May 14
Regina Eastman is an inspiration in the field of Wholeness. She is the founder of Ariel Grace Integrative Therapies and holds a Master of Arts in Applied Psychology. She is a Psychedelic-Assisted Psychotherapist, Somatic Experiencing Practitioner, and a Body and Energy Worker.
Building on my previous writing about vulnerability as a superpower, I want to explore the deeper vulnerability that comes with confronting the shadow self. This process involves engaging with repressed aspects of ourselves through embodiment, requiring immense courage. By embracing this vulnerability, we can unlock healing and personal growth.
What is the shadow?
We all live with a shadow, most often without realizing it. It resides within the unconscious mind and is held within the body. We may remain unaware of our shadow Selves until we intentionally begin to work through the darkness that lies within.
The shadow is a wounded dimension of the self that exists behind the scenes. It consists of the hidden or repressed parts of us that shape unconscious beliefs, thoughts, and behaviors. It can also include aspects of our wholeness that we have unknowingly given away, that have been taken from us, or that we have surrendered.
The shadow is expressed through unresolved trauma, our deepest fears and insecurities, and patterns shaped by ancestral trauma, prenatal and intrauterine experiences, and the birth process.
Though it may feel counterintuitive to approach the shadow, it can become an ally when befriended. When we connect with the shadow, it offers us gifts of healing and wholeness.
Misinformation and clarity of the shadow self
The shadow is often described simply as the part of ourselves we do not like, but that definition falls short. What we consciously dislike about ourselves is often related to the ego. The shadow goes deeper. It lives beneath unwanted traits and drives the thoughts, feelings, and actions attached to them. Trying to eliminate an undesirable trait without exploring its deeper roots does not reach the shadow itself. Transformation becomes possible when we approach the shadow with curiosity, non-judgment, and a willingness to befriend what is hidden within us.
The shadow includes what is unknown, hidden, and repressed. It may hold dark emotions such as envy, anger, guilt, rage, and shame, but it also carries untapped creativity, joy, and childlike spontaneity. When unexamined, the shadow can manifest through abuse, addiction, aggression, anxiety, depression, codependency, chronic lying, self-sabotage, resentment, procrastination, chronic life drama, and victimization. It can also color our perceptions, leading us to project darkness onto others and the world, creating isolation and disconnection from self, others, and life.
What does the shadow hold for us?
The shadow reveals repressed aspects of our psyche, along with subjective experiences and ancestral patterns that await our attention and transformation. Within its darkness lies our light, our liberation. This is sometimes referred to as the golden shadow.
As we integrate the shadow, we deepen our emotional intelligence. We begin to live more fully through the wisdom of the body, where emotions are experienced.
This integration can cultivate various qualities, including empathy, compassion, creativity, healthy boundaries, discernment, empowerment, trust, intuitive responsiveness, self-regulation, self-awareness, and agency.
An example of shadow coming into light
A woman in her early thirties, whom we will call Grace, began experiencing intense agitation that manifested as both fight and flight responses. Rationally, she could not understand why an ordinary television commercial, one that began with a single child crying and built to a chorus of many children crying, provoked such intense distress in her body. It also caused anger in her tone and behavior to the point that she needed to leave the room or turn off the television to feel relief. She sought support because she wanted to “get rid of” the behavior.
Through a series of body-based sessions, Grace began connecting with her shadow through her felt sense, or soma, where body and mind meet. She became aware of deeply held rigidity, anger, vigilance, and fear. Her shadow revealed that, beginning in infancy, she had felt unsafe around a certain branch of relatives who were part of her early environment.
Before explicit memory formed, her body had already registered danger. She later connected her experience with stories told by her family about how she would scream for hours when those relatives were present or holding her. As she grew older, Grace also remembered harmful and uncaring family behavior, always feeling “creepy” around them and eventually choosing to disengage.
While distancing herself protected her in the present, the unresolved trauma remained suspended within her. It expressed itself through the shadow in painful and dysfunctional ways. The crying babies in the commercial became the clue that activated what had never been fully processed.
With curiosity, trauma-informed support, and growing trust in herself and the therapeutic relationship, Grace began to transform the acid-like anger and surge of fight-or-flight activation. She came to appreciate the wisdom of her nervous system, which had done what only an infant could do to communicate distress, a cry.
She developed compassion for herself for having expressed that distress without resolution, and for her parents, who had done their best to soothe her. Through this integration, Grace came to feel tenderness toward children and their need for attentiveness. She became gentle and protective in her presence with them, seeing them as precious souls worthy of validation and care.
She also came to forgive her relatives, understanding that they, too, were wounded, and that forgiveness was part of freeing herself from the past. Eventually, she reported that the once-activating commercial no longer caused distress. She shared this with a smile, a sign of liberation.
Approaches to access the shadow
People like Grace, who want to “get rid of” difficult feelings or behaviors, benefit first from support with a professionally trained, trauma-informed practitioner. Such support can help them understand the importance of befriending the maladaptive trait, accessing the feeling beneath it, and integrating what is revealed.
Grace’s work included Somatic Experiencing to process bodily held memories and Therapeutic Breathwork to access expanded states of consciousness. Other approaches to shadow work through the body, and nonordinary states include mandala art, meditation, hypnosis, journaling, trance states induced by rhythmic drumming, dance, chanting, singing, and Indigenous and shamanic practices involving entheogens. shadow work is not something to approach alone. Professional guidance can help contain, support, and integrate the emotional material that arises.
For more information on the shadow, I have included an article from the Society of Analytical Psychology and research from the National Library of Medicine.
You may also find more information about me and my offerings in the realm of shadow work here.
Read more from Regina Eastman
Regina Eastman, Integrative Therapist/Doctorate of Ministry (c)
Regina Eastman offers the weaving and evolution of her life experiences and academic achievements as a work of sacred service. From early childhood, her connection with nature from both the seen and unseen perspectives, in relationship with her curiosity and sensitivities, Regina has come to the stages of wisdom. Presently, with her candidacy for a Doctorate of Ministry in Engaged Wisdom, these wisdoms are ripe to be shared. She is the founder of Ariel Grace Integrative Therapies, where she invites and supports you in embodying yourself as conscious wisdom, through the physical, emotional, heart, energetic, spiritual, intuitive, and conscious and unconscious dimensions of Self.
