Lessons
Background reading on the ideas behind shadow work. Every lesson is free.
Foundations
- What is the shadow
Where the shadow comes from, how it shapes daily life, and what shadow work actually does.
5 min read
- Projection
How we see our disowned traits most clearly in the people who irritate us most.
5 min read
- The golden shadow
The admired qualities you see in others that are actually your own unlived potential.
5 min read
- Triggers as teachers
Why your strongest emotional reactions are the most reliable map to your shadow.
6 min read
- The wound beneath the reaction
Finding the original hurt that a pattern of behaviour is still trying to resolve.
6 min read
Thinkers
- Jung
The psychologist who named the shadow, and the map of the unconscious he drew.
7 min read
- Nietzsche
On the self-deception we practise to avoid seeing who we really are.
7 min read
- Freud
How the id, ego, and superego compare to Jung's model of the shadow.
7 min read
- Buddhist perspectives
What Buddhist thought says about ego and the suffering of self-division.
6 min read
- Stoic perspectives
Stoic practices for examining the self that parallel the aims of shadow work.
6 min read
Practice
- How to sit with discomfort
Practical techniques for staying with difficult feelings instead of fleeing them.
5 min read
- When to seek a therapist
What self-work can do, what it cannot, and how to find the right kind of help.
5 min read
- Writing as practice
Why putting words on the page changes how you see — and how to use it well.
5 min read
- The inner critic
The harsh internal voice and the shadow material it guards.
5 min read
- Patterns over events
What recurring themes across different situations reveal that single incidents cannot.
5 min read