Does Shadow Work Really Help You Be More Creative?

If shadow work sounds exhausting, depressing, or just too woo, this is for you.

I have to admit that I used to internally roll my eyes a little whenever I heard the term “shadow work.” I knew shadow work was a real thing, but it sounded exhausting. My mental health issues mean I already live with a lot of darkness; I didn’t think I had the internal resources for some woo-woo BS that would just make me feel worse about myself. But then I ended up doing some shadow work accidentally, and it was like my creative core broke open and streams of light and color poured out. So, yeah. It works. But it definitely doesn’t have to be a whole big thing with candles and meditation. Here I’ll tell you why it’s worth considering if you’re feeling blocked, and how I got started.

First, let’s demystify this shadow thing. Your shadow is simply the stuff about yourself that makes you feel bad, that you’ve shoved away into a corner of your psyche in a bin labeled “All the Things That Make Me Unworthy” (my unworthy bin has proper title capitalization because being imperfect at that kind of thing makes me feel unworthy. . .go figure). The unworthy bin is accessible, because we like to take that stuff out when we’re feeling especially down and do a nice little PowerPoint presentation for ourselves. But most of the time we work very hard to make sure our unworthiness stays out of sight. We put up caution tape, build a wall, numb ourselves, whatever we have to do to keep all that ugly at bay.

But our shadow looms large in our everyday consciousness anyway. It underlies our every thought and emotion. Have you ever seen the reverse side of a tapestry, or a piece of needlework? It’s a total mess. But you can’t have the pretty front side without that ugly back side. Creatives need to integrate their shadows in order to function at their highest level of creative potential. There are esoteric reasons for this, but I’m going to stick with the practical here. The main reason to do shadow work is that policing the boundaries around your shadow takes a lot of energy. Our shadow, like the truth, will out, and when we are using our creative energy to keep it down, we have less energy for actual creative work. In other words, it’s not shadow work that’s exhausting, it’s not doing it that’s exhausting.

Shadow work isn’t actually difficult to do, but it is scary. None of us wants to examine our ugly stuff up close. Our shadow makes us feel awful about ourselves – that’s why we keep it stuffed away in a bin, right? It’s important to understand that the way we typically confront our shadow is not what shadow work is. Usually we only use our shadow to self-flagellate. But shadow work does not involve feeling bad. It’s about liberation. I stumbled into shadow work when I decided I’d had enough of feeling like shit about myself and invented an exercise I call “Embracing the Ugly,” in which I reimagine my ugly in a positive way. When I realized that this was essentially shadow work, I had a moment of clarity. We misfile everything in our unworthy bins. It doesn’t belong in folders labeled “Shameful” or “Bad.” All of it – and I mean all of it – fits into the following categories: 1) Untrue; 2) Not Actually Bad; 3) Totally a Good Thing; and 4) If It Is True, So What? Yes, into all of them at once.

Here’s an example from my own life. One of the secret fears I’ve put into my unworthy bin is that I’m arrogant. It makes me feel sick with horror and shame to contemplate. Why do I fear that I’m arrogant? Because I sometimes have arrogant thoughts, and because some people have told me I’m arrogant. That’s all the proof I need, right? Actually, no. Let’s fit it into those categories:

1) Untrue. Your thoughts don’t define you as a human being. We all have ugly thoughts sometimes; being aware of them and acting better than those thoughts is what defines you.

2) Not Actually Bad. You know who has called me arrogant? Men. Why? Because I’m an intelligent, self-confident woman who speaks her mind. Nuff said.

3) Totally a Good Thing. Every creative needs a certain kind of arrogance in order to put their work out there. Creatives face a lifetime of rejection, even when they are succeeding. In order to sustain their creative spirit they have to personally believe that they are better than any negative or indifferent reception they’ve received, and that other people’s opinions are ultimately irrelevant when it comes to judging the quality of their work.

4) If It Is True, So What? Seriously, so what? Giving space to these kinds of personalized shame judgements is how we end up exhausting ourselves policing boundaries around our shadow in the first place. People can be how they want and do what they want. You are the only person who needs to approve of you.

I did this exercise with all my secret fears and shames, and I continue to do it every day. It runs like a background program in my mind at this point, and has replaced my former policing of boundaries. The practice has played a major role in my own creative regeneration – for example, I don’t think I would have had the courage to start this website without it. It’s not the only way to do shadow work, of course, but it works for me, and maybe it could work for you. If you decide to give it a try, let me know how it goes!