Why Shadow Work Triggers Us (Before It Transforms Us)
Learning to love the parts of ourselves we were taught to fear.
There was a time when I truly believed wholeness meant purification. That one day, if I was good enough, obedient enough, righteous enough—if I prayed hard enough or sacrificed enough—the “bad” parts of me would finally be gone.
But they never disappeared. They were the parts of me I couldn’t shake.
No matter how hard I tried to follow the rules, to be holy, to do it “right,” my shadow side remained.
Now, I see things differently.
An integral part of the coaching model I use includes unconditional love and acceptance of all parts of who we are. But for many people, the idea of accepting parts they’ve judged or rejected can feel deeply uncomfortable—sometimes even terrifying.
In this post, I want to explore why this fear arises, and how to begin reconciling with the parts we’ve labeled as unlovable or unacceptable. Because this kind of inner work—what I call shadow work—is, in my experience, the only path to true wholeness.
LIGHT AND SHADOW
I use the terms “light” and “shadow,” but you might also relate to words like:
Divine and Human
Higher Self and Wounded Inner Child
Spirit and the Flesh
There’s some nuance in each pairing, but ultimately, I see them pointing to the same basic idea.
I love the words “light” and “shadow” because they don’t imply good or bad. They’re neutral.
Light is what we’re willing to see. It’s the part of ourselves we accept, embrace, and allow into conscious awareness.
Shadow is everything we repress, reject, or push away. It lives in the subconscious, often without our even realizing it.
The goal isn’t to destroy or eliminate the shadow. It’s to befriend it. To integrate it into a balanced relationship with the light.
WHY WE NEED THE SHADOW
Depending on how you were raised, you may have been conditioned to see the shadow as bad or dangerous. Maybe you were taught that the ultimate goal was to banish the dark and live in pure light?
But if we look to the natural world, we find a different story.
We need the night just as much as the day. If the sun never set, life would burn out. All new life begins in darkness—whether that’s the seed in the soil or the baby in the mother’s womb. Growth and new life comes from shadow.
It’s also no accident that in many traditions, darkness is associated with the feminine, and light with the masculine. And for thousands of years, we’ve lived in a patriarchal world where the masculine is favored at the expense of the feminine.
Is it any wonder we have judgment toward our shadow selves?
But the truth is: the light and the shadow are both sacred. One is not better than the other. They are complementary halves of a whole.
I used to imagine wholeness as a perfect circle filled with light. I thought the goal was to one day become “all light”—pure, holy, and free from shadow.
But now I see wholeness as the image of yin and yang: light and shadow, in balance, each holding a dot of the other. This feels more honest. More human. More divine. It is the marriage of the masculine and feminine within us, and a beautiful representation of how unconditional love that unites instead of divides.
WHEN ACCEPTANCE FEELS SCARY
Shadow work is really just love work. Unconditional love.
It’s not about reform. It’s not about fixing yourself. It’s not about self-improvement, judgment, or shame. It’s about welcoming every part of you to the table.
But in the beginning, this can feel incredibly scary.
Why?
Because many of us have spent our entire lives trying to control or correct ourselves through judgment. We believe it’s our disapproval that keeps us “in line.” If we stop judging, won’t everything spiral out of control?
We fear that if we start accepting the parts of ourselves we’ve exiled, it will be a slippery slope into indulgence and chaos. We may fear loving ourselves might mean condoning bad behavior or that we’ll lose our moral compass.
But this fear isn’t truth. It’s conditioning.
THE SPIRITUAL JOURNEY
We begin our lives in duality, which is the lens of the black and white world. We learn right and wrong. Good and bad. This is a necessary part of development—it gives us structure and safety.
To bring in a little biblical mythology, this is akin to partaking of the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. This is the tree of duality.
But eventually, if you progress along the spiritual path further, it will lead you to the other tree: The tree of life. This is the tree of unconditional love. The tree of non duality, or what I see as the tree of wholeness. This is spiritual awakening.
And what are we awakening from?
The black and white world.
While a black and white world serves a purpose in our development, eventually this paradigm will begin to cause more problems than it solves and you will begin to see that life can not always be divided into good and bad. In fact, doing so will begin to cause you pain and suffering. Especially, when you do this to yourself and those around you. This framework starts to strain. The black-and-white world becomes too small to contain the fullness of life.
The trademark state of duality is judgement. Judgement is what divides. You judge one thing right and the other thing wrong. You judge one part of who you are as good and the other part of who you are as bad. We judge other people as a good person or bad person. The judgement instantly divides and separates. That's the whole point of judgement, to determine what or who you accept and what or who you reject.
The trademark state of non duality is unconditional love and acceptance. Unconditional love and acceptance is what unites. You expand to create space for all people and all parts of who you are. You see the world of nuance and color.
But here's the thing...you don't go from duality to non-duality with the snap of your fingers. Your duality brain has a lot of conditioning to unlearn
Our brains are tuned to polarity, so don’t be surprised when the thought of accepting the shadow, triggers fear of getting trapped in the shadow. Our brain only knows how to be in one polarity or the other and hasn’t yet learned how to hold both at the same time. But this is what wholeness is.
Wholeness unites light and the shadow together.
YOU BRING YOUR LIGHT TO THE SHADOW
Understanding this can increase your feeling of safety. You can trust that you aren't going into the shadow alone.
You bring your light with you into the shadow.
You bring your common sense. Your discernment. Your compassion.
This isn’t about living in one polarity or the other—it’s about walking the middle path. It’s about balance.
Unconditional love becomes the new compass. Not permissiveness. Not chaos. But a love that doesn’t divide.
The journey into shadow is not about abandoning your light. You don’t throw away your values, your wisdom, or your boundaries.
When you explore the shadow with love, you’re not condoning harmful behavior. You’re recognizing the innocence underneath. Often, our shadow parts are just wounded inner children doing their best to protect us in dysfunctional ways.
They don’t need to be punished. They need to be heard, healed, and integrated.
THE DIVINE DESIGN OF THE SHADOW
I now believe the shadow is part of our divine design. It’s not bad and it’s not a mistake. It’s the invitation to grow our capacity for love.
Without a shadow, there would be nothing to stretch our hearts to love with greater capacity. It’s easy to love the light. It requires expansion to love the shadow. And this expansion is your transformation. You are spiritually born again in the darkness, just as you were physically born from darkness as well.
As we move toward wholeness, we stop rejecting opposites and begin to hold them. Love them. Integrate them.
This is the work.
CREATING FROM WHOLENESS
We can’t create the future we truly desire until we heal our past.
Shadow work is how we heal the past—so we stop sabotaging ourselves from places we don’t fully understand. When we reclaim those lost parts, we return to wholeness. And from wholeness, we can create something truly new.
In coaching, I see this happen all the time.
People come in afraid—bracing for pain, for grief, for judgment. But after we go to the shadow with love, what usually happens is laughter. Lightness. Relief.
They realize the monster they feared was just a little one, hiding in the dark, waiting to be seen.
That is the power of this work.
Not control. Not perfection. But peace.
The peace of no longer needing to reject, exile, or fix any part of who you are.
Just love.
You feel okay being you.
All of you.
What part of you have you been trying to fix?
What if it’s just waiting to be loved instead?
SO TELL ME…
I’d love to hear—what has shadow work taught you about love and wholeness? Have you ever felt afraid of unconditional love and acceptance? Tell me in the comments and I promise to respond. <3