You Cannot See What You Cannot See. This Is Why Shadow Work Was Never Meant To Be Done Alone.

Shadow work is becoming trendy, which is good news. However, it is also extremely shallow right now, and this is not the real depth of shadow work.

When you see a trendy social media post talking about shadow work, what do they mean by it? Most of the time, it is pop psychology, not the real thing, and it has turned something demanding into a lame version of itself. The real work takes work. It is extremely confrontational. It goes deep, and pop psychology on social media does not help anyone.

Shadow work, in the tradition I do with my Jungian analyst, is to look at what is in the unconscious, and we do a great deal of dream work because of that. Our dreams show us, through symbols, what is lurking in the shadow and what those symbols are trying to say. We spend time with the feelings underneath them, and we also look at how the shadow parts of our consciousness show up in life, sometimes in surprising ways.

This is not to say that everything we see in the world means something. Some things simply do not, and we should not read too much into them. The ability to tell the difference has a lot to do with how mature our consciousness is, because in new age spirituality most people assign meaning to everything they see, which is also not the right thing. That is a lack of discernment.

What the popular version leaves out is depth, and depth work takes time. It is not about passing a mark. It is a very intimate inner process you have with yourself.

This has happened, where clients tell me they have been doing shadow work, and when they describe what they have actually been doing, I realise it is not that at all. It is pop psychology, something they picked up from a spiritual teacher who called it shadow work.

One of the most obvious ways this shows up is when a teacher uses shadow work to belittle a student, telling them they are not there yet because of their shadow. But the shadow exists in everyone, no matter how far along they are. Having a shadow does not mean you have failed at the work, because the shadow simply means the things you are not able to see, the parts of your unconscious you are not conscious of. A lot of spiritual teachers use the phrase to mean a dark side within yourself, an evil part, but that is not what it means. It is a huge misreading of the concept.

If someone is just using journaling prompts from an online Jungian course, they may only be scratching the surface. The truth is, you cannot do shadow work on your own. You cannot see what you cannot see. Someone has to point it out to you, someone who is familiar with the work, has done it themselves, and can interpret the symbols and connect them to your life. Shadow work cannot be done solo.

To people using AI journaling prompts, or the Instagram version of shadow work, I want them to know this: what they are doing is probably just rearranging furniture in their minds. They are not going any deeper. It might give temporary relief, but it is whatever sits in the unconscious that will free them from the pain, the challenge, or whatever they are going through. Going deeper is the key.

Understanding a pattern and being free of it are two different achievements. You can understand a pattern, but if you do not have the depth to see clearly where it originates, why you make decisions the way you do, why you feel the way you do, and why you repeat it the way you do, then you are not going to change. Nothing changes.

© 2026 Shamala Tan