Meeting the Shadow: The Healing Hidden in What We Avoid

When The Masks Come Off

Shadow work isn’t glamorous. It’s not a weekend ritual or a pretty prompt in a journal. It’s the slow and sometimes uncomfortable act of seeing yourself without filters.
And for me, that started when everything I’d avoided started repeating itself.

Patterns That Whisper

Before I understood shadow work, I thought “healing” meant staying positive, forgiving quickly, and moving on. But me being positive became another mask.
The real shifts happened when I started noticing what kept looping — the same emotional triggers, the same relationship dynamics, the same exhaustion after helping everyone but myself.

Shadow work begins in that recognition. It’s the quiet voice that asks, why does this keep happening?

What the Shadow Really Is

The shadow isn’t darkness in a moral sense — it’s unintegrated energy.
All the parts of you that were shamed, rejected, or deemed “too much” found somewhere to hide.
For me, it was anger. For years, I turned it into overworking, caretaking, and control. It looked like compassion, but it was really fear of rejection dressed up as service.

When I finally let that anger speak, it didn’t destroy me — it freed me.
It said:

“I deserved to be heard.”

ADHD, Autism, and the Hidden Self

Living with ADHD and autism, the shadow often forms through masking.
We learn early to hide our sensitivity, our intensity, our difference. Over time, the mask becomes muscle memory — and we forget who we were underneath it.

My shadow work wasn’t about finding darkness; it was about finding authenticity.
It was the first time I met the version of me who didn’t apologise for needing time alone, who didn’t shrink when others misunderstood her rhythm.

Bringing Light to It

Shadow work doesn’t ask for perfection; it asks for honesty.
Some days, that honesty looks like tears in the bath. Other days, it looks like saying no when your nervous system says enough.

I’ve learned that my shadow isn’t my enemy — it’s my guide.
It leads me back to boundaries, to truth, and to emotional safety.

Integration Is Love

If awakening is remembering who you are, shadow work is learning to love who you’ve been.
When we stop running from our pain, we stop creating from it.
That’s when compassion becomes real — not the type that drains you, but the type that strengthens you.

“You can’t heal what you still fear.”

“But when you face it, you realise the shadow was never darkness — it was you, waiting to be seen.”