Embracing the Dark Side: Shadow Work

I'm Megan Hamilton, and this is the embracing enchantment Podcast. I'm so glad that you're here spending your time with me today, and if you haven't had a chance to listen to the intro episode.

Make sure you queue it up so you catch it after you've listened today. It helps build a little bit of context as to what we're going to be doing here, why we're here, what this is all about, who I am and what I'm going to focus on today. We're going to take a deep dive into a practice that I've been using and coaching with for a few years, and to say that this practice changed my life. You know, I It's, I'm, I could be I am. I have been called a dramatic person before. I did go to theater school, but I'm not being overly emphatic when I say that this practice changed my life, and I'm really excited to dive into it with you today. I use it almost every single day. It has helped me understand myself, be honest with myself, more deeply than almost anything else has. So today we're going to take a look at shadow work. So before we get started, make sure you stick around to the end, because I'm going to be sharing some free resources with you to help you get started. You've probably heard the term shadow work before, and maybe you're familiar with it, but maybe you're not, and so Shadow Work is broadly defined as reaching into your psyche and examining your dark side. The person who coined the phrase and the practice, or the earliest practice, was Carl Jung, and this quote hit me in the guts. This quote might be the actual moment when I just went, Oh my God. I quote everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves. End quote, and that's Carl you. So why is that important? Well, if you're anything like me, you've been irritated before in your life. I am currently perimenopausal, and a lot of things are irritating. And when I see I've talked before about this, so people would say, be yourself. And I'd be like, I don't even know if I know who that is. What does that mean? I don't know what being myself is like. Shadow Work changed that for me, and I think part of it was that, until the point where I realized how important it was to be very deeply honest with yourself, I sort of was walking around like many of us do with this vision I had of who I wanted people to think I was instead of maybe who I actually was. And when this quote came to me, it it occurred to me and it had been said before, but for whatever reason, it just hit me in that moment when somebody is irritating you, it's often because that is a behavior that you exhibit, and you're recognizing it, and it bugs you about yourself, and so it bugs you about somebody else, that, for me, was like or, you know, What's the other takes one to no one. What I that opened up this new channel of being able to understand myself, and I had to be ready to do it right. So maybe, you know, maybe you're following along here, and you're like, you're nodding in agreement. You're thinking, okay, maybe you've already gone down this path before, and you're like, uh, yeah, but that piece of recognizing behavior in others that you don't like, because you ultimately recognize that it's behavior that you do is it's a game changer. It also lets you know that you're ready to start taking sort of a more serious look at this stuff. And the other thing, it's not just that, if somebody's bugging you that that's because you do it. It's also information for yourself that you can say, okay, as my old coach, Jericho, used to say, Hmm, that's in. Interesting, if we can take a look and examine and have a realization, and instead of, you know, immediately shaming ourselves, or why didn't I get this until now, or what is wrong with me? Instead, we go, Hmm, that's interesting. And we remove the judgment piece, and we say, Why am I bothered by this? What? What does it matter like? Why do I have to care about this that can lead you down a huge rabbit hole that ultimately leads to leads to self realization in ways that you hadn't thought of before? So we'll get to that. I'm sort of getting ahead of myself here. So shadow work, as we said, taking a look at the dark side of your psyche. So what might some of this stuff look like? Well, things that we're ashamed of, situations that happened in the past, that we wish had never happened, and that might be, you know, stuff that we did so all of a sudden, you know, it's there's like 4000 million memes about this, but waking up in the middle of the night and suddenly remembering this very dorky said thing you said at a party 20 years ago. Why does that keep coming up? What might this tell us about ourselves, and how are we talking to ourselves about this very situation? So before we get any further, I'm going to pull a tarot card for us. And in fact, what's interesting about this is that when I practice shadow work, I always practice it with my tarot cards. So I pull three cards just about every day, and then the bottom of the deck is the shadow card. So actually, let's keep that practice in mind. For here, what's our shadow card for today?

Well, it's the devil reversed. And again, tarot couldn't be more on the nose. So I did a shadow work workshop recently, and it was around the full moon in Aries that happened in October of 2024, which is, you know, full moon is usually when we're we want to be letting go of something, releasing something. And I pulled the death card, which is all about releasing. It is the most releasing of the releasing cards. It is all about letting go, moving on. Something is done. Let's move on with it. And actually, in the introduction episode, I pulled the 10 of swords, which is about that as well. So something you might notice, the theme is coming. And I realized as well. You know, I do you can find, if you want to take a look at this card, you can head over to YouTube and watch the video version. But some folks are just going to be listening, and maybe folks are visually impaired. So I'm going to describe the card a little bit for you. So I've pulled the devil reversed. And this is card 15 in the Major Arcana. I am using the Rider Waite Smith deck, which came out in 1909, and the devil card has, you know, a pretty standard devil looking guy, big ears, two horns, bat wings, hairy legs and sort of crow like feet standing on a black box. On that black box is a ring. Attached to that ring are two chains. On either side of the devil, we have a woman who's also got devil horns. She's naked and her tail are grapes, and the chain is around her neck. On the other chain, also around a neck, is a man. He has a flame for a tail, and maybe flaming hair as well. He's also got devil horns, and the devil is holding a big torch, and that is sort of igniting the man's tail. Okay? Above the devil is a pentacle, which is reversed, and so a pentacle is one of the suits of tarot, and when it's reversed, the two bottom points of this five pointed star are pointing up, and that's supposed to be the devil horns. So this card is reversed. And I read reversals when I do tarot, some people don't. The devil card alone is about shadow. It is about things we're addicted to. It is about So, you know, the man might say, and I'm speaking binary here, but um. The man is maybe addicted to anger, right? That's, that's where this flame is coming from, and the woman maybe is addicted to wine or sort of over indulging. So one is sort of like focusing on difficult behaviors, and the other one is focusing on also difficult behaviors, but more like addictions, things that we are, that we feel we can't get rid of in ourselves, and they're chained, right? So you feel chained. You feel tied to this. You feel like you can't escape it. And this card is reversed, and we could talk, and we will at some point, about what reversals might mean, but really, this could be about releasing these difficulties, releasing these addictions, releasing these obsessions, releasing these patterns, which is really hilariously what shadow work is all about. And the first thing to think about with Shadow Work is that we have to know what we're dealing with, so that we can actually deal with it, right? And so we really do hide from a lot of this stuff that lives in the darkness of our psyche because it's painful because, of course, we do. Nobody wants to sit around thinking about all of the things that we've done in our lives that are awful things that have happened to us that were awful people in our lives, that were terrible now, before we get going, it's really important to note it that sometimes when you're doing Shadow Work, stuff can come up, especially if you've dealt with some major trauma in your life, or if you haven't, if you've, if you you know, if you've got a suspicion that there's been major trauma, but you haven't actually taken a look at it. This is where, if you're going to be responsible, you want to make sure you've got somebody who can help you, and that person would be a licensed mental health practitioner, right? So, a therapist, a counselor, somebody that you have access to, you might even just want to have a phone number handy of somebody you can call who can help you through this stuff. Most of the time, the stuff that comes up is, is painful, but it's, it's not so painful that you can't, you know, get through your day. But every once in a while, something might come up, and it might really trigger something for you, and you want to make sure, because this work is is compassionate, it's helping ourselves. We are caring for ourselves. You want to make sure that you have somebody who can help you through that. Okay, that's really important when we're talking about shadow work. But we can't move forward in our lives until we know what we need to move forward from and so learning how to very compassionately Be honest with yourself, to ask yourself deep and difficult questions, to be to see yourself The Good, the Bad and the Ugly, right? That's the other thing. You've also got to see the good. Because we talk about this a lot when I work with clients, uh, when we're doing Shadow Work, specifically around visibility and speaking, and why that might be difficult, we can get into habits of just, you know, practicing Shadow Work, unearthing all this stuff, you know, being being real with ourselves. And sometimes that can become its own habit, so that we're sort of just constantly like having to excavate all this stuff, or feeling like we need to be working on ourselves all the time, instead of the goal, which is just to be able to be right. So once you get started with this, or if you already are, that's a great question to ask yourself, How much do I practice this? How aware am I of this? And might I, might I take a break from it every once in a while, and just like, live be okay with who I am today and come back to this when I need it. So here's what I do every day. I pull out my journal, I get my tarot cards ready. I also read runes. Now I light a candle. I walk around the room looking at things, saying thank you to things, maybe I'll pull out some crystals I want to use to focus on for the day. Think about where I'm at and thinking about, you know, sort of broadly, what I might want to be tackling today, taking a look at I've got an altar that I use, and again, this helps keep me intentional. I sometimes, after I feed the birds in the morning, I might find a feather. I bring that up this summer, I found hundreds, maybe not hundreds, maybe 100 or close to 104 leaf clovers that'll come up later. I'm sure of it, and now I don't find them as frequently. Which is really, really interesting. But to get myself situated, I get myself set up, pull out my journal. My microphone is actually sitting on top of it right now, so I can't show you and my pen. I have a favorite pen, light a candle, and I get started. For me, I like to call in the four directions, or the seven directions, right? If that's new to you, we will absolutely cover that. But that is where you call in the east, the South, the West, the North, below, above and within. And then I like to call in my ancestors, and I just start to think about where I am, what's going on. Sometimes I use when I'm journaling, I start off with a commitment statement, and for a while that was I commit to trusting that what I put out will come back to me in expansive growth. I commit to justice, I commit to action, and I commit to doing the next right thing. So I'd write that out every day, to stay intentional. Other ways that you can stay intentional about stuff is use a phrase as a password, right? You know, we can use these phrases to psych ourselves up. We can use these phrases to remind ourselves of things that we want to be intentional about let me also build it into your password. How many times we have to enter a password every day?

Sometimes quite a few. So the whole point of all of this is really intentionality, because we know, especially if you've got a busy life right now, life can just go, you can be all of a sudden, 15 years later. And go, what happened? Oh my gosh, all this stuff that I wanted to do I haven't done. And then you get to my place, where I'm 50, right, probably half past the halfway mark, you never know. And you think, okay, if I ever want to get this book done, I'm gonna have to make a plan for this. I'm gonna I'm gonna have to actually write it. We can get so caught up, there are enough things to do every day for us to not think about bigger, deeper goals that we want to achieve in our lives. And maybe you're not a goal person, living is its own great thing. You know, life really is a gift. And experiencing nature, love, delicious food, warmth, tenderness, humanity, community, those things, they're enough. You don't have to do anything monumental in your life if you're not called to do it, but if you are, and even if it's not monumental, even if it's you want to get better at cooking, you're going to have to put some action into that in order for it to get done. And so that's part of the reason why I sit down and get intentional in my journal every day, because I was realizing that my life was going and there was some stuff I knew I was going to want to do, but I hadn't started and I hadn't made a plan. I also knew that I really wanted to figure out who actually am I? Why do I feel so awkward in certain situations? Why am I still not being able to get past XYZ? And that's where the shadow work came in, and over time, as I became more comfortable really being honest with myself about things with a very compassionate framework, and I go through what that compassionate framework is in my shadow work workbook called me and my shadow which I will definitely put in the show notes, as well as a recording of the recent Shadow Work workshop that you can do if you want to get started practicing Shadow Work, those will be in the show notes. Once I started to be very honest with myself in a compassionate way, asking myself the hard questions and committing to truth, I started showing up differently. I was more confident. I was more comfortable. This is somebody I'm also, you know, okay, so I'm 50. I went to theater school when I was 19. I've been perform, and then I became a musician, a speaker. I I've been out in front of people for a very long time, and I would say, and I'm, you know, and it's an ongoing journey, but I would say that the way I show up now is vastly different. And you could say, well, but you're older, you don't care about things as much. And that's true, that's part of it. But I'm also showing up full. Really ask myself as somebody who likes themself, as somebody who is very honest with themself now, like, that's not to say I'm not just showing up like hero Megan all the time. I make a lot of mistakes, like a lot. I have a 13 year old daughter. I make mistakes on the daily, I'm doing my best out here, just like the rest of us are, but I feel so much better equipped to handle the difficult times, because I've got to practice. I know that tomorrow, if I'm feeling stressed and overwhelmed, and by the way, this year, 2024 has really given me a run for my money in terms of practicing what I preach, and also I asked for it so and I'll get into this as time goes on. I'm still figuring it all out, but I know that tomorrow morning I'm going to be able to sit down with my journal and work all of this out. I know that I can go to my therapist who, by the way, is amazing, and walk through things with her. I have got these supports in place to help navigate these difficult times. And that is, ultimately, you know what Shadow Work can do for any of us. So again, the goal is honesty, commitment, comfort, self compassion, which in turn becomes compassion for others. The more honest and truthful you are with yourself, and the more you see where some of your behaviors come from, which, by the way, is usually to protect yourself from some kind of pain. That's happened. When we can really see that, instead of being embarrassed and think, oh my gosh, oh, 20 years ago, Megan was in so much pain. That's where this started. That's why this happened as a very different mindset than Damn it. Why do I always do this to myself? What is wrong with me? I'm such a jerk, right? Nothing great ever happened from feeling deep shame. Nothing great ever happened from beating yourself up over something, nothing great ever happened from belittling yourself in your mind. And you know, the more we do that, the more we also do that with others. So there's a lot of compelling reasons why we might want to practice shadow work, and the way I practice it is questions. And this is, you know, I started to get into this too with coaching, with the various coaching trainings that I've had, just know how to ask great questions, and you keep asking the questions. So you might say, Okay, what is bothering me right now? Well, I I was a jerk to my kid yesterday. Okay, well, why was I a jerk to my kid? Well, because I got triggered by a certain behavior that she exhibited and I couldn't get out of it. Okay. Well, why did that happen? Well, maybe it reminds you of ways that other kids or your parents handled certain situations a long time ago. And you go, Oh, interesting, okay. And then you might notice, well, when that first happened, I was little or younger, my brain wasn't fully developed. Our brains only function, really is to keep us from pain. It's to keep us alive. And there's a fabulous book called Seven and a half lessons about the brain that you should check out if you haven't and you think, oh, okay, so little me did this in the moment, because that's all I knew how to do. And then your brain goes, Oh, okay, I know how to handle these situations. When x happens, I do this. And so now, 35 years later, you find yourself behaving in a way that feels really bad, because it's a pattern you developed. You're going back to that devil card, right? Patterns, addictions, things we feel chained to, and you haven't ever given yourself the chance to interrogate it or re channel, redevelop neural pathways, change how you deal with the original trigger. So then, now that you know what you're dealing with, you know what you're dealing with, and you can make a plan. Okay, so when my child does this, I am triggered. I don't want to be triggered. So what can I do? I realize that I am triggered. Because of this painful thing that happened many, many years ago. Okay, now I recognize that I started to do that behavior because I felt threatened. I felt a lot of deep pain or shame or I, you know, guilt. Okay, so now, how can I start to untangle that? And in that shadow work workbook that I mentioned, there's a couple of different ways that you can do, that you can also develop your own and there are a million books about shadow work out there that you can look at, lots of them with incredible questions to ask yourself. And once you start exploring, you'll start to develop your own practice of uncovering, of compassionate, loving ways of really connecting with yourself. And you know, I guess it sounds cheesy to say, but healing your inner child, healing those parts of yourself that did the best they could in any given situation before your brain was fully developed. And so now we just want to give ourselves the opportunity to develop more mature. And by mature I mean wise, right ways of handling these situations, and that is shadow work in a nutshell. Again, man, it was life changing for me, and I would love to know if you decide to take a look at it,

how does it work for you? What are you discovering? If you come up with any great questions to ask yourself for shadow work, I'd love for you to share. So I hope that you will join us every two weeks so you'll be able to cultivate rituals, devotions and soul searching to help you build a dynamic and evolving relationship with yourself and the captivating world around you. We have some very exciting episodes coming up about Taro, human design, shamanism, and I'd love to know what you would love to know more about. Leave us a voice note or send me an email and find information and takeaways from today's episode, including the Shadow Work workbook, as well as the Shadow Work workshop, or at embracing enchantment.com please subscribe if you love what you're hearing. Subscribe and keep up with us and follow wherever you get your podcasts. We'd love it. If you would leave a review. Even better, a voice note, even best, help spread the Word. Until then, here's to building an enchanted life. You

Transcribed by https://otter.ai