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My mission as a Coach is to help my clients embrace their shadows to heal what has been holding them back in their relationships. This is one of three pillars in my 1:1 coaching practice, which I designed to help people improve their relationships. Now, this sounds really sexy… but what does it actually mean? Well, it means we’re going to do shadow work!
But before I have my clients dive into shadow work, there is some very important “pre-work” that we need to do. And this pre-work should NEVER be skipped, as it allows you to gain the most benefits and navigate this work emotionally intact (this pre-work is another pillar in my practice).
Think of this pre-work as protein for a bodybuilder. If a bodybuilder loads up on carbs and fats only, they can lift weights all day but won’t see the results they want. That’s because protein is an important building block for our muscles. In their case, the protein aids their muscles to allow them to get the most benefit from lifting, making their muscles the biggest and strongest they can be. Pre-work helps us to gain meaningful results from shadow work, while making the results easier to achieve.
In this blog post I will discuss what the pre-work for shadow work is, why it’s important, and provide resources to help you complete it.
Table of Contents
What is Shadow Work and How It Improves Relationships
Why is “Pre-Work” Crucial for Success
The “Pre-Work” needed for Shadow Work
Resources to Help with “Pre-Work” and Shadow Work
What is Shadow Work and How It Improves Relationships
First, if you’re new to the term “shadow work” and want to learn more about what that is and how you benefit from doing it, I’ve already written a blog post about this. Check out: How Shadow Work Helped Me to Feel More Connected to Myself and Improve My Relationships where I describe what it is, the benefits of doing this work, and my own personal journey with shadow work.
Why is “Pre-Work” Crucial for Success
Pre-work is crucial for success in shadow work because it is what helps you to be centered and grounded enough to do this work. Shadow work stirs up some pretty intense emotions and parts of yourself that you may not be fully comfortable with or proud of. In fact, there were periods of time while I was deep in my shadow work journey that I began to experience depression and had to ease off while I leaned into healthy coping strategies which would allow me to continue without affecting my overall mental health.
Maintaining a sense of emotional balance by centering and grounding yourself while doing shadow work is important for the following reasons:
Emotional safety: Shadow work involves confronting your unconscious thoughts, fears, and suppressed feelings. These can sometimes be difficult or painful to face. Staying grounded helps you process these emotions without becoming overwhelmed or reactive. It gives you a sense of safety as you explore deeper parts of yourself.
Self-compassion: When you’re centered, you’re more likely to approach the shadow work with kindness and understanding toward yourself, rather than self-criticism. It helps you remember that confronting your darker aspects isn’t about judgment but about healing and growth. This self-compassion is essential for making the work more effective and sustainable.
Presence: Being grounded keeps you present in the moment, rather than spiraling into anxiety, shame, or past experiences. It helps you avoid getting lost in overthinking or slipping into old patterns. When you’re grounded, you’re able to stay focused on the work, absorb the lessons, and respond with clarity rather than reactivity.
Emotional regulation: Shadow work can trigger powerful emotions like anger, sadness, or guilt. Staying grounded helps you regulate these emotions, preventing them from overwhelming you. It also enables you to process and release these emotions in healthy ways, without suppressing or acting out.
Clarity and insight: Shadow work requires a clear and open mind to understand the parts of yourself that are usually hidden. When you’re grounded, your mind is clearer, and you’re less likely to be clouded by defense mechanisms or distractions. This allows for deeper insight into the root causes of your behavior and emotions.
Balance: The process of shadow work can bring up both light and dark aspects of your psyche. Staying centered helps you hold that balance, accepting both your strengths and weaknesses without getting caught in either extreme. This acceptance is key to personal growth.
In a way, being centered acts as a protective shield that allows you to dive deep into shadow work without losing your sense of self or stability. If you’re not grounded, it’s easy to get lost or overwhelmed by the things you uncover.
The “Pre-Work” needed for Shadow Work
The pre-work needed for shadow work are all exercises and activities designed to center and ground you.
Essentially, the pre-work I focus my clients on includes:
Healthy Coping Strategies – Shadow work can be stressful because it forces you to take a good, long, hard look at yourself and some of your behaviors that you’re not very proud of. Shedding any maladaptive coping strategies and replacing them with healthy ones will increase your resilience and prevent you from going to some dark, emotional places while you’re doing this work.
Self-Care – Implementing a solid self-care routine is a fantastic way to practice self-compassion, which is vital to your success in shadow work. Self-compassion helps you to neutralize strong negative emotions you might otherwise feel when faced with the realities of your behaviors and how they may have impacted your life and others. Self-care also helps us to better manage stress, making it an important healthy coping strategy.
Breathwork – Breathwork has both physiological and psychological benefits. When we take deep breaths, signals are sent to our parasympathetic nervous system to instruct us to calm down and relax. The body also benefits from the increase in oxygenated blood that is then sent throughout your body to the rest of our organs. Breathwork helps to ground you in the present and focus on what is in front of you. Given these benefits, breathwork can help you to achieve the calm and mindful state required for the deep self-reflection in shadow work.
Meditation – Meditating regularly helps you improve your presence, helping you to move through life more intentionally and mindfully. This helps you to more easily recognize triggers as they arise, which is an important piece of shadow work. If we go through life distracted, we miss out on recognizing and examining our less obvious triggers which still negatively impact our lives and relationships. Meditation also helps you increase your focus and redirect your thoughts, making it easier to exercise self-compassion over judgment, another crucial skill to have while doing shadow work.
Journaling – Journaling has so many healing benefits that I recommend it whether you’re doing shadow work or not. It helps with healthy emotional regulation, providing a valuable outlet to unload our stress, thereby making it a healthy coping strategy. It can boost our mood and increase memory. It can even enhance our communication skills as it gives the opportunity to put our experiences and emotions into words, which can sometimes be difficult to do. Journaling also actually helps you change your negative thought patterns because writing things down can support the brain in building new neural pathways more efficiently than simply thinking or speaking our thoughts can (Neural Pathways in our brain are what create our habitual patterns of thoughts, feelings and actions). An added benefit of writing things down is the opportunity to reflect and build upon the thoughts we have record of, as we meditate and recall even more of our history that has long since been buried, making it a pretty important component to shadow work.
Why Do This Work?
If you have read this blog post and thought to yourself, “Shadow work sounds really intense, too uncomfortable, or too much work. Why bother?” I’d point you to the amazing benefits shadow work has.
First, shadow work helps you to create self-awareness and uncover your “blindspots,” opening your eyes to the behaviors, attitudes and beliefs that aren’t serving you, and are negatively impacting your relationships.
Second, by doing this work, you can neutralize your “triggers” and gain clarity on why you react the way you do, to better regulate your emotions. It also makes it easier for you to understand other people’s perspectives (demonstrate empathy), communicate effectively, and resolve conflict, which are all vital relationship skills.
Third, shadow work helps you better understand yourself, improves your self-confidence when you are able to take a balanced approach and recognize the good in you. It also helps you to increase self-love. When we achieve self-love, we become magnetic to others, attracting even more love to ourselves. Afterall, we have to first love ourselves before we can truly love and be loved by others.
Finally, I think Calvin Coolidge put it best when he said, “All growth depends upon activity. There is no development physically or intellectually without effort, and effort means work.” Plainly stated – sometimes hard things are worth doing.
Resources to Help with “Pre-Work” and Shadow Work
So where to begin?
First, if you’re unclear on how to do any of the pre-work I mentioned above, you can find all of it in my eBook Journey Within: A Guide to Strengthening the Connection with Yourself and Others. This book not only covers the ins and outs of how to do the pre-work, it includes theories, instructions and exercises to help you do shadow work.
Second, if you want the support and accountability to help you better understand, implement and stick with shadow work, let’s explore 1:1 Coaching. I have a 90 day program designed to help you improve your relationships which, as discussed above, includes the pre-work and shadow work. Not discussed above is the third pillar of my program where I help my clients develop or improve upon vital relationship skills that help them have healthy relationships.
If a 90 day program isn’t for you, purchasing individual sessions is also an option.
Being that I aim to work very closely with my clients, I meet with all prospective clients in an initial discovery call to ensure our goals align and that I truly will be the best support for them. This call is of no cost and you can schedule one by clicking here:
Third, if you start on this journey, as noted above, you are going to need a journal. If you’re looking for recommendations, this is the one I use. I love it for its privacy and durability. It’s refillable so you only have to replace the insert once you fill it up. And the buttery soft leather still feels luxurious two years after purchase.
Finally, as noted above, this work can bring forth a lot of intense emotions. If you’ve experienced trauma in the past that you feel has not yet been resolved and could become problematic for you to rehash on your own, or you begin this work and start to experience heavy emotions to the point it makes daily life difficult, I recommend seeking a therapist to help you move through your emotions. Note that this blog, coaching sessions, the Journey Within eBook, or any resources on this blog are not replacements for therapy. I personally love the website www.psychologytoday.com as it helps you locate providers in your area that are accepting new patients.
Thank you for reading this post! Before we say goodbye, here are two more non-shadow work specific resources:
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