What is shadow work? A dark dive into the abyss and facing terrors unknown? Or is is merely taking a hard look into yourself and asking, “Why do I do that?”
It’s BOTH actually. Months ago, a comment about my 76 Week Goetia revealed that the person criticizing it didn’t understand what TRUE shadow work is. A lot of people erroneously think it means sitting in a dark candlelit room, frankincense smoke wafting to the ceiling in plumes, while the practitioner, dressed in robes of course, laments some long invocation to the dark gods.
Truly, you can work with any Divine Intelligence when it comes to shadow work, but it doesn’t need to be done in the dark, or by candlelight, or anything like that. It could be a simple plea to a spirit – or it can involve working with spirits in ways that they help you reveal the work that needs to be done, guide you through it, and then help you find the strength to do it.
Shadow work has a list of basic key elements to it:
- You identify that there is a problem.
- Once you have looked outward and blamed all external influences (whether responsible or not) and the problem still exists, you realize you have nowhere to go but inward. This is true whether you are the problem or not. Sometimes, if other people are the problem, you need to accept that you can’t change them. But you CAN change your interactions with those people and reframe the situation or your thinking to benefit your own sanity.
- You analyze yourself. Your thoughts. Your decisions. Your feelings. How you react. What you say. What you do and how all of this impacts your situation.
- You work on yourself – rewiring your brain to think differently and to change your perception. Or you make a concerted effort to change how you act and/or react. For example, if you have low self-esteem and you discover you constantly feed yourself negative self-talk like, “Well, that’s as good as this will look on this body” then to reframe this, you become hyper aware of the negative self talk, and when it happens – you can stop yourself and reframe that thought to be more positive.
- You face your biggest fears and challenges and find ways to reframe your thinking or find solutions to eliminate fear (or at least minimize it), and to overcome challenges by thinking outside the box or finding a new path to the same goal. Of course, sometimes the only way forward is through. I know each of these steps sounds simple written out, but we all know it’s not. Many of you will be going to hell and back emotionally – and that’s why we call it shadow work.
- You face your deep emotional traumas that have shaped you and come to terms with these events, accept that they happened, let go of guilt or shame or fear, and move forward from that point. You don’t deny it happened, but you find ways to become stronger and not let the trauma destroy you and your present and future.
- You find your weaknesses and lack of skills within yourself and try to improve them based on your goals and interests. Constant self-improvement gives you a sense of accomplishment and builds your confidence.
- When you finish working on one thing (or do all the work you can at that time), you move on to the next thing. It is a constant, never ending process.
This is what Shadow Work is. No, it’s not some glamorous adventure through some LARP fantasy-land replete with horned Daemons. Well, not for the bulk majority of us. It’s basically all about dealing with your own imperfection, fear, trauma, and nastiness (let’s face it, we all have the capacity to be complete assholes as well as violent animals) that impacts your external world in so many ways.
The Daemonic merely serve as guides to this Shadow Work — inner work, self-work, whatever you want to call it. A lot of times, the Daemonic will come up with shit you didn’t even know you needed to work on. My favorite example of this is I was working with Sorath to help me with my writing career. First, you shouldn’t do this unless you’re ready to face the fire. Second, Sorath will burn your ass just to see if you can take the heat. But then if you want some sort of “public figure” type existence – you need to be able to handle that heat. So, I was excited when Sorath started throwing awards and nominations, and accolades at me. But then – with those things – he also threw a good number of speaking engagements at me. Public speaking has been a fear of mine forever. I have frozen in front of live audiences before. I used to shake and my voice would quiver. But, if you want accolades and fame, you better know how to speak in front of crowds. Point taken (Sorath-1, Steph-0). This barrage of public speaking started in 2017 and didn’t end until 2019. Then COVID happened, and I didn’t public speak again until 2022. This time around, I started getting paid to speak. I hadn’t really discovered how far this journey had taken me until July of 2024 when I spoke at a writer’s conference in Northern Colorado.
My husband was in the audience because he took the two hour drive with me so I wouldn’t be bored. When we were back in the car, driving home, my husband said, “You’re a great public speaker.” He sounded surprised and in awe, because I’d always told him how terrible I was at it and how nervous it made me. If you know my husband, you know he doesn’t throw around praise lightly. Shocked, I thanked him for the compliment, and then he pointed out one tick phrase I tended to use that, if I tossed out, would improve my performance. (This is why I’m sad he has no interest in beta reading all of my books. 😂) The point is – I hadn’t realized just how much my public speaking had improved until someone I trusted told me. It helped me to reframe my thinking about public speaking and I can no longer say I suck as a public speaker. (Not to mention people pay me for it now – so clearly I stopped sucking awhile back, but it never really clicked until M said something.)
Somewhere in the ether – Sorath is cheering and I’m moving on to the next piece of shadow work, because it’s never ending.
I don’t care how old you are, how wise you are, or how experienced you are – the shadow work never ends. There is ALWAYS a personal skill to improve or a new challenge or fear to face. No one, and I mean NO ONE – will leave this world without unfinished shadow work. I just think that maybe you become more adept at navigating it the longer you do it.
Anyway – that’s what shadow work is and how you do it. It doesn’t seem so intimidating written out like that. But you can probably also see why some people avoid it. It can be messy, complicated, and emotionally – hard work.
If you do need some guided instruction and ideas on how to do the shadow work, I recommend 76 Week Goetia, or the forthcoming The Hierarchy Dukanté. Or, if you prefer, just join my Patreon at the $5+ a month (might be a little over $8 a month if you join using IOS after November 2024) and jump in for the last part of the Dukanté Hierarchy Immersion class and have access to a bunch of other workshops and classes, as well as forthcoming classes.