PRACTICE
Shadow Work and Affirmations: Carl Jung's Quiet Practice
The parts of yourself you've disowned don't go away. They just get harder to hear.
The phrase shadow work has been on the internet long enough that it’s started to mean nothing. Search it and you’ll find candle-lit Pinterest boards, healing-girlie TikToks, and a hundred PDFs of “365 shadow work prompts” that all promise to crack open the parts of you you’ve been hiding from.
Most of it skates over what shadow work actually is. The point of this essay is to go back to the source — Carl Jung — and ask what the practice was originally for, and where a small daily affirmation practice fits inside it.
The honest summary: shadow work is the slow work of including the parts of yourself that haven’t been allowed in. Affirmations are a small piece of the practice — not the practice itself. But used well, they’re one of the most accessible doorways in.
What Carl Jung actually meant by “the shadow”
Jung’s concept of the shadow is older than most people realize. He started developing it in the 1910s, refined it through his break with Freud, and was still writing about it in the 1950s. The clearest definition comes from his 1951 essay Aion:
“The shadow is a moral problem that challenges the whole ego-personality, for no one can become conscious of the shadow without considerable moral effort.”
That sentence does a lot of work. Three things to notice.
The shadow is moral, not emotional. Jung isn’t talking about the parts of you that feel bad. He’s talking about the parts you’ve judged as wrong and pushed out of awareness. The shy person’s shadow contains their hidden ambition. The kind person’s shadow contains their hidden cruelty.
The shadow requires effort. Jung uses the phrase “considerable moral effort.” Not “easy mindfulness practice.” The shadow takes work because the parts of yourself you’ve disowned were disowned for reasons.
The shadow is unavoidable. You can’t get rid of your shadow by being a good person. The harder you push the disowned parts away, the more they leak out — through projections, dreams, and the unexpected behaviors that surprise even you.
Where affirmations fit into shadow work
The popular framing puts affirmations on the surface (“I am whole, I am loved”) and shadow work in the depths (“What did I learn from my parents about anger?”). It treats them as opposites.
Used well, they’re not opposites. They’re two parts of the same practice.
The trouble with confronting the shadow alone is that your conscious self is frequently the one most threatened by what surfaces. You sit with the disowned ambition, the disowned cruelty, and the inner narrator gets cruel: “see, I knew I was actually a bad person.”
This is where affirmations earn their keep. The right kind of affirmation — quiet, true, present-tense — gives the conscious self something to hold while it looks at the shadow.
✦ for the parts still mending
From the notebookMy body's tiredness is the truth of the day so far.
These don’t paper over what shadow work surfaces. They give you the steadiness to look at it.
Four kinds of affirmation that work alongside shadow work
After years of writing affirmations, four kinds keep proving useful for people doing shadow work in parallel.
1. Permission affirmations
Lines that allow for the existence of the shadow without endorsing its worst forms.
FROM THE NOTEBOOK
Permission to be more than one thing
2. Tenderness affirmations
Lines that speak to the conscious self when the shadow has just surfaced something hard.
FROM THE NOTEBOOK
Tenderness for the work
3. Continuity affirmations
Lines that remind you the work is long and you can stop at any time and come back tomorrow.
✦ on the days you've gone backwards
From the notebookHealing is a quiet, steady process; I trust the steadiness.
4. Integration affirmations
Lines that name the goal of shadow work — not perfection, but wholeness.
FROM THE NOTEBOOK
Made of softer, sturdier stuff
You’ll notice none of these claim a feeling. They claim a posture. That’s the difference between affirmations that work alongside shadow work and ones that flatten it.
A simple shadow-work-and-affirmation practice
Most people who try shadow work overdo it for two weeks and then quit. Ten minutes a day, sustained, will do more.
Morning (3 minutes). Read one continuity or permission affirmation. Out loud once, silently once. Don’t analyze it. Just let it set the day.
Evening (5 minutes). Pick one moment from your day where you reacted strongly to someone — anger, contempt, jealousy, dismissal. Write down what they did and your reaction. Then write down: “What part of me does that quality belong to?” Sit with the question.
Bedtime (2 minutes). Read one tenderness or integration affirmation. The point is to lay the day’s discomfort down rather than carrying it into sleep.
That’s it. Smaller and slower than the internet suggests. It also goes deeper.
What shadow work isn’t
A few honest notes, because the niche promises a lot.
Shadow work isn’t therapy. If you have significant trauma, shadow work alone is not enough — and may surface things faster than you can integrate them safely. Please work with a therapist. Shadow work can sit alongside that care; it shouldn’t replace it.
Shadow work isn’t manifestation. Some current voices conflate the two. Jung had nothing to do with manifestation. Shadow work doesn’t change your circumstances; it changes your relationship with the parts of yourself driving from the back seat.
Shadow work isn’t a phase. Jung’s view was that integrating the shadow is the work of a lifetime. The good news: there’s no failure state. The honest news: there’s no graduation either.
Shadow work isn’t always profound. Most of the work is small and ordinary. You notice you got annoyed at a coworker for being too eager, and sit with the question of whether your eagerness has been inconvenient to you. That’s a real shadow-work moment.
Frequently asked questions
What exactly are shadow work prompts?
Reflective questions designed to surface disowned parts of the self. They’re a tool, not the practice itself. The work is what you do after — sitting with what surfaced, noticing how it shows up in the next week.
Are shadow work and inner child work the same?
Related, not identical. Inner child work focuses on the wounded younger self. Shadow work focuses on disowned aspects across the whole life. They overlap but the lens is different.
Can affirmations be used as shadow work prompts?
Sort of. An affirmation that names a permission you don’t yet feel (“I am allowed to take up space”) can surface the shadow material that contradicts it. The contradiction is the prompt. Sit with it.
How long does shadow work take?
Jung would say a lifetime. Practical answer: meaningful shifts in projection patterns and self-talk usually take three to six months of consistent practice. Bigger shifts take years.
Is shadow work safe to do alone?
Light shadow work paired with an affirmation practice is safe and useful for most people. If significant trauma surfaces, please bring it to a therapist rather than continuing alone.
Jung wrote, near the end of his life: “One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious.” He didn’t mean the darkness is enlightenment. He meant you can’t get to enlightenment without including the darkness.
That’s what shadow work is. Not a healing aesthetic, not a manifestation hack — the slow work of including the parts of yourself that haven’t been allowed in.
Affirmations don’t replace that work. But the right ones can give the conscious self something steady to hold while you look. That’s the small, useful place affirmations belong: not the room itself. The chair you sit in while you’re in the room.
✦ Carry one with you
Pick the line above that lands today. Open its page. Save it, share it, or just sit with it for one breath. The practice is in the carrying.