Worthy Words #3: Shadow Work

Worthy Words #3: Shadow Work

In this post on Worthy Words, we are gonna look at Shadow Work. Worthy Words is a blog series, where we learn about seemingly worldly important words.

This blog post covers about the word “Shadow Work”. Disclaimer: These’re all psychology terms and I am not a psychology expert, I am just a humble (read lowly), software engineer. Now, why do I believe that I could write a blog post on a word that’s not in my area of expertise? Sure, I am not a Psychology expert, but, I too have a mind, like the fellow human reader, I too have emotions and I have been fighting my emotions for more than 20 years. Fighting with emotions for 20+ years surely gives us an experience. Also, I am not going to talk about the academic psychology behind it but from the practical perspective of a software engineer who writes, debugs and analyses code for work.

Let’s first look into the word “Shadow”. The word “Shadow” comes from Carl Jung, who equated that with our hidden and dark traits. For example, Everyone is nice at the office because of the HR rules and the watchful eyes of the fellow employees. But, not everyone is gentle, loving, caring (why should they in a competing environment? Right?) at heart. Some could be in survival mode. Some could have unresolved childhood trauma and still want vengeance. And some might be just raised that way and stay bad. On the other end, some positive traits like hugging, touching, holding others aren’t particularly acceptable by the public too, it’s bad to hug people from other gender. Everyone masks their bad traits to satisfy the HR’s condition to remain on the team.

These traits (non-acceptable, consciously repressed for some reason) that are masked behind the outwardly same niceness, are “Shadow Traits”. Any work done on the Shadow to hopefully improve the darkness is “Shadow Work”.

P.S. Now, why is it important for us to understand the shadow traits of a person. Actually, not for a person in a professional setting, but for someone who is entering the personal space of their desirable partner, it is very empowering to know their “Shadow Traits”. Because, if the shadow traits were luckily just hugging or something positive, then it would not hurt, but when they are negative, then, it’s bad for the desiring person. Knowing the “Shadow Traits” empower the potential partners. AI might be finetuned to understand the shadow traits of a person a bit and used alongside dating apps. Also, some say that prisoners have positive shadow too.

What do you think? Let me know your thoughts in the comments below!