July 21, 2026 • 21 mins
Shadow work has a reputation for being heavy, dark, and painfully complicated. We take a different angle: what if shadow work is simply learning to spot the hidden meanings your nervous system assigns to everyday life and updating that “old code” with truth? When we understand the shadow self through a practical lens, we stop fearing what we might find and start using self-awareness as a real tool for healing, confidence, and better relationships.
We walk through what shadow work actually is, why it often starts out hard, and why it gets easier when your body learns safety. Instead of relying only on insight, we talk about somatic signals like tightness, shallow breathing, and tension as clues that an old insecurity just entered the room. This is nervous system work in plain language: the body stores pain, but it also stores safety, and with repetition it can alert you before you spiral into projection, catastrophizing, or self-protection.
If you care about mental health, trauma healing, emotional regulation, and practical self-development grounded in faith and integrity, this conversation will give you a clearer map. Subscribe, share this with a friend who overthinks everything, and leave a review with the pattern you want to break next.
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Episode Transcript
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SPEAKER_00 (00:04):
Welcome to Islamic Life Code School Podcast.
Apply tools that you learn inthis podcast and your life will
be unrecognizably successful.
Now your host, Dr.
Kamal Akar.
Hello, hello, hello everyone.
Peace and blessings be upon allof you.
Alhamdulillah, I absolutely lovetoday's topic because it makes
my own life and my clients' lifeso much easier.
(00:26):
But as you might have noticedfrom the title, we're talking
about shadow work.
So the topic has some dark vibesto it, but I will show you how
this is an extremely importantwork towards your healing and
how you can actually do thiswork while enjoying it.
The premise is that not only canshadow work be fun, it can be
(00:47):
easy.
Your body will start to do theshadow work automatically
without you spending too manyintellectual resources.
So by definition, shadow work isthe process of exploring and
integrating the repressed,unconscious parts of your
personality, often referred toas the shadow self.
And this is originating from thetheories of the Swiss
(01:08):
psychiatrist Carl Jung.
It involves acknowledging yourhidden fears and biases.
It involves acknowledgingunhealed traumas to achieve
greater self-awareness andemotional wholeness.
And you do all of this in spiritof preventing yourself from
projecting your insecuritiesonto others and onto your life.
As soon as something from yourshadow side comes up, like your
(01:30):
insecurity about your body oryour awareness of your scarcity
mindset around money, if it'ssomething you've worked through
before, every time you do thiswork, there's a higher chance
that your body will call you onit and stop you from spiraling
down and projecting thatinsecurity onto your life or
onto your confidence or evenonto your relationships.
(01:54):
And it will remind you that it'ssafe for you to be in this space
and it will provide you thesafety that you're looking for
to go through this healingprocess.
This is a beautiful function ofyour body, which is your
subconscious mind.
In the beginning, if you need aprofessional to help you hold
your space while you go throughthe healing of your
(02:14):
insecurities, each subsequenttime your body will remember the
safety and it will allow you tohold space for yourself.
Your body begins to do theshadow work for you
automatically, meaning your bodyis the subconscious mind that
does things out of effort andmemory, something that is
familiar.
And since you have previouslyapplied time, effort, and
(02:37):
consciousness to clean up theshadow side beliefs, then the
body will start to do itautomatically, and it will
require less and less energyeach time.
What I'm saying is that yes,shadow work looks like a lot of
work, and it is in thebeginning.
And at the same time, it's veryeasy once you've started to do
(02:57):
it, because the body getsrecruited to do the work
automatically.
It starts to remember the safetyit felt when you previously
addressed any painful memories.
So just like body stores thepain of the trauma, it also
stores the feelings of safetyand connection.
So in the background, while youcontinue to build your life and
(03:20):
achieve your goals, it will helpyou do the work automatically.
I'm gonna give you my exampleand some generic examples to
make this point moreunderstandable.
One of my recruiting shadowthemes is my desire for
perfection.
Maybe it came from childhood orsocial expectations or wherever
it came from.
It was growing and festeringunder my awareness and getting
(03:41):
stronger and stronger each day.
So in the beginning of myhealing journey through therapy
coaching, not only did I realizethat this is perfectionistic
tendencies that are existing inme, I also saw how they're
affecting my life and making itso difficult.
It was showing up in myparenting, in my life as a
physician, and literallyeverything else.
(04:02):
I coached through it with help,someone else was able to hold
space for it for me, while wesafely explored how this does
not mean anything inherent aboutme and that there are limiting
beliefs that I have internalizedover time, and we coached
through this shadow side to comeout of it.
This holding of space allowed meto examine it and create a
(04:24):
different, more empoweringrelationship with my high
standards.
Now my relationship to myperfectionism is that it is a
lie that covers a very importantvalue to me, that is in doing
high quality work, and thatperfection only belongs to Allah
subhanahu wa ta'ala.
I can strive and come close toperfection, but I might never
quite achieve it.
(04:45):
I healed enough to believe thatI can call my effort perfect and
the outcome is also perfect asit relates to this world, as it
relates to this world and us asmortal human beings.
Alhamdulillah, the success andthe expansion of life I have
created through this healing ofmy shadow side of perfectionism,
that in itself is worth all themoney and the time and the
(05:08):
effort I spent in coaching.
Now every time when aperfectionist tendency shows up
an area of my life, my body andmy mind immediately alert me to
it, so I can bring it to myattention and consciously move
away from the lie it's trying totell me.
The shadow side work of myperfectionist tendency has
(05:29):
become much easier because nowmy body is recruited into making
it automatic.
Currently I'm working on a bookon mental health for Muslim
women, and this perfectionistictendency shows up as I write my
book, along with my other shadowside beliefs to avoid being
misunderstood.
When I started to write thisbook, the perfectionistic
(05:50):
tendency showed up with tellingme that I should be able to
communicate the truth with suchprecision in this book that it
should be impossible for anybodyto misunderstand me.
That sounds noble on thesurface, but the shadow almost
always disguises itself astruth, as virtuous.
In my case, the shadow is thebelief that I can explain
(06:14):
something perfectly, so thatpeople will receive it
perfectly.
That creates an enormous amountof internal pressure because I
start carrying responsibilitynot only for the quality of my
work, but also for how otherpeople will interpret it.
So what that looks like is thatI'm sitting down to write what
should take me one hour or soworking on one chapter, one
(06:36):
paragraph, or whatever my goalis, but I find myself hours
later still refining the sameexact idea, not moving any
further.
If someone was watching from theoutside, they would conclude
that I'm very meticulous andintellectually rigorous.
What they won't see is that theinternal conversation in my mind
that's driving the behavior.
(06:57):
I'm not really just trying tomake the paragraph clearer.
My mind is trying to eliminateevery possible misunderstanding
before anyone reads my work.
I begin imagining the reader whowill take my words out of
context, the person who willthink I'm saying something
unislamic when I'm really not,and the critic who will assume
(07:17):
that I'm minimizing trauma whenI'm actually trying to restore
agency, and it makes me reallyafraid for that woman who will
interpret my message as blameinstead of empowerment.
And without realizing any ofthis, under my shadow side of
perfectionism, I stop writingfor the thousands of women I'm
genuinely trying to serve and Istart writing for that one
(07:39):
hypothetical critic who may ormay not exist.
Years ago this process wouldconsume me without my
recognition.
What I thought was that I wasjust being thorough with the
process.
I thought I was pursuingexcellence because excellence is
something Islam encourages.
I couldn't see underneath all ofthese virtues was a pattern of
(08:01):
my old belief that my worth wassomehow tied to me getting it
exactly right every time, andthat the quality of my work was
dependent on it not having anycritic, which of course leads to
me not having produced any book.
The shadow side is not that Iwant excellence.
The shadow is believing thatperfection could protect me from
(08:24):
being misunderstood.
Now, after having done thiswork, the body catches it much
earlier than my mind does.
I notice that there's somethingvery shallow in my breathing or
there's some tightness ortension in my body that I'm
holding.
And this shows up that insteadof feeling excited about the
idea that I'm writing a book, Ibegin feeling responsible for
(08:46):
controlling every reactionanother human being could hold.
Now, these bodily sensationsbecome my invitation to pause
because they tell me that I'm nolonger creating from clarity.
They tell me that I'm stuck inperfectionism or self
protection.
That is what I mean when I saythat the body starts helping you
(09:06):
to do your shadow work.
The body is so intelligent thatit does not allow the shadow to
stay in the unconscious anylonger.
It doesn't resolve the patternfor me, but it does alert me to
the pattern that has entered theroom.
And once I recognize thatsignal, I can consciously decide
whether I'm genuinely improvingthe work or if I'm trying to
(09:29):
soothe an old insecurity byrewriting the same paragraph
fifteen times.
More often than not, the body isright.
It reminds me that myresponsibility is to communicate
with sincerity, and myresponsibility is not to control
every single person's outcome.
So now let's move on to somegeneric examples.
Let's say you are anintelligent, educated working
(09:52):
woman, but every time you seeyour mother, something gets
triggered because you neverreally healed the effects of her
criticism that she had on you.
So then now you start being onedge every time you're around
her.
And if this dynamic is hidden,it's considered your shadow
side, meaning you're notconsciously aware why you're
(10:12):
triggered, you don't know whatthe origin of all of this is,
you just know that you feeluneasy or on the edge.
You don't like the way you feel,and you know something's wrong,
but you might not be able topinpoint it.
Your specific shadow work wouldinvolve bringing this into
light, healing any sense ofblame that you might be feeling,
that again might be the resultof childhood criticisms that you
(10:35):
heard, softening the triggersaround talking about the
situation so that you canexplore it safely, and allow
somebody else to hold space forthat if that's what you need in
the beginning.
As long as that internalizedinsecurity that your mother's
criticism made you falselybelieve about yourself stays in
(10:55):
the shadow side, meaning you'renot even aware that it exists,
that insecurity is going to showup in all matters of your life.
So when you decide to do thiswork, you will find it hard in
the beginning.
It will be hard work to clean upall of that, to understand why
you're believing your mom'scriticism, you might have to
heal through self-blame, youmight have to heal through
(11:17):
victimhood or externalization ofthe blame.
And while you're doing this hardwork, in any good healing
journey, you become more andmore in touch with your body,
your somatic sensations, andthis is where your body gets
recruited to do the futureshadow work for you.
When you're making space for thediscomfort and becoming familiar
(11:38):
with the sensations of thediscomfort that insecurity
brings in your life, thisawareness brings you closer to
the ability to listen to yourbody.
And this communication with yourbody is what gets silenced as
the after effect of trauma.
So when you are in communicationwith your body, when you can
listen to it without shutting itdown or without expanding it
(11:58):
into further drama, then thebody starts to tell you a lot of
useful information.
Through this back and forthcommunication, you being in
touch with your body next timeany insecurity shows up becomes
much easier for you torecognize.
Because let's say your bossdidn't say good morning to you
in the elevator and you startfeeling like you've done
(12:19):
something wrong, and your fearescalates to just about saying
that you're about to get fired.
Your body will let you know thatthis might be your insecurity
speaking, and you can gentlycorrect it.
You said good morning to yourboss, but she didn't reply back.
You allow yourself to believethat maybe she's having a bad
day, or maybe she's busy.
(12:40):
She's planning a surprise partyfor you.
You can believe whatever youwant just as long as you're
conscious to your body's accusedto it.
Your body reminded you thatyou're slipping into your shadow
belief and you're allowed tocorrect that error without
catastrophizing it.
The shadow belief disguisesitself as something true.
(13:01):
Like my perfectionistictendencies, it was telling me
that it's something valuable,like my pursuit of excellence.
Or your mom's criticism willlook like true because you have
collected a lifetime of evidenceof how you are not the best at
what you do.
The same insecurity and poorconfidence that you internalize
growing up, when you see itshowing up in another situation
(13:25):
with practice, the body willmake you aware of it and you
will not listen to itimmediately.
You will reject it as the shadowside because you will recognize
it that it's your mind fearmongering based on your previous
insecurity.
Now notice, same shadow workthat was your burden before
healing is now your GPS becauseyour body is doing the work of
(13:49):
informing you automatically.
When you go through enough ofthese cycles and heal enough
aspects in your life, your bodywill start to do the shadow work
for you, without you having tospend conscious effort into
explaining every insecurity.
One warning that I want to tellyou is that in these examples I
simplified the story a lotbecause I wanted to explain to
(14:12):
you linearly that's how theprocess works.
But of course, your individualexperience might not be as
linear, and that's okay.
What I wanted to do is explainit like this for the purposes of
this demonstration.
The process is simple, but it isnot easy.
And if as always this exampledoesn't resonate with you,
insert your specific challengeinto it and figure out how it
(14:35):
applies to you.
It could be a scarcity mindset,it could be difficulty with
infertility, it could be with adiagnosis, it could be fear of
not having high enough faith andtakwah all the time.
It could be a belief that all ofyour marriage prospects are just
stupid people.
Whatever your challenge isinviting you to do, your shadow
(14:55):
work is your perpetual gift,which is what you get at the end
of this hard work.
The gift that keeps on giving asan outcome of doing this shadow
work is that you become more intune with your body, which makes
any future work much easier todo.
The shadow work is theunconscious emotional contract
that are limited beliefs thatotherwise look like virtues.
(15:20):
Your mother's criticism is notthe shadow.
My perfectionistic tendency isnot the shadow.
The shadow is the meaning ouryounger self constructs in order
to survive these criticisms andthese tendencies.
Perhaps the meaning you made wasI will never be enough.
Perhaps it was I have to earnapproval.
(15:42):
Maybe you thought to yourself issomeone is unhappy, I am unsafe.
And years later when your bosswalks past you without saying
good morning, you do notconsciously retrieve the
childhood belief.
Instead, your nervous systeminstantly applies the old
meaning to a completelyunrelated event.
That is what makes it shadow,the invisible.
(16:05):
You don't experience yourselfinterpreting the situation, you
experience yourself asaccurately perceiving reality.
This is why the body becomes soimportant, because it recognizes
the familiar physiologicalsignature of an old
interpretation.
So the shadow is the unconsciousmeaning that your nervous system
continues to assign to presentday experiences based on some
(16:29):
unresolved experiences of thepast.
Most women think that they haveto be afraid of their shadow
because they believe somehowthey will discover something
very ugly about themselves.
They imagine that if they lookdeeply enough, they will uncover
proof that they really areinadequate, or unlovable, or
selfish, or arrogant, or broken.
(16:50):
The shadow becomes this darkbasement that people refuse to
enter because they're convincedthat there is a monster living
there.
But in my experience aftercoaching hundreds of women, that
is almost never what they find.
What they find is not a monster.
What they find is a frightenedyounger version of themselves
who believed a lie all thistime.
(17:11):
Because at that time it was theonly explanation her nervous
system offered.
The shadow does not containhidden truths.
It contains hidden conclusions,misunderstandings, if you will.
It contains just outdatedpredictions.
What you find is not an ultimatetruth about yourself.
It's just another false belief.
The shadow is full of cognitiveerrors that your nervous system
(17:35):
has repeated for so many yearsthat now it feels like objective
reality.
As a physician, my shadow wasthat I'm not good at what I do.
If I didn't correct it in time,my mind would build evidence for
that.
And it would do it despite mepassing my boards and residency
and any other qualificationsthat are required.
(17:55):
And to counter that evidencethat I am inadequate, I would be
working really hard to provethis belief wrong and burning
the candle from both ends.
This is why shadow work isactually much less frightening
than people imagine.
You're not digging through yourpsyche hoping you don't discover
that you're secretly defective.
(18:15):
You're uncovering the faultycode that your nervous system
wrote maybe decades ago.
You're discovering lies like ifsomeone is disappointed in me, I
must have failed.
Or if I make a mistake, I losemy value.
If someone misunderstands me, Imust not have written a good
book.
This is why awareness is soliberating.
(18:37):
The moment your body makes abelief available to you, you can
examine it.
You can compare it against yourcurrent life, and you can ask it
whether it still deserves to runin the background.
So in summary, your shadow isnot your anger, jealousy,
anxiety, or insecurity.
The shadow is the hiddeninterpretation of your nervous
(18:59):
system that it automaticallyassigns to present day events
because of unresolved pastexperiences.
Human beings avoid doing shadowwork because they're afraid they
will uncover some horrible truthabout themselves.
Instead, universally, what theydiscover is a faulty conclusion,
an overgeneralization.
(19:20):
Healing changes yourrelationship with your body,
which is the mechanism throughwhich eventually your body makes
shadow work much easier for you.
I always encourage you torecruit your body into the
healing, which is what makesthis work so enjoyable.
With that I pray to Allahsubhanahu wa ta'ala, O Allah,
bring into light every hiddenbelief that keeps me distant
(19:44):
from you.
Ya Allah, bring me closer to theabundant life that you have
written for me.
Replace my fears with truth,make my healing easy, my heart
sincere, and let healing ofevery shadow become another step
to get closer to you.
Amin Ya Rabullah.
Please keep me in your du'as.
I will talk to you guys nexttime.
Welcome to Islamic Life Code School Podcast.
Apply tools that you learn inthis podcast and your life will
be unrecognizably successful.
Now your host, Dr.
Kamal Akar.
Hello, hello, hello everyone.
Peace and blessings be upon allof you.
Alhamdulillah, I absolutely lovetoday's topic because it makes
my own life and my clients' lifeso much easier.
(00:26):
But as you might have noticedfrom the title, we're talking
about shadow work.
So the topic has some dark vibesto it, but I will show you how
this is an extremely importantwork towards your healing and
how you can actually do thiswork while enjoying it.
The premise is that not only canshadow work be fun, it can be
(00:47):
easy.
Your body will start to do theshadow work automatically
without you spending too manyintellectual resources.
So by definition, shadow work isthe process of exploring and
integrating the repressed,unconscious parts of your
personality, often referred toas the shadow self.
And this is originating from thetheories of the Swiss
(01:08):
psychiatrist Carl Jung.
It involves acknowledging yourhidden fears and biases.
It involves acknowledgingunhealed traumas to achieve
greater self-awareness andemotional wholeness.
And you do all of this in spiritof preventing yourself from
projecting your insecuritiesonto others and onto your life.
As soon as something from yourshadow side comes up, like your
(01:30):
insecurity about your body oryour awareness of your scarcity
mindset around money, if it'ssomething you've worked through
before, every time you do thiswork, there's a higher chance
that your body will call you onit and stop you from spiraling
down and projecting thatinsecurity onto your life or
onto your confidence or evenonto your relationships.
(01:54):
And it will remind you that it'ssafe for you to be in this space
and it will provide you thesafety that you're looking for
to go through this healingprocess.
This is a beautiful function ofyour body, which is your
subconscious mind.
In the beginning, if you need aprofessional to help you hold
your space while you go throughthe healing of your
(02:14):
insecurities, each subsequenttime your body will remember the
safety and it will allow you tohold space for yourself.
Your body begins to do theshadow work for you
automatically, meaning your bodyis the subconscious mind that
does things out of effort andmemory, something that is
familiar.
And since you have previouslyapplied time, effort, and
(02:37):
consciousness to clean up theshadow side beliefs, then the
body will start to do itautomatically, and it will
require less and less energyeach time.
What I'm saying is that yes,shadow work looks like a lot of
work, and it is in thebeginning.
And at the same time, it's veryeasy once you've started to do
(02:57):
it, because the body getsrecruited to do the work
automatically.
It starts to remember the safetyit felt when you previously
addressed any painful memories.
So just like body stores thepain of the trauma, it also
stores the feelings of safetyand connection.
So in the background, while youcontinue to build your life and
(03:20):
achieve your goals, it will helpyou do the work automatically.
I'm gonna give you my exampleand some generic examples to
make this point moreunderstandable.
One of my recruiting shadowthemes is my desire for
perfection.
Maybe it came from childhood orsocial expectations or wherever
it came from.
It was growing and festeringunder my awareness and getting
(03:41):
stronger and stronger each day.
So in the beginning of myhealing journey through therapy
coaching, not only did I realizethat this is perfectionistic
tendencies that are existing inme, I also saw how they're
affecting my life and making itso difficult.
It was showing up in myparenting, in my life as a
physician, and literallyeverything else.
(04:02):
I coached through it with help,someone else was able to hold
space for it for me, while wesafely explored how this does
not mean anything inherent aboutme and that there are limiting
beliefs that I have internalizedover time, and we coached
through this shadow side to comeout of it.
This holding of space allowed meto examine it and create a
(04:24):
different, more empoweringrelationship with my high
standards.
Now my relationship to myperfectionism is that it is a
lie that covers a very importantvalue to me, that is in doing
high quality work, and thatperfection only belongs to Allah
subhanahu wa ta'ala.
I can strive and come close toperfection, but I might never
quite achieve it.
(04:45):
I healed enough to believe thatI can call my effort perfect and
the outcome is also perfect asit relates to this world, as it
relates to this world and us asmortal human beings.
Alhamdulillah, the success andthe expansion of life I have
created through this healing ofmy shadow side of perfectionism,
that in itself is worth all themoney and the time and the
(05:08):
effort I spent in coaching.
Now every time when aperfectionist tendency shows up
an area of my life, my body andmy mind immediately alert me to
it, so I can bring it to myattention and consciously move
away from the lie it's trying totell me.
The shadow side work of myperfectionist tendency has
(05:29):
become much easier because nowmy body is recruited into making
it automatic.
Currently I'm working on a bookon mental health for Muslim
women, and this perfectionistictendency shows up as I write my
book, along with my other shadowside beliefs to avoid being
misunderstood.
When I started to write thisbook, the perfectionistic
(05:50):
tendency showed up with tellingme that I should be able to
communicate the truth with suchprecision in this book that it
should be impossible for anybodyto misunderstand me.
That sounds noble on thesurface, but the shadow almost
always disguises itself astruth, as virtuous.
In my case, the shadow is thebelief that I can explain
(06:14):
something perfectly, so thatpeople will receive it
perfectly.
That creates an enormous amountof internal pressure because I
start carrying responsibilitynot only for the quality of my
work, but also for how otherpeople will interpret it.
So what that looks like is thatI'm sitting down to write what
should take me one hour or soworking on one chapter, one
(06:36):
paragraph, or whatever my goalis, but I find myself hours
later still refining the sameexact idea, not moving any
further.
If someone was watching from theoutside, they would conclude
that I'm very meticulous andintellectually rigorous.
What they won't see is that theinternal conversation in my mind
that's driving the behavior.
(06:57):
I'm not really just trying tomake the paragraph clearer.
My mind is trying to eliminateevery possible misunderstanding
before anyone reads my work.
I begin imagining the reader whowill take my words out of
context, the person who willthink I'm saying something
unislamic when I'm really not,and the critic who will assume
(07:17):
that I'm minimizing trauma whenI'm actually trying to restore
agency, and it makes me reallyafraid for that woman who will
interpret my message as blameinstead of empowerment.
And without realizing any ofthis, under my shadow side of
perfectionism, I stop writingfor the thousands of women I'm
genuinely trying to serve and Istart writing for that one
(07:39):
hypothetical critic who may ormay not exist.
Years ago this process wouldconsume me without my
recognition.
What I thought was that I wasjust being thorough with the
process.
I thought I was pursuingexcellence because excellence is
something Islam encourages.
I couldn't see underneath all ofthese virtues was a pattern of
(08:01):
my old belief that my worth wassomehow tied to me getting it
exactly right every time, andthat the quality of my work was
dependent on it not having anycritic, which of course leads to
me not having produced any book.
The shadow side is not that Iwant excellence.
The shadow is believing thatperfection could protect me from
(08:24):
being misunderstood.
Now, after having done thiswork, the body catches it much
earlier than my mind does.
I notice that there's somethingvery shallow in my breathing or
there's some tightness ortension in my body that I'm
holding.
And this shows up that insteadof feeling excited about the
idea that I'm writing a book, Ibegin feeling responsible for
(08:46):
controlling every reactionanother human being could hold.
Now, these bodily sensationsbecome my invitation to pause
because they tell me that I'm nolonger creating from clarity.
They tell me that I'm stuck inperfectionism or self
protection.
That is what I mean when I saythat the body starts helping you
(09:06):
to do your shadow work.
The body is so intelligent thatit does not allow the shadow to
stay in the unconscious anylonger.
It doesn't resolve the patternfor me, but it does alert me to
the pattern that has entered theroom.
And once I recognize thatsignal, I can consciously decide
whether I'm genuinely improvingthe work or if I'm trying to
(09:29):
soothe an old insecurity byrewriting the same paragraph
fifteen times.
More often than not, the body isright.
It reminds me that myresponsibility is to communicate
with sincerity, and myresponsibility is not to control
every single person's outcome.
So now let's move on to somegeneric examples.
Let's say you are anintelligent, educated working
(09:52):
woman, but every time you seeyour mother, something gets
triggered because you neverreally healed the effects of her
criticism that she had on you.
So then now you start being onedge every time you're around
her.
And if this dynamic is hidden,it's considered your shadow
side, meaning you're notconsciously aware why you're
(10:12):
triggered, you don't know whatthe origin of all of this is,
you just know that you feeluneasy or on the edge.
You don't like the way you feel,and you know something's wrong,
but you might not be able topinpoint it.
Your specific shadow work wouldinvolve bringing this into
light, healing any sense ofblame that you might be feeling,
that again might be the resultof childhood criticisms that you
(10:35):
heard, softening the triggersaround talking about the
situation so that you canexplore it safely, and allow
somebody else to hold space forthat if that's what you need in
the beginning.
As long as that internalizedinsecurity that your mother's
criticism made you falselybelieve about yourself stays in
(10:55):
the shadow side, meaning you'renot even aware that it exists,
that insecurity is going to showup in all matters of your life.
So when you decide to do thiswork, you will find it hard in
the beginning.
It will be hard work to clean upall of that, to understand why
you're believing your mom'scriticism, you might have to
heal through self-blame, youmight have to heal through
(11:17):
victimhood or externalization ofthe blame.
And while you're doing this hardwork, in any good healing
journey, you become more andmore in touch with your body,
your somatic sensations, andthis is where your body gets
recruited to do the futureshadow work for you.
When you're making space for thediscomfort and becoming familiar
(11:38):
with the sensations of thediscomfort that insecurity
brings in your life, thisawareness brings you closer to
the ability to listen to yourbody.
And this communication with yourbody is what gets silenced as
the after effect of trauma.
So when you are in communicationwith your body, when you can
listen to it without shutting itdown or without expanding it
(11:58):
into further drama, then thebody starts to tell you a lot of
useful information.
Through this back and forthcommunication, you being in
touch with your body next timeany insecurity shows up becomes
much easier for you torecognize.
Because let's say your bossdidn't say good morning to you
in the elevator and you startfeeling like you've done
(12:19):
something wrong, and your fearescalates to just about saying
that you're about to get fired.
Your body will let you know thatthis might be your insecurity
speaking, and you can gentlycorrect it.
You said good morning to yourboss, but she didn't reply back.
You allow yourself to believethat maybe she's having a bad
day, or maybe she's busy.
(12:40):
She's planning a surprise partyfor you.
You can believe whatever youwant just as long as you're
conscious to your body's accusedto it.
Your body reminded you thatyou're slipping into your shadow
belief and you're allowed tocorrect that error without
catastrophizing it.
The shadow belief disguisesitself as something true.
(13:01):
Like my perfectionistictendencies, it was telling me
that it's something valuable,like my pursuit of excellence.
Or your mom's criticism willlook like true because you have
collected a lifetime of evidenceof how you are not the best at
what you do.
The same insecurity and poorconfidence that you internalize
growing up, when you see itshowing up in another situation
(13:25):
with practice, the body willmake you aware of it and you
will not listen to itimmediately.
You will reject it as the shadowside because you will recognize
it that it's your mind fearmongering based on your previous
insecurity.
Now notice, same shadow workthat was your burden before
healing is now your GPS becauseyour body is doing the work of
(13:49):
informing you automatically.
When you go through enough ofthese cycles and heal enough
aspects in your life, your bodywill start to do the shadow work
for you, without you having tospend conscious effort into
explaining every insecurity.
One warning that I want to tellyou is that in these examples I
simplified the story a lotbecause I wanted to explain to
(14:12):
you linearly that's how theprocess works.
But of course, your individualexperience might not be as
linear, and that's okay.
What I wanted to do is explainit like this for the purposes of
this demonstration.
The process is simple, but it isnot easy.
And if as always this exampledoesn't resonate with you,
insert your specific challengeinto it and figure out how it
(14:35):
applies to you.
It could be a scarcity mindset,it could be difficulty with
infertility, it could be with adiagnosis, it could be fear of
not having high enough faith andtakwah all the time.
It could be a belief that all ofyour marriage prospects are just
stupid people.
Whatever your challenge isinviting you to do, your shadow
(14:55):
work is your perpetual gift,which is what you get at the end
of this hard work.
The gift that keeps on giving asan outcome of doing this shadow
work is that you become more intune with your body, which makes
any future work much easier todo.
The shadow work is theunconscious emotional contract
that are limited beliefs thatotherwise look like virtues.
(15:20):
Your mother's criticism is notthe shadow.
My perfectionistic tendency isnot the shadow.
The shadow is the meaning ouryounger self constructs in order
to survive these criticisms andthese tendencies.
Perhaps the meaning you made wasI will never be enough.
Perhaps it was I have to earnapproval.
(15:42):
Maybe you thought to yourself issomeone is unhappy, I am unsafe.
And years later when your bosswalks past you without saying
good morning, you do notconsciously retrieve the
childhood belief.
Instead, your nervous systeminstantly applies the old
meaning to a completelyunrelated event.
That is what makes it shadow,the invisible.
(16:05):
You don't experience yourselfinterpreting the situation, you
experience yourself asaccurately perceiving reality.
This is why the body becomes soimportant, because it recognizes
the familiar physiologicalsignature of an old
interpretation.
So the shadow is the unconsciousmeaning that your nervous system
continues to assign to presentday experiences based on some
(16:29):
unresolved experiences of thepast.
Most women think that they haveto be afraid of their shadow
because they believe somehowthey will discover something
very ugly about themselves.
They imagine that if they lookdeeply enough, they will uncover
proof that they really areinadequate, or unlovable, or
selfish, or arrogant, or broken.
(16:50):
The shadow becomes this darkbasement that people refuse to
enter because they're convincedthat there is a monster living
there.
But in my experience aftercoaching hundreds of women, that
is almost never what they find.
What they find is not a monster.
What they find is a frightenedyounger version of themselves
who believed a lie all thistime.
(17:11):
Because at that time it was theonly explanation her nervous
system offered.
The shadow does not containhidden truths.
It contains hidden conclusions,misunderstandings, if you will.
It contains just outdatedpredictions.
What you find is not an ultimatetruth about yourself.
It's just another false belief.
The shadow is full of cognitiveerrors that your nervous system
(17:35):
has repeated for so many yearsthat now it feels like objective
reality.
As a physician, my shadow wasthat I'm not good at what I do.
If I didn't correct it in time,my mind would build evidence for
that.
And it would do it despite mepassing my boards and residency
and any other qualificationsthat are required.
(17:55):
And to counter that evidencethat I am inadequate, I would be
working really hard to provethis belief wrong and burning
the candle from both ends.
This is why shadow work isactually much less frightening
than people imagine.
You're not digging through yourpsyche hoping you don't discover
that you're secretly defective.
(18:15):
You're uncovering the faultycode that your nervous system
wrote maybe decades ago.
You're discovering lies like ifsomeone is disappointed in me, I
must have failed.
Or if I make a mistake, I losemy value.
If someone misunderstands me, Imust not have written a good
book.
This is why awareness is soliberating.
(18:37):
The moment your body makes abelief available to you, you can
examine it.
You can compare it against yourcurrent life, and you can ask it
whether it still deserves to runin the background.
So in summary, your shadow isnot your anger, jealousy,
anxiety, or insecurity.
The shadow is the hiddeninterpretation of your nervous
(18:59):
system that it automaticallyassigns to present day events
because of unresolved pastexperiences.
Human beings avoid doing shadowwork because they're afraid they
will uncover some horrible truthabout themselves.
Instead, universally, what theydiscover is a faulty conclusion,
an overgeneralization.
(19:20):
Healing changes yourrelationship with your body,
which is the mechanism throughwhich eventually your body makes
shadow work much easier for you.
I always encourage you torecruit your body into the
healing, which is what makesthis work so enjoyable.
With that I pray to Allahsubhanahu wa ta'ala, O Allah,
bring into light every hiddenbelief that keeps me distant
(19:44):
from you.
Ya Allah, bring me closer to theabundant life that you have
written for me.
Replace my fears with truth,make my healing easy, my heart
sincere, and let healing ofevery shadow become another step
to get closer to you.
Amin Ya Rabullah.
Please keep me in your du'as.
I will talk to you guys nexttime.
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