top of page
What to expect in a shadow work session

What to Expect in Shadow Work Sessions

Embodied Parts Work & Experiential Depth Psychotherapy

Shadow work sessions are experiential, embodied psychotherapy sessions that support you to explore and work directly with the unconscious patterns, emotions, beliefs, and inner dynamics shaping your life.

​

Rather than simply talking about your experiences, we work with them directly through embodied parts work, symbolic representation, emotional processing, and relational exploration.

​

Sessions are collaborative, paced carefully, and guided by your intention for the work.

geralt-clouds-3978914_1920.jpg

A Typical Session Process

A session will usually involve:

  1. Arriving and grounding

  2. Clarifying your intention for the session

  3. Identifying the parts or dynamics involved

  4. Symbolically representing your inner world

  5. Embodied exploration and parts work

  6. Working with unconscious dynamics and emotional process

  7. Reflection, integration, and closing

Each session unfolds differently depending on your needs, history, nervous system, and what emerges through the process.

Beginning The Session

Sessions begin with conversation, grounding, and orientation.

​

We spend time exploring:

  • what brings you to the session

  • what feels most alive or important

  • what you hope for or want from the work

  • relevant experiences, patterns, or history

Some clients arrive with a very clear focus. Others simply know that something feels stuck, painful, confusing, or unresolved.

​

Both are completely welcome.

 

​The beginning of the session creates the foundation of safety, trust, and clarity that supports the deeper work that follows.

geralt-clouds-3978914_1920.jpg

Clarifying Your Intention

An important part of the process is becoming clear about what you want from the session.

​

​This may involve:

  • identifying a current or historic pattern you want to shift

  • understanding or getting clarity around a recurring emotional response

  • exploring a relationship dynamic

  • processing grief, shame, guilt, fear, anger or rage

  • reconnecting with a lost or disowned aspect of yourself

  • Returning to a previous memory or experience to find resolution or healing

  • Understanding and resolving harmful or destructive behaviours, patterns, or parts of you

If you are not arriving with a clear focus we will have a deep and broad discussion about how you live your life: what works really well and what doesn’t; what areas of life flow and which ones are stuck; what is the focus in the foreground and what is neglected in the background.

​

In this way we will uncover what is alive for you and you will naturally see what it is that you want to have happen.

​

​Your intention becomes an orienting thread for the work, ensuring that the session is following your agenda. The process remains collaborative and flexible throughout.

​

Working With Parts

This work draws on the understanding that the psyche is made up of different “parts” or sub-personalities, each carrying its own emotions, beliefs, feelings, sensations, needs, memories, and protective strategies. The emerging view of the psyche is that of multiplicity: we are not in fact just 'one mind' but a collection of individual parts, voices, ego states, sub-personalities, complexes or inner-selves: that we actually have inside us an inner community and that this is our natural healthy state. 

​

Parts can be thought of as holding differing points of view. Many people already recognise this intuitively in everyday life:

​

“Part of me wants to move forward, while another part feels frightened.”

​

In sessions, these inner parts are explored directly and experientially rather than only conceptually.

This allows unconscious dynamics to become more visible, embodied, and understandable.

New to parts work?

If you would like a deeper understanding of the multiplicity of the psyche, how parts develop, you can read more here:

​​

→  Learning to see our Selves'

geralt-clouds-3978914_1920.jpg

Symbolic Representation of Your Inner World

In a shadow work session we identify, separate out, symbolically represent, and explore parts of you with an intention to bring new awareness and clarity to the issue or pattern.

 

A large rug in the centre of the room is used as a symbolic space where we can represent the different aspects of your inner world.

 

Coloured pieces of fabric or symbolic objects may be used as place holders to represent:

  • different parts of yourself

  • other people or beings

  • institutions, groups, faiths or religions

  • relationship dynamics

  • inner conflicts

  • feelings or emotional states

  • dreams, memories, beliefs, or experiences

In this way we slowly build a symbolic representation of what is going on inside your inner world on the rug in the middle of the room. Through this process, your inner world becomes externalised and visible in a tangible way.

​

This often brings a surprising level of clarity and perspective.

Embodied Exploration

You are invited to move between an observing position and direct embodied experience.

​

Rather than talking about a part of yourself from a distance, you will be supported to:

  • intentionally 'step into' a part of you by standing or sitting on the rug where the part has been represented

  • embody and inhabit just that part of you, engaging in a direct experience and getting to know it intimately

  • speak from that part directly

  • notice and experience the sensations, thoughts, feelings, emotions, impulses, or beliefs arising as this part of you is explored

  • Return back to your chair once the exploration has come to a natural end, and gain an outsiders perspective of what that part of you is like by hearing back what was spoken.

There is no performance involved and no “correct” way to do the work. You also cannot get it wrong.

 

With my holding and guidance you are invited to step into a part and you are supported to direct your attention internally so that together we can learn as much as we can about this aspect of you.

 

We are only ever working with your direct experience and the emphasis is always on authentic inner experience.

 

The work is experiential, meaning that it involves stepping into these parts of the self in order to fully experience them. This is where what has been hidden begins to emerge.

​​

​

This process can reveal:

  • unconscious thoughts and beliefs held deep inside

  • emotional wounds and unmet needs

  • the hidden relationships between parts

  • relational dynamics between parts and other people in our lives

  • the hidden drivers of your reactions and behaviours

  • protective strategies taken on

  • internalised voices or patterns

  • the trauma held somatically in the nervous system and tissues of the body

​​​​Exploring your psyche in this way with intention supports you to differentiate and separate from these aspects of your personality, bringing you into essential relationship with them.

 

The whole process is guided by you and at every step you are completely in control of what happens or does not happen. We spend time exploring the parts that you think are most relevant, finding out as much information as we can about them. This experience can be uniquely shame-lifting with compassion for ones-self naturally emerging as you begin to experience and see with greater clarity and perspective your inner parts and what drives your reactions and behaviours. ​

geralt-clouds-3978914_1920.jpg

Working With Unconscious Drivers & Inner Dynamics

As different parts - and the people who impact us - are represented and explored, the relationships between them often become clearer.

​​​

For example:

  • a vulnerable part may feel dominated by a critical part, protective part, or other person

  • anger may emerge around previously hidden boundary violations or injustice

  • hidden judgements may emerge in relationship with the people in our lives

  • shame may reveal inner critics and internalised messages from earlier relationships

  • fear or resistance may appear as protective strategies developed for survival

What emerges brings what has been hidden out of shadow, and can provide much insight into what needs to shift within us. These dynamics are explored carefully and compassionately.

​

Rather than fighting against protective, critical, destructive or violent parts, we seek to understand their role, concerns, and positive intentions.

Emotional Processing & Reparative Work

Once unconscious dynamics become clearer, the work may move into deeper emotional and relational processing. You may be invited to step back onto the carpet and interact with some of the parts or dynamics on the carpet. In this way you can participate in an interactive reparative emotional experience  in order to bring about the shifts you are looking for.

​

​The nature of the work and what you want to have happen will naturally emerge.

​

This can include:

  • expressing previously suppressed strong or destructive emotions

  • working with guilt, shame or fear

  • supporting vulnerable or younger parts of yourself

  • sensitive inner child work

  • creating a safe and meaningful container to experience and express anger

  • creating a safe and meaningful container to experience and work with grief and loss

  • standing up to oppression or strengthening boundaries

  • transforming self-critical, protective or destructive patterns

  • resolving inner conflict between different parts of you

  • processing traumatic memories and experiences carefully and safely

  • working with and transforming somatic energies and trauma held in the body

This process unfolds in collaboration, symbolically and experientially within a contained therapeutic space.

 With my support and guidance, you are offered complete control over your own therapeutic experience.

​

The work in shadow work sessions is about more than the healing of deep emotional wounds. It is also about finding the gold that lies in those wounds. Somewhere within our deepest wounds we will find the greatest energies and the greatest gifts we have to offer the world.

geralt-clouds-3978914_1920.jpg

Resistance, Fear, and Safety

Fear, resistance, uncertainty, or numbness are natural parts of deep therapeutic work. Protective parts are welcomed and respected as aspects of yourself that developed for important reasons.

​

These experiences are not treated as problems or failures.

​​

If there are blocks to the work we will work with the blocks. If there is resistance or risk that arises we will work with that. If the work is not flowing for you, we will find another way to work in order for you to explore the issue that you came to explore. The framework and tools are transparent and flexible, allowing you to experience a personal process in a way that is authentic and works for you.
​

If the process feels too intense, we slow down, pause, or reorient.

 

The work is collaborative and paced carefully to support safety, regulation, and integration.

Integration & Transformation

As sessions unfold, many clients experience:

  • increased levels of energy and vitality

  • lightness, emotional release and clarity

  • greater self-understanding

  • increased strength, confidence and compassion towards themselves

  • relief from inner conflict, anxiety and a greater self-respect

  • deeper connection with their emotions and needs

  • an internalised felt-sense of safety and nervous system regulation

  • a stronger sense of groundedness, capacity, resilience and self-leadership

"Bowing to your pain, wisdom, and resilience. Let’s walk together in ruthless joy."​
 
Pat McCabe 
geralt-clouds-3978914_1920.jpg

Interested in Exploring This Work?

A free 20-minute consultation offers space to ask questions, explore what you are looking for, and get a feel for whether this approach is right for you.​

bottom of page