Photo by Vladyslav Tobolenko on Unsplash
Shadow work is getting to know the parts of yourself you learned to hide: the reactions you’re ashamed of, and the hurt you pretend isn’t there. You don’t do it to dig up dirt on yourself. You do it so those parts stop running your life from the dark, and you get the energy they’ve been holding back.
Maybe something keeps happening that you don’t understand. You snap at someone and the size of it frightens you. One person at work gets under your skin like nobody else. You keep ending up in the same argument, the same relationship, the same Sunday night feeling, and you’re starting to suspect the common factor is you.
Or maybe you’re the reasonable one, the one who always gets stung, and you’re tired of telling that story.
I first heard the story I use for all of this in a film. In Neil Jordan’s The Crying Game, a soldier called Jody, held hostage under a canvas hood, tells his captor the fable of the frog and the scorpion.
A scorpion asks a frog for a ride across a river. The frog says, “If I let you on my back, you’ll sting me.” The scorpion says that makes no sense, because they’d both drown. The frog, trusting little froggy that it is, agrees. Halfway across, the sting. As they go under, the scorpion says, almost apologetically, “I could not help my nature.”
I didn’t fully get it until decades later. But something in my bones did. What Jody was really saying was this: you think I’m just a scorpion, and I think you’re just a scorpion, but there’s a frog inside me too. And there’s a frog inside you.
Years later I read that fable to my children, aged eight and eleven, after they’d been fighting. I didn’t tell them to stop. I just read it. My son said, “It makes me feel empathetic.” My daughter said it made her feel like pancakes and waffles, but she’d found one exception. Mosquitoes. Mosquitoes, according to her, are all scorpion.
She was spot on. Every one of us has a mosquito somewhere: the one person where we really are just the sweet little frog and they really are just the scorpion.
Before I explain any of it, try something. Read the next sentence slowly, let the out-breath go, and notice what happens in your body as you read it. You’re the frog and the scorpion, and you’re still welcome here. Don’t argue with it and don’t agree with it. Just notice where it lands, the chest, the jaw, the belly, and whether something in you softens or braces. Stay with that one more breath. That’s the place we’ll work from.
What’s really going on
If something in you relaxed, notice that. If something argued, “but I really was the one who got hurt,” notice that too. It might be the truest thing in you.
We all identify as the frog. The trusting one. The good one. The one who got stung by the mean baddie scorpion. And when you see yourself only as the frog, you’re disowning your own scorpion: the times you struck, withdrew, judged or went cold because shame rose in your body and you couldn’t stand it.
That’s your shadow. Carl Jung gave us the word. I’d put it simply: it’s everything you had to stop being, or stop seeing, to stay safe and stay wanted. You cannot heal what you refuse to see.
Most shadow work misses this. For a lot of people the shadow isn’t the scorpion at all. They can list every way they’ve struck out. What they deny is the frog: the part that trusted, needed, and got wounded. Both are forms of disconnection.
The parts that hide all this are protector parts. They formed because at some point you weren’t safe, and they kept you alive. They’re absolutely sure that whatever it costs to protect the vulnerable one inside you, it’s better than letting that one be exposed. They’re doing a job nobody told them was finished.
So the colleague who drives you mad, the contempt for “people like that”, the shame after you snap: none of it means you’re bad. Underneath most contempt is grief. Underneath most hardness is longing. You make sense.
Need to talk this through right now? Figlet is an AI coach that’s there at 2 in the morning, or right now. It runs this loop with you on the Self ground.
The loop, on your situation
Coaching is how we go from where you are now to where you want to go. We only address the past when it emerges in the present. So pick one recent moment where your reaction was bigger than the situation, and walk it through this.
Get ground in your body first
Feet on the floor. One slow breath out, longer than the breath in. You can’t look at your own scorpion while you’re braced against it.
What happened
One plain sentence, the way a camera would have seen it. “My sister made a comment about my job at dinner and I left early.” Not “she’s always cutting me down.” Just the moment.
Where it lands in the body
Heat in the face. A clenched jaw. Stay with it for one breath, with permission to stop any time. And now what do you notice?
Who’s driving
Ask which part took over. The one that strikes first. The one that goes cold and leaves. The one that smiles and resents you later. Then ask: in this moment, was I the frog, the scorpion, or both?
Trace it
Only as far as today needs. Where did you learn that this part of you wasn’t welcome? Anger, in a house where only one person was allowed to be angry? Need, in a family that prized being no trouble? The shadow is whatever your first world couldn’t hold.
Feel it and tell someone
Shame is what keeps the shadow in the dark, and shame feeds on aloneness. Say the true sentence to someone safe: “I think I was the scorpion there.” Or the other one: “I think I was more hurt than I let on.” When the inner critic starts its prosecution, let the Friend answer, the part of you that knows you’re good: “You did that, and you’re still worth knowing.”
One creative action
Do one small thing from the hidden part, on purpose. If it’s your scorpion, make a clean repair: “I was sharp with you yesterday, and I’m sorry.” If it’s your frog, let someone see you need something, even something tiny.
How to do shadow work, honestly
Journal prompts are everywhere, and they work far better once you know what you’re looking for. This is what I’d actually do.
Follow the charge. When someone provokes a reaction bigger than the situation, irritation, contempt, envy, even admiration, that’s your shadow knocking. Write down what exactly got you.
Ask what you’d never be. “I’d never be that needy.” Whatever you say most firmly is often what you had to cut off to belong. You don’t have to become it. Just stop pretending it isn’t in you.
Look for both creatures. If you only ever find your scorpion, look for the frog you’re not letting yourself feel. If you only ever find the frog, look for where you struck.
Stay with it rather than fix it. Behaviour change emerges on its own when awareness broadens. My kids didn’t stop fighting because I told them to. They saw themselves in a story.
Expect to begin again. You’ll catch the same pattern next week. That isn’t failure. Catching it is the practice working.
One thing to do tonight
Before bed, think of your mosquito: the one person you’re sure is all scorpion. Sit somewhere quiet, one hand on your chest, and say quietly, “There’s a frog in there somewhere.” You don’t have to believe it. Then say, “And there’s a scorpion in me.” Notice what happens in your body with each one. Ten breaths, then sleep.
Would therapy help with this?
For most people, shadow work is the ordinary work of growing up a bit more, and coaching is the right size of help.
But if you go looking and what comes up is trauma, memories that flood you, panic, nights you can’t sleep, or a shame so heavy you can’t function, stop doing this alone. Please find a licensed therapist where you live. Shadow work isn’t dangerous, but going into deep material with no one beside you can be. If you’re thinking about hurting yourself, call or text 988.
The path
What I’ve just walked you through is the Empathi Method. For an individual, it’s built on my Proof of Work of Being Human protocol: building sovereign ground inside yourself. On the Self ground, that means being able to see all of you, frog and scorpion, without collapsing into shame or reaching for a defence.
There are two ways to keep going. You can start now with Figlet, an AI coach that’s there at 2 in the morning, on the Self ground, the night a reaction surprises you. Or you can get on the list for the book and the live program with me, where we do this work together.
Figs O’SullivanFiglet Life Coaching
Get help now
Figlet is an AI coach, there at 2 in the morning or right now. It runs this loop with you on your actual situation, as often as you need. It’s coaching, not therapy. The list hears first about the book and the next live program with me.
Proof of Work, Greenleaf Book Group Press, February 2027. Not sure which ground is hurting? Take the two-minute Ground Check.
Be with the truth of who you are. You can’t become sovereign by pretending you’re something other than what you are.
I go deeper into this in my book, Proof of Work (Greenleaf Book Group Press, February 2027).
Common questions
How do I start shadow work?
Start with one reaction that was bigger than the moment, not with your whole childhood. Notice it in your body, ask which part of you took over, and ask whether you were being the frog, the scorpion, or both. Then tell one safe person what you found.
Is shadow work dangerous?
Not in itself. It can get heavy if old trauma comes up and you’re doing it alone. If you start to flood, can’t sleep or feel worse week after week, pause and find a licensed therapist where you live.
Can I do shadow work on my own?
You can start on your own, but you can’t finish it alone, because shame keeps the shadow hidden and shame only eases in company. Do the noticing yourself, then bring what you find to someone safe: a friend, a partner, a coach or a therapist.
The Friend comes from the teaching of Aftab Omer at the Institute of Imaginal Studies, where I trained.
