“Shadow Work” is everywhere on social media. Everyone talks about it. But few people actually do the work.
Why?
Because Shadow Work is demanding, uncomfortable, and requires you to look where you don’t want to look.
Fortunately, Tarot can be a valuable tool to approach this work gently.
Let’s see how.
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The Shadow, in Carl Gustav Jung’s thinking, is everything that doesn’t fit into the identity you’ve constructed.
These aren’t necessarily “bad” parts of you. They’re simply the parts that were incompatible with who you had to be to be loved, accepted, integrated into your family of origin and socially.
When you were a child, you learned – through family messages, social norms, your environment’s expectations – that certain parts of you weren’t acceptable.
So you put them in an invisible bag that you’ve been dragging behind you ever since.
In this bag, the Shadow, we find:
The Shadow isn’t only “negative”.
Because the bag also contains buried qualities:
It also contains gold! This is what Robert A. Johnson calls the “Golden Shadow” in his book Owning Your Own Shadow.
In this Shadow part that therefore contains gold, you have immense resources you buried because they didn’t fit the mold.
Shadow Work is the process of identifying and integrating these exiled parts – your anger as much as your genius, your selfishness as much as your beauty, your jealousy as much as your power.
Not fighting them.
Not eliminating them.
Integrating them.
And the benefits of Shadow Work are immense!
What disproportionately annoys you about your colleague is often a part of yourself you refuse to see. When you integrate your Shadow, you stop seeing it everywhere around you. Your relationships naturally improve.
Keeping the Shadow hidden demands constant and exhausting psychic effort. It’s like holding your breath permanently. Integrating these parts frees this energy for your creativity, your projects, your life.r votre créativité, vos projets, votre vie.
Less rigid social mask, more truth about who you really are. You stop playing a role to meet expectations. You simply exist.
The unintegrated Shadow works against you in the shadows, precisely. It makes what you consciously build fail. When you integrate it, it stops sabotaging you.
Why do you react so strongly in certain situations? Why does it affect you so much when it’s objectively not a big deal? Shadow Work answers these haunting questions.
Shadow Work therefore aims for two objectives:
Wholeness: Integrating the parts of yourself you had to hide. Becoming whole, not perfect. Being aware of more things about yourself, your functioning… and suffering less from it.
Responsibility: Stopping projecting your Shadow onto others. Repairing when your Shadow hurts. Consciously doing differently with what you discover.
The Shadow is, by definition, your psychological blind spot. It’s what you refuse to see, what you fiercely deny.
If I tell you “you’re angry”, you’ll probably answer “not at all, I’m very calm” – even if all your loved ones find you irritable. That’s your Shadow.
Moreover, it often formed on wounds – those moments when a legitimate need was invalidated, when a part of you was judged unacceptable. Sometimes through obvious traumatic events. But most often, through a thousand insidious little moments where you understood: “This part of me is a problem. I must hide it.”
These wounds are still sensitive. Going back to them head-on risks reactivating the pain without creating true integration.
Confronting the Shadow face-to-face is like staring at the sun: you risk burning your eyes.
So how do we do it?
We circle around it.
You observe:
Your disproportionate reactions
What annoys you about others (projection being the Shadow’s favorite mechanism)
The Shadow is, by definition, your psychological blind spot. It’s what you refuse to see, what you fiercely deny.
If I tell you “you’re angry”, you’ll probably answer “not at all, I’m very calm” – even if all your loved ones find you irritable. That’s your Shadow.
Moreover, it often formed on wounds – those moments when a legitimate need was invalidated, when a part of you was judged unacceptable. Sometimes through obvious traumatic events. But most often, through a thousand insidious little moments where you understood: “This part of me is a problem. I must hide it.”
These wounds are still sensitive. Going back to them head-on risks reactivating the pain without creating true integration.
Confronting the Shadow face-to-face is like staring at the sun: you risk burning your eyes.
So how do we do it?
We circle around it.
You observe:
Tarot is a perfect tool for Shadow Work because it acts as an indirect mirror.
The Cards don’t tell you “here’s your Shadow, look at it carefully!”
They show you images, symbols, archetypal experiences – and it’s your reaction to these images that reveals your Shadow.
You can’t see your Shadow directly. But you can see what it projects onto the cards.
How does this work?
When you draw a card, something happens within you even before you think.
A discomfort. An attraction. A visceral rejection.
It’s this first reaction – before analysis, before the “correct” interpretation – that’s most revealing.
If the 3 of Wands makes you say “oh no, not that! I’m stuck on the cliff doing what there?” even before you think about its meaning, it’s partly your Shadow reacting.
If the Emperor systematically annoys you, if the 10 of Swords makes you look away, if the Sun makes you uncomfortable in its brightness – the Shadow is there.
Why does this work?
First, because we can’t help but create “a whole story” around a Tarot card when we look at it.
You draw the 5 of Wands and immediately, even before thinking, something unfolds within you.
A sensation. A judgment. A little voice commenting.
“More chaos”, “I’m accomplishing nothing”, “I’m useless”.
Or on the contrary: “Okay, it’s fine, it’s just a bit complicated right now”.
This instant story you tell yourself – that’s where your intimate self speaks. Your deep psyche, with everything it contains: your wounds, your hidden beliefs, and yes, your Shadow.
You don’t control this first reaction. It surges before analysis, before the “correct” interpretation you learned. It’s your psyche spontaneously reacting to the image. And in this spontaneous reaction, your Shadow reveals itself.
Second, because Tarot creates a safe distance.
You’re not saying “I’m angry”. You’re looking at a card that represents anger. It’s external to you. It’s just an image. You can observe it without collapsing, without triggering all your defenses.
And gradually, by observing your reactions to the cards, you begin to see: “Ah. That’s what I don’t own in myself.”
Important note: For this work, favor a Tarot that shows human complexity and the difficult aspects of existence. Don’t use a “positive” Tarot, a “sanitized” version or a Tarot whose artwork is too simplified.
The classic Rider-Waite-Smith, the Radiant Rider-Waite-Smith, work very well. The soft energy of The Good Karma Tarot conversely, won’t help you here. As much as I like the deck, there’s nothing disturbing in it by design.
Here’s a golden clue for your Shadow Work: which Cards do you hate?
Which Cards make you uncomfortable when they come up? Those you hope never to draw?
These Cards often point to your Shadow.
If a card bothers you that much, it’s touching something you refuse to see in yourself.
Examples:
Activity: Take your deck and turn the cards over one by one until you find one that bothers you, one you don’t like to see.
Ask yourself these questions:
Take time to write down your answers or say them out loud. The act of articulating your ideas is what brings awareness.
If certain Cards bother you and constantly come back in your readings, that’s also an important clue.
There are the “usual suspects” – the Tower, Death, the Devil – but it can be any Card.
Warning: this isn’t about saying “the Devil or any ‘negative’ Card = your Shadow”. It’s much more subtle than that.
For a time, I kept drawing the 5 of Wands, and each time I hear the same little inner discourse: “You’re accomplishing nothing, you’re messy, and on top of that you don’t clean up!”
The question is: Why does this Card bother me? Where does this discomfort come from? Why does it keep coming back insistently?
Examples :
But again: nothing is automatic. It’s your reaction to the Card that reveals your Shadow, so your context matters enormously.
Activity: Keep a journal of your readings for a few weeks. Note the Cards that come back unusually – not just once or twice, but really insistently.
When a Card comes back like this, ask yourself these questions:
The recurrence isn’t random. It’s your psyche insisting: “Look here. There’s something important.”
Start by thinking of a situation where you reacted “disproportionately”, where you felt something activating within you, that you were going into “automatic” mode.
Think of a moment when you had an emotional reaction too strong relative to the situation.
Card 1: The Card that best represents this momentent
Choose from the Tarot the Card that best represents this moment. Don’t draw it randomly. Choose it consciously.
Now, shuffle your deck and draw two Cards randomly.
Card 2: What this reaction says about your Shadow
This randomly drawn Card represents the exiled part of you that manifested in this reaction.
Card 3: How to integrate this Shadow part?
This randomly drawn Card represents what you can do to welcome and integrate this part of yourself.
My example:
I sometimes have communication problems with my father. I insist on a point, I ask him questions. He bristles and the conversation cuts short… sometimes to the point of heavy silence. And I feel very small, unable to continue the exchange normally. The wind has turned and I feel that it’s all my fault.
I choose the Emperor card to represent this moment. He is the paternal force in its crushing splendor.
What this reaction says about my Shadow: The Ace of Cups. There’s a lot of disappointed love in this situation. My father is an iceberg on which my little girl “Titanic” love keeps crashing. And this isn’t recent.
My flow of love – and words probably – had nowhere to go so, I swallowed it.
I also see in the Ace of Cups’ flow… tears. Mourning an imperfect relationship. Mourning the fact that my mother left us so long ago already… She who was the “buffer” between him and me.
How to integrate this Shadow part?: The Tower. This has me chuckle a little. My father and I must jump into the void, into the unknown of another relational mode… and this seems totally impossible to me!
And so frightening.
That would mean daring to act differently.
Daring to say “But wait! Why are you reacting like this? I’m asking the question because I’m interested. I’m interested in you.”
But the automatic program makes me hunch over in my chair, makes me stare at the window, to extract myself from the discomfort. And yes, it makes me literally want to eject myself from this conversation / from a Tower now on fire.
So maybe the Tower isn’t asking me for an impossible posture change… But to become aware, when the moment arrives, of this discomfort in my body… and just tell myself “you’re not four years old anymore and your father isn’t all-powerful. He too has an Ace of Cups for you that he can’t voice.”
Shadow Work isn’t a sprint. It’s long-term inner work. The work of a lifetime.
There’s no single reading that will “solve” your Shadow – because, for one thing, your Shadow isn’t a problem to solve.
It’s an ongoing conversation you have with yourself, one that unfolds through readings, dreams, and the patterns you notice in your life.
But each time you identify a projection, each time you recognize an exiled part, you move toward more wholeness, more integration.
Tarot helps you circle around your Shadow, approach it gently, see it through reflections and symbols – until, gradually, you can welcome it.
Because that’s what true Shadow Work is: bringing the Shadow to light, that is, to consciousness.
Recovering all that energy you were spending repressing it.
Becoming more authentic, more yourself.
Not perfect. More conscious and whole.
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