The Shadow Coach

There is an archetype I see often, and support my clients to meet consciously.

The Innocent One.

Not weak, but carrying a kind of essential goodness. A devotion to love, to truth, to the possibility of profound connection. An undefended heart. 🤍

This archetype often lives through the feminine principle, in both women and men. The feminine, in this sense, is not at all about gender or an aesthetic. It is the part of the psyche that is orientated towards relationship, connection, body-knowing and what is felt between people.

For people who embody this, loving is not something you do. It is who you are.

You feel deeply. You register undercurrents others overlook. And because you have not anaesthetised yourself to your own pain, because you have viscerally experienced it, you go out of your way not to cause it in others.

But here is what is rarely spoken of.

Most people cannot meet that level of care, awareness, and responsibility.

They haven’t developed in the same way as you. To some degree, they probably had to shut down their feeling function in order to adapt to their world.

And so the wound forms.

Is there something wrong with the way I love?

No.

But it is exposing and without protection, it comes at a huge cost.

I have lived this many times.

And what I have learned is that if I stay in relationships, groups, or partnerships that cannot meet me, the cost is my self-honouring, my integrity, and my ability to fulfil my purpose.

So I am willing to leave.

Because giving at this level is not casual. It requires energy, presence, and truth. Without reciprocity, it depletes.

If you carry this essential goodness, it is part of your gift.

But the only way to preserve it is through discernment.

And this is developmental.

The ability to form long-term, mutual alliances, where care, consideration, and loyalty are reciprocated, is a sign of maturity.

You only need a few who can meet you.

And placing your depth there is what allows it to flourish.

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The Lover Archetype 💞

The Lover is the archetype of connection.
It brings us into relationship with ourselves, with others, and with life itself.

This energy allows us to feel deeply, to be easily moved by beauty, to connect emotionally, and to experience intimacy, creativity, and sensuality.

In balance, the Lover creates warmth, aliveness, and genuine connection.
It allows us to bond with others, express emotion authentically, and experience pleasure without losing ourselves.

In excess, this energy can become consuming or ungrounded.
We may lose boundaries, seek validation through others, or become overly reliant on connection to feel secure. Emotional intensity can flood us.

When the Lover is less available, life can feel flat or disconnected.
We may find ourselves guarded, distant, or out of touch with our body’s instinctual knowing.

Many of the people I work with are highly capable, self-aware individuals who have developed strong inner structures.

They can think clearly, perform well, and navigate complexity.

But their Lover has often been the part that was least welcomed.

It is one of our biggest societal shadows, so most of us have either learnt to dampen aspects of our emotional life or funnel it into socially acceptable places, such as love for one’s children.

We have almost certainly learned to minimise our grief.

Shadow work supports the return of this energy more fully.

This happens through gently restoring safety in the body and allowing what has been held back to move and integrate over time.

As the Lover comes back online, connection deepens, creativity flows, pleasure feels natural. And relationships begin to feel more real and nourishing.

If you’d like to read more about the Lover archetype, you can explore it here:

https://www.theshadowcoach.co.uk/shadow-work-archetypes/thelover

If you’re curious which archetype you tend to lead with, you can take the quiz here:

https://www.theshadowcoach.co.uk/shadow-work-archetype-quiz

You might want to save this and return to it when you have a quiet moment.








Photography by

People sometimes imagine shadow work as digging through darkness, fixing what’s wrong, or confronting the worst parts of themselves.

But sincere shadow work, the kind that actually creates change, rarely moves in that direction.

In my experience, it brings you back into contact with more of who you are.

More expressed.
More available.
More flexible in your range.

What goes into the shadow isn’t limited to anger or fear.

Confidence.
Warmth.
Unapologetic Visibility.
Playfulness.
Brilliance.
Sensuality.
Spontaneity.
Unique Voice.

These can all get pushed out of reach when they aren’t welcomed, recognised, or safe to express.

So something intelligent happens.

You adapt.

You learn what keeps connection intact.
You understand what reduces friction.
You perform what allows you to belong.

And those adaptations often work.

They help you navigate your environment.

They help you stay connected.

And over time, they start to feel like who you simply are.

By adulthood, there is usually a quiet cost.

A sense of holding back.
Being smaller than you are.
Not daring to ask for more.
Or a strong reaction when someone else expresses something freely.
Especially envy, or resentment.

That reaction is a gift.

In shadow work, activation is information.

When someone feels irritating, intimidating, or magnetic, it often touches a part of you that hasn’t had full permission to exist.

That quality didn’t disappear. It was set aside. Usually at a time when expressing it carried a consequence.

This is where the work begins.

You first need to understand where and why you had to hide it.

And recognise that the version of you who made that decision was often wise.

Protective.
Perceptive.
Responding to the reality you were in.

That part of you needs honouring, for keeping you safe.

From there, something starts to open.

You don’t need to construct a new identity.

You begin to reintroduce parts of yourself, slowly, safely, and on your own terms.

Even 5% of what you cut yourself off from is enough to begin.

Your light isn’t something you have to create.
It’s something you’ve been carefully protecting for a very long time.

Most people aren’t afraid of their feelings.

They’re afraid that once they let the emotion flow, they won’t be able to stop. And they don’t have time for that.

When you first realise that you’ve been escaping your emotional life, it can feel as if there’s a dam inside you,
holding back years of grief, anger, longing.
And if that dam breaks, everything will flood.

But that’s not quite how it works.

A feeling itself doesn’t last forever.
The latest neuroscience suggests an emotional wave moves through the body in around 90 seconds.

What makes it feel endless
is the thinking that wraps around it.
The analysing, the resisting, the trying to stay in control.

Feelings feel overwhelming when they’re held back.
Not when they’re actually allowed to move.

What was never safely held
doesn’t disappear.
It gets stored.

And it often stays there
until your system senses that it’s finally safe enough
to let it come up and move through.

This is why the relational piece matters.

We can’t always go there on our own.
We go there when something in us feels accompanied,
met,
not alone in the experience.

In my work, I support clients in learning how to stay with what they feel, in relationship, which is what I call the process of “undoing aloneness”.
We work in a way that is paced, supported, and integrated.

Sometimes that integration looks like very simple, embodied practices.
Letting the body be held by water.
Noticing the difference between bracing and softening.
Learning, gently, that you don’t have to force your way through.

Because the shift doesn’t come from pushing harder or moving faster or trying several different modalities at once.

It comes from creating the conditions
where something in you feels safe enough
to finally let go.

📷 Photography by the incredibly talented

Many of the women I work with are already very self-aware.

They can see the pattern quickly.
They can name what’s happening.
They understand why it’s there.

And then the question comes:
“What do I do about it?”

What often gets missed is this:

Understanding something is not the same as processing it.

If an experience was never fully felt, never witnessed, never allowed, it doesn’t resolve just because you can explain it.

It stays. It becomes a shadow. And it limits you, quietly in the background, dampening your aliveness.

In my work, we come back to the body.
To what’s actually there beneath the thinking, the reaction, the compulsion.

Not to overwhelm you, but to support you in meeting it, safely, in an empathically attuned relationship.

This is where somatic work and shadow work meet.
And it’s why things that have felt stuck for years can begin to move.

More gently and quickly than you might expect.

I’m a Jungian psychodynamic coach, ICF accredited Integral coach and trained in somatic and parts-based approaches.
I’ve also walked, and continue to walk this terrain myself.

If you recognise yourself in this, you don’t have to do it alone. Reach out for a complimentary connection call.

The Warrior Archetype 🛡️

Archetypes describe recurring patterns in the psyche, ways of perceiving and responding to life, people and situations.

The Warrior is the archetype of action.
It gives us resilience, courage, and the capacity to follow through.

Our inner warrior helps us to generate results in the real world, to set boundaries, and to take a stand for what matters.

In excess, this energy can become forceful, rigid, aggressive or judgmental, damaging our relationships by trampling over others’ needs. Its inflated shadow can also cause us to be overly driven at the expense of rest and play.
When it is less available, we may hesitate, procrastinate, avoid conflict, or struggle to act on what we know to be true.

Many of the people I work with are high achievers who know the action-taking side of the Warrior especially well.

They can move forward, push through, and produce excellent results.

But the protective side of the Warrior is often less developed.

The part that sets clear boundaries, recognises what is right, and has the courage to stand by it.

Shadow work, when integrated over time with the support of an attuned coach, helps this energy become more conscious and balanced, so action is grounded, anger is clean, boundaries are clear, and forward movement doesn’t lead to burn out and self-sacrifice.

If you’d like to read more about the Warrior archetype, you can explore it here:

https://www.theshadowcoach.co.uk/shadow-work-archetypes/warrior-archetype

If you’re curious which archetype you tend to lead with, you can take the quiz here:

https://www.theshadowcoach.co.uk/shadow-work-archetype-quiz

You might want to save this and return to it when you have a quiet moment.

🌸 With blossom and blue skies returning, you may be feeling ready to begin something new, or tend to your growth.

You might feel it in your work, relationships, or in yourself.

Sometimes, even when something really matters to us, the pull to create and expand brings with it a hesitation, or even a contraction.

And often, that’s where we stall. With a ‘who do you think you are’ or a list of very practical-sounding reasons as to why now isn’t the time.

Other times, we do the opposite.

We push ourselves forward.
We override hesitation and use force of will to make things happen.

And in that, something can get lost or distorted.
The possibility of creating in a way that feels more natural, joyful and alive.

These journal prompts offer a way to turn towards this moment, and begin to relate to it differently.

You might want to save this to return to when you have a moment to journal. And if something new is emerging for you, I’d love to hear.

Wishing you a very Happy Easter 🐰 and the blessings of many new beginnings ✨

In which relationships or environments do you feel most yourself, unedited and at ease?

Where do you notice yourself performing, adapting or attempting to control how you are perceived?

Integrity and congruence are magnetic, irresistible energies. What might it look like to give yourself more of what makes your soul sing in 2026?

We can feel loneliest in a crowded room.

But aloneness and solitude are not the same.

Solitude allows us to tune out the noise of the collective and tend to our inner life, to peel back layers of conditioning and environmental adaptation, and begin to discover our own truth, voice, values, and principles.

When this inner work is done diligently, our identity often begins to shift. We become more rooted, more inhabitable to ourselves. We may lose interest in pursuits, conversations, or groups we once strained to fit into, and become more sensitive to what no longer feels aligned.

Carl Jung described this as the work of individuation, often associated with the second half of life. Increasingly, though, many young people are arriving here earlier, as old structures and institutions begin to fall apart.

Jung was also clear that, as this work deepens, the right people tend to find us. When we give up striving to belong or to prove our worth, and find the courage to know ourselves fully and live from that integrated place.

In my experience, and that of my clients, the connections that emerge from here feel deeper, more peaceful and true.