Connor Beaton explains "shadow work" as reclaiming disowned parts of the personality that live in the unconscious — traits you hid or rejected growing up. He frames shadow work as learning to develop and express those parts (e.g., make more decisions, set boundaries, admit anger) and recommends communicating these changes to a partner so the relationship can adapt without disruption.
How shadow work is going to help you. The shadow is essentially the part of your personality that sort of lives in your unconscious mind. It's the part of you that you don't know about, you don't like, you don't want other people to know about, is an amalgamation of everything that you had to disown, that you had to disconnect from or ignore in order to fit in growing up, especially if you're with a more secure partner. To say, I'm going to start to make more decisions myself. I'm going to start to set more boundaries. I'm going to start to tell you when I feel a little angry. So you start to communicate with your partner what you're doing so that they know and expect these behavior changes in the relationship. And this is going to help them to not kind of get disrupted so that they're with you in this process. So that's a little bit about shadow work. Again, the key here that you are trying to do is reclaim the things that you never really developed.
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