{"id":819209,"date":"2025-12-02T10:51:00","date_gmt":"2025-12-02T07:51:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/?p=819209"},"modified":"2025-12-02T10:51:00","modified_gmt":"2025-12-02T07:51:00","slug":"accept-your-ugly-i-tried-beauty-shadow-work-to-help-my-self-esteem","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/?p=819209","title":{"rendered":"\u2018Accept your ugly\u2019: I tried \u2018beauty shadow work\u2019 to help my self-esteem"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n
\n

Embarrassingly, I started surfing lessons because it\u2019s sexy<\/a>. My self-esteem was low, and signing up I could already see it: glossy wetsuit half unzipped, salty droplets articulating the curves of my face and bikini top, my fingers raking through sea-tousled hair. But after the first few lessons, as I zoomed into photos, it dawned on me: surfing actually makes me look\u2026 kind of chopped. Blots of scarlet on each cheek, aggravated rosacea, and hair in monstrous tangles where once there\u2019d been plaits. Even the wetsuit had betrayed me. But rather than feeling crushed, each time I saw my red face and amorphous neoprene silhouette I felt oddly thrilled.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

I assumed it was the post-surf cocktail of adrenaline, dopamine, endorphins, and serotonin. But the TikTok algorithm has its own theory: by repeatedly seeking out that ugly post-surf high, I had unwittingly stumbled into \u2018beauty shadow work\u2019. \u201cYou need to accept your ugly,\u201d said one shadow work influencer, as I continued my evening scroll. \u201cYou have to work with, sit with, allow your ugly self,\u201d another explained.<\/span><\/p>\n

I don\u2019t feel ugly<\/a> all the time, but more often than I\u2019d like \u2013 when I\u2019m covertly touching up my make-up, or assessing new creases on my face in an elevator. Usually it\u2019s when I\u2019m near someone I\u2019m convinced is more beautiful than me. But as far as \u2018shadowtok\u2019 was concerned, my shadow self had emerged<\/a> \u2013 and it was time to \u2018integrate\u2019 her.<\/span><\/p>\n

Shadow work, or at least BeautyTok\u2019s take on it, is having a moment. But the idea dates back to the early-20th-century when Swiss psychiatrist and psychologist Carl Jung argued that we all carry a hidden \u2018shadow\u2019 made of the traits we reject or repress. Shadow work means bringing those parts back into consciousness. His ideas resurfaced in the 60s and 70s, and again in the 2000s as the media tried to decode scene kids, emos and other dark subcultures. But can TikTok\u2019s cherry-picked version \u2013 the one promising to reunite me with my higher, hotter self \u2013 actually fix my self-esteem?<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n

\n<\/div>\n
\n

Many shadow work creators suggest affirmations, and so I choose some most relevant to my appearance: <\/span>I am beautiful. I accept every aspect of myself.<\/span><\/em> They\u2019re momentarily pleasant but feel generally inconsequential. Next, I move onto \u2018mirror gazing\u2019 (which is exactly what it sounds like). But as I stare, I feel vain, ashamed and distracted by a world falling apart beyond my mirror.<\/span><\/p>\n

I try one final prompt: <\/span>write a letter to your inner child<\/span><\/em>. A painful memory elbows its way up: the first time I felt ugly by comparison. I was ten, my older sister 13, and we\u2019d tried out a sauna at the swimming baths, our lovely dad watching over us from across the pool. As my dad later debriefed my mum, he\u2019d gently joked about how different we\u2019d looked leaving the sauna: my sister \u2013 the olive-skinned, blonde-haired angel that she was \u2013 had emerged a vision of glowing vitality. \u201cAnd then Kate came shuffling behind,\u201d he\u2019d continued, \u201call red, like a lobster\u201d. The comment was innocuous, but humbling to overhear \u2013 and now to remember.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

I arranged a conversation with a shadow work coach called Laura Torres Funiestas \u2013 a therapist who began practicing shadow work in 2023 to accommodate clients who preferred a less diagnostic, traditional therapist-client relationship. Lauren suggests that my post-surf ugly euphoria could be a \u2018correctional emotional experience\u2019. \u201cBy doing something different it gives you a new positive response \u2013 and if you keep doing that, it\u2019ll eventually replace the negative points.\u201d She points out that shadow selves are often based on insecurities, which in turn \u201cstem from childhood, from the messages we inadvertently hear,\u201d she explains. \u201cShadow work is about embodying the thing that could have protected the child that was hurt,\u201d she smiles, urging me to speak with my family about the experience \u2013 advice I accept, but tellingly panic over.<\/span><\/p>\n

Maybe out of muscle memory, I reach out to my former therapist to ask his opinion of shadow work. He\u2019s a brilliant psychologist called Jochem Bukman who\u2019s fixed my brain more times than I can count, and I want to know if we\u2019d have reached a similarly satisfying conclusion together with evidence-based techniques. \u201cMaybe!\u201d he says. \u201cIt depends on what you believe. If you are a fan of this sort of psychological approach \u2013 and I can imagine more people are getting there, because traditional therapy doesn’t necessarily always deliver \u2013 that will go a long way in getting the internal change you\u2019re hoping for.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

Shadow work is about embodying the thing that could have protected the child that was hurt \u2013 Laura Torres Funiestas<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n<\/div>\n

\n

He also points out that the notion of a shadow self \u201ccan be a very practical, intuitive thing that people can latch onto easily\u201d. Where in my therapy sessions with Jochem I\u2019d identify a negative inner critic and build distance from it, in shadow work I might see that intruder as a \u2018shadow\u2019. And as Jochem puts it, \u201cWe are in sort of a-rational times, so something more about the actual <\/span>experience<\/span><\/em> of things, instead of the factual nature of things, may also fit with the time.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

Lauren and Jochem warn against going fully DIY \u2013 Lauren explains that an intensive session can bring up repressed memories that benefit from evidence-based therapy. And Jochem suggests to \u201ctry other things first before you go digging around in the darker corners of your subconscious\u201d, like learning to better tolerate uncomfortable emotions, and processing them with others. \u201cWe\u2019re looking for the source of everything that\u2019s wrong with us in our own past, and discrediting what\u2019s happening right now, in our own context\u2026\u201d he explains. \u201cYou don\u2019t have to do all this stuff alone. Go have higher quality conversations with your friends. Share how you\u2019re feeling. See what happens.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n

I take Lauren and Jochem\u2019s advice. I voice note my sister. I laugh the lobster story off, overcompensating. My sister\u2019s reply is immediately more helpful than all of the affirmations, the mirror gazing, and journaling. Because she doesn\u2019t laugh back. Instead, she acknowledges the sadness, and something inside me softens. \u201cI didn\u2019t compare us at all,\u201d she replies. \u201c\u2026 I never really thought we were supposed to be the same,\u201d and it\u2019s like two decades of secret sadness whooshes from my body like a badly animated cartoon. We talk about the times we\u2019ve been compared, or compared ourselves to others, and the papercuts left over and over in our self-esteem. Before long, the result of my Jungian experiment becomes clear. The conversation I really needed wasn\u2019t one with my ugly shadow. It was one with my beautiful sister.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Source URL: https:\/\/www.dazeddigital.com\/beauty\/article\/69110\/1\/accept-your-ugly-i-tried-beauty-shadow-work-to-help-my-self-esteem<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Embarrassingly, I started surfing lessons because it\u2019s sexy. My self-esteem was low, and signing up I could already see it: glossy wetsuit half unzipped, salty droplets articulating the curves of my face and bikini top, my fingers raking through sea-tousled hair. But after the first few lessons, as I zoomed into photos, it dawned on […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":819210,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[76],"class_list":["post-819209","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-politics","tag-dazeddigital-com"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/819209","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=819209"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/819209\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/819210"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=819209"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=819209"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/analyse.optim.biz\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=819209"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}