Amanda Davies

I’ve noticed a lot of coaches love talking about the shadow like it’s some kind of secret enemy that’s trying to sabotage your life from behind the scenes ⚔️

Well I have news:

Your shadow isn’t a secret enemy.

👉 Your client’s shadow isn’t a secret enemy either.

As a practitioner, part of our role is to remember the shadow carries hidden aspects of our clients they haven’t learned how to consciously own:

The power they suppress.
The anger they disown.
The ambition they’re afraid to embody.
The voice they learned was too much.

Here’s the other thing…

You’ll know when the shadow is present, because when those qualities can’t be consciously expressed, they will find another way out.

They slip out sideways 🕳️

Learning to recognise this in our clients completely changes what you see and hear in the room!

… you develop a type of second-sight as you see beneath the presenting issue or story.

Meaning, you can better address what’s actually happening and guide the client towards a better outcome.

👉 This is why your psychological understanding matters as a practitioner.

That behaviour you’re seeing? It may be telling you something the client doesn’t yet have the language to say.

Recognising what’s moving underneath the surface is a game changer.

Want to develop this kind of understanding in your practice?

DM me GUIDE and I’ll send you the curriculum for the next round of the Psychodynamic Coach Academy starting November 9. ✨

Let’s talk Psychic Inflation 🎈

It happens when we become overly-identified with the spiritual self…. the conscious, awakened, intuitive, ‘higher’ version of who we believe we are.

On one level, this sounds like growth, right?

But unless with temper our ‘ascended selves’ with sincere integrative work, the Ego can become very fat, very bloated, very… rotund 😉

With this in mind, Jung gives us a more curious question to chew on: what happens to everything that doesn’t fit the image of who we’re becoming?

It slips into the shadow.

Here’s the twist: the shadow may be the most ordinary, human parts of us!

The anger.
The limitations.
The neediness.
The primal urge.
The WILL.
The parts that don’t feel particularly clever or evolved…. That almost feel ‘beneath us’.

This is why as grounded practitioners and space holders, we need to understand the terrain of psychic inflation.

We need to discern when a spiritual identity (or any identity for that matter) has begun to organise the psyche of a client.

Because from a psychodynamic perspective, that’s where the work truly begins.

(… and, of course, to notice when we’re doing the same thing) 😉

What have you noticed about this?

Let’s discuss in the comments👇🏼

The helping professions are about to change…

Perhaps not in the way you think 👀

Sometimes the woman who wants to be seen is in conflict with the woman who learned to hide 👀

Hint: both of these women are you 😉

Most people believe that a fear of visibility will be resolved by “pushing through”, thinking positive, or simply being more consistent.

But when there’s an internal conflict **underneath** the fear, those strategies rarely get to the root of it.

One part of you wants the visibility, the voice, the 💰 and the impact…

Yet another part sneakily has one foot on the brakes…

This is the Shadow of Visibility.

… and it’s exactly where we go inside Shadow Medicine.

A 6-week LIVE journey into Shadow, Story, Soul and embodiment for women ready to become more visible, powerful and fully expressed in their work and life.

Starts 14 September.