White Rabbit

03/06/2025

Five Benefits of Shadow Work

The shadow isn't a popular topic. Who enjoys owning their flaws, weaknesses,
selfishness, nastiness, hate, and so on?

Focusing on our strengths is more enjoyable and life-affirming.

Exploring the shadow, however, gives us tremendous opportunities for growth and
development. Let’s look at five benefits that result from shadow work:

1) Improved Relationships

As you integrate your shadow and come to terms with your darker half, you see
yourself more clearly. You become more grounded, human, and whole.

When you can accept your own darker parts, it is easier to accept the shadow in
others. As a result, other people’s behavior won’t trigger you as easily. You’ll also have
an easier time communicating with others. You may notice an improvement in your
relationships with your spouse, family members, friends, and business associates.

2) Clearer Perception

In seeing others and yourself as you are, you’ll have a cleaner lens with which to view the world.

As you integrate your shadow, you're approaching your authentic self, which gives you a more realistic assessment of who you are. You won't perceive yourself as being too big (inflated) or too small (deflated). When you're self-aware, you can assess your environment with more accurately. You’ll see others and evaluate situations with greater clarity, compassion, and understanding.

3) Enhanced Energy and Physical Health

Dragging around this invisible bag of stuff behind us is draining. It is exhausting work
to continually repress and suppress all of the parts of ourselves that we don’t want to
face in our adulthood.

Fatigue and lethargy can plague the unexamined life. Mental suppression can also lead to physical pain and disease.

For example: cronic back pain can be relieved by acknowledging the repressed rage in your unconscious.

In working with your shadow, you liberate a tremendous reservoir of energy you
were unconsciously investing in protecting yourself. This can improve your physical,
mental, and emotional health. It can bring you inner strength and a greater sense of
balance, making you better equipped to take on life’s challenges.

4) Psychological Integration and Maturity

As long as we deny our shadows and repress certain parts of ourselves, a sense of wholeness and unity is elusive.

How can we feel a sense of wholeness and balance with a divided mind? Integrating
the shadow brings you one step closer to realizing a sense of wholeness. It’s a critical
step to achieving mature adulthood.

5) Greater Creativity

One of the greatest benefits of integrating your shadow is that it unlocks more of your
creative potential, which is a spontaneous occurrence in mentally healthy (integrated)
individuals.

01/06/2025

White Rabbit always hold a light for you here. Welcoming new clients, and welcoming home existing ones.

03/05/2025

Down the Rabbit Hole:

Someone in pursuit of something (such as an answer or solution) leads to other questions, problems, or pursuits of continual soul searching, realizations and personal healing.

03/05/2025

While Alice's adventure might seem mad on the surface, its main goal is answering the Caterpillar's question and figuring out the greatest puzzle of all – "who in the world am I?".

Life can also seem mad but by discovering who we are, and accepting ourselves, assures a much smoother ride through our own journey.

Hypnotherapy can help you on your journey of self discovery.

02/05/2025

What Happens When You Repress Your Shadow?

So what happens to all the parts of ourselves we sweep out of view?

Whatever qualities we deny in ourselves, we see in others. In psychology, this is called projection. We project onto others anything we bury within us.

If, for example, you get irritated when someone is rude to you, it's a good bet you
haven't owned your own rudeness.

This doesn't mean the person isn't being rude to you. However, if rudeness wasn't in your shadow, someone else's rudeness wouldn't bother you so much.

This process doesn't happen consciously.

We aren't aware of our projections. Our
egos use this mechanism to defend itself—to defend how it perceives itself. Our false
identities of being “good” keep us from connecting to our shadow.

These psychological projections distort reality, creating a thick boundary between how we view ourselves and how we behave in reality.

Hypnotherapy does not just reveal the shadow: it helps transform it. By bringing repressed emotions and limiting beliefs to light, it allows them to be integrated consciously. This process allows blocked energies to be released and used for creative and growth purposes.

Carolyn DeFehr
Certified Clinical Hypnotherapist
White Rabbit Intuitive Services
whiterabbit2023@yahoo.com
(717)686-8924

30/03/2025

21/03/2025

Hypnotherapy can be a valuable tool for processing grief, offering a gentle approach to emotional regulation, exploring positive memories, and facilitating acceptance of loss, potentially leading to healing and resilience.

To make an appointment please call, text or email:

Carolyn DeFehr
Certified Clinical Hypnotherapist
(717)696-8924
whiterabbit2023@yahoo.com

17/03/2025

Happy St. Patrick’s Day!

06/02/2025

Ignore the Shadow At Your Own Peril

The ancient Greeks understood the need to honor all of the parts of the psyche. For
them, these parts were worshiped as autonomous gods and goddesses.
The Greeks knew a god or goddess you ignored became the one who turned against you and destroyed you.

Any part we disown within us turns against us. The personal shadow represents a collection of these disowned parts.

So here's the problem: The shadow can operate on its own without our full
awareness. It's as if our conscious self goes on autopilot while the unconscious
assumes control.

We do things we wouldn't voluntarily do and later regret (if we catch it). We say
things we wouldn't say. Our facial reactions express emotions we don’t consciously
feel.

Remaining unconscious of the shadow hurts our relationships with our spouses,
family, and friends, and it will impact our professional relationships as well as our
leadership abilities.

Do you remember Robert Louis Stevenson's Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde?

Dr. Jekyll was a respectable gentleman (the "good," conscious side of the personality) who took a potion to separate out his darker impulses to create a creature free of conscience named Mr. Hyde (the personal shadow).

Looney Tunes did a fun version of this classic tale in Bugs Bunny in (Hyde and Hare.)

Dr. Jekyll could not control the actions of his darker half, leading him to commit
unscrupulous acts. Such is the fate, although often not so severe, of
anyone who denies his or her shadow.

03/07/2024

What is your inner shadow?

Your inner shadow is composed of parts of you that you subconsciously reject.

The psychologist Carl Jung popularized the idea of the shadow self, or inner shadow. He defined the collective unconscious with eight different Jungian archetypes:

Self: The center of the personality or psyche — your conscious awareness

Shadow: The dark and emotional aspect of your psyche

Anima: An image of an idealized woman that draws people into their feminine side

Animus: A part of you that has the capacity for reflection and self-knowledge

Persona: The mask you wear to show the world while you protect your inner self

Hero: A part of your psyche that can overcome evil and destruction

Wise old man: A personification of the self that contains your wisdom

Trickster: A childish part of your psyche that needs gratification

Jung defined the shadow archetype as the dark and emotional side of your personality or psyche. He also defined it as inferior or immoral, but this isn’t always the case.

For example, say that you were often teased for being talkative as a child. Believing that you “talk too much,” you start retreating within, weighing every conversation to see if you “did it again.” One day, someone makes an innocuous comment while you’re preparing for a presentation: “Be careful not to put too many words on that slide” — and you’re furious.

Why? It wasn’t the comment, the presentation, or even whether or not there were too many words on the slide. It was the part of you that was emotionally invested in not being a chatterbox. Anything that threatens the way you present yourself to the world (that is, brings your shadow self into the light) will be seen as a threat to your identity — and ultimately, your safety.

What makes up your shadow depends on what you subconsciously reject within yourself. We usually hear this come up as negative self-talk. Often, these rejected parts of ourselves are the result of childhood experiences.