How Dreams Reveal Your Shadow

24.09.25

At the end of last year, I had a profound dream that made me reevaluate what’s truly important in my life and what makes me feel fulfilled.

I saw myself 10 years into the future, and to my despair, things seemed exactly the same. It was as if I blinked and lost a decade of my life. I was dealing with the same fear that I allowed to keep me small, hide my authentic self, and sabotage my artistic creations, especially music.

In the dream, I had a distinct feeling that it was too late and I couldn’t do anything different. My destiny as a failure was set in stone. I remember waking up deeply disturbed, but this dream made me take important decisions.

For the longest time, I was ashamed to be in the spotlight, but the week prior to this dream was the first time I ever played an original song in front of a live audience. It was a life-changing experience, and I was debating whether I’d share the video with my friends and on my newsletter.

After this dream, I knew I had to do it. By the way, you can check the recording here.

What’s interesting about dreams is that they can linger on your psyche for weeks, months, and even years, still promoting important shifts and bringing new perspectives if you allow them to.

At first, this dream made me sit with myself and seek to understand what’s important to experience and accomplish on a soul level. 9 months later, as I revisit it, I can see how this shift also impacted my business as I had the courage to launch my physical book and hit 200 copies sold just a few days ago.

It also made me see how I was playing small and dare to take the next step and start teaching other coaches and therapists. And of course, I changed my entire schedule so I could prioritize music again.

That’s what shadow integration is truly about, it’s not an intellectual exercise, as it demands taking action in the real world. It’s about shaping your life according to the truth of your soul, i.e., following your pistis.

The Paradox of Individuation

Carl Jung explains that the individuation journey requires a balance between the demands of the outer world (persona) and the inner world (soul).

Consequently, we must develop our personalities and seek individuation by sustaining this paradox, and finding equilibrium between the values of the soul and the persona.

Now, let’s explore each part of this equation.

Most people think that persona is only a bad thing, a mask that we use to hide our authentic selves. However, the persona has an important function to help us adapt to the external world and exert our role in society.

Moreover, this is the part of our psyche that understands cultural values, and a well-adapted persona allows us to flow in distinct social settings. The persona only becomes problematic when we identify with it and lose our individuality, just like Patrick Bateman in American Psycho.

As the film progresses, we learn that he’s an empty vessel and crafted a perfect character to maintain an ideal image of status and wealth. There’s nothing underneath it, and he lives only for appearances, driving him to insanity.

This ideal image is dependent on cultural standards, family values, and social rules that we feel pressured to abide by. The more we have the unconscious need to win the approval of others, the more we end up adopting values that hinder the development of our personalities and make us disconnect from our souls.

This inevitably leads to a neurosis, a self-division.

All of this is amplified by our current zeitgeist, in which we have to be constantly productive and everything has to serve a purpose. There’s an excess of rationalism as science has become the new god, suffocating the soul.

There’s no space for the creative matrix of the unconscious to be manifested, and that’s why it rebels against us in the form of vices, addictions, and an unbearable lack of meaning. But all of this could be solved if we learned to listen to our souls and allowed them to participate in our daily lives.

The problem is that the very things that could bring us meaning and fulfillment are treated as worthless or as a source of shame, and they become part of our shadows. Consequently, we forsake our creativity, spontaneity, and true talents.

This leads to a general feeling of being lost, a lack of motivation, and, according to Jung, it’s one of the main reasons behind anxiety and depression.

In contrast, as compensation for the persona, we have the animus and anima, which reveal our authentic selves. For the sake of this article, I want you to think about this part as listening to your soul.

Listen To Your Soul

As I mentioned in the beginning, for the longest time, I ran away from my talents. In part, it’s because I was discouraged and shamed whenever I tried to express them, and I tried to be someone I wasn’t because I wanted to fit in.

But as we become adults, we must realize all of the crutches and stories we tell ourselves to run away from our responsibilities and life tasks.

Many people mistakenly assume the shadow only contains immoral qualities, but more often than not, the true battle lies in accepting our good qualities, precisely because they demand a conscious decision to develop them.

Once we realize we have dormant talents, we’re asked to rise above our fears, and our souls won’t rest until we accept this calling. This is the moment we’ll try to dismiss it and feel completely inept to face this challenge.

But as Steven Pressfield says in The War of Art, “We become capable in the process, we just have to take the first step, and unseen forces come into our aid”.

When we commit to fulfilling our true destinies, suddenly we’re gifted with new opportunities, and we start doing what before seemed impossible.

But I find this only happens when we develop an attitude of utmost respect for our crafts and do it from a place of love rather than seeking validation and recognition.

Wanting to prove ourselves can be a powerful drive and even take us far, but it doesn’t fulfill the soul. We can even be doing exactly what we were born to do and still be disconnected from our authentic selves.

The voice of the soul is subtle.

It comes in moments in which we choose not to write a sentence because we feel like it’s too vulnerable, or when we change our song because it doesn’t fit the standards.

But over time, we get the feeling that we’re dry and the things that give us joy are now a source of anxiety and frustration. Everything becomes stale.

This is the moment we must stop listening to everyone and ask ourselves what our truth is.

The values of the soul are often incompatible with our egotistical desires, and it requires vulnerability to access them. More often than not, they’re a straight road to our wounds, and that’s why we want to keep our distance.

However, if we can change our narratives about ourselves, we can transform our wounds into gifts. Our crazy ideas, sensibility, weird perspectives, and insane dreams not only make us unique but can also bring meaning.

The individuation journey requires the courage to develop our gifts and talents. Everything starts with listening to our souls and then taking action to develop them in real life and sharing them with the world.

That’s what true shadow integration and individuation are all about.

Read Next – Demystifying Shadow Work Series

Rafael Krüger – Live an Audacious Life

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Mentorship – Catalyze your personal transformation with 1 on 1 sessions. Master your psychology, relationships, and business.

Audacity University – Master Jungian Psychology in 1 year: Become your own analyst or integrate these tools into your professional practice.

Katabasis – The Shadow Integration Manual – My best-selling and accessible course will teach you how to disrupt the unconscious patterns keeping you stuck and integrate the shadow.