Working With Your Shadow Around Forgiveness and Release

Forgiveness work has a shadow dimension that is rarely addressed in standard frameworks. The shadow in forgiveness territory includes: the parts of the practitioner that identified with the harm, the aspects of the self that found purpose or protection in the unforgiven position, and the qualities that were projected onto the person who caused harm that belong, in part, to the practitioner themselves. Taking the shadow dimension seriously transforms the depth of the forgiveness work. Take your time with this.

What Shadow Work Adds to Forgiveness

Standard forgiveness work addresses the practitioner’s legitimate hurt, anger, and grief in response to genuine harm. This is necessary and must not be skipped.

Shadow work adds a layer: examining what the practitioner’s engagement with the unforgiven material is also serving — what functions the unforgiven position is fulfilling that make complete release feel threatening.

This is not the same as blame-shifting or minimizing genuine harm. It is recognizing that psychological processes are multi-layered, and that the unforgiven position often serves functions that are not immediately obvious.

The Childhood Schema Lens

The childhood schema framework offers a specific entry point for shadow work on forgiveness. A schema is an overarching pattern of thought, feeling, and behavior developed in early life — a broad template for how the self, the world, and relationships work.

When significant professional harm occurs, it often activates an existing schema rather than creating a new pattern from scratch. The practitioner who was exploited by a mentor may have a pre-existing schema around authority that the exploitation confirmed and reinforced. The practitioner who was rejected by a professional community may have a pre-existing schema around belonging that the rejection confirmed.

The shadow dimension of this: the schema was also serving a function before the harm occurred. The practitioner with an authority schema had organized their professional life in ways that made exploitation more likely — not because they deserved exploitation, but because the schema created specific relational patterns with authority figures. And the exploitation’s confirmation of the schema now makes the schema harder to examine, because examining it feels like excusing the harm.

Identifying the Shadow Function of the Unforgiven Position

For the specific unforgiven harm you are working with, examine the following questions:

What does not forgiving this protect you from? Often: the risk of a similar harm occurring again (the unforgiven position keeps the threat vigilance high), the discomfort of having to update a core schema (which would require acknowledging that the schema contributed to the situation), or the loss of a certain professional identity (the identity of someone who was significantly wronged and has risen from that).

What does the unforgiven position give you? This question is uncomfortable but important. Possible answers: moral clarity (the person who harmed me is clearly wrong, and as long as I maintain this position I know where I stand), professional purpose (the harm gave my work a direction or urgency it might not otherwise have had), or relational structure (the unforgiven harm organizes my professional relationships — those who know what happened, those who don’t, those who sided with me).

What would you have to take responsibility for if you released this completely? For many practitioners, the honest answer is: some aspect of the conditions that made the harm possible. Not the harm itself — the responsibility for that lies with the person who caused it. But the patterns, the schemas, the choices that created the specific professional context in which the harm occurred.

The Projection Examination

Shadow work on forgiveness also involves examining what qualities the practitioner has projected onto the person who caused harm.

Projection in this context does not mean the practitioner is wrong about what the other person did. It means that some of the extreme qualities attributed to the other person — the extremity of the judgment — contains a projected element.

The quality most intensely attributed to the betrayer often reflects something the practitioner is least comfortable owning in themselves. The mentor who is experienced as completely self-serving and exploitative — might the practitioner have some self-serving qualities that are disowned? The community that is experienced as completely closed and cliquish — might the practitioner have some tendency toward exclusion that is unexamined?

This examination is not to reduce the actual harm. It is to reclaim the projected energy — which, once reclaimed, is no longer burning in the relationship to the person who caused harm.

The Schema Update Practice

With the shadow functions identified and the projections examined, the schema update becomes possible.

The schema update involves: acknowledging the schema that the harm confirmed, identifying the function it has served, recognizing the ways it has constrained professional life, and beginning to build contrary evidence.

The contrary evidence for an authority schema: deliberately engaging with professional authorities who do not exploit, and documenting the different experience. The contrary evidence for a belonging schema: finding professional communities that provide genuine welcome, and documenting the experience of belonging.

The schema update is gradual. Schemas form over many years of repeated experience and update over months of consistent contradictory experience. But the update cannot begin until the schema is visible — and it becomes most visible through the shadow work that reveals its function in the unforgiven position.

If you want community for this work — the Abundance GPS community on Skool offers a free trial. Come as you are.