Practically Shameless: How Shadow Work Helped Me Find My Voice, My Path, and My Inner Gold

Now in its fifth printing, Practically Shameless is the first book to explain the compassionate psychology of Carl G. Jung through one person's intimate experiences of shadow, including a riveting first-person account of Shadow Work processes. Practically Shameless reveals for the first time the real buying power of archetypes in daily life for creative self-expression, building self-esteem, getting your power back, letting go of destructive behavior patterns, and overcoming depression and the belief that life holds no meaning.

Many books say they will change your life. Practically Shameless actually will, by explaining for the first time the inner mechanics of change and offering an approach that has worked for thousands of people since 1990. Change is hard because there's a part of the self whose job it is to resist change. It does so for the best of reasons -- to protect us from something it considers worse than the change we want to make. Most of us think of our resistance to change as a problem. Practically Shameless reveals for the first time that our resistance is a good guy, not a bad guy, in our inner drama. It demonstrates the surprising key to turning resistance into forward movement: befriending that resistance by honoring the role it's been playing in protecting us. Once honored, our resistance becomes willing to stand down and to take on, with its treasury of information on risks we've faced in the past, a new role as valued ally as we begin to move forward. An exercise in Chapter 19 invites the reader to step into this inner protector to be honored directly by the author and begin making lasting change.

An Appendix on the Shadow Work Model details the specific emotional wound underlying each of the 16 varieties of shadow, to help lift the shame enshrouding it and thus to help facilitate change. With a Foreword by Shadow Work founder Cliff Barry and illustrations by Cindy Kalman, formerly of PBS's McNeil-Lehrer News Hour. See excerpts, additional testimonials from authors and readers, study guides, excerpts from interviews with Alyce's father, and more, at the Practically Shameless Press website.

Note by the author June 2018: I am a white woman. When Practically Shameless was published in 2008 I had never looked deeply at my attitudes about race and had never heard of white privilege. Practically Shameless tells the story of a journey I went through that left me willing to look at myself. Consequently when I first began learning about my whiteness and my privilege in the spring of 2015 I was willing to look at them. I believe I would not now be an anti-racism activist if I had not taken my Shadow Work journey first. Anti-racism work is vital personal growth work and in some ways similar to Shadow Work. Most experts agree that the single greatest reason for the persistence of racism in the U.S. is too few white people doing anti-racism work. I say all this as a preface to apologizing for this book, which centers the story of a white person who grew up with and still enjoys unearned privilege, and which is therefore a book that perpetuates white supremacy.