Step Zero: Facing Our Shadow

“Emotional sickness is avoiding reality at all costs. Emotional health, rather, is embracing reality at all costs.”

Scott M. Peck, The Road Less Traveled

 

Perhaps you have heard of the Twelve Steps but are unsure what they entail. The coauthor of the Twelve Steps was an alcoholic named Bill Wilson, who found recovery as a result of this “Damascus Road-like” spiritual experience in a hospital room where he lay dying of alcoholism. The Twelve Steps originated from the teachings of a Christian group called the Oxford Group; however, Wilson reworked them in such a way that they were accessible to all people, regardless of their religious experiences, allowing anyone to benefit from them. What Bill Wilson and countless others have come to discover is that the addict’s main problem was principally spiritual, not psychological or moral, and therefore required a spiritual solution.¹

“The craving for alcohol is the equivalent, on a low level, of the spiritual thirst of our being for wholeness, expressed in medieval language: union with God,” wrote Carl Jung.² This sentiment of the spiritual solution is echoed once more through the words of John Ortberg, who writes, “We have a spiritual thirst for transcendence. If we cannot satisfy it through the real thing, we will look for substitutes. Addictions are, in essence, a shortcut back to Eden.³

Over the next several blog posts, I intend to unravel the psychological, spiritual, and practical musings that are interwoven within the Twelve Steps, step by step. Beginning with “Step Zero,” which precedes many of the traditional Twelve Steps, and ending with “Step Twelve: Having a spiritual awakening as a result of these Twelve Steps.”

Whether you have an identified addiction or not. The Twelve Steps are written in such a way that it is meant to help anyone enter into an actionable, non-legalistic, spiritual way of life. But let us be honest for a moment, we are all overly attached to something—starting with our egos—that we are powerless to control. We all need to be freed. The word attachment itself comes from the French word for holding something fast with nails or stakes, like the hands of a condemned man being nailed to a cross. Everybody gets crucified by something.⁴

Before beginning with “Step One: We admitted we were powerless over our deepest problems—that our lives had become unmanageable,” we must recognize that we must have a problem to “admit we were powerless” too. Step Zero is a conceptual idea that represents the crucial first step of letting go of denial and admitting the need for help. It's the moment of surrender that must occur before a person is willing and able to fully embrace “Step One” and the rest of the program. This acknowledgment of a problem and the inability to solve it alone is the foundation upon which recovery is built.

Thus, Step Zero: Facing Our Shadow

Our chemical and process addictions—from alcohol and gambling to compulsive spending and pornography—are more than just flawed attempts to find relief. They are, in fact, self-designed shortcuts we've created to make our lives more tolerable, bypassing the need for genuine love, connection, and affection. These coping mechanisms often stem from the pain we've experienced in our childhood.

As author Ian Morgan Cron writes, "We're blasted into the furnace of life without adequate psychological defenses to fend off the unavoidable traumas, hurtful messages, and emotional injuries we all sustain in childhood."⁵ These wounds become burdens we then load into what author and poet Robert Bly calls "the long invisible bag we drag behind us."⁶ This bag contains all the parts of ourselves that our parents and authority figures disapproved of. Thus, dragging the bag becomes a heavy burden for any child, and the need for our addictive processes rose to the surface. From childhood into adulthood, our bag has become quite large, and the importance of repression or suppression becomes our primary source of survival if we are to experience our parents' love.

As Bly notes, "We spend our life until we’re twenty deciding what parts of ourselves to put into the bag, and we spend the rest of our lives trying to get them out again."⁷

This "long bag" is often symbolized by our shadow—the unconscious, repressed aspects of our personality. Author Robert Augustus Masters aptly describes the shadow as "the place within each of us that contains what we don’t know, don’t like, or deny about ourselves." He adds that the term "shadow" is fitting, “Due to its lack of illumination; whatever it's storing is being kept in the dark.” Our shadow goes with us everywhere, whether we're aware of it or not.⁸

Shining a light on the darkest places within ourselves can feel impossible, as if the doors to our shadow have been sealed shut. And for many, it remains sealed. As John Eldredge observes, “We have two basic options” to compensate for this internal annihilation of the shadow: “We can become driven and violent, or we can shrink and go passive. For most of us, it's an odd mixture of both.”⁹

But what happens if a person waits fifteen or twenty years to illuminate his shadow? Sadly, the sexuality, wildness, anger, and vibrant joy that were once a part of them have become hostile. "Every part of our personality that we do not love will become hostile to us," writes Bly.¹⁰ The longer we deny these parts of ourselves, the more eager they become to show themselves.

“Not knowing our shadow keeps us partial, fragmented, stranded from wholeness, stuck in old patterns, regardless of achievements,” writes Masters.¹¹ Whenever we become reactive, caught up in the same patterns, or shutting down emotionally, we are within the shadow’s grip. Whatever in you that you’re keeping in the dark, whatever in you is unhealed, it doesn’t go away or keep quiet just because you don’t see it, hear it, or feel it.¹²

“If we do not transform our pain, we will most assuredly transmit it,” writes Richard Rohr.¹³ If we do not transform our pain, we will most assuredly transmit it—usually to those closest to us: our family, our neighbors, our co-workers, and, invariably, the most vulnerable, our children.

So, how does one begin to turn toward our shadow and dare to illuminate the hidden parts ourselves?

When it comes to facing our shadow, Masters outlines three possible courses of action: avoid, fuse, or intimacy.¹⁴

The first is to avoid our shadow, in whole or in part—and we may spend much of our lives doing this—keeping ourselves at bay from facing the reality of our shadow’s presence and yet at the very same time seeing the various qualities of the shadow in others, and thinking they have the problem, not me! (What we dislike about others can often be a strong indicator of what we’re keeping in the dark about ourselves).¹⁵

The second is to fuse with our shadow, in whole or in part—absorbing ourselves in its darkness and its manner of operation, and having no distance from it, including the distance needed to keep it in clear focus. For example, we may live without questioning why we avoid entering intimate relationships with others, telling ourselves and others that we’re “just wired that way,” instead of leading with curiosity and wondering why we fear intimacy. In both cases—avoidance and fusion—we are being run by our shadow, operating under whatever conditioning of ours that we are all but blind to or unwilling to take charge of.¹⁶

The third option, the optimal one for facing your own shadow, is to develop intimacy with it. This means getting close enough to our shadow to see and feel it in detail, but not so close that you may lose the capacity to keep it in focus (fuse).¹⁷

“We must feel it to deal with it,” says the words of Dr. Dan Siegel.¹⁸

We must create intimacy rather than avoiding or fusing in order to reclaim all the disavowed, rejected, and otherwise unwanted parts of ourselves we have for so long shoved in our “long invisible bag.” We welcome and integrate them into our being, and by doing so, we become more whole, more vital, able to live a deeper life, no longer needing to invest our time and energy keeping these unwanted elements out of our line of sight.¹⁹

This kind of shadow work does not leave us intact," writes Masters. "It is not a neat and tidy process, but an inherently messy one."²⁰ The pain of such work brings to the surface the very pain we have so ruthlessly and aggressively tried to flee for most of our lives—the pain that creates the unmanageability in our lives.

Thus, the need for Step One.

Actor Russell Brand recommends starting with this question: “Do you have a problem? Is there some activity—drinking, eating, spending, gambling, watching porn, destructive relationship, promiscuity…[you] are struggling to stop?” “If the answer is no,” says Brand, “Well done, carry on, you should have plenty of time on your hands to help others less fortunate and generally serve the planet and its people”²¹

If you are not sure, stop. Take a deep breath. Release the tension within your face, shoulders, and hands. What happens within your body once you become still? Where do the troubled thoughts or feelings of anxiety begin to arise within you? Step Zero is not about fixing, solving, managing, minimizing, or claiming victory over our shadow. Its to create intimacy with it; to cultivate the courage within us to embrace all that has been lost within us.

As we begin to practice Step Zero: Facing Our Shadow, I leave us with a poem written by Robert Augustus Masters:

Seeds grow in the dark—so do we.

Let’s stop making such a virtue out of the light

and turn toward what’s in the shadow

and breathe it in, breathe I here

meeting it face-to-face

until we realize

with more than mind

that what we are seeing

is none other than us

in endarkened disguise

Seeds grow in the dark—so do we.

Let’s not be blinded by the light

let’s unwrap the night

building a faith too deep to be spoken

a recognition too central to be broken

until even the darkest of days

can light our way²²

 

Grace and Peace, 

Andrew M. Forbeck MA, LPC, CSAT-Candidate, SATP

 

Resources

Bly, R. (1988). A Little Book on the Human Shadow: A Poetic Journey into the Dark Side of the Human Personality, Shadow Work, and the Importance of Confronting Our Hidden Self. HarperCollins.^6,7,10

Brand, R. (2019). Recovery: Freedom From Our Addictions. Holt Paperbacks.²¹

Cron, I. M. (2025). The Fix: How The Twelve Steps Offer a Surprising Path of Transformation for the Well-Adjusted, the Down and Out, and Everyone In Between. Zondervan.^1,5

Eldredge, J. (2021). Wild at Heart: Discovering The Secret Of A Man’s Soul. Thomas Nelson.⁹

Masters, R. A. (2018). To Be A Man: A Guide To True Masculine Power. Sounds True.^{11,12,14,15,16,17,19,20,22}

Masters, R. A. (2018). Bringing Your Shadow Out of The Dark: Breaking Free From The Hidden Forces That Drive You. Sounds True.⁸

McCabe, I. (2018). Carl Jung and Alcoholics Anonymous: The Twelve Steps as a Spiritual Journey of Individuation. Routledge.²

Ortberg, J. (2025). Steps: A Guide To Transforming Your Life When Willpower Isn’t Enough. Tyndale Refresh.^3,4

Rohr, R. (2021). Breathing Underwater: Spirituality And The Twelve Steps. Franciscan Media.¹³

Siegel, D. J., & Bryson, T. P. (2012). The Whole-Brain Child: 12 Revolutionary Strategies to Nurture Your Child’s Developing Mind. Bantam.¹⁸