There is nothing glamorous about doing shadow work.

Today’s social media does a terrific job at pandering falsified pop-psychology. It also serves as a source of “trending” mental health and wellness ideologies, including doing “shadow work.”

Internet personalities from social media influencers and business tycoons alike have been spotted carrying on about “doing the shadow work” in order to become more successful, mentally stable, or [insert end goal here of your choosing here.] I’ll be honest—I’m a little tired of it.

Carl Jung defined “the shadow” as “that hidden, repressed, for the most part inferior and guilt-laden personality whose ultimate ramifications reach back into the realm of our animal ancestors” (Collected Works of Carl Jung, Volume 9). In other words, our personal shadow is home to the parts of our psyche that carry the emotional responses and instincts we feel ashamed or embarrassed of. For some, our shadow might be saturated in anger or denial such that we don’t even broach feelings of shame when we acknowledge it.

The issue I have isn’t with the basic concept of coming to terms with or understanding our shortcomings; specifically, it’s with the fantasia that is cast around something so personal as making progress in one’s mental health journey.

When influencers or public figures dispense self-help advice online to a predominantly malleable audience, it leaves a lot of room for subjectivity into what the subject matter entails. One example is the tired phenomenon of “practicing mindfulness.” We have heard this phrase being strewn around the internet ad nauseam in the last decade, but what does it actually mean? When a Tik Tok influencer with over a million followers spouts “practice more radical mindfulness to achieve ultimate joy,” they’re not actually telling you anything meaningful that gives you a framework for what to do with it. The idea of doing shadow work has become pretty much the same thing.

Something as significant as mending the unhealed elements of our psyche and conscious awareness should not be taken lightly. It involves many hours of introspection and confronting uncomfortable emotions and bodily sensations. For those who are trauma survivors or experience behavioral disorders, this can be an arduous, often difficult process which can take hundreds of hours and sometimes the help of professional facilitation. Not only that, but a concept as broad as “doing shadow work” to susceptible consumers can leave many feeling lost and not knowing where to start, especially if they have no personal awareness around how and why they should do it in the first place.

Our mainstream social paradigm creates self-imposed pressure for hundreds of thousands of people who compare themselves to public figures and influencers all over the globe. No wonder the influencer business is a multi-million-dollar industry—but mental health should not be part of it. Doing shadow work is a deeply personal endeavor, often marked with a specific purpose and end goal. It is not some broadly defined pop-psychology trend that should be done just for the hell of it.

In my personal experience, shadow work is a private undertaking that I have no desire to glamorize by talking about it on a 15-second video reel. I believe in sharing specific aspects of my personal experience in my written work if I believe it will help others with their own process, but it’s not a topic that I’d leverage for any other purpose. I’ll be honest—it also sucks. Coming to terms with our innermost confessions about why we are the way we are is no cake walk. I haven’t enjoyed very much of it myself, but I understand its importance and believe doing the work now will pay dividends in the future.

In closing, I encourage others to: A) consider their social responsibility to their audience before dispensing self-help advice, and B) use a critical consumer mindset when hearing about new concepts that we read about and see online. Just because this week’s most popular influencer is pandering a certain message doesn’t mean that it’s the right one for you.

Consume with caution. Your mental health journey is highly personal. When you’re ready to integrate shadow work in your travels, do so with the most care and consideration possible—not just because someone else tells you to.