244 - What Lives in Your Shadow: A Jungian Approach to Complex Trauma w/ Hannah Fraser Moore244 - What Lives in Your Shadow: A Jungian Approach to Complex Trauma w/ Hannah Fraser Moore
Adult Child
Andrea and Jungian-oriented psychotherapist Hannah Fraser Moore talk about shadow, complex trauma and how childhood experiences resurface in adult relationships, dreams and the body. They share personal stories and practical ways to notice exiled parts of the self and begin relating to them differently.
1:00:15•19 Aug 2026
Shadow Work, Jung Style: Complex Trauma, Soul and the Parts of You Hiding in Plain Sight
Episode Overview
- Shadow isn’t just old pain; it also holds exiled strengths like anger, desire and ruthlessness that were pushed away to stay safe in childhood.
- Intense, outsized reactions to breakups or dating often signal old abandonment wounds rather than the actual depth of the current relationship.
- Dreams, recurring images and even daydreams can reveal unconscious material, especially when the same themes or figures keep returning.
- The body often registers danger and truth before the mind does; physical reactions can be treated as meaningful communication rather than ignored.
- Inner conflict usually involves two parts that both think they’re protecting you, and giving each “side” space can open up new choices instead of black‑and‑white thinking.
“"Whatever you refuse to look at inside yourself just comes back at you disguised as your own life."”
What drives someone to seek a life beyond addiction and childhood chaos? Here, Andrea sits down with Jungian-oriented psychotherapist and writer Hannah Fraser Moore to unpack how complex trauma shows up as “shadow” in adult life. You’ll hear Hannah describe the moment she realised her childhood had shaped her far more than she’d admitted, despite years in therapy.
She shares how a breakup with a man she barely knew hit her “as if every person [she’d] ever known died” and how that intensity pointed back to old wounds rather than present-day reality. Andrea matches her honesty with her own story of dating two alcoholic Brians and reacting to a brief fling as if a 30–year marriage had ended.
Hannah explains Jung’s idea of the shadow as the parts of yourself you had to get rid of to survive childhood – not just pain and fear, but things like anger, desire, ruthlessness and ambition. Those qualities don’t disappear; they leak out in stuck jobs, chaotic relationships, people-pleasing and the terror of being seen as “bad”. They talk through how dreams, bodily symptoms and strong reactions to other people can all hint at what’s hiding in the shadow.
Hannah gives vivid examples: women who pride themselves on “having no needs”, creativity tangled up with fear of being selfish, and bodies screaming with headaches and tension while the mind insists, “This is fine.” Jung’s ideas about soul, archetypes and the “war of opposites” run through the chat, but the tone stays grounded, sweary and funny.
If you’re sober (or trying to be) and starting to suspect your childhood is still running the show, this conversation offers language, perspective and a bit of much-needed dark humour. Which parts of yourself might be stuck in the shadows, just waiting to be reclaimed?
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