The Inner Wealth Podcast

Ep194: Your Shadow Is Your Power: Stop Running and Face the Depth of Your Pain.

• Mike Kitko

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In this episode, Mike dives deep into the misunderstood realm of shadow work and how emotional discomfort often reveals the exact area of life calling for liberation. Drawing from his own experiences and coaching conversations, Mike shares how facing the parts of yourself you’ve rejected—your fear, shame, judgment, or insecurity—is the gateway to deeper trust, inner peace, and personal power. Shadow work isn’t something to be afraid of—it’s the very path to becoming whole. If you’ve ever felt like something inside is blocking your next level, this episode offers the clarity and insight to move through it.

Key Takeaways:

  1. Your Shadow Isn’t the Problem—Avoiding It Is–Facing the parts of yourself you’ve been avoiding leads to emotional freedom, not deeper pain.
  2. Your Triggers Are Invitations–Emotional reactions aren’t obstacles—they’re signals that healing is ready to occur.
  3. Healing Happens Through Awareness, Not Force–When you sit with discomfort instead of fighting it, transformation unfolds naturally.
  4. You Are Not Broken–Your shadow isn’t something to fix—it’s something to love, integrate, and bring into wholeness.
  5. Power Is Found in Integration–When you stop abandoning parts of yourself, you reclaim the full power of your presence.

Notable Quotes:

  • “When you stop trying to outrun your shadow and start turning toward it, it dissolves its power over you.”
  • “You’re not here to be perfect. You’re here to become whole.”
  • “The shadow will scream for your attention until you love it.”
  • “That emotion is not a problem—it’s an invitation into your next level of personal power.”
  • “When you stop rejecting what’s hard to feel, you stop rejecting who you are.”


Music Credit: "What's Left of Me" by Wes Hoffman & Friends

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Mike Kitko is an executive self-mastery coach, speaker and author. He found external success through powerful titles, incomes, and material possessions. He ultimately fell into depression, toxic abuse of alcohol, and the near collapse of his family before he began a journey of internal happiness and success.

Speaker 1:

Do you ever wake up feeling like there's something missing in your life? Do you ever feel the need to escape your business? Are you running your life or is your life running you? I'm Mike Kitko and I'll help you design and create a life so authentic and aligned with who you really are that you'll get excited just to wake up. I'll help you create real wealth, success and freedom from the inside out. Welcome to the Inner Wealth Podcast, where we learn and choose to live inspired each and every day.

Speaker 1:

If you listened to the episode the Inner Wealth Podcast episode last week with me and my wife, angie, you know that last week we held our spring inner wealth mastermind retreat at the Outer Banks in the Outer Banks, north Carolina, and it was a beautiful place called Corolla, north Carolina Beautiful. We absolutely fell in love with that part of the country. We had never been to the Outer Banks before and this is, like Kerala is, I guess, more off the beaten path. There's not like one chain restaurant in the whole area, it's all mom and pops and there wasn't a lot of people there because of the time of year it's not quite high season yet but what a wonderful, wonderful time, and the first two days of our trip we had 80 to 85 degree weather and then, as the week went on, it really cooled off. It's like a storm came in and it dropped 40 degrees. But what a wonderful, wonderful, beautiful experience that was at the Outer Banks and we're making plans, we're thinking about Angie and I love that area so much. We'll probably go back and visit again soon and just spend some more time there, because it was man. What a great experience. But we spent. We saw some dolphins, we saw all kind of animals. It was awesome. But when we hold our retreats and last week was about giving you a little, you know, behind the curtains peek at the Inner Wealth, mastermind and the work that we do together.

Speaker 1:

I lead a lot of meditation in our retreats, in our intensives. I record meditations. They're available on innerwealthglobalcom and meditation has changed my life and I run. I guess I led over the course of two days probably four meditations, maybe five. Some of them were. One of them was three minutes, one was, you know, a half an hour or so. But I lead guided meditation deep down inside of yourself to understand what's there, in some cases to install some new software and in some cases to uninstall expired software and to you could say, to reprogram some corrupt programs. So meditation, there's a variety, especially guided meditation. There's a variety of ways and methods and reasons, but either way it's powerful and it'll reshape. It'll help you with the right person, with the right guide. It'll help you reshape who you are.

Speaker 1:

And if you're interested in experiencing some of my meditations, innerwealthglobalcom, there's a meditation bundle. It's got I don't know eight or nine meditations in there and both of them are from retreats or intensives where it was a good one and I produced it and I put it in the bundle. But at the end of the retreat I we went around the room and I asked all of the students, all the people that were there, not just the students, but you know Cara Dossi, our operations assistant, and Angie, and. But you know, cara Dossi, our operations assistant, and Angie and I shared mine no-transcript, and I love hearing you know opportunities for improvement as well. So when I do this it's not just about getting you know all positive feedback. But when we went around, one of the participants said you know, what I love the most was the shadow work meditation that we did, and what I loved least was the shadow work meditation that we did and I thought that was pretty profound, because that's exactly what you would expect out of leading that kind of meditation. Now let me tell you a little bit about what shadow work is.

Speaker 1:

Deep inside of you are wounds. Deep inside of you are suppressed emotions from experiences. Inside of you there are beliefs, there are. In Sanskrit it's called. They're called samskaras, s-a-m, samskara, s-k-a-r-a, and what these are these?

Speaker 1:

These samskaras are little trauma-based, trauma-filled emotional wounds that are embedded into your biology, your physiology. Sometimes, you know, in your brain or just in your body, could be in your heart. If you look at the traditional Indian chakra system. That's what blocks energy in an energy center. It blocks emotion in an energy center. It blocks emotion in an energy center. It is a samskara and all emotion is is energy in motion and a traumatic experience will block this emotion. A traumatic event, a traumatic experience, a painful experience, a painful event, a painful sentence from someone that can get lodged inside of you as a samskara. And we often, when we're unconscious, we build a life around these samskaras. We build a life to avoid feeling, because what happens is energy travels in four directions. Energy travels up, down, in and out from you.

Speaker 1:

You've been around someone and you've shared space with someone. When you stood next to them, you felt really good. That's because good energy was leaving their body and entering yours. And you've also experienced people that when you stood next to them or you were in their aura or when you were in their energy, you didn't feel so good. That's because they had some lower level energy in their body and it was penetrating yours. Now, please understand that people are experiencing you the same exact way. People experience me the same way. People experience everyone the same way, and we've all been around people that we love being around, and we've all been around people that we just don't enjoy being around. That's because of the exchange of energy that's happening between us and I.

Speaker 1:

These, these samskaras they are guiding and they are directing and they are manipulating and they are shaping and they are reforming the aura and the energy that you're you're exuding on a on a regular basis. These samskaras get trapped and what I'm talking about is the lower level, conflict-based, trauma-based. As these samskaras get blocked inside of us, our aura reshapes, our energy reshapes and the emotional impact that we have on people shifts. When we're living unconscious and we're just carrying around a whole lot of these samskaras and a whole lot of this wounding and a whole lot of this, this traumatic, these traumatic traumatic experiences in our mind, in our body, in our, in our aura, then then life is going to interact with us in certain ways and the more powerful your aura, the more powerful you are, and the more depleted your aura, the more depleted you are.

Speaker 1:

When I started my journey and I had a coach, I had a mentor say what are you scared to lose most in this world? And this was right after I had gotten fired second time in 2016. And I hired my coach and my mentor. He said what are you most scared of? And I said I'm most scared of losing my house. And I've told this story a gazillion times on this podcast in various episodes. I was most scared of losing my house, and what that was was as a result of some scars that were buried inside of me. Those fears came from experiences that I had during my childhood, my upbringing, you know area in Baltimore, and it was a very lower middle class kind of upbringing. We had just enough to get by. We really didn't have a whole lot of excess. We never needed for anything, but we didn't have any excess and our house was cluttered and it was dusty and all this stuff.

Speaker 1:

And when, as Angie and I started to really start to, I guess I, when I ascended the ranks in corporate and we started building this life, this wealthier life and more successful life, we've purchased three homes and our homes kept getting bigger and my home became a piece of my identity and I built, I forged and I founded my identity on my material possessions, because when you saw my house, you could see that I wasn't broke and I wasn't poor and that was what I was. You know, that was a badge of honor for me. I think I might have even just told this last week again on on this episode, but the point being is, when I left corporate and I got, I got booted. What? What are you most scared of? I'm scared of losing my house, because that meant that I was going to lose my identity and that meant that I was going to lose my identity and that meant that I was going to be perceived as poor, and that's what I was afraid of the most is being perceived in a way that was lower middle class or where I was living in a state of scarcity. I was always afraid of being perceived, and I wanted to be perceived through my money and I wanted to be perceived through my titles and through my success. That's how I wanted to be perceived. It wasn't about who I really was, it's about how other people saw me. So the danger of losing my house was the danger of losing this false identity that I had built.

Speaker 1:

And when I told this to my mentor, he says good, well, we're going to lose it, we're going to lose this identity and we're going to disconnect, we're going to unattach your identity from your house. And how are we going to do this? He said I want you to go into meditation, and I had already started doing some meditative work, so I was comfortable and familiar with meditation. So go into meditation. And he said I want you to picture yourself on a side of the road with a sign in your hand that says help me, I have nothing, anything will help in tattered clothes that were dirty. And, by the way, in this, in this graphic representation, your family's left you and you have no friends and you're completely alone in the world. And he said I want you to look at yourself and watch yourself in in that scenario and I want you to feel all the emotions that you anticipate that you would feel if you experienced what you were experiencing. And I thought it was freaking delusional. I thought this was the most.

Speaker 1:

But at that point I was in so much pain I would have done anything to relieve myself of this pain that I was feeling inside. I always say if my mentor would have said, jump up and down on one foot and spin in circles and pat my head and rub my belly, I would have been singing happy birthday. I would have done that because I was in so much pain, I was willing to do anything to feel relief from all this pain. And when I went into meditation and I pictured myself on the side of this road with this sign in my hand and I started feeling hopelessness and I started feeling shame and I started feeling poor and I started feeling judged and neglected and abandoned, all these lower level, raw emotions. It's like all these emotions that were inside of me started to shake free and started to let go and started to release.

Speaker 1:

And when you look at emotion, when you look at things like this, what happens is, if you're watching this on video, you can see this, but if you're not, if you're listening on audio. In my left hand I'm holding an orange I, if you're listening on audio in my left hand I'm holding an orange I'm pretend holding an orange and in my right hand I've got a knife. And if you stick the knife in the orange and maybe shake it around a little bit and twist it back and forth and pull the knife out, the orange juice comes out of the hole right. Well, the knife didn't create the orange juice, the knife just revealed the orange juice that was already in there. And that's exactly like emotion. It's the perfect visualization for emotion. Visual for emotion. I should say not visualization, but that's the perfect visual for emotion is when you go into meditation and you look at yourself.

Speaker 1:

If you're scared of losing your house and scared of losing your family and scared of losing all this stuff and scared of losing your money and your wealth, if you picture yourself on the side of the road with this sign and you see this actively happening and you're watching and you're witnessing, it'll start to draw out all these emotions that are already there. And the visualization isn't creating the emotion. The visualization is actually revealing the emotion. But let's be honest, the emotion was already there. It was already there in the form of samskaras. This visualization is not creating the emotion, it's revealing it. And when you start to provoke this emotion in you, it starts to let go. To provoke this emotion in you, it starts to let go. And that blocked those blocked samskaras, that blocked energy, that energy in motion that one time was energy in motion, that became blocked, that became a thorn inside of you. As you start to feel that emotion, it starts to break free and it starts to flow and it starts to resolve and it starts to dissolve. And it starts to flow and it starts to resolve and it starts to dissolve. No-transcript.

Speaker 1:

If you feel you can't be broke and you can't be poor, if you go into the shadow work and go into the visualization and you picture yourself broke, you're going to start to feel the things that are keeping you in a state of chaos, trying not to avoid or trying to avoid those situations, trying not to feel those emotions. And when you feel them in shadow work, then they start to resolve and dissolve and the impact and the influence and the control that they have on you, over you, begins to diminish and dissolve and and as this deep buried, painful energy that creates massive suffering in your life, as it starts to resolve and dissolve, it starts to be replaced with a higher level of energy, higher level of emotion. Because as one empties, something has to take its place and nothing lower ever takes its place. Only more love, only more peace, only more joy. And as you do this exercise over and over and over again and you begin to really dive into your shadows and you really get to lean into the parts of yourself that you would rather not feel.

Speaker 1:

When you get into the lower level shit inside of you that you've been looking to avoid, that you would rather not feel. When you get into the lower level shit inside of you that you've been looking to avoid, that you've been looking to ignore, that you've been suppressing, that you've been repressing, that you've been escaping, maybe through drugs and alcohol and eating and food and sex. And you know when you, when you look at all these deep parts of you that you've been looking to ignore your entire life, and you shine a light on them and then you begin to see them as true and feel them, they begin to heal. And when you proactively trigger them because that's exactly what this is when you proactively trigger them and you learn to let them go and you allow them to let go, you learn to let them go and you allow them to let go, then you no longer have to build a life around this pain, you no longer have to build a life around these samskaras and there's nothing left to avoid. Now you shift from survival mode, which is all that, was, into creation mode. Now you can create to experience instead of acting to survive or acting to avoid, or acting to ignore or reacting. You can begin to respond to life instead of react from an accretive place, from an expansive place, from creation mode, not from survival mode.

Speaker 1:

And shadow work is the most raw, the most courageous, the most vulnerable work that you could possibly do in the energy healing space, and that's all. Emotion is energy in motion, and when it gets trapped in you and you look to avoid certain emotions maybe shame, maybe guilt, maybe anger, maybe grief, maybe fear when you look to avoid certain emotions maybe shame, maybe guilt, maybe anger, maybe grief, maybe fear when you look to avoid these emotions, it's because they're buried inside of you and you've been building a life to avoid them and ignore them. And when you, as you let them go, your body empties of these things and you no longer need to build a life around them. You can build a life on purpose, for the experience of life itself, not to avoid death.

Speaker 1:

I led a shadow work session in the Outer Banks and one of my favorite parts about leading meditation is I get to watch people do the work and I can see who's doing the work and I can see who's not doing the work, because if you, once you get into real deep, vulnerable shadow work, oftentimes the color of your skin changes the emotion, your facial expressions, your facial impressions, the tightness in your body. I can, especially for people new to shadow work, as they start to really do the shadow work and when they really get into their shadows and they really get into the depths of their soul, I can literally see the physical transformation that's happening in their body and it's a beautiful thing to watch, especially for people that have harbored and that have stored up decades and decades of raw, painful, suffering-filled energy in motion in their body. As they get into it and as that starts to express and as that starts to resolve and let go, they feel a new sense of lightness and freedom and vibrancy and vitality and everything in their life begins to shift. We did some shadow work. Back in Gatlinburg in the fall.

Speaker 1:

The Interwealth Mastermind went to Gatlinburg in the fall and I watched someone who had stored up a defense mechanism. They wouldn't let anyone in. When I watched and I witnessed, we witnessed someone actually let go of decades of a defense mechanism. Then their heart started to open and they started to let people into their lives in a deeper and a healthier way and their lives in a deeper and a healthier way. Listen, avoiding all of those trapped, painful samskaras, avoiding the things that you'd rather not lose, avoiding the things that you'd rather not experience, avoiding anything in your life is a sign that there's a samskara inside of you that's waiting to be let go, healed, resolved, dissolved, and that gives you back control of your life and your purpose, your freedom and your fulfillment.

Speaker 1:

But not everyone is courageous and willing to experience shadow work and the pure freedom and liberation that's involved in letting go of your shadows and letting go of that trapped energy, that samskaras. When I went around the room and I asked what was your favorite part, what was your least favorite part, that one student said my favorite part was the shadow work. And my least favorite part was the shadow work Because when I was watching her do the work. I could literally see the tears streaming down her eyes. I could literally see the years and decades of pain starting to leave her body. You could see it. You could see the physical release in the tensed up muscles that when I invited after getting them into the shadow work, then I get them into a place of letting go of those shadows and breathing through the shadows and becoming free of those shadows. You could literally see decades of pain and suffering and struggle and turmoil leave her body. And her body went from tense and in a state of pain and crying and grief to a whole nother level of freedom and fulfillment, in the absence of needing to avoid any of this stuff, because the samskaras that were in her were not keeping people safe, they were not keeping her safe, they were not keeping her protected, they were literally just making her life smaller and more control-filled and more survival-based. And as she let them go, she let these decades of pain go by releasing, by breathing and letting go of this stored, toxic, expired energy. Then a whole nother level of freedom and fulfillment consumed her and filled up the spaces from the pain.

Speaker 1:

Guys, shadow work will change your life and there's a great book by a gal named Debbie Ford and it's called the Dark Side of the Light Chasers. If you want to explore shadow work and the depths of freedom that you can get from this, shadow work, or the Dark Side of the Light Chasers is an awesome, awesome book and an awesome reference. In my meditation bundle I also have meditations that get you into your shadow. Especially it's called Meditation no 1. It takes you deep in your shadow and then brings you to a place of release all right, releasing your shadow and stepping into a higher level version of yourself. So there's all kind of tools, there's all kinds of techniques, there's all kinds of wisdom in the world about the power of shadow work, but I just wanted to bring it to your attention because it's another tool and a technique for liberation. If you're interested ever interested in, you know, tap dancing with me and seeing how we can work together to you know, to get you know, get some of those shadows out of you, I'd love to have a discussion with you. Just message me at mike at interwealthglobalcom, come to the website.

Speaker 1:

At every retreat and at every intensive we do some shadow work. I'll introduce it to you, but I'll help you get become even more emotionally courageous. And emotional courage is being willing to feel any and all emotions and still be okay. It's not the absence of fear, it's feeling the fear and doing it anyway. It'll create shadow work, will create a whole, nother level of emotional courage. And when you are emotionally courageous, you will not ever need to avoid anything, ever for the rest of your life. As you increase in your emotional courage, you increase in your freedom to be who you are and to do things you want to do and to fully express yourself in the world. If that sounds good to you, connect. But at a minimum, start to understand, investigate research, shadow work a little bit. It'll only set you free. Start to understand, investigate research, shadow work a little bit. It'll only set you free. If you enjoyed what you heard and you want to learn more, go to wwwinnerwealthglobalcom for more tools and resources.