What is Individuation?
Becoming more of who you already are.
In the work I do with leaders, seekers, and changemakers, there's a thread that weaves through every coaching session, tarot reading, and retreat: the desire to become more fully yourself. That journey of reclaiming the parts of you that have been hidden, forgotten, or distorted has a name: Individuation.
Rooted in the work of Swiss psychologist Carl Jung, individuation is the lifelong process of becoming whole. It’s not about fixing what’s broken or striving to be someone new. It’s about integrating the many parts of who you already are — conscious and unconscious, light and shadow — into a more complete, authentic self.
Let’s break it down.
Core Concept: Becoming Whole, Not Separate
Individuation is about integration, not isolation. It doesn’t mean breaking away from others to become a rugged individualist. Instead, it means showing up in your life, your work, and your relationships as a whole person — not just the version you think is acceptable.
This process invites you to recognize your gifts, your contradictions, your wounds, your wisdom, and weave them together into something coherent and powerful.
The Key Moves of Individuation
Here are a few central steps along the path:
Confront the Shadow:
Every one of us carries parts of ourselves we’d rather not face, including insecurities, impulses, beliefs, or desires we’ve pushed out of sight. Some shadows are obvious: anger, jealousy, fear. But many are more subtle, especially when they hide beneath what we pride ourselves on. Individuation asks us to bring those parts into the light, with curiosity and compassion, so we can stop projecting them onto others and start working with them consciously. Imagine a leader who’s known for being calm under pressure; the one who always has it together. They’re admired for their steadiness, but they’ve quietly exiled their grief, messiness, and vulnerability. These parts haven’t disappeared, they’ve just gone underground, often reemerging as judgment toward others who seem “too emotional,” or as chronic fatigue that has no obvious source. Their shadow isn’t rage or cruelty, it’s tenderness. It’s the fear of falling apart. And until they make space for that part, their “composure” isn’t integration, it’s suppression; and it’s unsustainable. How about someone who’s seen as radically inclusive and community-driven; a role model for belonging. But beneath that value may live a shadow that expresses as a terror of being left out themselves, or a resentment of people who move freely without needing community. Their commitment may still be sincere, but if they haven’t examined the unconscious fears or wounds beneath it, they’ll continue to feel drained, over-obligated, or quietly superior. The shadow often shows up in the gap between how we want to be seen and what we don’t want to admit. Bringing it into consciousness isn’t about self-blame. It’s about reclaiming the power, choice, and wholeness that gets locked away when we refuse to look.
Integrate the Anima/Animus:
Jung used these terms to describe the inner masculine and feminine energies within us all. Individuation invites you to integrate what’s been culturally or personally disowned. A simple example: a man embracing emotional sensitivity, or a woman reclaiming assertive power so you’re not limited by outdated scripts. Now consider a high-achieving woman who is deeply intuitive and relational, but has learned to rely solely on logic and efficiency to be respected in professional spaces. She may begin to feel burnt out or emotionally flat, not because she’s incapable, but because she’s overdeveloped her animus-driven capacities and under-integrated her inner anima. Her individuation might look like trusting her dreams, reclaiming spaciousness, or making strategic decisions based on resonance not just data. Or imagine a man who is warm, collaborative, and expressive, but who over-identifies with being the “good guy” and avoids conflict at all costs. His anima may be overly dominant, and he may need to call in the assertive, boundary-setting energy of his animus. Not to overpower others, but to stop abandoning himself. These integrations are rarely dramatic. But they are disruptive because they require us to break our internal contracts with outdated beliefs about what strength, value, or love are supposed to look like.
Align With the Self:
At the heart of individuation is something Jung called “The Self” — a deeper center of wholeness and meaning that’s bigger than your day-to-day ego. It’s not the version of you that hustles for approval, performs competence, or gets caught in identity loops. The Self is wiser. Quieter. Connected to something beyond survival; something sacred. As you individuate, you begin to move closer to this core. You start making choices not just to succeed, belong, or be seen, but to live from a place of greater integrity, purpose, and inner authority. Picture someone at the height of their career who is respected, influential, and genuinely grateful. But something in them is restless. Not unhappy. Just… misaligned. They start noticing where their life has become a performance of who they thought they should be — a curated identity built to please the boardroom, the family, or the movement. And they begin asking different questions: Not “What’s next?” but “What’s true?” This moment, often subtle and inconvenient, is a call from the Self. And aligning with it might look like a series of quiet, radical shifts:
Saying no to a wonderful new opportunity because it pulls them away from their center
Reshaping how they lead to reflect more of their soul, not just their skill
Reclaiming a buried creative longing that doesn’t “fit” their public image
To the outside world, nothing may look different. But internally, there’s a reorientation from ego to essence. Living from the Self isn’t about abandoning what you’ve built. It’s about inhabiting it differently and letting it become an expression of who you are, not who you thought you had to be.
Why This Isn’t Just Another Self-Improvement Project
It’s important to clarify that individuation is not the same as individualism. Individualism is a cultural value that often glorifies independence, control, and self-reliance, sometimes at the cost of connection. Individuation is different. It’s about authenticity, not isolation. You don’t lose your place in the world; you deepen it. In fact, you become someone who can stand rooted in yourself while being in relationship with others with more clarity, more resilience, and more grace.
Individuation isn’t linear. It’s cyclical, layered, and often messy. But it does move through a recognizable pattern of initiations, disruptions, integrations, and revelations.
That’s why, inside Tarotypal Leadership, we work with Tarotypal Pathwork™, a five-arc journey that traces the stages of becoming more fully yourself — from waking up to your inner truth, to facing the shadows you inherited, to ultimately living from a place of deep alignment and service.
You can think of these arcs as symbolic waypoints on the path of individuation. They help you locate yourself in the process and offer archetypal guidance for the journey. (You can explore each of the arcs here).
So How Do You Actually Do It?
You don’t need to go off to a mountaintop or enter a decades-long Jungian analysis to begin. Here are some of the everyday ways you can support your individuation:
Deep self-reflection (through journaling, art, ritual, or conversation)
Working with dreams and symbols
Engaging in practices that develop both intuition and insight
Tarot and archetype work (hello, Tarotypal Leadership!)
Facing internal conflicts and exploring the emotions underneath
Taking aligned action, even when it stretches you
The outcome isn’t perfection. It’s integration. It’s a life that feels more yours. It’s the ability to walk through complexity with clarity, to respond instead of react, and to lead yourself and others with the power that truth unleashes.
Individuation is what happens when you stop abandoning parts of yourself to fit the world and start reclaiming the fullness of who you are to shape it.
