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Down With My Demons: The Shadow Work Path
Down With My Demons is a podcast for people who are ready to stop spiritually bypassing, turn toward their pain, and build a more honest relationship with themselves.
Together, we explore shadow work: all the parts of us we’ve hidden, exiled, or learned to be ashamed of. Through storytelling, depth psychology, trauma-informed insight, and intimate conversations with guests, we look at the raw, uncomfortable material of being human: grief, rage, desire, shame, longing, burnout, and everything in between.
This is a space where:
- No parts are bad parts – every emotion and pattern is seen as meaningful and workable.
- We connect dots between your personal story and larger systems (family, culture, capitalism, patriarchy, colonization).
- Nervous system + soul work meet – we talk about the brain, body, and psyche, and how to actually integrate change instead of just talking about it.
- Big topics are named out loud – complex trauma, addiction, pleasure, power, money, sex, spirituality, and the collective grief of living in uncertain times.
I’m Chloe Lionheart – a doctoral candidate in clinical depth psychology, therapist, researcher, and longtime befriender of my own shadows. I don’t come as a guru, but as a fellow human who’s been cracked open and is still learning. Expect real talk, tenderness, and basking in raw humanness.
If you’re:
- tired of self-help that skips over the hard parts,
- craving language for what you feel but can’t quite name,
- longing for companionship on the path of becoming…
…then this show is for you.
Come sit by the fire, bring your demons, and let’s find out what they’ve been trying to tell you about the life you actually deserve to live.
Episodes
38 episodes
Death of a Mother: Grief, Alchemy, and Rising from the Ashes
In this episode, I finally name what has been living in the background of everything: my mother’s death, and the grief that took me under. I share how losing her shattered the life I thought I was living, and how that rupture rippled into this ...
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Seasonality and Tending to Our Becoming
We're back! This episode touches on what it means to be with our seasonality of soul and explores the importance of acknowledging what is happening in the present moment. With the growing climate of uncertainty and discomfort, Chloe Lionheart d...
Authority, Integrity, and Rage: An Exploration with Claire Thompson
Join my guest, Claire Thompson and me, as we explore the shadow of authority, how that plays into our integrity, small bits about what it means to move with integrity, and over course RAGE! The episode begins with a dive into working for others...
The Palestinian Perspective: A Conversation We Need
This special edition episode is a conversation, much needed on the global main stage. For too long, we here in America, have only ever heard one perspective on the Palestinian and Israeli conflict. We are very fortunate to hear from Ramzy, a Pa...
The Grip of Dopamine
This week we are unpacking Dopamine! This is a term that gets thrown around a lot these days and this episode is devoted to the continued exploration of understanding how our brains and bodies work in conscious and unconscious ways. Inside, we ...
PTSD and C-PTSD: Understanding Chronic Trauma
Today we're talking about PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder) and C-PTSD (complex post-traumatic stress disorder). With so much to unpack, we discuss what these two things are, the differences, neurological factors, somatic sensations, how th...
Dark Night of the Soul: A Love Story of Change
This episode explains a bit about what I've been experiencing and the wisdom I've been gleaning over the last 10 months away from the pod. Join as we unpack a dark night of the soul and what it means to both be in the darkest depths and to emer...
Sex Series: A ‘Not So Black and White’ Conversation About Consent with Lisa Chatham Part 2
WE'RE BACK!! Thank you for your patience, understanding, and support. On this weeks episode we've got the second part to our interview with the legendary Lisa Chatham. We cover a lot of ground from consent with partners and owning our wanting, ...
Sex Series: A ‘Not So Black and White’ Conversation About Consent with Lisa Chatham Part 1
This episode marks part one of our first ever Sex Series! In honor of Scorpio Season, the holiday season, and the shifting of our environments and selves, we dive into some of the edgier and more taboo parts of life. This first episode features...
Men's Mental Health with Garrett Hooper
In this week's episode we talked to Garrett Hooper LMFT about men's mental health and why he think's it's taken so long illicit a societal response. Men make up the majority of death by suicide cases in the United States and yet there is not mu...
The Shadow of Dating: Ghosting in the 2020's
Dating seems to be one of the most accessible things in the digital age and also one of it's biggest pain points. Not only in the superficiality of design but also in the lack of real connection through apps and platforms. We've grown accustome...
Forgiveness
This episode means a lot to me in that it's been a life long journey and exploration of how I interact with the world and with my internal process. Forgiveness can feel confusing.... how do we forgive? Forgiveness can seem impossible, especiall...
The Death of Friendships
This episode is one I've been grappling with for many years. It's hard to see friendships go, especially the ones we were in for the long haul. The truth is, death is a natural process to the flow of life and that goes for anything that ends......
The Illumination of Hate
None of us are above the capacity to hate. It's sometimes easier to point a finger and judge people or groups who are different than us and hate them and blame them for how they live and move in the world. With all the love that we are capable ...
The Shadow of Time
Time is something we can't escape though sometimes it seems to evade us. The pace at which we want things to happen is not always the timing that brings them about and it can feel so defeating when they don't arrive on our time. We often say we...
Debunking the Shadow of Saturn, Chiron, and Pluto with Natalia Benson
This episode is jam packed with wisdom about these specific astrological placements that give many of us the heebie jeebies. I'm a believer that fear in something is truly a misunderstanding of the thing itself, and this episode serves as a gui...
The Shadow of How We Eat: Coming Back Into Balance and Intention with Callie Cavanaugh
Callie Cavanaugh is a dear friend and a food inspiration in my life. Her "Eat In Method" has coalesced from years of experience and we touch on the path she took to come into balance with HOW and WHY intention with food matters. Through the lau...
The Tough Truth About Boundaries: Getting Clear, Speaking Up, and Reducing Stress
This episode is about a topic that's brutally tough for many of us... boundaries! Saying the word, thinking about it, or getting ready to set a boundary has the power to make us hide under a blanket. But what we think is so scary about boundari...
The Shadow of Femininity in Society: A Conversation about Courage, Feeling, Intuition, and Being with Venus
There is so much ground covered in this episode with the incredible Venus! What a blessing it was to have Venus join us, especially the day after Roe v. Wade was overturned. We discuss rage and somatic experiencing, dreams, the shadow of the fe...
The Lurking Shadow of Insecurity: Thinking and Feeling with Josh Ruszala
This episode is PACKED with wisdom from my brother and fellow doctoral cohort member, Josh Ruszala. In this episode, Josh and I discuss how insecurities present themselves in social dynamics and how our thinking and feeling selves play a role. ...
The Shadow of Nourishment: A Conversation about Eating Disorders with Danna Schultz
It was a pleasure to host Danna Schultz on this weeks episode about Eating Disorders. Danna is a nutritionist, kitchen witch, and coach who helps her clients navigate a life of joy and pleasure post disordered eating. We discuss the many circum...
The Shadow of Self-Care: New Age Narcissism and Leaning In To Connect
This week's material was surprisingly edgy as I expose an element of shadow being cast by the self-care industry. This episode I discuss the ego-feeding problems with publicizing self-care and it's use in avoiding other's needs or any of our fe...
The Shadow of Entrepreneurship: A Conversation About Art with Olive Love
This week we heard from my long time friend and professional artist, Olive Love! In this episode she shares her wisdom on the shadow of being an entrepreneur in the art space as well as in the navigation of life. She gives us tips and tricks as...
Meeting, Dreaming, and Experiencing the Unconscious Shadow with Linda Buzogany
This episode is a full circle moment for me being that I had the honor of hosting my former professor, Linda Buzogany. Linda is a psychotherapist who works with dreams and unconscious material. She discusses an unexpected turn in her career foc...
Let Go or Be Dragged - Bringing Awareness to What No Longer Serves Us with Greg Kondor
This was such a sweet episode with my dear brother, Kondor where we unpacked the Zen Buddhist proverb, "Let Go or Be Dragged." In this episode we loosely discuss the energies being felt at this time, how we are experiencing, and what it means t...