Your “shadow” refers to everything about your personality that is always attached to you but remains (for the time being) unconscious to you. “Shadow work” refers to you discovering your shadow and learning more about yourself and your “dark side”. This allows you to work with your shadow and deal with the demons that you aren’t aware are even there. Now by this I do not mean literal demons from the depths of hell, but rather the things about yourself that you feel you cannot control and do not understand.
Most people go their entire lives ignoring their shadows. This is possibly because they are unaware that you can access that side of themselves or maybe because they don’t even realize it exists. The problem with ignoring your shadow is that you deny certain qualities that you have within yourself and you will project this onto other people and start seeing it all around you. Just as your emotional state becomes visible in dreams while you sleep, your shadow becomes visible in people around you. It will be qualities in other people that you do not like and it does not mean that these people don’t have those qualities, it just means that they bother you more than they should.
If you engage with your shadow you will notice these qualities far less in other people and your relationships will improve, you will see yourself and your partner more clearly and you will be dealing with far less frustration. Apart from that you will develop a psychological maturity which will come with a sense of pride, wholeness and mental balance. Understanding yourself better allows you to be more in control of your mental state. Psychology also teaches us that those who are healthier in mind are more creative which means that shadow work will allow you to be more creative in all aspects of your life. This allows for free and creative expression.
Before I explain to you more about how to get started with shadow work it is important that you remember a few key rules.
Remember to continue to love yourself. Shadow work can get upsetting but remember you are working on it so don’t let it bring you down.
Be sure to make a record of everything you have figured out about yourself as well as all the progress you have made.
Be extremely honest with yourself. You are not sharing this with anybody else so there is no reason to lie.
To begin with shadow work there are a two brilliant ways that you can do it.
Watch your reactions when dealing with people and make note of anything that sets you off for a seemingly unexplained reason. Be aware of the way you react to situations and the behaviour of others. At the end of the day take those issues and run them deeper. Ask yourself why you got so upset by it, and with each answer ask why again until you come down to one root cause of your frustration. You will often find that it relates back to a personal issue.
Talk to yourself. Do you ever find yourself doing something and wondering “Why did I just do that?” or “Why did I just say that?” Take note of these moments and again, at the end of the day run them deeper, constantly asking “Why?” until you get to the root cause. You can do this by writing it down, making a voice recording or a flow chart even. By talking to yourself you allow you mind to work through the situation and figure out what it really is that caused it.
The most crucial part to not upsetting yourself while doing shadow work is to face your shadow. Allow you “dark” side and your “light” side to challenge each other and come to a compromise of sorts. You need to really face the side of you that you have been ignoring before you can ever move past it or ever conquer it. Your shadow is an important part of who you are and the goal is not to get rid of it but to learn how to walk with it so that you can be more at peace and be able to move on from things about yourself that you weren’t even aware were holding you back.
