Shadow Work Is The Key To Your Healing Journey—How To Get Started Today
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What Is Shadow Work?
Shadow work is a critical part of your healing journal. It involves exploring the aspects of ourselves that we have hidden away. The goal is to bring these aspects into the light so that we can understand and heal them. This process requires courage and self-reflection, but it can ultimately lead to greater self-awareness, self-acceptance, and peace.
The shadow is the part of the human psyche that contains all the thoughts, emotions, and impulses that we repress or reject because they are too difficult, painful, or unacceptable to face.
Carl Jung was the first to introduce the concept of the shadow, and he believed that it is an integral part of the human psyche that plays a crucial role in our personal growth and development.
The shadow is a part of ourselves that we may not fully understand or accept. However, when we repress these aspects of ourselves and refuse to acknowledge them, they can have negative consequences.
Shadow work is a process of exploring and understanding the unconscious parts of ourselves.
This can be done through journaling, meditation, therapy, and creative expression.
By bringing these unconscious thoughts and feelings to the surface, we can gain a deeper understanding of ourselves and learn to integrate these aspects of ourselves into our conscious lives.
Example
Shadow work is twofold, that inside of you which you repress, and that inside of you that is doing the repressing.
I find it a less challenging process to start looking at the thing inside of you that says certain traits are undesirable.
As a simple example, if people who laugh too much trigger you and make you angry, then you are probably to some degree repressing laughing loudly. Because what you don't like in others, you don't like in yourself.
Rather than judging someone for their loud laughter, examine all your judgements about others laughing too loudly. Why is it bad? how should they behave? how long have you felt like this? what's the earliest memory you have of judging someone or yourself for it? are you like anyone you know? what would happen if you laughed too loudly? Give lots of room for this, and approach it with curiosity. What are all the subconscious rules you live by?
This process is meant to take some of the pressure of what is being repressed, and it's easier for the repressed to come out.
If you go straight for the repressed you might very well be able to experience it but you might still judge yourself afterwards. To me, this approach is applicable to almost everything in myself.
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