Shadow work is a time where you have to look at the parts of yourself that are dark. These are things that you have hidden, and everyone has a dark side. There is a way that you can look at yourself and see the parts of your unconscious mind that shapes how you feel and how you act. When you look at these things, chances are you will find traumatic things that you may have suppressed. Once you find them, you can begin to work through these things, and you can get therapy to deal with them.
Dealing with your past is important if you want to heal. Once you do this, you will see that your relationships can be stronger and better and that you can get rid of the parts of your inner being that are wounded. This will help you to stop repeating things that are painful in your life.
Shadow Work
Shadow work is termed from Carl Jung, a psychiatrist and he talked about the shadow self. This is the part of you that you have likely hidden away, maybe even since childhood. Instead of facing it, you smile, and you move on in your life, but it also leaves you feelings of anger and selfishness. Not everyone is able to express these feelings and these emotions.
Shadow work is part of your unconscious mind, and it is when you have repressed yourself and hidden yourself from trauma. Your shadow self will often come when you feel certain things and it can cause you to have trouble in your relationship and it can cause you to feel depressed or stressed out and you might not even know why.
Everyone can do shadow work and you can learn to get treatment. Some people have strong traumas that they have went through such as abuse or some kind of violent action towards them. When you can work through these things, you will see that you can get rid of this stress and the emotional blockages that hold you back.
There are different people that will take the time to look at their conscious minds and they will be able to get shadow work to help them heal on a level that is deeper than outer workings.
What Does Shadow Work Do?
Shadow work can help people heal that are into self-harm, addiction, in codependent relationships and more. Sometimes these things happen because of sexual and childhood abuse and when you can open up to what you have experienced, and you can learn to feel these feelings then you can change your behavior and how you see things. This can give you a chance to be more responsible for your own self and to change hurtful behaviors.
People that get shadow work want to know why they are going through things they are going through. They will look at the patterns in their life that are repetitive, and they will turn from things such as learned behavior. They will learn to be compassionate with themselves and they will stop figuring out how to protect themselves with harmful behavior but how to change and do good things for their life.
Some people that have past trauma will shut down and they will do things such as start addictive behavior in order to keep themselves safe, but this is only temporary and can hurt relationships.
Finding Shadow Work Help
There are different people that you can talk to, and it is best to do this when you start seeing that you have repetitive bad behaviors or patterns in your life. If you always feel stuck or you find yourself often in toxic relationships, you need to find out what is going on and why you are stuck. Therapy can help with this and if the person sees a therapist and does shadow work sessions, they will see that they can change their life.
Many of the shadow work sessions start with deep meditation sessions. The therapist will talk the person into relaxing and deep breathing. This will change their beta waves in their brain. When they meditate, they will begin to feel know things that have happened in their past.
The therapist will guide the person to a total meditative state, and they will encourage the patient to use the senses that come to them. The therapist will ask the client to share what is going on and their feelings and they will take them deeper to help them move forward.
Some shadow work treatments will involve the therapists pulling out self-awareness and emotions so that the person can embrace them and find out what their attachments are because of their past trauma.
There is no therapists that focus just on shadow work, and this is more of a new age proactive that therapists are starting to do but you can look online and find people that to this kind of work.
Doing Your Own Shadow Work
Even though it is best to have a therapist, if you cannot do that then you can start doing your own shadow work. You can do this by researching it and finding healthy options and opportunities that can help to fix you. If you are coping from things that happened in your childhood, then you need to learn to practice deep meditation.
When you relax, you can let your mind wander and you can journal what you felt and what you thought of. Write down what kind of emotions that you had and find out what your shadow self looks like.
Pay attention to the things that trigger you. This is especially important when you are in relationships. Look at things like how you feel when someone succeeds at something or what your reaction is when you don’t get picked. You can even start your own journal and write down things that bother you throughout your day.
Self-reflection and shadow work go hand in hand and even though this may be painful for you, you need to learn to love yourself and not judge yourself for your actions but to be accountable so that you can heal.
