Shadow Work on Shadow Self for Healing

Scratching the Surface of Shadow Work for Self Healing and Acceptance
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What is the Shadow Self:
Our shadow self is our inner self that we keep separate and hidden from the world. The shadow self is made up of mostly perceived negative aspects of our thoughts within our personality that we don’t want to be exposed and many times are hidden in our subconscious mind. Having a shadow self is as normal and natural as having air to breathe.

Reaching a state of equilibrium between our shadow and light self is called enantiodromia. Enantiodromia is a term used by Carl Jung to express how when we understand our shadow self, we bring into better balance our shadow and our light. It also helps to heal the root cause of our triggers. Some of the aspects of our shadow self are fear, guilt, shame, jealousy, envy, resentment, inadequacy, selfishness, feelings of not being worthy, and the like. These aspects may have originated during our childhood, our earlier years, or from decisions that we’ve made or didn't make throughout our lives.

We generally do a good job burying our shadow self from our own concious mind and our world. Our shadow self is as much a part of us as our light side. If not addressed, we can feel inauthentic and fragmented, sometimes severely. Our shadow self can manifest itself to the world at large especially when we are under stress revealing parts of ourselves that we don’t want to be exposed. Accepting, facing, and integrating these part of ourself allows us to heal what we may have suppressed in our subconscious mind and become more authentically whole. It may also explain many aspects of our thoughts, personality, and our triggers.

What is Shadow Work:
Shadow Work helps shine light on the darker parts of ourselves for a better understanding of ourself, self acceptance, and healing.

Practicing Detachment:
Practicing a level of detachment for shadow work is crucial. We need to realize we are not these thoughts, we are having these thoughts. Practicing detachment allows us to better examine the “whys” of our thought / personality interrelationship without self-judgment and self-condemning slander getting in our way of our healing.

Take Some Alone Time for Journaling:
With a journal to write in, take some alone time to bring to light some perceived negative emotions and feelings. We are looking to understand where these emotions and feelings are coming from. Ask yourself and answer by writing in your journal;
•What emotions are you feeling?
•Why are you feeling this way?
•What do you believe is the root of these feelings and emotions?
Some pieces of the puzzle may come at first. The more you check in with yourself when you are feeling these darker emotions the more you can understand the origin of the issue. Healing can occur when we can see the root cause.

Dream Journaling for Shadow Work:
Dreams states reveal a lot on many levels of consciousness. Regarding shadow work, dreams may uncover the different layers of feelings and emotions buried in our subconscious mind. Journal and ask yourself;
•How does this dreams made me feel?
•What emotions come up for me during and after my dream?
•What people or figures have appeared in my dream?
•What do I believe is the origin of this dream?
These could all be thought provoking indicators and keys to unlock and free some aspects of our shadow self.

Understanding our shadow self is a mindful lifelong practice just as practicing reaching higher states of vibration. The more we understand and heal our shadow self, the better we can maintain our higher states of vibration from our light self and can accept ourselves completely. We are always under construction.
xoxo ~ Abra.

“The meeting of two personalities is like the contact of two chemical substances: if there is any reaction, both are transformed.” ~ Carl Jung

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Brightest blessings to you all ~ Abra