Shadow work isn't about needing to love the parts we do not like. What if this wasn't about liking tomatoes or delighting in the folds of my belly? What if, instead, it was about appreciating tomatoes? Being ok with them slipping into a sandwich instead of it ruining my day? Finding a gentle curiosity and knowing that flesh isn't evil, and a soft belly doesn't make me a different kind of person. Why would I want to learn to love tomatoes when they make my mouth curl up in disgust? Why would I want to find the fleshy parts of my belly lovely when I've been told I need to hide them all my life? Why bother trying to like something I've spent so much time hating? Why do Shadow Work? How can naming all that I don’t love help me love myself? These parts of self might arise in our dreams and be unknown to us in waking hours, or perhaps we are all too familiar with these parts as they have come out to play in drunken stupors or lashed out in fits of fury when we’ve “lost control” of our emotional world. What is Shadow Work?Ĭarl Jung describes the shadow as the repressed desires of the unconscious mind-parts of self we’ve shoved away for fear they won’t be accepted, or worse, deemed evil or bad by our communities. A dinner party where you’ve invited your personality traits that irritate you, body parts that feel foreign to you, thought patterns that scare you, or behaviors that bother you. If you’re new to shadow work, I invite you to see this exercise as a meet and greet with the parts of yourself you’ve cast away.

If it is, this will be a welcome challenge. Shadow work may be a familiar concept to you.

Shadow work journal free pdf