Well, so what exactly is shadow work and how does one carry it out. Well, the term shadow in itself is a bit typical to understand. Shadow is related to parts of your personality that you may not be aware of. These could be feelings, beliefs, emotions about yourself that are not so known and are somewhat difficult to identify.
Particularly, in my case there have been certain things that I didn’t know were wrong. A lot of times, one really has to look deep into the unconscious part of ourselves and throw light upon it so that one can heal it.
In my case, I had confidence problems because of certain things that had happened in my life. Being rejected as kid from a certain group of people, not being able to fit in in a lot of places etc led to me being really conscious of myself.
I tried to cover up by being perfect in almost everything that I did. I wanted to excel in whatever I did in so that other people would accept me. But, later on as I studied more about these things, I understood that acceptance was more about accepting yourself and not being perfect. It was about loving yourself and offering yourself the validation that you crave from other people.
Another example of shadow work was that I had the feeling that people would take advantage of me. Although, it happened way back in the past it impacted me to an extent that I felt that I had to be wary of other people’s intentions. So, it caused a lot of trust issues with people. Also, I would get worked up about how someone could be potentially taking advantage of me.
So, these were the cases of shadow work that I had to work on. There are other things too, but these were the major ones. Realizing more about yourself causes you to feel better and once you understand certain aspects of your own shadow it can help you improve your overall well being in a huge way.
