Answering these journal prompts will be challenging, you’ll be confronted with stuff that’s uncomfortable, but soon you will see such great benefits.īe patient. Through whatever comes up, just give yourself love and grace to feel what you feel and process it. Often, getting feelings out of your head and onto paper helps you to see them in a new way and helps you process them, instead of having them continue to fester inside you.

The reason why shadow journals can be so powerful is because they provide a safe outlet for feelings of sadness, anger, and frustration. Write about any negative thought, feeling, memory, or experience that comes to mind, whether it stems from a current situation or something in the past. What Should I Write in My Shadow Journal? Then you can heal them and move forward without that weight. It helps you express, understand, and release feelings that you’ve been carrying around for years. With this method you simply ask yourself these questions and see what comes up.Ī 2018 study on how journaling impacts depression found that journaling for 15 minutes each day produced a significant decrease in the incidence of depression over a 12 week period. Many people have found relief by using a technique called shadow work journaling, which is a creative and therapeutic way to heal the shadow self.Ī shadow work journal gives you a place to explore the darker side of yourself without the fear of being judged. We wake up with it, go to sleep with it, and even take vacations from it. In today’s world, stress and negativity can be a persistent and unwelcome guest in many people’s lives. Transform Your Life From the Inside Out How Can Shadow Work Journaling Help? The shadow side of ourselves can be challenging to work through, but it’s important to try.

Shadow work is important to do because it helps us find inner peace and happiness.

Many people are not aware that they are holding on to unresolved or unidentified feelings that could greatly impact their ability to truly thrive in their life. It’s hard to see where we’re sabotaging ourselves when we’re doing it because these thoughts and patterns are so ingrained in us. We are either acting on suppressed feelings and beliefs without realizing it, or trying to avoid them with other feelings (like covering sadness with anger) or behaviors (eating instead of dealing with feelings). That is your shadow self expressing itself. Have you ever been stuck in a negative cycle, knowing it was bad but feeling helpless to stop it? Are you constantly self-sabotaging your relationships or career? Do you react to certain things in a negative way and not understand why? Do you try to hide certain feelings by eating, shopping, or substance abuse? The goal is to acknowledge these hidden parts of ourselves so that they can be integrated or healed, allowing us to become our most whole and complete beings. Shadow work is about recognizing that there are parts of ourselves that we have denied, rejected, or buried so deeply within us that they are hidden even to our own consciousness. It is not meant as a reference to the dark, shadowy figure looming in our psyches, but instead alludes to the fact that we process and hold these feelings and thoughts in the shadows of ourselves because there is pain, guilt, or fear associated with them. The shadow self is a term used to describe the unconscious and unprocessed emotions, beliefs, and memories that we carry. What is Shadow Work?Įveryone holds both light and dark aspects of our personalities, and of course we tend to want to present only our best sides to the world so we suppress the darker parts of us that we fear would be rejected. These journal prompts will set you on the path to finding your true self. Shadow work gives you the freedom to be who you are meant to be. It allows you to heal old wounds and release the baggage and toxic patterns that have held you back from success, happiness, and even love. Shadow work journal prompts allow you to reflect and look inwards at the parts of you which have been hidden out of fear or shame, but desperately want to be healed and integrated.ĭoing these shadow work prompts will give you so much insight into who you are and what has shaped you as a person to this point.

Healing the shadow self is essential to becoming a whole and happy person.

Shadow work journal pdf