A way to identify any shadow parts of yourself that don’t necessarily come from childhood trauma, or past experience, is to communicate with your inner self through shadow work.
Most people are essentially good or positively impactful people. By defining ourselves from what we know, and rejecting what is seen as negative or dark, we effectively deny those parts of ourselves and so qualities hide within unseen, as a part of the shadow self.
Have you ever exerted behavior yourself that had an unpleasant edge, perhaps unkind or spitefull, or said something or done something and instantly regreted it? If not acknowledged, these can become new elements of our shadow. When e choose to ignore these representations to the parts of our shadow, then the shadow self grows, retains power and has more influence over our behaviour effecting our lives.
By rejecting aspects of our trueselves, we give these negative or dark parts power; hidden away, they challenge our more positive traits, and will continue to influence and disturb our behaviour.
In order to take the power away from these darker elements of our own shadow and prevent them from influencing our behaviour or disrupting relationships or opportunities, it must be acknowledged. We can shine light on the shadow, basically shrinking it.
Shadow work can be described as having sort of imaginary conversations with ourselves highlighting and analysing the hidden aspects of ourselves rather than trying to ignore them. Asking ourselves personal questions and analysing the answers is a way of discovering this by understanding and analyzing comfort levels, feelings and emotions and inner thoughts on certain topics. As well as through a variety of shadow work exercises, personal journaling can be very helpful to start conversations with inner self.
Commentaires