You may be familiar with the buzzword “shadow work” if you’ve been paying attention to your mental health. What exactly is it, and what can it accomplish for you, may be your question.
According to Gauri Khurana, MD, MPH, a psychiatrist in New York City and a clinical instructor at Yale University School of Medicine, shadow work is about investigating the unconscious aspects of oneself, also known as your shadow. It is predicated on the notion that the unconscious and conscious have a compensating relationship, meaning that whatever you identify and live with consciously will have an opposite in the unconscious. Additionally, because they are frequently suppressed, negative traits have a stronger influence on your shadow than positive ones.
Carl Jung, a Swiss psychiatrist and psychotherapist, created the idea of shadow work. He thought that shadows reveal themselves by criticizing others. Everyone has a shadow, which he defined as their “dark side of personality,” and he believed that working with it would help people understand their anger and judgment of other people.
Since we are unable to recognize that these things are genuinely inside of us, Dr. Khurana explains that we first encounter our shadow when it is projected onto other people. When I observe that a patient has an explosive reactivity to a personality trait of another person, “I can often identify it for patients. It usually signifies that there is something about their own personality structure and development that they have not been aware of.”
Psychiatrist Gauri Khurana, MD, MPH, treats patients of all ages who are going through challenging life changes, such as relationship problems, family challenges, and stress at work. In addition, she teaches clinical medicine at Yale University School of Medicine.
Want to attempt this method but are unsure of how to accomplish it? Here is all the information you require to begin conducting shadow work and enjoy the rewards.
What is shadow work?
According to Dr. Khurana, the purpose of shadow work is integration, which entails being mindful of your hidden aspects so they can emerge into consciousness and find healthy outlets for expression.
Shadow work also tries to make you more grounded and fully aware of the reasons why certain facets of other people’s personalities irritate you. This will enable you to comprehend an incident from your youth and the reason for your inability to express a similar need or emotion in a healthy manner. A prominent example is sexuality, where some people criticize others who identify as gay because they are unable to express their own sexuality, according to Dr. Khurana.
According to her, “Shadow work offers insights on the roots of your personality and how you got these powerful feelings.” The main objective of shadow work is to bring as much of your unconscious into consciousness as possible by “shining a light on your shadow.”
What are the benefits of shadow work?
According to Dr. Khurana, it is challenging to demonstrate the effectiveness of shadow work as a technique because it has not been evaluated in any research studies. However, she observes that, based on the experiences of her patients, shadow work can assist in integrating many aspects of yourself and promote a sense of wholeness in your mind and personality.
As a person gains an understanding of why they can or cannot engage in particular behaviors, shadow work can also help them learn to trust themselves more. For instance, if they were reprimanded for being too loud or impulsive when they were younger, they can respond by being more restrained as they get older and becoming offended by others’ spontaneity. They would express themselves more honestly and become more at ease with themselves through shadow work.
According to Dr. Khurana, another advantage is that it may enable you to alter your boundaries with both yourself and others, enabling you to live a more genuine life. It might be useful for figuring out what messages and parenting techniques they want to keep using in their family while thinking about parenting.
Finally, since shadows can encourage harmful behaviors like addiction or binge drinking as a coping mechanism for stress, shadow work can also help someone develop more positive habits.
How do you practice shadow work?
According to Dr. Khurana, all you require to engage in shadow work is a curious, open mind and a desire to get along with people in general.
Shadow work has the advantage of being done both alone and with others, including your therapist, according to the author. You might have already engaged in shadow work without being made aware of it when you were receiving therapy. Without the patient’s knowledge, some therapists frequently use the shadow work technique to assist patients understand the challenging circumstance they have brought to treatment.
According to Dr. Khurana, “the simplest place for someone to start is to examine their pronounced negative judgment of others—typically it is the consequence of a projection of a quality that they have unknowingly been suppressing and don’t like about themselves. “Journaling, talking to family members or childhood acquaintances may be necessary to understand the beginnings of the repression of your intense feelings.”
It’s also crucial to avoid beating yourself up for having such strong negative thoughts toward other people and discovering these aspects of your shadow. The bad emotions you are already aware of will get greater if you shame yourself, according to Dr. Khurana.
What shadow work prompts can you use to start?
Dr. Khurana frequently advises her patients to evaluate their extreme feelings of positivity or negativity toward another person or a feature that person possesses in order to discover how it connects to themselves.
According to her, “the quality that they are fixating on and berating the other person for is often related to something about themselves that they don’t like and have taken great pains to hide from themselves and the world.”
The main questions that someone should ask themselves include:
- “Why did I have such a strong positive or negative reaction to X?”
- “Does this relate to something from when I was younger?”
- “Why can’t I stop thinking about X?”
- “What traits do I wish I had and what is holding me back from expressing them?”
Although the evidence isn’t there, it’s possible that shadow work can prevent you from making the mistake of projecting negativity onto yourself and other people. Discuss with your therapist how consciously focusing on it can improve your general state of mind.
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