Shadow work
I just had this realisation. I've been meaning to get into shadow work and I had some idea of what it is, but I hadn't necessarily researched into it or defined what it was so I could start my journey with it. I guess this was my typical way of being an anxious avoidant attachment style human. I knew that it would take so much energy and all of me and from me and I guess I was avoiding that. I just had a look at, actually I didn't have a look at something, something actually popped up online to me and it was from a group or page I'm in, which I guess sort of cast this kind of work but it just popped up to me. Someone had said something is along the same lines as what I wanted to do and they just said: Can someone please some up shadow work in a paragraph or less? I'm feeling lost. Some of the responses said: I guess it is like putting through a piece of paper, 3D piece of paper, like a script or you know, something that you could put in through a 3D scanner/projector but instead it's only a 2D one. So what shows up when you put it through is some text or picture and then there's a hidden text shadowing or distorted text/pictures behind it. This is your Shadow work. Hidden messages all hidden meaning. Someone else said: I want you to pick a name. I want you to write this name down and I want you to write nine things that frustrate you or that you don't like about this person or this name. Not this name physically. It's just like naming, you know, putting a name to something and writing nine things that you don't like about it. Then replace that name with your name. Welcome to your shadow self. And then so I was getting you know, that was showing me that yes, there is some hidden work inside of you or some emotions or subconsciously what you experience and feel and how you react to things. So, yes that was sort of making sense to me, but I still was a bit confused and lost. And then this one came up and it said I don't even know how to put it into words. I guess I'm sort of still seeing here processing it and I've just had this realisation. All this energy is like throughout flowing through my body and it's like I could cry. I just am sitting with this realisation and this feeling and it's like When you have an emotional reaction to something. Realise that it's your inner child. Like how you react or respond to something, or something that you get frustrated within yourself because you keep doing this, or you keep hurting like this, whatever ‘this’ it may be in your life. It’s actually your inner child inside you feeling those things. And I know that lots of what happens in your childhood or how you feel in your childhood and your childhood experiences and traumas translate into your adulthood. I knew this. But I guess what I didn't realise was how we are reacting to these things is our inner child inside of us feeling those things that we had felt as a child ~ and it's just translated into the now. I always had connected that they were separate and one was I guess an equal reaction or influence to what is happening now. But I guess I didn't connect that the inner child within us, is displaying that on the outside now. So I guess within my own experiences, I have what I've been recently realising, my threshold for holding uncertainty and anxious feelings, my trigger response is quite a smaller. How do I word this? It's quite a smaller resistance or the ability to flowingly handle it is it's quite I guess a smaller amount than I don't even like using the term normal or average because what is that? Then I guess someone who didn't experience anxiety like I have. Uncertainty and the unknown or not knowing how a reaction is going to be are big triggers for me. So I respond quite (not so much now) significantly to that or what I deem to be as that. So all the energy that comes with that has a significant impact on me or it can you know, it can build to be a significant one. Now that I'm beginning to deeply heal and recognise/have awareness and put in strategies and things for that it’s a bit different but regardless my threshold for that. I'm realising now. Is it smaller. Even that is building awareness. When I think back to you know my childhood and growing up even honestly up until my early 20s. I’m realising now and processing this how. I’m having the realisation that my relationship with my parent affected this because of their own trauma and how they projected that onto me, that is the very short story short end minimalist of the whole thing. But because of how they essentially projected their inner child trauma onto me that’s impacted me and how i’ve grown up and how i see myself in the world and these type of things. So I was constantly subconsciously and consciously always in a deep state of anxiety from that. This has grown with me, inside of me or my inner child sitting with these thoughts of anxiousness lives in there as I have physically and emotionally continued growing. And I guess now my shadow work is when now in this present moment or moments when I live my day to day life when I am feeling anxious or my threshold is smaller and I’m becoming impacted. I knew that is was because of those things as a child, but now i’m realising that that child is still within me and it’s feeling those things which I am in all of those moments. It is just projecting those thoughts and feelings into myself as an adult. I think I am doing shadow work right now.
