Shadow Work with Me (part one)
Buckle up y’all. It’s a long one. So long it’s coming in two parts.
One post my girlfriend has requested time and time again has been an outline of what to do if she wants to sit down and start doing Shadow Work. And yet, despite it being one of her top suggestions, I’ve struggled to write it. “You just do whatever Shadow Work you want,” I tend to say, which is admittedly a non-answer.
I think one of the reasons I’ve struggled is Shadow Work just isn’t very aesthetic. Even though it’s a cornerstone of my spiritual life, I just don’t feel very witchy for doing it. In fact, it’s one of the areas I feel like aesthetic can actually get in the way. Shadow Work requires you to drop whatever façade you maintain, whatever story you tell yourself, especially the ones you like.
For that reason, my shadow work practice is extremely spare; I’ve taken the rituals out, I’ve taken the candles and the ambiance out. I usually do it sitting on my bed, on my laptop, alone. I usually pray at the end and sometimes I give an offering of incense or booze afterward. Following that, I meditate for anywhere from a few breaths to an hour depending on what I need. Then I grab a snack.
“Okay but what do you actually *do*?” I can hear my girlfriend saying even as I write this. Which brings me to…
Journaling is the backbone of my Shadow Work. Basically, all of it is journaling of some form or another, it’s just a matter of whether its tarot assisted or not. I use these journaling styles when I know speifically what I want to work on. I use tarot when I don’t have something I know I want to work on. A mix of both is helpful to me.
I usually use my laptop because it’s easier on my hands. There have been times when I couldn’t type and I’d just turn on the camera or bring up an audio program and talk, going over the recording like I would a journal entry if the method requires it. But usually I bring up a OneNote notebook I have set up for this or an empty word document and go to town.
I use this for: when I can feel I’m holding a lot of stress in my body, removing emotional blockages
What it is: Tension Myositis Syndrome/The Mind-Body Syndrome is a medically unrecognized condition where the mind confuses repressed emotions for physical pain. I found it a couple weeks ago when looking for alternative approaches to fibromyalgia (a condition I have) and while I’m not sold on it yet, their journaling exercises have been incredibly helpful. The idea is to allow difficult emotions to come to the surface, see that you’re okay and you don’t have to act on them, and let them float away. Or act on them, I mean I’ve acted on some of what’s come up and it’s been very helpful.
How to do it: The idea behind it is to get in touch with feelings in a raw and routine way. One practitioner I’ve been learning from, talks about letting your inner five year old throw a temper tantrum on the page and that is definitely what it’s like for me. It’s also important for this method to shred the paper or delete the file after you’re done. Because it’s one of the only ways to really get yourself to let loose; when you know absolutely no one will be able to see and be hurt by what you’re writing.
I use a combination of list making and free writes. One of the common TMS journaling components is making three lists: past, present, and personality. Then you list stressors you have under each one. When you go to journal you pick one you’re drawn to and do a 20 minute free write.
I often cry when I use this type of journaling so I really recommend doing it in a private space where you can really let loose if big feelings come up. Though as always, practice good emotional hygiene and mental health safety.
Personal Example: I’ve been extra touchy with my girlfriend lately and I couldn’t figure out what was going on. I keep getting caught between feeling like I was unhappy with our relationship, but I also loved our relationship. Through doing this journaling exercise a few times I figured out that I was a bit angry and disappointed that our relationship didn’t look like what I’d spent so much of my younger years imagining my long-term relationship looking like. But by acknowledging those feelings and realizing they didn’t break us up or ruin what we have, it freed me up to enjoy us more deeply, free from guilt and repression. Long term relationships aren’t going to be the ideal in every way and it’s okay to acknowledge that. What I’ve got with her – mutual respect, deep compassion, shared interests, and lasting attraction – is pretty fucking great and that’s the important thing. Might seem basic but it was something I needed to spend active time processing in order to integrate that part of me better.
More information: TMSwiki
I Think/I Feel/I Want/I Will
I use this for: when I’m feeling defensive, when I’m dealing with current or past hurt by a person/people
What it is: A lot of people use Unsent Letters to process feelings from traumatic situations or old relationships, but I found the format often triggered me because of how often I’d been gaslit and trained not to believe my own reality. I Think/I Feel/I Want/I Will is an adaption of a Dialectical Behavioral Therapy format for being more assertive. I use it in my daily life but it’s also pretty much the only way I can write Unsent Letters.
How to do it: It’s very straight forward. For the “I Think” section, you list the events that happened in as unbiased a way as you can. Then in the “I Feel” section, you write whatever the situation made you feel, it doesn’t have to be factual just true for you. In the “I Want” section, you write about how you want the situation to change. In the “I Will” section, you write what will happen if those changes don’t happen.
When writing Unsent Letters in this format, it often winds up validating whatever current course I’m taking (avoiding, going no-contact, etc) that I’ve been feeling guilty about. It helps me realize it’s not just an uncontrolled tendency but a way of protecting myself from a person or group of people. There are just people in this life who don’t need to or shouldn’t have access to you and that’s okay.
Personal Example: My girlfriend’s family has largely disliked me from the moment they met me. They were unkind and exclusionary, then would blame me for not feeling connected or coming to events. I felt really guilty about not wanting to interact with them for a long time. Sitting down and writing an Unsent Letter like this to her mom and her sister helped me feel firmer in my decision to keep my distance from them. They since decided to go no-contact with both of us, which I can’t say I mind. I think though I saved myself a lot of heartache by just being able to organize my thoughts and feelings in this way. I really wanted to be a part of her family and the situation brought up a lot of memories of being teased and widely disliked when I was younger, so I started to feel this desperate need to win them over. But writing out my thoughts like this helped me realize that I had done plenty and they weren’t going to like me no matter what I did. It freed me to focus on myself and Ria more.
More Information: DEAR MAN
I use this for: limiting beliefs, inner critic work
What it is: I adapted this exercise from one I did with a therapist for a while. The idea is to try to capture some of the unquestioned beliefs that are a part of our everyday thinking and then slowly shift them into something more functional and positive. It’s really hard though so I don’t even get the opportunity to do this too often because it takes a thought showing up repeatedly and decently loudly before I think to apply this. But when I do get to apply it, it’s very helpful.
How to do it: I keep a note on my phone just for capturing dysfunctional beliefs with I notice them. I also include any beliefs I want to investigate. Occasionally I get a belief that I’m unsure if it’s as true as I seem to think it is and I include it. I try to write it in an “If ____ then ____” statement. Then I try to take time to sit down and write the belief out in a big font. Then I use strike through and write new iterations, recording my reasoning for each of my edits until I get a belief I can’t edit anymore. The important part of this is only making edits that feel true. Even if I know something is true, I don’t use it unless the edit also feels true too. This process can take an evening to a couple months or even a year.
Personal Example: I’m currently in the process of revising the belief that “I’m not a good student”. I’ve had a lot of trouble with school my whole life and it’s been a source of shame for me. I’m not to a point where I would say “I’m a good student”. But through different edits and reasons I’ve arrived at “I’m not a good traditional student, but I’m a good self-taught student.” Just getting it here has helped free me up to look at the self study I do in German, philosophy, and history as a part of my education rather than something separate. It’s shifted from a feeling of being inherently wrong or bad to doing well or even excelling under certain circumstances and struggling with others. That’s still so helpful just to have that degree of separation. It’s still slow going but I do try to work on it from time to time. It’s easy to get frustrated when it doesn’t budge for a while, but I know it will eventually.
More Information: Details on how to write out stuck points to work with
In the next post I’ll cover how I use tarot specifically for Shadow Work. I usually have a pretty even mix of both this style of journaling and tarot journaling over a weekly basis. I’m toying with the idea of doing shadow work journaling prompts on New Moons or maybe weekly. If that’d be something you’re interested in, please let me know! I really do think Shadow Work has a lot to offer us personally and magically and I want to help more folks do it. What other shadow work topics would y’all like to see?
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