Shadow work. The term sounds like a mysterious practice, one that must be done by candlelight, perhaps while casting spells and invoking ancient gods.
While I have nothing against any of those things, shadow work is actually much more practical than all that.
Consider, if you will, the lowly junk drawer.
Junk Drawers & Shadow Work
Do you have a drawer (or a closet, or a room), that’s filled with crap? Just random crap you threw in there when you didn’t want to deal with it, and then it just stayed there?
Some people refer to it as a “junk drawer,” and I think that most of us have something that’s equivalent. A container of some sort where we put things “temporarily” — just until we have time to deal with them — but then end up leaving them indefinitely, often packing them multiple times and moving them to different locations rather than just going through them once and for all.
I used to be really disorganized — across all dimensions of my life. I often lost things, but more often I misplaced them. I had various “junk drawers” in my life that were voids into which things disappeared. I spent many frustrated hours searching for things that had seemingly evaporated…often they’d show up later in one of the drawers, among random receipts and batteries (are they dead?), pens (do they write?), and other debris from my haphazard life.
These drawers (or closets) we have can give us mental grief. At times we just wanna dump it all into a garbage bag and toss it. But then we think, “there might be some really good stuff in there, but it might all be trash. At this point, I’m not sure. And there’s a lot of crap in there that I still don’t want to deal with, so I’ll think about it another time.”
So we just try to put it out of our minds.
Until it crops up next time.
And next time.
Meanwhile, we’re only opening the junk drawer to shove more stuff in.
The Junk in Your Psyche
Now, imagine that drawer is your psyche. But instead of ticket stubs and dead batteries, you’ve stuffed it full of fear and rejection. Every time someone bullied you, every time you were abandoned, every time you felt unworthy of love…all of that’s in the junk drawer of your psyche.
Shadow work is dealing with and sorting all the stuff in that mental container. It’s excavating and airing out those junky things you shoved down. Do they serve a purpose? Can you rehabilitate them? Do you want to? Can you work alchemy on that junk, and turn it into fuel for your precious life?
Alchemizing the Junk
Shadow work has been the single most valuable tool for my recovery, and I don’t think that I would have been able to get out of my mess had I not committed to doing that very hard part.
While it’s difficult, it’s uncomfortable, and it’s time-consuming, it’s the only guaranteed way I know to self-acceptance & (eventually) self-love.
There are a lot of different ways to do shadow work, and for all of them there’s one thing you need, and it’s non-negotiable. If you don’t have it in abundance, you can’t do shadow work. Full stop.
Shadow Work’s Magic Ingredient
What is this magical thing you need? It’s something that’s in short supply for most of us: complete and total honesty with yourself. And that can be really hard when you start to look at things you’ve done and said that make you cringe. Things you deny even to yourself, things you think you’d rather die than admit to anyone.
But it gets easier as you go, and the rewards start building quickly. Before too long, you start to reflexively forgive yourself in the way you would a beloved friend or child, and that makes you more accepting of yourself.
Being more accepting of yourself leads to being more accepting of others, and life begins to feel better.
Shadow work isn’t for the faint of heart, and it takes a commitment to being honest with yourself. But if you really want to heal yourself and get to a place where you are deeply and unabashedly in love with who you are, it’s the only way to go.
Comments