Everyone has a moment in childhood when we understand that living in society means controlling certain emotions. Especially diligently we suppress feelings that are considered negative: fear, anger, jealousy, selfishness. This happens for several reasons, including because we are ashamed of these experiences. However, no matter how we suppress them, such emotions still live inside us. Moreover, they create what Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung called a "Shadow" — the dark side of our personality.
Even if we don't like them, it is important to learn to recognize and notice our emotions, because they are often able to tell a lot of valuable and interesting things about our own life. Any emotional reactions show what we need to pay attention to in our relationships with ourselves and with others. This applies not only to positive experiences, such as happiness and gratitude, but also negative ones — guilt, anger, shame and others.
"Shadow" work is an effective way to improve your life and understand yourself. It consists of working out the subconscious, in which our hidden and suppressed feelings are hidden. The less attention we pay to them, the louder and stronger they become, until finally they reach a peak, after which we have to deal with all our emotional baggage.
Sometimes the feelings that we consider shameful are not like that at all. This is especially true for people who suffer from low self-esteem and can suppress even the most harmless emotions and thoughts about themselves.
"Shadow" work develops a healthy understanding of your personality, teaches you to listen carefully to thoughts and feelings and thus allows you to pump intuition. And besides, it helps to stop dividing feelings into good and bad and start treating them as a source of information.
Start by analyzing your emotional experience. It is very important to understand your experiences in as much detail as possible. Let's say you are experiencing sadness. What is she like? Is this feeling related to a certain event in the present or, conversely, is it an emotional reaction to the past? What is the reason for your sadness and why do you feel it?
After you analyze your emotions, you need to pay attention to the thoughts associated with them. If you are sad because of the loss of a loved one, what thoughts do you have in this regard? Do you blame yourself for not showing enough inner strength and the loss of a loved one has crippled you? Or do you doubt the validity of your emotions? Do you compare this loss with similar events in the past? Do you feel anxious or insecure? Or maybe anger?
We instinctively suppress all such experiences, because they cause shame and guilt. However, it is from them that it is necessary to get rid of. And "shadow" emotions simply exist — they do not define us, they do not need to be followed, but we need to learn to understand and accept them as they are.
