How to find and work through your "shadow" emotions

Everyone has a moment in childhood when we understand that living in society means controlling certain emotions. We are especially diligent in suppressing 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 the Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung called the "Shadow" - the dark side of our personality.

Why is it important to work with "shadow" emotions

Even if we do not like them, it is important to learn to recognize and notice our emotions, because often they can tell a lot of valuable and interesting things about our own lives. Any emotional reactions show what we need to pay attention to in relationships with ourselves and with others. This applies not only to positive experiences, such as happiness and gratitude, but also negative ones, such as guilt, anger, shame, and others.

Shadow work is an effective way to improve your life and understand yourself. It consists of working through the subconscious, in which our hidden and repressed feelings are hidden. The less attention we pay to them, the louder and stronger they become, until they finally reach a peak, after which we have to deal with all our emotional baggage.

Sometimes the feelings that we consider shameful are not so 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 one's personality, teaches one to listen carefully to thoughts and feelings, and thus allows one to pump intuition. And besides, it helps to stop dividing feelings into good and bad and start treating them as a source of information.

How to deal with "shadow" emotions

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 sad. What is she? Is this feeling connected to a certain event in the present, or, conversely, is it an emotional reaction to the past? What is the cause of 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 losses loved one, what thoughts visit you in connection with this? Do you blame yourself for not showing enough inner strength and the loss of a loved one knocked you down? Or doubt the validity of your emotions? Do you compare this loss to similar events in the past? Do you feel anxious or insecure about yourself? Or maybe anger?

We instinctively suppress all such experiences because they cause shame and guilt. However, it is precisely from them that you need 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.