What I Learned Through My Shadow Work

Why is shadow work important? When you don’t do shadow work you stay locked into a cycle of limiting beliefs about yourself and project that out to others. Before I knew what shadow work was, I would read quotes that said “love yourself” and I would think I love myself. I would hear people say “don’t worry what other people think” and I would think I don’t care what others think. I would see people being rude to other people and I would think I never do that. Shadow work creates an awareness that if you're not looking at yourself honestly, you would continue to tell yourself these blind stories.

Once I began shadow work I still had that belief that I loved myself fully and never talked negatively to myself until one day while scrolling Instagram I saw a beautiful picture of a woman on a beach that had a beautiful body doing an extremely challenging arm balance and the first thing that popped into my head was “I’ll never look like that…” because of my shadow work red flags shot up and I was taken aback…did I just seriously say that to myself. There it was the proof that I was not actually loving myself or accepting of who I was and where I was at. Then I started noticing more and more the toxic love I had for myself was reflected by the toxic love I accepted into my life. In my relationships (Intimate and otherwise) I would question why I was treated certain ways but with my new awareness I realized exactly why I was treated the way I was. It’s because we allow ourselves to accept love that we believe we are deserving of but if we don’t believe we deserve genuine love then we don’t accept it and those who try to give it are pushed away.