#The shadow work journal free pdf series#

There’s also conceptual overlap with a current popular therapy, Internal Family Systems, where different “parts” of the self are named, who behave in different ways. The recovered memory movement from the 1980s and 1990s suggested that people had dark repressions to be uncovered. Similar ideas have captured the psychological zeitgeist before. “There is a naive fantasy that you could find this poison that’s gotten into you, and that by seeing it you could have almost an exorcism and suddenly be cured,” said Kristian Kemtrup, a licensed marriage and family therapist, and a lecturer in the philosophy of mind at San Francisco State University. Its promise of step-by-step revelation is probably the other key to its appeal. It’s also adapted for contemporary audiences, making shadow work more approachable.” “It is certainly influenced by his ideas and is intended to help individuals explore their own psyches in a way that is informed by Jungian theory. “The journal is not a strict interpretation of Jung’s work,” she added. The decision to focus specifically on the shadow stems from its universal resonance, Shaheen said in an email. The journal’s themes and approach are clearly resonating with readers and its popularity gets a viral boost from being marketed through TikTok Shop, as well as TikTok’s trend-surfacing algorithm.

Shaheen is a 24-year-old with bachelor’s degrees in psychology and marketing who completed an online training course in cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), worked in marketing and brand strategy and at TikTok as a creative strategist. As Caroline Mimbs Nyce reported in the Atlantic, the author of the journal is not a therapist. The journal does, however, use Jung’s name to bolster its legitimacy. The journal is not a strict interpretation of Jung’s work Keila Shaheen, author of The Shadow Work Journal The journal doesn’t delve into Jung’s other archetypes, like the anima or animus, the masculine and feminine side that exists in the opposing gender, or other archetypal figures like the wise old man, the mother, or the trickster. The shadow was just one of Jung’s “archetypes”, or universal personalities and behaviors that exist in all people. Jung proposed a collective unconscious made of primordial images and stories that influence everyone. He gave the journal a 2.5 out of 5 star rating.Īt best, the book’s contents are loosely connected to Jung. “It’s important to explore our dark side, but this didn’t seem to have a whole lot of information,” Terhune said in a video review.

#The shadow work journal free pdf series#

There are QR codes directing you to breathwork exercises and a series of lined, essentially blank pages for noticing what comes up when you are “facing your shadow in real time”. A fill-in-the-blank section prompts you to remember emotional reactions to getting in trouble or feeling left out when you were young, or asks you to write down what makes your body tense it’s like a depressing Mad-Libs. For example, it invites you to identify childhood wounds by circling words like “guilt” or “abandonment” on one page. The contents of the Shadow Work Journal are pretty straightforward. More darkly (the Shadow Work Journal’s shadow, if you will), the phenomenon reveals how little access people have to forms of psychotherapy that allow for deeper, meandering interrogations of the self, which leads them to seek out a viral TikTok book instead.

It shows there is a continuing, alluring appeal of the promise that by uncovering a shadow side to yourself, you will find mental relief or meaning-making. The journal’s popularity is significant, though not because it’s the most accurate representation or a renaissance of Jungian ideas. “It’s those parts that we’ve rejected or split off because we learned that they’re not acceptable by our caregivers or our culture,” said Lisa Marchiano, a therapist, Jungian analyst, and co-host of the podcast This Jungian Life.

Throughout his work, he described a person’s shadow as the qualities they suppress and don’t want to acknowledge. The writer Keila Shaheen published the journal in February, which is based on an idea developed by the 20th-century psychoanalyst Carl Jung.