Inner Child & Shadow Work

Inner Child was a complete breakthrough for me.

I've never heard of this. It resonates with me. Best wishes OP. I'll start my research on this for myself.

What is shadow work? Hand animals on the wall?

I did this for years before I realised decades had gone by and I was still the exact same person I was when I first started. Just older and more weary, but still triggered in the same way by the same situations, repeating the same patterns. Ego loves these little projects and "healing journeys", postponing your wholeness into some indeterminate future when you're finally fully healed and you can start living. Meanwhile, actual life passes you by.

Your inner child doesn't need healing, it needs killing, i.e. kill all the nostalgia you have for your childhood and youth, it's all necessary baggage. Then embrace your shadow as your actual self and the source of power. And then live in the moment until it's time for the crematorium.

But, seeing is believing. You need to discover the ultimate futility of all this on your own.

[quote]it's all necessary baggage.

R4 ???

“I’ve started false repressed memory therapy. A wood, a hood, it’s all coming back!”

Seriously. Are you like those people who used to turn up on talk shows with teddy bears on your laps?

R4 this is, I think, the single worst comment I've ever read on DL

Love you R6!

If you are not willing to visit real and intense emotional pain on gut-wrenching levels do not start shadow work. Because ultimately that’s what shadow work is…getting to that part of you so that you can debride the infection and leave only clean (but raw) tissue to heal. (This appears to be what r4 was unable or unwilling to do. So they mock.)

1. Don’t start Shadow work until you’re at least 45. 2. Don’t start Shadow work if you are or have been within the last 18 months suicidal.

Best to you.

Oh, sorry, R10 here again. One other crucial thing…

Shadow work has a lot of charlatans cashing in on the terminology right now. But it’s a foundational Jungian concept. So I’d recommend that you watch some free YouTube videos, journal in any notebook and stay in touch with your spiritual counselor if you have one. Seriously consider GETTING one if you don’t already have one because Shadow work will leave you thirsty for spiritual comfort. I recommend Friends Assemblies (Quakers) or Unitarian Universalist Ministers if you don’t already have a gay-affirming spiritual counselor available.

What in the name of Marianne Williamson is this nonsense?

Would Jung be more a Sally or a Phyllis?

Closure is fake. This is all just navel gazing.

I always stop reading or listening when I see or hear the following phrase....

"I’ve done a lot of other work on myself".

Always a red flag

R4 - inner child work is not for healing the child. It’s for healing the adult.

I would just do a psylocibin microdosing schedule instead to permanently change your brain patterns and get out of negative and repetitive thinking.

I'm not a doctor, but I've been to many therapists off and on over the years. It only helped me to understand myself better, but it really did nothing for anxiety, for negative thinking, etc.

For many gay men and lesbians, we've been fed negative stereotypes and rejection very early on in life that can cause depressive thinking. These become engraved thought patterns in our brains - almost hardwired to this type of thinking.

Therapy is only going to do so much for that, whereas psylocibin actually rewires your brain and pulls you out of repetitive, negative thought patterns. It heals your brain to be more positive.

Thousands of studies have proven this - and it's why it is legal at a Federal level for therapy. The military did a 10 year study with tens of thousands of soldiers with PTSD and found over 80% had significant improvement.

I just feel like therapy is this revolving door we get attached to that feels good and helps some, but it's not permanent and works rather superficially in the long term for recurring depression and negativty.

I DO BELIEVE in therapy - I'm not saying that it's bullshit - it is valuable and necessary. But after so many times going, we're just doing the same things to treat the same issue somewhat unsuccessfully.

I really believe therapy with a microdosing schedule is the only way to truly change how your brain is wired for permanent results.

Live Love Laugh

Oh fuck no.

If it's got a trendy name like "shadow work," it MUST be here to stay!

I didn't know you guys were such suckers!

Find the right anti-depressant and you'll see all of this therapy stuff as the bullshit it is.