What is shadow work? Carl Jung was the first psychologist to propose the idea of a “shadow self”- those parts of us such as personality traits and core wounds that we deny and hide from. Everyone has a shadow self,
Shadow Work- A Survivor’s Guide
Purity
And you know, you just know that next time you go under you will neither fight nor panic, nor will you be broken. You will be still, as still as the earth herself. You will be strong. You will look that monster right in the eye and you will say, “I fear nothing.”
Permeate
And every so often, you’ll have these moments. These moments where you crawl right out of yourself and emerge, blinking in the fierce light of a new consciousness. And the old pain is still there but it changed, somehow. And
Happiness
That spark is you, that warmth is you- so it always was. You Are the explosion. Don’t you see?
You cannot lose what you already Are.
What Are Trauma Bonds? (& how to break them)
Those of us who had a traumatic childhood or who have been in abusive relationships in adulthood often experience trauma bonding- forming strong emotional attachments to abusive partners. These trauma bonds can be extraordinarily strong and pervasive, and hard for the neurotypical person to understand. “Why does she keep going back to him if he beats her?” they wonder. “Why does he take her back every time she cheats on him?”. Or “why are those two even together when they clearly hate each other?”.