Basically shadow work has to do with working through the traumas and not allowing them to continue to control who you are and how you respond to things and how you feel.
For me, most of the time once I understand that a feeling, action or inaction is due to emotional, mental, physical traumas or past experiences- I usually cry it out, feel whatever it is and then I’m able to let it go.
I find that once I understand that I am doing, feeling or saying things because of a past trauma, I can take actions to not do those detrimental things anymore.
I tend to recognize when I’m falling into those patterns and have an easier to realizing no, this isn’t how I feel about this, this is how I felt when someone else did something similar with malice, not how I feel about someone making a mistakes- or whatever.
So I’m able to accept the flaws that have resulted as a response to something traumatic and use reasoning and logic to begin taking back control of that part of myself.
You may not be able to change how you feel, but you can change how you react, especially if you realize why you are reacting that way and can thusly lessen future incidents becoming traumatic, that wouldn’t have been traumatic in their own- they only were because of the past.
Personally I journal, I find I need to get the emotions out to let go of them, otherwise I harbor them and dwell, work myself in circles etc.
Also while I’m writing I will often have sudden insights into myself, likely because I find myself in a state where claircognianze comes through easily.
There’s really no right or wrong way, there isn’t a step by step guide that will work for everyone who picks it up- basically you are just learning to recognize your actions, your feelings, how they relate to traumas and accepting those things so you can leave them where they belong- in the past.
We can learn from the past but we as humans tend to not be very objective, so we tend to allow the past to dictate the current moment, instead of taking what we need from it and letting the rest go.
The idea is to let it go. It’s in the past and it’s done so it has no power over you at all, unless you continue to give it power.
