How to Heal Your Inner Child with Shadow Work Journaling

Ellen | EKT Creatives - Spiritual Business Girlie

5 min readJan 23, 2024

Ever thought about healing your inner child? Shadow work journaling is one technique that you can do right away. The concept of “shadow work” was first brought up by psychiatrist Carl Jung, who was a big believer that the human psyche comprises both conscious and unconscious elements.

By doing this, you’ll explore your unconsciousness, find hidden things about yourself and uncover deep emotions and desires that you tend to reject and deny in your conscious world.

Just a fair warning, you might be vulnerable to opening up about your past traumas, unresolved emotions, fears, and other aspects of yourself that have been ignored or suppressed.

If you’re unsure, feel free to speak to your counsellor or therapist as they can help you along this journey. But if you agree to accept this, continue reading as I share approaches to shadow work journaling.

How to Heal Your Inner Child with Shadow Work Journaling

You can check out the YouTube video here:

Find a Safe Space

Before you find a comfortable and quiet space where you’re able to journal without being interrupted, grab your journal and pen. You need to find a place where you can be alone and focused.

You can find a safe space in your bedroom, office, living room (if you live alone or there’s no one at home except you), your backyard, a quiet park, a forest, etc. For me, my safe and private space is my bedroom.

The reason why I suggest you find a safe space is that you will indeed start crying TEARS of waterfalls (or feelings of distress) during the journaling phase. If you can’t find that space, it is okay to try this technique another time.

Set your Intention

After you find your space, sit down and think about the clear intention for your shadow work journaling.

Ask yourself:

What emotions or fears do I want to explore?
What issues or questions do I want to uncover?
What subjects do I want to investigate?

When you have a good idea of your intentions, it is time to move on to the next part.

Free Writing or Writing Prompts?

This will be dependent on how you’re feeling at the moment.

Free writing is when you allow yourself to “go with the flow”, not censoring yourself but releasing any judgements. You can start by writing about your intentions, how you’re feeling at the moment and how your day has been. The point of this is to allow your mind to brain dump onto paper and tap into your current state of mind.

Writing prompts are one of my favourite writing starters when it comes to shadow work journaling. You can find a whole lot of shadow work journaling prompts on Pinterest just by searching “shadow work journaling prompts” or “shadow work questions”. You can search for prompts related to your intentions such as “shadow work journaling for inner child healing” or “shadow work journaling for relationships”.

Here are a few of my favourites that you can try out:

You can even combine the two methods if you want! There’s no wrong way to journalling. Do whatever feels best.

Scanning Your Emotions

Try to be aware of any emotions that pop up while you journal. How are you feeling? What triggered you to feel this way? For example, one event could be “my ex-partner left me in 2019. I felt unworthy and unloved.” < you could tag this current feeling of being upset and angry.

Here are two ideas to do when analysing your emotions:

If you have different coloured highlighters (or pencils), highlight the event that you wrote down and tag them as the emotions you’re feeling.
If you have sticky notes, you can jot down the event and the triggered emotions so that you can come back to it later.

Now that you have identified the triggering events feel free to describe them in deeper detail. Ask yourself why you feel this particular way and what emotions are hidden underneath the surface.

Determine the Patterns

Find out the recurring patterns in your thoughts, feelings, and behaviours. For example, you can find two events in your writing that trigger emotions of anger and envy.

Any situations or triggers that evoke strong reactions are good ways to find events that are seeking your attention.

Reflect and Ask Questions

Ask yourself open-ended questions (like “why?) and reflect upon the recurring themes. Try to analyse your past and compare them to the present. For example, one event could be “I tend to distance myself from all previous relationships when things are getting tough.”

Do you repeat the same patterns as now? When others reflect, how do they mirror or challenge certain aspects of yourself?

These events could be useful when you attend therapy so that you can work with your therapist in overcoming your traumas.

(Optional) Journal Creatively

You can also start being creative with your shadow work journaling. Try doodling for instants, or drawing, writing poetry, painting, crafting or colouring to express your emotions.

Practice Self-Care

Once you’re done, feel free to allow yourself to take a few deep breaths, close the book and take care of yourself (I’m proud of you for getting through it)!

Here are a few things you can try after your shadow work journaling session:

Practise Self-Compassion

Pat yourself on the back and reward yourself with self-care. Do some meditation, go out for a walk, hang out with your family or friends, chill with your pets, etc.

Keep a Dream Journal

It’s good to keep track of your dreams after shadow work journaling. This is a great way to analyse the symbols, themes, and emotions within your dreams. Some things might linger and pop up but this is pretty normal.

Conclusion

So there you have it. You can continue to do shadow work journaling weekly or monthly. That way you can start healing, growing and finding deeper meanings about yourself.

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If you would like to work with me, feel free to email me or connect through this page.