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.

Into the wild shadow work journal pdf