Shadow work prompts

The shadow is an idea from Carl Jung, the Swiss psychiatrist who founded analytical psychology. He wrote that “the shadow personifies everything that the subject refuses to acknowledge about himself” (Jung, 1969). It is a concept from his theory, not a medical term, and shadow work as practiced online has no agreed method.

A search of the research turned up no controlled study of shadow work prompts or shadow work journaling. The findings on this page support pieces of it, such as projection (seeing your own traits in other people), stepping back from your own thoughts, and writing about what you avoid. They do not support the practice as a whole.

• 6studies: people who push a trait away tend to see it in others.Newman, Duff and Baumeister, 1997
• 7studies: thinking about yourself by name lowered distress.Kross and colleagues, 2014
• 585people took part in those self-talk studies.Kross and colleagues, 2014
• 146randomized studies of writing about hard things. The average effect was small.Frattaroli, 2006

What bothers you in other people

The first group follows the oldest idea in shadow work: we see in others what we push away in ourselves. Psychology calls it projection, and it has been tested. Across 6 studies, people who avoided thinking about an unwanted trait, and denied having it, were quicker to see that trait in others (Newman, Duff and Baumeister, 1997).

In the experiments, people told not to think about a trait went on to see it in someone else. The authors themselves call earlier evidence for projection “limited and controversial”, so their results support one mechanism, one way projection can work, not Jung’s whole theory. The fifth prompt turns it around, to the good qualities you wave away.

What you avoid

Avoidance is hard to see in a feeling and easy to see in a week. A task with no hours for a month answers the question of what you are avoiding. The psychologist James Pennebaker, who developed expressive writing, a journaling method tested in many studies, lists “something that you have been avoiding for days, weeks, or years” as worth writing about (Pennebaker).

What you say and what you do

The third group compares what you say you value with how your hours went. The gap is where people most often find something they did not want to see. It is also where a small change is easy to test.

Parts you keep out of sight

The fourth group stays with the present, and with rules you still live by. The prompt about growing up asks about a rule, not a wound, for the reasons in the next section.

A step back

Writing about yourself by name is a tested way to look at something hard without being swamped by it. Across 7 studies with 585 people, those who reflected using their own name or “you” instead of “I” showed less distress (Kross and colleagues, 2014). They also handled stressful tasks better.

Many shadow work lists ask for your earliest memory of feeling unloved, or your moment of deepest shame. The writing research does not support digging into that alone.

The myth: “The deeper you dig into old pain, the better.”

A review of expressive writing found it was harmful, compared with writing about neutral topics, in one study of adult survivors of childhood abuse (Baikie and Wilhelm, 2005). It found the same in one small study of 8 veterans with PTSD (post-traumatic stress disorder).

Those prompts are left out on purpose. If memories like that come up, a counselor is the right person to go through them with.

A good place for shadow work holds what you noticed and what you did, side by side, because the gap between them is the finding. It counts the hours from your own words, with no timers. Most journaling apps keep the insight and lose the hours, so “I never make time for it” is never checked against the weeks.

One app built for this is Think in Numbers, a smart journaling app with time tracking built in.

You write or say your day in your own words, as it happens or all at once. The app reads what you wrote and counts the hours that went to each part of it: work, the thing you keep avoiding, your phone, and the time you never mentioned (shown as unaccounted). Then it shows those hours over days and weeks. You can make a journal with these prompts, and set a target for the thing you keep avoiding, to see your real hours against it.

Write my first day

Download on the App StoreGet it on Google Play

Or scan with your phone's camera.

For iPhone and Android. Try it on your own day before you pay.

If a prompt only makes you feel worse, week after week, it is not finding anything, and it is fine to stop using it.

Some things are better looked at with someone. If these prompts bring up painful memories, especially from childhood, or you feel worse each time you write, stop and talk to a counselor.

Shadow work, done plainly, is noticing what you avoid. Look at who annoys you, and at where your hours go, and keep the old wounds for someone trained to help. More sets: self-reflection prompts, self-discovery prompts and reflective journaling.

Pick the person who annoyed you most this week. Write down what they did. Then check whether you ever let yourself do it.

1. Jung, C. G. (1969). The Archetypes and the Collective Unconscious (Collected Works, volume 9, part 1). Princeton University Press, second edition.
2. Newman, L. S., Duff, K. J. and Baumeister, R. F. (1997). A new look at defensive projection: thought suppression, accessibility, and biased person perception. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 72(5), 980 to 1001.
3. Kross, E., Bruehlman-Senecal, E., Park, J., Burson, A., Dougherty, A., Shablack, H., Bremner, R., Moser, J. and Ayduk, O. (2014). Self-talk as a regulatory mechanism: how you do it matters. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 106(2), 304 to 324.
4. Frattaroli, J. (2006). Experimental disclosure and its moderators: a meta-analysis. Psychological Bulletin, 132(6), 823 to 865.
5. James W. Pennebaker, University of Texas at Austin (archived copy) (read October 1, 2026). Writing and Health: Some Practical Advice.
6. Baikie, K. A. and Wilhelm, K. (2005). Emotional and physical health benefits of expressive writing. Advances in Psychiatric Treatment, 11(5), 338 to 346.
7. National Institute of Mental Health (read October 1, 2026). Help for Mental Illnesses.
8. 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline (read October 1, 2026). 988 Suicide and Crisis Lifeline.