What are shadow journaling prompts for the parts I don't post online?

Start with the five Tier 1 prompts below, one a day for a week, ten minutes each. They ask about patterns you can observe in yourself without assigning blame, which is the safe place to begin. Tier 2 (weeks two to four) asks what your envy and your judgments are pointing at. Tier 3 (after a month of entries) goes to childhood and shame, and it waits until you have someone you could tell one Tier 2 answer to. If a prompt brings up more than you expected, the stop rule further down tells you what to do, and it is three lines long.

The ordering follows the rule I used in 100 Self-Discovery Journaling Prompts: week one is a single ten-minute check-in a day, and the weekly review of those entries for patterns comes only in week two, after there is something to review. Hard questions go later for the same reason. You need a week of ordinary entries to read them against. The theory behind shadow work, Jung's term and what it covers, is on the sibling page, why your shadow work journal feels so uncomfortable. This page is the prompts.

Key Takeaways

• One prompt a day, ten minutes, in tier order; do not skip to Tier 3 because it looks more interesting.
• Move to Tier 2 when you can reread a Tier 1 entry without arguing with it.
• Move to Tier 3 when there is one person you could tell a Tier 2 answer to, even if you never do.
• Stop rule: if your breathing changes or you lose the room, close the notebook, name five things you can see, and leave that prompt for 48 hours.
• Twice on the same prompt means that prompt waits for a therapist.
• No time for twenty minutes: one prompt, three sentences, one line the next morning.

The graded set

Tier 1: week one, patterns you can observe

These ask for observation only. Write what happens, when, and with whom. Leave out why.

1. Which topic do I steer conversations away from, and what do I say instead?
2. Which conversation do I rehearse in my head, and how does it end in the rehearsal?
3. Who do I behave differently around, and what changes: my voice, my opinions, my posture?
4. What did I say yes to this week that I wanted to refuse?
5. Which compliment this month did I deflect, and with what words?

You are ready for Tier 2 when you can reread one of these entries and let it stand. If you find yourself adding a defence in the margin, stay in Tier 1 another week. In 100 Self-Discovery Journaling Prompts, chapter 8, the situational prompts include discomfort with praise, difficulty saying no and old patterns repeating; prompts 4 and 5 above are the same territory, put as plain observation.

Tier 2: weeks two to four, what envy and judgment point at

1. Whose news made me feel smaller this month, and what exactly do they have?
2. When did I last judge someone harshly, and which of my own rules were they breaking?
3. What do I want that I would be embarrassed to say out loud?
4. Which of my needs do I drop first when someone else is unhappy?
5. What fear sits behind the last time I was angry?

You are ready for Tier 3 when there is one person you could tell one of these answers to. You do not have to tell them. The test is whether the answer is sayable, because Tier 3 material needs a route out of the notebook if it turns out to be heavy.

Tier 3: after a month of entries, childhood and shame

1. What feeling was I not allowed to show at home, and how did I learn that?
2. What did I need as a child that did not arrive, and what did I do instead?
3. What is the most painful thing someone has said about me that I suspect is partly true?
4. Which part of my life have I never described to anyone, and what stops me?
5. Reading my Tier 1 and Tier 2 entries, which rule from childhood is still running?

Take these one a week, with an ordinary entry the next day. Prompt 5 is the reason the tiers are in this order: it cannot be answered without the earlier entries.

The dialogue template

Ira Progoff's Intensive Journal method, set out in At a Journal Workshop (1975), includes dialogue sections in which the writer holds a written conversation with a person, a piece of work, the body, or an event, and lets the other side answer. The template below adapts that form to a part of yourself. Fill in the brackets, then let the exchange run for a page.

Me: [what I notice]. The part: [what it wants me to know]. Me: [what I am afraid that means]. The part: [what it needed when it formed].

One completed example, invented: suppose a colleague has just been promoted over you.

Me: I notice I have read her announcement four times and I have not congratulated her. The part: I want you to see that you stopped asking for things two jobs ago. Me: I am afraid that means I am not good enough to ask. The part: I formed when asking got you laughed at, and I needed you to be safe, so I taught you to wait to be chosen.

The last line is the useful one. Write it at the top of the next day's entry and answer it as an adult.

The five-minute version

For the reader who will not sit for twenty minutes: one prompt from the current tier, three sentences, and one line the next morning that says whether the three sentences were true. Five days of that is a week of shadow work, and the morning line is the part that does the work, because it is written from outside the mood.

Grounding, pacing and the stop rule

These prompts surface material by design, and an old memory can arrive with more force than the sentence that called it up. When that happens, pause before you write another word: feel your feet on the floor, touch two objects near you, breathe out slowly three times. The prompt will still be there.

The stop rule is three lines. If your breathing changes or you lose the room, close the notebook, name five things you can see, and do not reopen that prompt for 48 hours. If it happens twice on the same prompt, that prompt waits for a therapist. If you have no therapist, the sibling page on trauma journal prompts describes what that territory looks like and when to seek help with it.

How this differs from the rest of your journal

A gratitude list or a morning page records what you are willing to see. Shadow prompts ask for what you leave out, so they belong in the notebook that nobody reads and they get one entry a day at most, with an ordinary entry after each Tier 3 prompt. This is not trauma processing and it does not replace therapy. Do it in the morning or the afternoon, and never late at night on a bad day.

Why shadow journaling prompts matter

Most journals record the life the writer is prepared to look at, and that record is useful. The patterns that run the writer's decisions sit in what is left out: the topic avoided, the compliment deflected, the promotion that was never asked for. Fifteen prompts in tier order, ten minutes a day, put those omissions on paper in an order that keeps the writer safe while doing it. The graded order is the whole method. It is why a beginner can start tomorrow, and why the childhood prompts come last.

Related reading

• Why your shadow work journal feels so uncomfortable
• Is shadow work journaling demonic or just uncomfortable?
• Self-discovery journaling prompts
• Journal prompts for defense mechanisms
• Trauma journal prompts