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Shadow work prompts

Thirty-nine questions, written to be answered rather than studied. They look at what you avoid, what you repeat without deciding to, and what the avoiding is protecting.

They come from Spaces You Made, a self-discovery game where one short exploration a day lights up a house of eight rooms. You can answer them in a notebook instead. The questions work either way.

Shadow work prompts for beginners

Start here. None of these asks you to know what shadow work is first.

  1. What do you criticise in other people most quickly?
  2. What did you learn to hide to stay easy to be around?
  3. When did you last have a reaction that was too big for what happened?
  4. What do you never let yourself want out loud?
  5. Which compliment do you refuse to believe?
  6. What are you afraid people would find if they looked closely?
  7. What do you keep doing after deciding to stop?
  8. Whose approval still changes how you behave?
  9. What would you have to feel if you stopped keeping busy?

Shadow work prompts for letting go

For when you already know you should, and knowing it changes nothing.

  1. What is holding on doing for you right now?
  2. What are you afraid happens the moment you stop?
  3. What would you have to feel if it were actually over?
  4. Who would you be without this to carry?
  5. Which version of the story do you keep rehearsing, and who is it for?
  6. What are you still waiting to be given, or told, or admitted?
  7. If nothing about it ever changed, what would you do differently tomorrow?

Shadow work prompts for self love

These skip the affirmations and go to what sits underneath them.

  1. What do you believe about yourself when nobody is watching?
  2. Where did you learn it, and whose voice is it in?
  3. What do you apologise for that is not actually a fault?
  4. What do you have to achieve before you are allowed to rest?
  5. Which part of yourself do you treat as a problem to manage?
  6. What is the first sentence in your head after you get something wrong?
  7. What would change if you spoke to yourself the way you speak to someone you love?
  8. What have you been calling a flaw that is only a difference?
  9. What would you have to give up to like yourself as you are?

Shadow work prompts for confidence

Aimed at the thing under the lack of it, rather than at the lack itself.

  1. Where did you learn to make yourself smaller?
  2. What do you expect to happen if you take up room?
  3. Who benefited from you doubting yourself?
  4. What do you say you cannot do, that you have never actually tried?
  5. Whose opinion are you still answering in your head?
  6. What did you want before you learned what was realistic?
  7. What would you attempt this month if nobody would hear about it if it failed?

Shadow work prompts for relationships

About your part, which is also the only part you can work on.

  1. What do you keep choosing, in one form or another?
  2. What do you tolerate and call patience?
  3. What do you criticise in a partner that you recognise in yourself?
  4. What are you protecting by not saying the obvious thing?
  5. What do you do when you need something and cannot ask for it?
  6. Which role do you take the moment there is tension?
  7. What would you have to risk to be known as you actually are?

Where these questions come from

Spaces You Made is a self-discovery game. A house of eight rooms, one short guided exploration a day, a few minutes at a time. Each room looks at a different part of what repeats in you: what you need, who you become with other people, what you protect, how you judge yourself, what you never ask for.

You answer in your own words, and what comes back to you is built from what you wrote rather than from a template. Nothing is diagnosed and nothing is labelled: you are the one who says whether it is true. The house lights up room by room as you go.

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One exploration a day. You can skip a question, take a break, and come back whenever you want.