Category Archives: shadow work

How we project our desires and emotions through social media

Want to align your ego and actions with your soul and ‘how you truly feel inside?’ Want to see how other people perceive you? Our own social media photos provide the easiest form of self analysis. As we awaken we often look back on social media and see it through a fresh perspective of OMG WHAT HAVE I BEEN PROJECTING TO THE WORLD.

the horror

There’re different social media platforms for all of our various needs – and we humans often feel the need to express ourselves. Be this artistic creativity, the desire to communicate with others, or just vanity, we can tell a lot about ourselves and each other by taking a look behind what drives us to post the things we do, because when we post without thinking, we are projecting something.

Instagram is about projecting the self, analysing the self, understanding the self, and pictures of people wearing very little – which may be vanity, a low self esteem driven selfie addiction, or body empowerment. Our personal Instagram feed is where we post what we are proud of, what we love, and things that inspire us. It can work the other way around though, we can also inadvertently project our shame.

We all like being liked

Facebook is a more social communicative platform, and while we post all of the things above, the profile picture and banner play a much larger part. Our profile photos shows how we feel inside. Both our eyes and profile pictures are windows to the soul, and we change profile pics when we subconsciously want to express that we feel differently about ourselves. The more often we change them, the more changeable the personality (same goes for hairstyles!).

Don’t look at the photo literally; read its energy. Is it happy, sad, wistful? What’s happening in the photo? Is it heavy, excited, joyful – what does the image evoke in you energy wise? How is this person feeling? What do the eyes say? Are they available to see or covered? Does the profile picture have a real image or a mock up? Are they presenting themselves to the world, or hiding from it? Are they an individual, or a part of a couple? Read it like a tarot card. Then combine it with the banner pic for a fuller story.

Our Facebook profile banner pic shows what we currently desire. Maybe not literally, but what it represents to us, the energy it has or memory it brings up. We feel we need to integrate more of that energy into our lives.

Our music playlists can be a combination of all these things. Look back at the playlists and music genres and lyrics of what you’ve been listening to. That’s how you felt at the time, or what you needed in your life, or something your ego or soul desired, or you’re proud of something, or working something out. Often it’s a jumble and you never really know, but music helps us work out how we feel about everything. Just reading through a list of song titles will give you a reasonable understanding of what you are feeling inside, at a soul level, at the time.

Do you share your music history and playlists publicly? You’re an open book, your soul is on display. Do you prefer to hide your music choices, ashamed of your secret “guilty pleasures”? Then you’re a closed book. You know you’re in a good place for a relationship with someone when you both share your music with each other and like each others’ choices – the power of a mixtape 💞🎵

Want to give this theory a try? Look at your partner and best mates profiles with this in mind first, then if you think it’s legit, take a look at yourself from a stranger’s perspective. It will lead to a whole new understanding of what’s going on in your life! Much of it won’t be pretty – deep breath! Remember that acceptance and forgiveness stuff. And if you feel the need to delete – wait – sit on it for a while – deleting is running away from the problem. Acceptance is much much better for us long term.

seeing yourself isn’t pretty

You can also look back at the post you’ve just made, and see what you were projecting afterwards. It’s impossible to do so in real time, you’ll just confuse yourself. I see I’ve discussed here some of the aspects of ego I’m wrestling with as a general theme at the moment, which is clearly evident to anyone else, but not me until I read back what I’ve written to see where I’m at, and I can determine if that’s a positive thing or not 😉 Either way, whether we choose to write, post photos, create art or play music, online or on our own; expressing ourselves consciously can give us a far greater understanding of ourselves than by working things out in our head.

Expressing our shadow side at halloween

Our subconscious is always trying to express itself, through our hair colour, the things we display in our homes, our clothes, our creativity. At Halloween, we feel it’s acceptable to publicly express our shadow side, even though our conscious mind thinks we’re just dressing up for a laugh. Halloween can give us the most fascinating psychological insight into ourselves and the people around us.

Michael’s likely being killed by his unrequited love feels. His social skills have let him down and he’s resorted to being a creepy stalker, out to punish those sorority girls and anyone having sex with them, because he feels he can’t. Anyone who dresses up as him, likely has a bit of stalker inside them too, if they’re honest with themselves! They hopefully won’t act on it, but what do they think about in secret, or watch on the internet? That’s the secret shadow side of Michael Myers fans.

Adults who express themselves as a devil or demon on Halloween (or through snapchat filters any time of year) – are subconsciously representing the subconscious monster inside, controlling and enhancing their conscious fear and anger. They’re either metaphors for their inner demons, the thoughts that plague them at night when they’re trying to sleep… or they’re negative spirit attachments, depending on what you believe.

Ghosts are heard but not seen – they don’t matter or aren’t taken seriously in daily life, they might make a lot of noise but still get ignored, and may as well be invisible.

Buffy the vampire slayer / Faith – they’re probably a bit of a mess but fighting back, and totally kicking ass!

Vampires = energy vampires. They don’t love themselves, they’re broken inside and narcissistic. To make themselves feel good they slowly suck the life out of the people around them, literally feeding on their happiness / energy until their victim’s an empty husk.

Superheroes / film characters – they relate to this character, they feel their feels, they want others to understand them and see them as this character in a way. Most superheroes have a tragic past, but overcome it or use it to become something greater than they were before, or maybe they just get revenge on their oppressors. It depends on the character.

Supervillains? Same as superheroes, but more damaged. i.e. The Halloween Jokers & Harley Quinns relate to their character’s inner madness. Inside them there’s a psychopath just waiting to come out… all it takes it one bad day to go completely insane, and then they might beat you to death with a baseball bat and a grin on their face.

Freddy Krueger wants to scare and abuse teenagers for some likely very dark reasons, and does so while they’re sleeping… *shudder*

Jason Vorhees? See Michael Myers, but less of a stalker, more of an angry psycho! Trapped in a watery grave of emotion, likely because of his demanding mother. Anyone sexually active is going to get stabbed, ’cause if he can’t get some, no-one can.

Sexy cats or anything sexy on a night meant to be about Samhain? They likely use sex to numb their pain, and use their sexuality to control others to get what they need.

T-Rex? They’re powerful and scary but also extinct / old / irrelevant, they feel their thoughts and actions don’t matter and are rejected by others.

Princesses don’t take responsibility for their own life, instead they want a prince / king / sugar daddy to look after them. They require a pony, a palace, and all of your money, or they’ll scream and scream until they turn blue!

Pirates want to live free, irresponsibly, drunkenly, stealing their treasure from others. They have a great time, but are emotionally plundering society / others’ hard work / finances, unless they’ve got their own treasure – in which case they’re just party animals.

Witches – well, basically yeah, they’re a witch. They’ve got special skills, commune with spirit / nature, feel outcast by society who want to burn them ‘cause they’re scared of their power. Witches can be lovely, there are many good ones, but people dressing as evil witches on Halloween are likely expressing they’re drawn to power and spells / manifestations to control and influence others. Spells don’t turn out well, dark witches! See “The Craft”!

As for me.. my go to Halloween costume has always been Pinhead. I apparently enjoy my own suffering and raising hell – I see shadow work as the route to happiness. Angel to some, demon to others! But I have such sights to show you…

We’ve all got our shadow sides, it’s nothing to be ashamed of, expressing it once a year isn’t a problem… and is quite cathartically healthy, in a way. We can’t ignore our dark side, we all have one. One year we might be having a hard time and may feel drawn to dressing as a vampire, the next we might be feeling better and want to be a superhero. That’s OK. We can explore our dark side safely, though Halloween fancy dress.

If we’re not aware of our dark side though or are in denial, we might just be destroying our relationships with our toxic behaviour. What’s important is, whether or not it’s our fault we feel bad, to take responsibility for it, to heal our hurts rather than ignore them, and try to improve ourselves a little bit at a time. It can take ages, so don’t be hard on yourself if this suddenly makes you realise you’re masking some unhappy / dark feels – almost everyone is! The first step to feeling better is acknowledgement and acceptance.