Shadow Work Prompts
18 shadow work prompts about people pleasing
People pleasing rarely feels like a choice. It feels like reading the room, keeping things easy, being the one nobody has to worry about. These prompts are for looking at what that habit is actually costing you, and where it started.
The prompts
- Whose mood do you check before you speak
- What do you say yes to before you think
- What happens in your body when someone is upset with you
- Who taught you that keeping the peace was your job
- What did it protect you from back then
- What does it cost you now
- Which favor are you quietly resenting
- Who would be surprised to hear you say no
- What do you think they would do if you said it
- When did you last pick the restaurant
- What opinion do you keep to yourself to stay liked
- Who gets the real you and who gets the agreeable one
- What would you stop doing if no one noticed
- What does being liked give you that being known does not
- Which relationship would change if you stopped pleasing
- Which one would end
- What would you do with the energy you get back
- What is one small no you can say this week
How to use them
- Take one. Not the list. One prompt is a whole entry.
- Write the first honest answer, not the tidy one.
- If a prompt makes you want to close the notebook, that is usually the one.
- Come back to the same prompt in a month. The answer moves.
Somewhere to keep these
Prompts are easy to read and easy to lose. Exist is a private journal where you can answer one, keep it, and find it again later — and, if you want, see that other people are sitting with the same thing.
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