🕯️ Episode 19: I Did Shadow Work and Accidentally Became an Urban Legend

It all started with a sigh. Not just any sigh. One of those deep, weathered exhales that feels like it comes from your ancestors’ spleens. The kind of sigh that could fog up the windows of your soul. Carl, my monocled cactus/spiritual coach/potted enigma, called it “the opening breath of ego excavation.” He says things like that while sipping herbal tea and levitating half an inch off the floor. I don’t question it anymore.

The ritual began on a Tuesday. Always a Tuesday. That’s when reality feels most emotionally available. Carl rolled out the ceremonial rug—embroidered with motifs that suspiciously resembled my high school GPA—and summoned the fog machine from the hallway closet. "It’s time," he said, adjusting his monocle and lighting a candle shaped like a screaming moon.

“Time for what?” I asked, already regretting my curiosity.

“Shadow work,” he whispered, as if he were offering me either enlightenment or a particularly niche salad dressing.

Shadow work, for the uninitiated, is the psychological process of confronting all the things about yourself that you pretend don’t exist. Like your toxic positivity, or your middle school poetry phase, or the fact that you still get emotional during pet food commercials.

Carl had me sit in front of a mirror—more specifically, The Reflecting Glass of Unrelenting Truth, a name he trademarked and is now marketing as a home decor item for couples in denial. He instructed me to stare into it and repeat affirmations while the fog machine filled the room with what can only be described as goth humidity.

That’s when things got strange.

I blinked. Once. Twice. On the third blink, my reflection didn’t blink back. It just stared at me with that “we need to talk” face. And then it started talking.

“Stop over-apologizing,” it said, with my voice but cooler. “Start using your trauma as seasoning, not the whole entrée.”

The mirror-me had better posture, perfect winged eyeliner, and the kind of emotional boundaries usually reserved for Buddhist monks or librarians on Adderall. It went on to critique my life choices, roast my exes, and demand I stop romanticizing my burnout.

Carl nodded in the background like a therapist DJ mixing existential basslines. The candle screamed louder.

Then it escalated.

That night, I dreamed of a stranger walking through an abandoned shopping mall—clearly a metaphor for late-stage capitalism—when I showed up in their dream, hovering above a broken escalator, offering unsolicited advice like, “You’re not unlovable, you just date emotionally unavailable Geminis.”

I woke up with glitter in my ears and an overwhelming urge to delete everyone named Chad from my contacts.

By Thursday, the DMs started rolling in. Strangers—some from three time zones away—messaged me things like, “Hey, I saw you in my dream last night. You were wearing a turtleneck made of fog and yelling something about inner child reparenting. Are you okay?”

No. I was not okay. But apparently, I was now someone else’s cautionary spirit guide.

Carl was thrilled. “We’ve crossed the threshold,” he said. “You’ve gone from internalized repression to collective iconography. Very rare. Very merchandisable.”

He started selling “I Met My Shadow Self and All I Got Was This Liminal Hoodie” sweaters. Someone made a TikTok of me in a dreamscape, rating people’s chakras like a Yelp reviewer. It went viral. Hashtags included: #CryptidCoach, #FogOracle, and #SleepParalysisBFF.

A Reddit thread popped up under r/UrbanMystics, detailing firsthand accounts from people who dreamed about me in increasingly elaborate scenarios. One user claimed I appeared during their midterm-induced nightmare and slapped the procrastination out of them using a binder labeled “Accountability Is Self-Love.”

Another said I emerged from their bathroom mirror and screamed “BOUNDARIES!” before vanishing in a puff of peppermint steam.

Even my Recycle Bin got involved. It started deleting itself in protest, saying, “There’s no room in here for your old selves anymore.” I hadn’t even opened it that day.

I tried grounding exercises, but the ground started whispering unsolicited feedback. My pillow smelled like generational regret. Every elevator played lo-fi remixes of my childhood insecurities.

I went to the grocery store and a stranger looked at me, blinked, and said, “You’re real?” I said nothing and walked away in slow motion like the finale of an indie film.

Apparently, I had become a symbol. Not for coolness or calm, but for that liminal state between healing and completely losing it. Somewhere between a ghost and a guidance counselor. A roaming psychological mascot for the spiritually exhausted.

“Think of it as astral consulting,” Carl said, handing me a mug that read Empaths Do It With Shadow Work in glitter font. “You’ve become a mirror for other people’s self-doubt. That’s basically sainthood.”

I didn’t feel like a saint. I felt like a haunted Google Calendar.

That’s when Carl suggested a “containment sigil,” which is code for drawing weird shapes on your bathroom mirror with dry erase markers while chanting about ego integration. It helped. A little. At least I stopped appearing in every dream. Now it’s just the occasional group therapy session in someone’s REM cycle.

Sometimes they leave me dream snacks. Other times, they cry and offer me metaphors.

The merch is doing well.

If you happen to see me in a dream, floating above your subconscious baggage in a foggy cardigan, don’t be alarmed. I’m just there to remind you that emotional growth is non-linear, and also, maybe stop texting your ex.

—End Transmission.

🕯️

Note from Carl: Don’t forget to sage your phone and compliment your shadow self at least once a week. Mirrors don’t lie, but they do gossip.