Getting to know our secret self can be liberating
The psychoanalyst Carl Jung coined the term “shadow self” to refer to parts of our personality we disown. Disowning them means we have pushed them so far away from our conscious awareness, we don’t even know they exist.
The shadow self affects not only our outer behavior but also our health, our inner emotional experience, and our beliefs. Lurking behind the scenes, it can fuel our headaches, diseases, insomnia, addictions, and compulsions.
Although the shadow self is a part of the subconscious mind, the subconscious mind is much more than the shadow self. It’s the repository of our intuition, creativity, dreams, drives, and many other faculties. The shadow self, on the other hand, is that part of our inner world we find unacceptable. It can include our anger and hostility (when we believe these emotions aren’t “nice”), our inadequacy, selfishness, laziness, lust, greed, self-centeredness, and many more unacceptable traits and feelings.
The shadow self is a strange concept and yet a crucial one for us to understand because the shadow self impacts our daily thoughts, feelings, and actions. We want to believe — in a childlike manner — that we’re “good.” We may desperately try to stamp out any hint of “bad” thoughts or feelings through defenses designed to diminish, mislead, and distract us. For example, a woman who feels a deep sense of worthlessness may put extreme attention on the appearance of herself, her family, and/or her home. Her intense efforts at looking good consume her not only because she enjoys the aesthetic of attractive clothes and furniture, but because she’s so rejecting of herself. If she could meet and befriend her shadow self, she might be able to relax and be more normal in managing her public image.
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