As Jung’s words suggest, avoiding the dark side of your personality is likely to cause suffering in the long run. Ultimately, the more we suppress feelings and negative emotions into the subconscious, the greater the power they have over us. Moreover, they can assert themselves in different ways. This could be through mental health issues, chronic illness, anxiety, addiction, and low self-esteem.
Suppressing the shadow self can also prevent us from reaching our full potential. This is particularly true when specific character traits have been suppressed due to low self-esteem, anxiety or incorrect beliefs that have been instilled during childhood. Our belief systems are most often rooted in our childhood, once we have learned that a particular behaviour or character trait is ‘bad’ it is difficult to overturn this.
When discussing shadow theory, the terms ‘dark side’ and ‘light and darkness’ refer to personality traits and can seem to put a negative slant on the concept of the shadow self. However, frequently, the shadow personality consists of disowned parts of your character that you have deemed to be weaknesses in yourself, rather than themselves, in fact, being negative traits. These could be traits such as being independent, having a sensitive nature, or not allowing yourself to show certain emotions.
Equally, when the shadow self does contain a side of the personality that is potentially destructive, then the conscious mind is not able to fully address those traits or recognise that they might be a problem. For example, when we are disengaged from our shadow, it can lead us to practice something which Jung referred to as a ‘psychological projection’. This is the process whereby we recognise and criticise undesirable qualities in others which we, in fact, hold ourselves.
When we fail to take the time to look at our own shadow this can also lead to an obsession with the opinions of others and a lack of acceptance of our true selves.
This field is created to start showing you the both sides of everything in yourself, so you can see also the good parts of your shadow and integrate it into yourself fully without having attached negative emotions and through of yourself
End results: Feeling happy and whole by yourself, without needing much from the outside world to be happy. Love and true acceptance for yourself which will be projected after that also to others.
