Your Shadow: How To Explore Your Dark Side
A Guide to Your Unconcious Traits
“Everyone is a moon, and has a dark side which he never shows to anybody.”
― Mark Twain
Every day of your life you go around putting on a mask, a conscious personality shown to the world when you are around your friends, family, or in the workplace. So today, we would explore the other side of your personality known by different names, the unconscious, the dark side, or the “the shadow”, as the swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung would put it.
What is The Shadow?
The basic definition of the shadow refers to the side of your personality that has been rejected and repressed by you over the years, a side of you, you do not like or that you think society would not like, so you push those parts down into your unconscious. This means deep within the shadow are a lot of traits.
Carl Jung believed that everyone has a shadow, he separates our personality into two parts; that which we are conscious of ( conscious mind) and that which we are unconscious of (unconscious mind or shadow). Our conscious mind is the seat of the ego, and it is made up of parts of our personality that we are aware of.
Jung talks about a persona, an aspect of personality that comes from the desire to please people or be accepted by society. This persona, however, can stop us from knowing other sides of our personality leaving it unexplored, underdeveloped, and suppressed. Through a desire to please others, we focus on the qualities that we perceive to be acceptable by others and hide the parts of ourselves that we believe to be negative.
“Everyone carries a shadow and the less it is embodied in the individual’s conscious life, the blacker and denser it is”
Carl Jung
So what kind of traits are in our shadow? and why should we explore our dark side?
Understanding your shadow leads to an understanding of yourself, no matter how you suppress these traits, they are still part of you and they can show up in different ways.
Ways The Shadow Can Show Up
To spot your shadow manifesting, you need to pay attention to your communication and attitude towards others. Do not deny the existence of the shadow rather acknowledge it and dive deep into it, explore it and understand it.
If you ever find yourself in the following positions, then your shadow self is at play:
1. Judging people
Your tendency to judge others is an influence of your shadow on your behaviour, you judge them based on your weaknesses, weaknesses you rejected and suppressed in the subconscious mind a long time ago.
“Thinking is difficult, that’s why most people judge.”
Carl Jung
Your fears and vulnerabilities cloud your opinion of others and this comes out as harsh judgments.
2. Projecting
projection is the process of misinterpreting what is “inside” as coming from “outside”. It is a defence mechanism in which the ego defends itself against disowned and highly negative parts of the self by denying their existence in themselves and attributing them to others.
What you project are the attributes you dislike in yourself and are not proud to possess. These are the same attributes you disown and become your shadow. What you project in others reveals the elements in your shadow self.
Some examples of this include:
- A cheating person accuses the partner of disloyalty.
- Someone feels guilty for feeling the urge to steal, leading them to suspect that others are planning to steal from them.
- A person saying someone hates them, when in fact they don’t like the person.
3. Spreading Hate Online
Social Media has given a lot of people the chance to say hurtful things to others and get away with it. Things they won’t say to their faces, this is the shadow manifesting. It is because of the lack of consequences that the shadow sees an opportunity to manifest, if you ever find yourself in this position, take time to reflect on why you have decided to spread hate and say hurtful things online.
As said earlier, the shadow contains a lot of suppressed traits, many of which can be seen as negative. But within the shadow also lies positive traits which have been suppressed since childhood and this is the importance of embracing the shadow.
How To Explore Your Shadow and Use it To Your Advantage
A dive into your unconscious can help you understand yourself better, this is known as “shadow work”. Awareness of the traits within you and how they manifest themselves can be used to your advantage.
The world is full of people with different characters and temperaments. We all have a dark side, a tendency to manipulate, and aggressive desires. The most dangerous types are those who repress their desires or deny the existence of them, often acting them out in the most underhanded ways.
Robert Greene
Here are a few ways you can know traits in your unconscious and get a better understanding of yourself:
1. Daily Journalling
Daily journalling is beneficial in a lot of different ways not just for shadow work, journaling can help you organize your thoughts. To use this to your advantage, write your thoughts, write your emotions, and write about the things you did that made you feel bad or good about yourself. Observe your thoughts and do not resist them, let them flow and you’ll discover things about yourself.
2. Looking Back at Your Childhood
Exploring your childhood is a great way to understand your shadow, think of the things you did as a child and how your parents and others reacted to those traits, let’s say you used to draw and the people around you never showed signs they appreciated your drawings, you can interpret this as you being bad at drawing and then you suppress the desires you have to draw.
3. Self Talk
Self-talk is the way you talk to yourself or your inner voice. You might not be aware that you’re doing it, but you’re doing it. This inner voice combines conscious thoughts with inbuilt beliefs and biases to create an internal monologue throughout the day. You can use this as a means to discover the things hidden in your subconscious mind by asking yourself questions about why you feel and think a certain way.
4. Meditation
Meditation is the practice of intentionally spending time with your mind. Take quiet time to relax and observe your thoughts. Focus and control your breathing, observe your thoughts, and do not resist them as they flow, do this for some time and you’ll discover things about yourself.
Final Thoughts
Now you have an idea of the shadow and how it manifests, and you’ve also seen ways to explore it and discover things within it. Remember this, understanding your shadow leads to a better understanding of yourself, and a strong sense of self is essential for navigating the world you live in. Through looking into your shadow, you discover things about yourself, this would also give you the ability to deal with the shadow of other people.
