THE DARK SIDE OR THE SHADOW

Over the years, I have tried to deal with certain behaviours which instinctively kick in as a knee-jerk reaction to some stimulus. I have spent time reading self-help books and spent time in self-awareness workshops. Slowly but surely I have come to understand where I am coming from, and to redress some of the more glaring of my inadequacies.

Yet I have the habit of reacting in an unacceptable way when I feel threatened, no matter how insignificant that threat may appear to be to an outsider. I am now trying to confront my fears, and to unravel what has gone into causing my default behaviour, so that I can get sufficient understanding of myself, and try to dismantle this need to defend myself.

I think about this behaviour as being part of my dark side, my shadow, and yet I need to recognise that whatever it is, it is part of me, and so I must accept it, and go as far as to love it. Resisting it, hating it, feeling guilty about it, can only cause it to persist, grow and add to my feeling of dissatisfaction with myself. This cannot help my growth, but will surely hinder future progress in gaining control over myself, my relationships and my possibilities.

What my parents said and did whilst I was growing up, have had a profound effect upon my inability to deal with conflict situations. I became terrified when problems were magnified and crises created out of everyday happenings. It made me feel that problems are something unnatural and to be avoided at all costs. The person who created the problem, if outside the family, was criticised severely and judged to be a moron and (as it felt to my child’s mind) fit for nothing. So I grew to believe that no-one else was good enough, no-one was acceptable, and certainly that no-one was nice. I believed that people were not to be trusted.

But what then happened if I were the wrongdoer? Well, all hell broke loose, it seemed to me. My small world was torn apart by lengthy and enraged questioning about why I had done this terrible thing; I was lectured about how dreadfully inconvenienced everybody had been and then left to contemplate my iniquitous position as an arch transgressor, to be cast into the outer darkness of non-acceptance by our family. I quickly learned not to make mistakes, and this obsession with perfection has been with me throughout my life: it is death to err.

 

But no matter how I hated the criticisms and judgements of other people, as long as I made certain I was above reproach, there was a certain strange sense of security in being accepted by the family, in being a part of the clan. So as I became a teenager, and started to do well at school, I began to experience a certain disdainful satisfaction to hear others’ being judged and condemned: this confirmed my acceptability and membership in the inner circle of mankind. No-one else could do what we did. We were The Incredibles.

 

We were right, and everyone else was wrong. This is where my sense of justice was founded. 

And yet, for all my conviction that I was above everyone else, this feeling had no foundation. I was neither acknowledged for doing something good, nor praised for achieving something worthy. Therefore, I developed the need to do better and better, in the vain hopes of one day being acknowledged and praised, which just did not happen.

Stuck between the fear of doing wrong and the fear of never doing well enough, I became someone I had not wanted to: a critic and judge who could not acknowledge the achievements of others, but who was only too quick to record their insufficiencies and failures. I simply did not know how to act differently.

 

Over the years, I came across various role models who showed me how to accept, trust and love other people, and then, to acknowledge and praise them. Things changed for the better, and I began to feel that something had become freed within me. My need to excel and be perfect at all costs relaxed and I felt freer to experience the challenge of what I could do when I made a mistake.

I had an amazing epiphany one day while driving to a meeting, for which I believed I was running slightly late. I spoke aloud to myself, and said “OK, so you have not left as early as you normally would, and you could even arrive late. What will happen? Do you think that someone is going to shout at you? No! Do you think that people will start to judge and condemn you? No! Is someone going to kill you? No! Well then, just RELAX, and do what you can to get there as soon as you can.” So I relaxed, took a few deep breaths and drove as efficiently as possible, without the adrenaline-pumping heart of a few minutes previously. And guess what? I arrived in good time! 

I felt that each new opportunity offered me the exciting challenge of being creative around an error. I also accepted errors as a part of life: no longer a capital crime. In time, this relaxation in my soul led to my losing the fear of making errors and I was then able to prevent making them, by being present, confident and constructive in every moment.

But I still was reacting inappropriately with other people who “made mistakes”. I found myself being impatient with them, and I got the feeling that I was, in some strange and inexplicable way, being mistreated by them...can you explain that? As if they were trying it on, trying to inconvenience me, or even deliberately to make things difficult for me. I was being catapulted back into the huge problem area of feeling inadequate and downright bad. 

 

What I found confusing was to decide which role I slipped into : the role of “aggrieved perfect  parent”? or “terrified criminal child”? Possibly a combination of both. Possibly during my childhood the two roles had become so merged into my view of both myself and my situation in society that I was unable to be a real and fun-loving child or an effective and mature adult. As an individual, I could not make mistakes, and in my relationship with others, they could not make mistakes. Two sides of the same coin, the foundation of which was criticism, judgement and condemnation. No-one else was good enough, but then neither was I.

I now realise, after so many years of trying to understand the situation and analyse my motivations, that I really need to look beyond the complications and do something entirely different.

Perhaps what now needs to happen is for me to realise that I cannot give away what I have not first owned. I cannot give acceptance, patience and tolerance to someone else until I first allow myself the privilege of feeling and owning these comforting and loving qualities. (I believe that I read that in a book by Wayne Dyer called “Your Sacred Self”.) http://www.drwaynedyer.com/daily-inspiration   http://www.drwaynedyer.com/

I therefore need to accept and acknowledge myself, and love myself. After all, in the Bible, Jesus said “Love your neighbour AS yourself”. (The Gospel according to Mark Chapter 12 verse 31.) I cannot truly accept and love someone else, if I cannot accept and love myself first. Surely this must be my starting, and ending point: to love myself, with humility, not arrogance; to accept myself as indeed flawed, but with infinite possibilities, and therefore to grant the same privilege to others.

I also need to "become my own parent" and heal my memories by treating myself as I wish they had treated me. I need to heal myself before I can help another.

So now I need to work to unpack my instinctive reaction each time it threatens to take me over, to see it for what is – a complete falsehood. I need to learn to behave with a constructive desire to solve my own problem while acknowledging that my “neighbour” is there as my challenge to be kind and to develop a loving and peaceful approach.

“Where love rules, there is no will to power; and where power predominates, there love is lacking. The one is the shadow of the other.” ~Carl Jung

www.carl-jung.net

http://www.quotationspage.com/quotes/Carl_Jung

 

We all have our dark side, our shadow....what is yours?

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