How To Strengthen Intimacy by Shining Light on Your Shadow

For as long as I can remember, I have had a strong perfectionistic streak. I was an overachiever in childhood. I studied for hours each afternoon after school and carried a GPA in high school that was at times over 4.0. But my achievements didn’t make me happy. In fact, I was miserable.

I had a nagging self-critical voice that had an answer for every time I achieved something: “Yes, you got an A on the test, but you made a stupid mistake with a decimal place and got the easiest question wrong…You read too slowly. You could have finished that book in a day instead of in a week…” On and on it went, dragging me down and distorting my perceptions of myself on a daily basis.

This voice was part of my shadow self. It was the unforgiving part of me that demanded perfection and punished me for every flaw and error. It was the part of me that had lost compassion for myself.

The idea of the shadow self was first introduced by Swiss psychoanalyst Carl Jung, M.D. Jung said that the shadow within contains the parts of ourselves that we have rejected, those traits that we consider unacceptable and unlovable. We often hide these traits, even from ourselves. This is how they grow to have a power over us that negatively affects our relationships and our lives. The more we repress these hidden qualities, the more they influence our behavior.

Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.

— Carl Jung

The shadow self can cause us to take the pain of unresolved issues out on ourselves whether through addictions, negative self-talk, high stress levels, or mental health issues such as anxiety or depression. It may also keep us from connecting genuinely with other people as we resist allowing others to see our authentic selves. We behave as though we are wearing a mask, only showing others the parts of ourselves that our egos deem acceptable.

Deepak Chopra writes in The Shadow Effect that the best way to identify your shadow self is to take a look at what irritates you about other people. When you become angry at your partner for their laziness, you may simply be projecting your own hidden laziness onto them. You may try to project an image of being hardworking and disciplined, but secretly you procrastinate at work and spend too much time on social media when you should be writing reports. If you are trying to discover your own shadow, the best place to start looking is those aspects of other people that arouse strong emotions in you.

This is how your shadow self creates conflict and separation in your relationships. When two people are reacting from their shadow aspects instead of relating to each other authentically, it’s as though they are not seeing each other at all. They are merely projecting aspects of themselves onto each other while hiding their own authentic selves behind masks that their egos deem acceptable.

“Maybe the only thing each of us can see is our own shadow. Carl Jung called this his shadow work. He said we never see others. Instead, we see only aspects of ourselves that fall over them. Shadows. Projections. Our associations. The same way old painters would sit in a tiny dark room and trace the image of what stood outside a tiny window, in the bright sunlight. The camera obscura. Not the exact image, but everything reversed or upside down.” – Chuck Palahniuk

I buried my perfectionistic shadow self for years, thinking that I was just a hard worker, that I had high standards for myself. I did not realize that this aspect of my shadow was still affecting my behavior until I began routinely criticizing my new husband for small mistakes. Whenever he knocked something over or made an arithmetic error in the budget, I would feel disproportionate anger towards him. I was projecting my inner need for perfection onto him, and it was causing a subtle but very real separation between us. The part of myself that treated me without compassion was starting to treat him the same way.

Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves.

— Carl Jung

The breakthrough was when I made the connection between this behavior and my own shadow self. When you shine the light of awareness on your shadow self, then you gain valuable insight into how your thoughts are driving your behavior. You take the shadow’s power away, as the shadow is most influential when it is hidden.

Shadow work is the process of bringing the unconscious aspects of ourselves into our conscious awareness so that we can heal them. Look at what traits irritate you in other people, then try to see how your own behaviors show evidence of those traits. It’s highly likely that if someone else’s negative quality arouses strong emotion in you, then you are projecting some of yourself onto them.

Seeing this aspect of your dark side will instantly shine light onto your shadow self, and suddenly this aspect of yourself will lose its power over you. You may suddenly find compassion for yourself as you discover the roots of your negative thoughts and behavior.

You will also find that you no longer project this quality onto other people. You will no longer be so irritated with your partner for seemingly no good reason.

“There is no light without shadow and no psychic wholeness without imperfection.” — Carl Jung

Authenticity is an important key to true intimacy. Once you have shed light on an aspect of your shadow self, then you may find that the shame you had previously felt about it has dissolved. You will no longer need to hide it behind your mask, the barrier that exists between you and your partner that is composed of everything that your ego deems acceptable.

Once you are truly free to be yourself in your relationship, you are at the start of authentic love. Once you have brought your shadow self into the light piece by piece, you are well on your way to becoming whole. This is the beginning of a healthy and happy partnership that lasts.

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This post was previously published on medium.com.

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