Carl Jung stated that the unconscious was 80% of our psyche, called THE SHADOW, which is positive and negative repressed content from our childhood, daily lives and our potential aspects. There is also a collective shadow, aspects which society does not to wish to claim. The shadow is emotion almost always accompanied by physical manifestations. Jung stated your body was your shadow. The shadow represents energetically charged autonomous patterns of feeling and behavior that simply cannot be stopped by an act of will. What is needed is rechanneling or transformation. Therapy provides this.
Shadow usually is shown when we have someone in our life we are compulsive about (either positive or negatively) - our thinking becomes addictive about this person, about what we're going to do with them, about them, etc. We usually use PROJECTION or blaming - the attribution of one's faults to others in order not to own our shadow qualities.
We have islands in our unconscious of feelings that keep popping up. The shadow also contains the voices of the people who raised us saying, usually, negative messages that we allow to be repeated over and over to ourselves in our mind. Some other shadow characteristics are denial, repression, cynicism, masochism or sadism, ruthlessness, suffering martyr, guilt-ridden behavior, enabling behaviors, inability to commit, pride, jealousy, envy, self-destructiveness of all types, creation of negative circumstances, control, rigidness, tyrannical behavior, judgment (positive and negative), laziness, gluttony, irresponsibility, etc.
We have positive shadow also - for ACOA's some characteristics are the ability to play, sense of humor, risk taking, and having good things happen to us and accepting them. Also, the knowledge of positive things about our personality is sometimes in our shadow.
The shadow is shown in stories and myths as meeting "the other" (remember that nothing is so opposite as "the other person" who contains your shadow qualities and that you WON'T and DON'T see in yourself). You meet this other and then descend to the underworld to wrestle with the ogre or animal, battle doubt and temptation and expose and beat the evil one. This is the dark night of the soul battle and YOU ARE THE ENEMY WHO MUST BE LOVED - BY YOU. This moment when you begin this battle is really when your core issue stage of therapy actually begins! (Please see Stages of Therapy for more info on core issues).
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