In my recent post about Harry Potter and the Psychology of the Shadow, I explained how most of our “negative” qualities contain within them the seed of a positive characteristic.
This is why, when we completely cut ourselves off from our negative aspects, we also cut ourselves off from their positive counterparts.
But the thing is…it’s hard to identify our own negative traits because our ego is constantly trying to hide them from us!
So here are four practical steps you can take to become aware of the dark, repressed aspects of yourself.
Once you become conscious of these aspects, you can begin to reclaim them and harness them in more constructive ways.
1. Pay attention to your exaggerated traits.
Overemphasized positive characteristics are usually compensating for their negative counterparts. Identifying them can give you a clue to their shadow side.
For example, if you are overly polite, you might be concealing aggression that is bubbling beneath the surface.
Or, if you identify too strongly with your intellect or rationality, perhaps you are hiding a part of yourself that feels ignorant.
Once you become conscious of your aggression, you can channel it into healthy assertiveness.
Once you become conscious of your ignorance, you can transmute it into a beginner's attitude and an open mind.
2. Pay attention to what triggers you.
The things that trigger us reveal the parts of us that need to heal.
If you have an open, infected wound on your arm and someone pokes it, it’s obviously going to hurt. You’ll recoil in pain and probably become angry.
The same thing happens with our emotional and psychological wounds.
If you have unfelt emotions, unexpressed qualities or other disowned parts and someone says or does something that “pokes” that part of your psyche, it's going to hurt.
And you’ll likely respond with defensiveness, anger or some other intense negative emotion.
Use this opportunity to identify the unintegrated parts of yourself that are crying out for attention.
3. Pay attention to who (and what) you judge.
It’s extremely difficult to confront our repressed qualities. That’s why we’ve repressed them, after all.
Instead, what we do is project those qualities onto other people. It’s much easier to deal with them “out there.”
We condemn in others all the things we don’t dare admit to in ourselves.
Paradoxically, the more unconscious we are of our own negative qualities, the more emphatically we will see them in others.
This is why it’s often the most judgmental people who are the most insecure.
It’s why people who are uncomfortable with their own decisions are often the same people who criticize other people’s choices.
It’s why guilty people are often the ones who point the finger at others.
Next time you have a visceral, knee-jerk reaction to something or someone, ask yourself: “Is this about them…or me?”
4. Think of moments in your childhood when your dark side came out.
Children are not as good at hiding their shadow as adults. They haven’t had decades of practice in putting on a social persona.
As such, their dark traits are more likely to leak out when they are upset, excited, etc.
If we can recall the moments—or perhaps more prolonged patterns of behavior—in our youth in which we acted with cruelty, aggression, or some other trait we’ve buried within our personality, then we can reclaim these forgotten traits and channel them in more constructive ways.
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I hope these tips help put you on the path to becoming more self-aware!
To your Integrated Self,
Ruben
P.S. If you’d like more help increasing your self-awareness and stepping into your individual power and authenticity, check out my immersive virtual workshop “Integrate and Thrive.” Registration is open now through August 30th.