“Everyone carries a shadow, and the less it is embodied in the individual’s conscious life, the blacker and denser it is.” – Carl Jung – Psychology and Religion.

We all have a shadow, there is no way to avoid it. As we go through life, experiences start to shape who we are. I mean all experiences – from the food we eat to the books we read and the interactions we have with the people around us. Even if we did not have any experiences at all, the shadow arises naturally from the mere fact that we are alive. In short, it is an integral part of who we are as humans. The shadow is that part of us that is not known, it is the dark side of our psyche, the place where most of our negative concepts reside.

These, as I mentioned above, are based on our life experiences. The shadow contains the seeds of lust, envy, greed, unresolved anger, selfishness, to name just a few. Its counterpart, according to Carl Jung, is the conscious ego of the person. Our conscious ego is who we portray out to the world. The shadow is the unacceptable aspects of our personality that does not “jive” with who we portray ourselves to be. Because it does not fit our narrative personality, it gets repressed. This is where the problems in our lives start to form. The repression of unwanted thoughts and impulses is the ground zero in which our destruction and our unravelling spring forth.

When the shadow is repressed, we easily project all our buried weakness and flaws and unacceptable emotions unto others. By denying awareness of our own unacceptable traits, we will project and find them in others. The more we suppress awareness of these darker traits, the more automatic they become. As I stated in other articles, the subconscious mind LOVES REPETITION. And it can repeat the projection as long as it is an unconscious process. Carl Jung said it best “Until you make the unconscious, conscious, it will rule your life and you will call it fate.” No truer words have been spoken. So how does a negative event or experience become so engrained?

There are two aspects of our mind/brain I would like to discuss that will illustrate this well. One is called “Hebb’s law“. I am sure that, if you don’t know of it, you have heard of its effects: “Neurons that fire together, wire together”. When trauma occurs in our lives, it, well, traumatizes us. Our thoughts slowly become fixated on the trauma, in the same way the body focusses on a bleeding wound. When these negative thought patterns become more repetitive, the associations in the brain gets stronger. It is not unlike exercising a muscle. With each and every time you work it out, it gets stronger and stronger and even develops muscle memory – literally. It is cumulative in nature. This very same thing is happening in your brain as well. The neurons that are firing as you engage in this loop of thinking start to fire more and more. The connection starts to get so strong that it becomes “unconsciously controlled”. It has become a routine of the subconscious mind. Since the subconscious mind “thinks” it is doing you a favour, it will continue to foster these traumatic thoughts over and over again, inflicting more damage on you, DESPITE trying to protect you. Again, as long as you let the unconscious operate, it only would be able to operate through these patterns.

The next concept I would like to mention is called “The Quantum Zeno Effect.” – “Energy flows where attention goes”… While Hebb’s Law explains how something becomes linked in our minds, the Quantum Zeno Effect explains why this is happening. Quantum Zeno Effect is all about how one focuses his or her thoughts and energies. It is a known fact that when you focus on something, your brain changes – certain parts light up and with time get stronger. The Quantum Zeno Effect states that when you place your focus on a thought, be it negative or positive, this very act of focusing maintains the brain state that arises in association with that experience. In other words, when you focus attention on a given experience, the circuitry in the brain that is associated with that experience remains in a very stable state. This stability then brings upon Hebb’s law and the neurons of that specific region will start firing together. This is simply physics.

Let us look at how this might arise in a person who went through verbal abuse in his or her childhood. Let’s name this person Mary.

Life Experience:

Mary is told by her parent/s from an early age that nothing good is expected of her and that she was a mistake. She is told this quite often. Since she is too young to fully process these emotions, aka, bring awareness on the fact that none of that is actually true, they become small scars on her psyche. They remain small for now.

The Subconscious Mind:

Time is going by and these thoughts are incubating in her mind. So far, they are not yet causing overt problems in her life. She hasn’t been exposed to much yet, so she hasn’t been fully poisoned.

Life Experience:

An event occurs in Mary’s life that reinforces her parents’ words. Perhaps she fails at school, gets bullied or maybe she goes through a breakup.

The Subconscious Mind:

When a negative event occurs, it stores this negative experience in the “unworthy file”. Mary is now starting to (subconsciously) think, “Maybe my parents are right about me”.

Life Experience:

Now the mind is on the lookout for more corroborating “unworthiness” information. Whenever something goes wrong in Mary’s life, she starts to link them to being unworthy. Her negative thoughts begin to break out and she starts to feel pain from this.

The Quantum Zeno Effect:

Now he is starting to entertain these thoughts more and more. The Quantum Zeno effect is now engaged, and her attention has now started to gel around thoughts of unworthiness.

Hebb’s Law:

The thoughts are now so prevalent that the neurons in her brain start firing together. This creates a deeper and deeper pathway in her brain and thus these thoughts get embedded.

Life Experience:

Now that she has developed this chronic negative state, she is starting to experience events in her life that will foster this unworthiness and make it more apparent. She is the girl that always seems to have “bad luck”. She starts to self-sabotage since, deep down, she thinks she deserves it. These self-sabotaging sprees cause more events to occur such as sabotaging relationships over and over again or perhaps making bad life choices over and over again, or she might withdraw completely from the world because she is afraid to muck up.

Do you ever see that person who always seems to have the same problem repeatedly? It is their “thing”. The process above might be why. It’s the mechanism of the repressed shadow. The results of these moments of self-sabotage simply reinforce the cycle and the negative impact starts to compound upon itself.

At this point, it may even start to invade her dreams. Since she is now out of control and can’t handle her pain, rationalizations kick in and weave seamlessly into her day-to-day thoughts which makes her feel like she isn’t in need of change and that it is everyone else who needs to change. This causes Mary, despite her unworthiness issues, to judge others for their incompetence or whatever else. Despite her own issues, she projects the things she hates the most about herself on others. She cannot see that what she actually hates, is the way she is beating herself up. She cannot see that she is angry at herself for not looking into the reality of her thought patterns. She cannot see that the guys that keep hurting her are her own hurting herself… That would simply be too painful to acknowledge, so in that sense, the subconscious mind is protecting her from the pain of becoming aware of all that.

The shadow aspect in the above is in full force and has been repressed and is now running on autopilot until she actually does the work and faces the darkness. Until then, she is attached to her unworthiness. And this unworthiness will cause her to commit these acts of self-sabotage and then to assuage herself, she turns it against others to deflect from her own pain. It’s a sorted business. All this is occurring so automatically at this point…

The solution to this is to first, acknowledge, to become aware of what we really think about ourselves. This, in itself, seems to be very difficult for people. It feels like self-annihilation. How come? Think about it:

• your mom repeatedly told you that you are unworthy in some way
• this became a focus for you
• you have gathered proof throughout your entire life that you are, in fact, unworthy
• that became a safety blanket for you and the place you operate from
• because it is impossible for you to consciously go through life telling yourself that you are no good, you projected that on others.

The first step in recovery consists in revealing to yourself that YOU are what you think of others. This is where it can truly sting!!!

The next step is where you start seeing clearer and clearer, finding proof through compassion and reality awareness that you are none of the things you thought and that will naturally prompt your focus on what is real: you simply exist.

What I see mostly happen though, is people being unable to acknowledge that ways in which they themselves are what they think of others and trying to go directly into the second phase, that of acceptance of themselves. This is where deeply covert, malignant spiritual narcissism kicks in: projection on others, grandiosity, fantasizing, lack of shame for bullying others, utter lack of ability to self-inquiry, reactivity to any and all kinds of “negative” feedback, etc.