Breaking Negative Behavioural Patterns

For years, I kept repeating the same behaviors. A lot has changed in the past three years. I’m still in the process of building a better relationship with my unconscious self. My old experiences, childhood beliefs, emotional wounds, repeated habits and forgotten fears. Psychologist Carl Jung called this the shadow self. It runs your life while you remain unaware. Your shadow is everything about yourself you’ve pushed aside from public view. The parts of yourself you think are unacceptable. If you were taught to be strong, your vulnerability had to be hidden. For everyone who was taught to be quiet as a child, your natural assertiveness got pushed to your shadow side. I have a shadow. Everyone does.

We are all fighting unconscious battles every day.

“Everyone carries a shadow, and the less it is embodied in the individual’s conscious life, the blacker and denser it is.” Everything you reject, deny, or ignore about who you are doesn’t go away. The shadow controls your life more than you think. Your hidden self, built from everything you disowned, is in charge of most of your behavior right now, whether you know it or not. You see, the shadow does not stay hidden. It erupts when we least expect it. The clues and signs are everywhere. The sudden outbursts you can’t explain. The repetitive arguments sabotaging your relationships. The addictions. The small things that change your mood all day.

You think these things happen to you.

But they come from inside you, according to Jung. “When an inner situation is not made conscious, it appears outside as fate,” he said. If you keep picking fights at home or with your boss, it’s not bad luck or fair. It is your shadow. If you keep picking the wrong partner, it is not coincidence. Your shadow has a lot to do with it.

But we don’t see the shadow directly.

We project it onto other people. That’s why Jung said, “everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves.” When someone’s minor flaw triggers an intense, irrational surge of anger in you, you are looking at your own shadow. If a coworker can’t shut up about what they’ve achieved or done puts you in a bad mood for an entire day, maybe you are suppressing your own need for recognition. If your partner asks for alone time and you suddenly feel terrified that they are leaving you, the intense fear of abandonment is your shadow self. Of course, you’ve been hiding that by acting like you are completely independent or fiercely self-sufficient. By noticing what infuriates you in others, you get a better understanding of what you have buried in yourself.

What you don’t examine, you repeat.

If you feel stuck, maybe get back within for the answers. It’s all there. That’s why Jung said, “One who looks inside, awakens.” Pay attention when you have a strong emotional reaction. If you have a lot to do with the many problems in your life, you are also the source of the fix. Jungian analyst Carl Greer once noted that while we all have a life story, most of us are merely acting out on what was passed on by others. Most of us act in a story written by someone else. Our parents. Our culture. Our past wounds. “To transform our lives, we need to change our stories,” he says. You can rewire the story at any time to make it more satisfying.

A better relationship with your unconscious self-changes your life because it stops you from unconscious ruining your life. You can become aware of the behaviors that dominate your life. You can see the patterns that make life a lot harder than it should be. The recurring habits of struggle, victimhood. Or need for approval.

Once you see these patterns, you can change them.

Most people spend their whole lives maintaining and managing a persona. But self-censorship will drain the life out of you. “I’d rather be whole than good,” Jung said. “The persona is a complicated system of relations between individual consciousness and society, fittingly enough a kind of mask, designed on the one hand to make a definite impression upon others, and, on the other, to conceal the true nature of the individual,” he said. Everyone has a capacity for anger, selfishness, and fear. Once you acknowledge these darker impulses, they lose their power over you. You control them; they no longer control you. When you stop running from your hidden self, you reclaim your stolen energy. You become less judgmental of others because you are no longer at war with yourself.

The result is clarity and emotional freedom.

A better approach to stop running from yourself is to start from your childhood. Your shadow building process starts early. What was praised? What was punished? What parts of yourself did you hide to gain love and acceptance? Building a better relationship with your buried self-starts with integrating all the parts of yourself you had to hide. The shadow is not necessarily bad. It’s also the strengths you never claimed, the talents you dismissed, the ambitions you buried. “In spite of its function as a reservoir for human darkness — or perhaps because of this — the shadow is the seat of creativity,” Jung said. The goal is to integrate it. Your shadow is a source of energy, creativity, and strength. When you repress it, it becomes toxic. When you face it, you can use it. Jung wrote, “The privilege of a lifetime is to become who you truly are.” The process of becoming whole (individuation) changes your trajectory in life.

It’s uncomfortable.

But it’s key to your better self.

“One does not become enlightened by imagining figures of light, but by making the darkness conscious,” Jung said. He also wrote, “A man who has not passed through the inferno of his passions has never overcome them” Jung said. You have to go through the fire. You have to face the parts of yourself you would rather avoid. But the reward is freedom to live. Shadow work changes everything. What frustrates you. What you keep repeating. Where do you feel powerless? These are all clues to shadow work. They are telling you what you refuse to see.

Start with one area. One relationship. One pattern.

What shadows do you see?

It takes courage to face yourself. But the alternative is worse. Your unconscious calls the shots in your life. And you remain irritated and frustrated for the rest of your life. Stuck on a miserable path. You have a choice. You can stay blind. Or you can see. You can awaken all of yourself. You can Turn inward for answers. Face your darkness. Understand what you rejected. Become whole. This is the secret that changes everything.

But it takes time.

Jung spent his whole life studying the shadow self. And he never claimed to have finished his own integration. I’m still working on integrating mine. I know many of my triggers now. This is ongoing work. The knowledge of your unconscious self alone will help you to stop treating yourself like a problem to fix. Turn the light on. And see your complete self.