Meeting my Shadow

Last night during dinner I had an encounter with my Shadow. The Jungian kind. Perhaps I'd better start again.

I haven't read very much Jung, and I'm no expert in the tenets of Jungian psychology. Most of what I know about the Shadow archetype, I've learned from reading John Michael Greer—for example, in this essay here. See also this YouTube video as a quick summary:

But his description has always been a bit difficult for me to apply to myself. 

• Your Shadow consists of all the parts of yourself that you don't like. OK, so far, so good. 
• But specifically they are things you hate so much that you refuse to acknowledge that they are part of you. This makes it harder, because I freely acknowledge many of the unpleasant sides of my own character. I talk about them in this venue, not infrequently. Do I have to rule out all of those?
• Because you can't admit that your Shadow characteristics are part of you, you project them onto your enemies. Gosh, do I have enemies?
• And whenever you see someone else exhibit one of these behaviors, it makes you crazy.

I wasn't sure what that left me. But it turns out that's because I have a bad memory.

A couple days ago, or thereabouts, Marie sent me an email about a problem she was having at work. Partly this was to get my sympathy, of course, but partly it was to get my advice. She knew it was the kind of problem that I used to address professionally back before I more or less retired. But the place she works is very different from any of the places I ever worked, in a number of important respects. 

So my first reply (I envisioned this to be one of a series) said: 

"Here's how we used to handle this sort of thing at my companies, but tell me more details about what's going on at your place." 

Her response was, in essence: 

"Oh my God, I feel so ashamed! Obviously we've done everything wrong!"

Oh dear. Deep sigh.

"Well no, that's not what I meant. Your workplace is different from mine; of course you do things differently. And the solutions we used at my work could never work for you, for lots of reasons. So let's just discuss for a while. It's all fine."

That's what I wrote back. But meanwhile I spent all evening ranting to a fictitious Marie in my imagination. (It was late at night and I hadn't eaten yet, though I had started drinking. Both facts might have contributed to my mood.) My internal hollering went something like this: 

For heaven's sake, read the damned email! I explicitly said I wasn't criticizing you. And even if I were criticizing you—even if I did say you did it all wrong—who the Hell cares? The worst you can do is fail, and we all fail. Failure is nothing special. Grow a spine! Stand up and stare me down!

Over and over.

The monologue mellowed after I got some food into me. After dinner I puttered around a little more on the Internet. And then, just after I turned out the light and was climbing into bed, I suddenly realized: Wait, I do that too!

I've talked to you about my own cowardice and fearfulness:

• It's Time: "So I silently scolded those who got a divorce for lacking the courage to soldier on in the face of adversity, while all the time I clung to fantasies of flight and then castigated myself for my own cowardice. I guess there is nobody so self-righteous about avoiding this or that sin as the man who secretly craves it with all his heart."
• Am Pragfrieghof: "Or maybe not. Remember who I am,
  "A staid and quiet, timid, fearful man,
  "too shy for such Odysseosity."
• Movie meme, 3: "That makes her the harridan who dominates the marriage; and me the timid, henpecked nebbish who hates his lot in life but goes along with it anyway."
• You can find plenty of other references by searching, though often the comments are incidental reflections in the context of a different discussion.

Or think of all my discussions of fragility and "Mood 2." I've talked about what it feels like inside. But also I know it frustrates other people, people who have to interact with me. I've seen the same fragility portrayed in movies (here, and recently here) and it is always dysfunctional. And God knows, when I have to deal with it in somebody else it enrages me: look at this story I'm telling right now about Marie, or stories like this one about Wife. 

Cowardice. Timidity. Fragility. Depression. "Mood 2." You can probably add in a certain amount of my drinking too, come to that. I've certainly discussed how alcohol can treat my anxiety: for example here, here, and here.

And I've written enough about anxiety to make it a search key.

All these words seem to orbit around the same space, more or less. They relate to each other. And after last night, I'm confident that they represent part of my Shadow, in a Jungian sense.

By a curious synchronicity (Jung again!) I ran across the following remark on Twitter this morning:

I guess it's a good thing I'm neither famous nor funny. I'd hate to be thought arrogant.