Earlier this 12 months, a spiritual coach and Reiki healer named Zen Oasis posted a video on TikTok explaining the thought of the “shadow self” to her 167,000 followers.
“I sat down and wrote down all the things I couldn't stand about people. The things that really made me angry, like, 'yuck, yuck,'” she said, raising a hand in disgust. “Then I looked at this really long list and picked out my top five and just thought, 'You know what? That's me. That's how I am all day.'”
“It may sound a bit trite,” she said, “but for me it was the best way to see the things I can't see in myself.”
The Videowhich has been viewed over 36,000 times, is just certainly one of over 48 million videos on the social media platform exploring the topic of shadows, and further evidence of a widespread resurgence of fascination with Jungian style.
“People are really unsure about the world and its future development and they come to Jung because they want to find solutions,” says Christophe Le Mouel, director of the CG Jung Institute of Los Angeles.
At a time when conversations about self-discovery have gotten increasingly loud, the analyst’s theories in regards to the collective unconscious, archetypes and shadows are increasingly influencing the work of social media-savvy healers, therapists and life coaches. They are also the inspiration for brand spanking new Tarot-like card decksthought-provoking Etsy Prints and the recently published “The Shadow Work Journal” that is old more than one million copies This is thanks in part to a highly successful TikTok marketing campaign.
63 years after his death, Jung’s ideas – especially the concept of the “shadow” – are currently receiving a number of attention.
“When I read his work, I thought: Man, this stuff is 100 years old, but it touched me so deeply,” Zen Oasis said in a phone conversation. “It helped me summarize what I already knew intuitively.”
How did Jung define the shadow? And why is the idea experiencing a revival today? To find out more, I called Lisa Marchiano, a Philadelphia-based Jungian analyst and co-host of the popular podcast “This Jungian Life,” which itself has more than 50,000 subscribers, and author of the new book “The spark of life.”
In an interview, Marchiano discusses how Jung defined the term shadow, why we all have one, and the reasons for people's renewed interest in the concept.
This interview has been edited for length and clarity.
What is the shadow self?
If it refers to Jung's concept of the shadow, I will say that he did not use the term “shadow self.” He was talking about the shadow.
The shadow is the part of us that we have denied. Jung once said the shadow is everything we don't want to be. It's something we think we aren't. “Oh, we're not like that.” “I'm not like that.” Well, actually we are, we just don't have a conscious relationship with those parts of us. But we could, and this is the really constructive part of it, become curious about the shadow.
Is it a fundamental idea of Jungian psychology?
Jung had so many insights that have entered everyday language. Shadow is one of them, but also synchronicity, introversion and extraversion, the collective unconscious. But shadow is certainly a fundamental idea of Jung's. He believed that shadow work was actually the first part of the work of analysis and the work of what he called individuation, because it is the entry point into the depths.
Does everyone have a shadow?
In Jungian theory, we all have a shadow and it has two components. There is a personal shadow and then there is the collective shadow. For simplicity, I will mainly talk about the personal shadow.
Where do our shadows come from?
So we're born with a ton of potential, and as we grow up and develop a healthy, functioning ego, we find that there are parts of ourselves that we need to push aside. That's normal. It's necessary. It's healthy. It happens to all of us. Some of what gets relegated to the shadows are things that could really be a problem in a collective society, like aggression or greed. But a lot of what gets relegated to the shadows could also be more constructive.
How can we recognize what lies in our shadow?
In every family there is usually something you shouldn't be. In some families you absolutely can't be lazy and if you sit around watching TV that is the worst thing and means you are lazy. In other families you might not be impractical or moody. In my family you couldn't be immodest or boastful. When thinking about your shadow, it can be helpful to ask yourself what was the one thing you weren't allowed to be in your family. This is often a clue to what might be in your shadow.
Why is it useful to examine your own shadow?
When the shadow is completely unconscious, we tend to project it. If you are really angry at someone else, you have to ask yourself, “Where is that in me? What is it about that in me?”
The other reason it is helpful to do shadow work is that much of the shadow is actually full of vitality and energy that we can use in the service of life and growth. Jung is said to have once said that 99% of the shadow is pure gold.
To use myself as an example, I thought, “I can't be the focal point, I can't seek attention, I actually have to be very humble.” But when I pulled myself together a little bit and did my shadow work, my ability to put myself at the forefront turned out to be very invigorating and exhilarating and that helped me in my career.
How do you start shadow work?
The first answer to that is to become curious about what lies in the shadows. Pay attention to what really upsets you. When do you react with excessive indignation toward someone or something? When do you notice that sense of self-righteousness and that enormous arrogance that comes with being righteous and on the right side of history? It might be good to say, “Hmm. Wait a minute. Who am I hating at once? And where might that be in me?”
And then we just proceed to be open to it. Where could we be just a little greedy, just a little selfish? Where could we behave in a shady way?
Why do you’re thinking that this concept is currently so popular?
I believe there's a timeless quality to Jung's ideas. They keep coming back, with recent freshness and interest. I definitely think The Shadow Work Journal helped with that originally, but why did it spread so quickly? Why did it have such a surge in the favored imagination?
I believe people appreciate Jung's ideas and return to them because they feel there’s simply an inherent truth in them.
As a Jungian analyst with years of coaching, does it worry you that these ideas are circulating on social media?
Jung said our ability to do that work could make the difference between the survival of humanity. And given our polarization, I'm unsure I disagree with that. So in some ways, it's very gratifying to listen to this sort of language permeating social media.
But I do know that things will be trivialized, simplified and adjusted on social media, so I'm not without concerns. One of my concerns is the concept that shadow work is something you possibly can just do and leave behind. It doesn't work like that. You're at all times working on the shadow – you possibly can't make it go away. What you possibly can do is grow to be more aware of it.
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