I hated sober people. I hated good childhoods and clean and proper girls and people who didn’t say fuck constantly. ‘Girly’ girls, preppy guys, hard workers, and people who had their shit together. Like, fuck them, right? I thought fuck them because I was so twisted - addiction, mental health issues, self-destructive sensation-seeking. Those people made me uncomfortable. I was beneath them and I was damaged. I hated them because I knew, somewhere deep down, that I could be better. I knew I could change. I was the problem, not them.
I’ve had a request to write about what drove me to change. I also threatened to write more about Jung’s Shadow, so this is going to be a mash up.
We’re all repressing a part of ourselves - a shadow that lurks in the dark. It can cause a lot of problems. Obviously, the thing you’ve pushed down and bottled up is the thing you don’t want to face. Shadow doesn’t necessarily mean bad. You can be a shitty person on the outside and repress the good side of you. Maybe your shadow self was discouraged when you were younger, which is usually the root of it. Regardless, the shadow needs to come to light if you want to overcome problems, have a good life, be a fully functioning person or, insert your goal here.
What’s in your shadow? There’s a test. Think about the type of person that pisses you off the most. The type that you can’t stand. They annoy the hell out of you and you’re not sure why (for the most part). Maybe they’re kind and bubbly and walk around with their pants up their crack, sparking up a conversation with everyone - telling bad jokes, thinking they’re the man (or woman) of the people. It cringes you out.
Or, maybe it’s the selfish kind. They’re takers and out for themselves and everyone and everything needs to orbit around them. They don’t give a fuck, but you do. How can someone be so self-centered? There’s a thousand examples but the point is that what you can’t stand is probably what’s lurking in your shadow. It’s called projection and I was projecting onto the people I despised.
What made me change? Lots of stuff, but here’s an example:
I remember sitting around with a bunch of guys. High on K, drunk (bad combo unless you’re a pro. I was a pro), and hitting lines of coke. Side note: K is the antidote to coke and coke is the antidote to K. Get too high on either, and you have a way out. It can be a touchy balancing act. Anyway, we were sitting around in an old cabin. Weed stems at our feet, spring-loaded scissors in our hands, portable A/Cs and dehumidifiers humming around us. We were trimming our crops. We grew a lot that year, outdoor fat plants, about a half pound each. We grossed over 7 figures, well, the main guy did anyway. I pulled over $30k so it wasn’t a bad summer in the early 2000s. So we’re sitting around talking shit. I remember saying something sort of philosophical. It was met with eye rolling and ridicule. I saw in that moment how other people saw me. I mean, I really saw it. I was nothing but a little blonde idiot. An airhead. I didn’t look smart, that’s for sure. Maybe I still don’t but at least now I have some clout.
So I enrolled in university, solely to prove everyone wrong. I was a high school dropout so it took some extra classes to be fully admitted. I tied down and obsessed over excelling. My grades were exceptionally high in regular school - when I was actually there (I dropped out a total of three times, two of them resulting from expulsion). I had to relearn how to learn and it took a lot of hours. I still hadn’t kicked my booze and drug habits. Or my raging eating disorder.
I started working as a waitress in a strip club. I’m telling you, that was a lot of fun. It didn’t help my habits, though. I was drunk every night, driving home like that at 3am, and at the university during the days. I’d drink alone, too. I’d finish my homework and drown my anxieties, but not before eating and throwing up. I was a mess and it all came to a head. I couldn’t sleep without my ritual. Actually, I eventually couldn’t sleep with it, either. The solution became the problem, as the trope goes. I stopped going out. My anxiety and depression reached record highs and I sank deeper and deeper. I looked in the mirror and my reflection wouldn’t look back. I was a wretched piece of shit and something had to give. So, I quit. It took months of mouthing myself off in the mirror and in my head. This is the process of change. It can take years to gather the courage to pull the trigger. The stars have to align. You have to want it and I wanted it bad. Things spiraled more after I quit. Turns out there’s other stuff you’re trying to suffocate with addiction. More on that another time.
Back to the shadow. Mine was made up of neglected potential. I found out that I’m an entirely different person than I thought. I’m an introvert and I like reading and learning and geeking out on geeky stuff. I’m still edgy, of course, but in a much tamer way. Jung (the man behind the theory) believed that neglecting one or more of the many facets of your ‘self’ is damaging. It’s inauthentic. For him, his shadow was a pompous gloater, with a desperate need to be admired. He first discovered this when he wrote The Black Books, where he painfully examined the inner workings of his mind, with honesty and humility.
“Whoever looks into the mirror of the water will see first of all his own image. Whoever goes to himself risks a confrontation with himself. The mirror does not flatter, it faithfully shows whatever looks into it; namely the face we never show to the world because we cover it with the persona, the mask of the actor. But the mirror lies behind the mask and shows the true face.” (Archetypes of the Collective Unconscious, Jung p.43)
For sanity, you have to integrate with your shadow, not become it. For me, I write about my inner demons to keep in line. The wild part of me is still wild and writing is a way for me to keep in touch. This is my way. Yours will likely be different.
I’ve gone on and on here. Maybe I’ve said too much but I’m past caring. If there are people who find this helpful, which seems to be the case, then it’s worth a bit of humiliation.
Take good care of yourself,
Kari Janz, PhD (ABD)
No tree can grow to heaven unless its roots reach down to hell - Carl Jung
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