Despite our friendly outward demeanour, each one of us harbours a darker side to our personalities, which may include traits such as aggression, selfishness, and greed. These negative characteristics can profoundly affect our behaviour and relationships. By becoming conscious of our dark side we can control and channel the creative energies that lurk in our unconscious. By integrating the dark side into our personality, we can become more complete human beings and radiate our authentic self.
We naturally repress the less socially acceptable traits that we possess as kids. We craft a public persona that accentuates our strengths and conceal the socially unacceptable traits (dark side). The dark side contains our deepest insecurities, our secret desires to hurt people, even those close to us, our fantasies of revenge, our suspicions about others, our hunger for more attention and power. Depression and anxiety comes from repressing our dark side and from always playing a role (as a good person).
Concealing our dark side requires energy, it can be draining to always present a nice, confident front. As concealing the dark side is difficult, it is released in the following ways:
Contradictory behaviour: It consists of actions that belie the carefully constructed front
Emotional outbursts: Suddenly losing habitual self-control and sharply expressing deep resentments or saying something biting and hurtful
Vehement denial: Something unpleasant or uncomfortable in our unconscious can reach the conscious mind through active denial
Accidental behaviour: After stating a behaviour that they will avoid, they will fall into that behaviour blaming it on an uncontrollable illness or dependency
Over-idealisation: Overly strong conviction in a cause, person or object is used to cover a repressed emotion
Projection: We cannot admit to ourselves certain desires, so we project these desires onto others
Deciphering the Shadow
Early on in life some people sense a softness, vulnerability, or insecurity that might prove embarrassing or uncomfortable. They unconsciously develop the opposite trait, a resilience or toughness so that it can act as a protective shell. The other scenario is that a person has a quality that they might be anti-social like ambition or selfishness. To compensate they develop the opposite quality, something very prosocial.
The most common emphatic traits that you must learn to recognise and manage appropriately:
The tough guy: Projects a rough masculinity that is intended to intimidate. He has a swagger and an air that signals he is not be messed with. Such men have learned to conceal an underlying softness, an emotional vulnerability from deep within that terrifies them
The saint: These people are paragons of goodness and purity. They support the best and most progressive causes. This saintly exterior developed early on as a way to disguise their strong hunger for power and attention or their strong sensual appetites
The passive-aggressive charmer: These types are amazingly nice and accommodating when you first meet them. The truth is that these types realise early on in life that they have aggressive, envious tendencies that are hard to control. They want power. They intuit that such inclinations will make life hard for them
The fanatic: They radiate fervour in whatever cause they support. They speak forcefully. They allow for no compromise. They have a flair for drama and capturing attention. But at the key moment when they could possibly deliver what they have promised, they unexpectedly slip up. They have doubts about their self-worth
The rigid rationalist: They impose their ideas with extra intellectual heft and even a touch of anger. Everything must be clear and analytical in the extreme. Their faith in science and technology has religious air to it. They are trying to conceal their irrational tendencies
The snob: These types have a tremendous need to be different from others, to assert some form of superiority over the mass of mankind. Everything surrounding them is extraordinary. It later comes out that they were exaggerating or downright lying about their background
The extreme entrepreneur: They maintain very high standards and pay exceptional attention to detail. They are willing to do much of the work themselves. Their outward show of self-reliance disguises a hidden desire to have others take care of them
The Integrated Human
By confronting and integrating the dark side, we can transform it into a source of strength and wisdom. The following are four clear and practical steps for achieving this:
See the shadow (dark side): This is the most difficult step in the process. The shadow is something we deny and repress. The best way to begin is to look for indirect signs such as emphatic traits, emotional outbursts and moments of extreme touchiness. Look deeply at your tendencies to project emotions and bad qualities onto people you know, or even entire groups. We are particularly sensitive to traits and weaknesses in others that we are repressing in ourselves. Other people can see our dark side better than we can, and it would be wise to elicit their feedback
Embrace the shadow: Your natural reaction in uncovering and facing up to your dark side is to feel uncomfortable and maintain only a surface awareness of it. Your goal here must be the opposite - not only complete acceptance of the shadow but the desire to integrate it into your present personality
Explore the shadow: Consider the shadow as having depths that contain great creative energy. The conscious thinking we depend on is quite limited. We can hold on to only so much information in short and long term memory. But the unconscious contains an almost limitless amount of material from memories, experiences, and information absorbed in study
Show the shadow: Most of the time we secretly suffer from the endless social codes we have to adhere to. It will be wise to look at those who are successful in their field. Inevitably we will see that most of them are much less bound by these codes. They are generally more assertive and overtly ambitious
This post is a summary of information provided in the book - The Laws of Human Nature, Robert Greene