Our Shadow Self
This blog post is an excerpt from my newly-released book, A Change Would Do You Good: Proven Strategies for Creating the Life You Want.
Carl Jung, Swiss psychiatrist and founder of analytic psychology, introduced the concept of the shadow self as the flawed and negative parts of our personalities that we try to conceal. According to Jungian psychology, suppressing the parts of ourselves that we shamefully hide from ourselves and from others creates much distress.
The Jungian shadow self, the dark side of our unconscious personality, has influenced a number of books and movies. A Man Called Ove is a Swedish novel (and film adaptation) that allows us to peek into the shadow self of a man who firmly believes “hell is other people.” Through this tragicomedy, we laugh and cry at the ways in which Ove’s constraining and self-defeating beliefs erode his relationships and the possibility of meaningful connections.
Identifying what we dislike in others can give us a clue about the parts of ourselves we wish to disown. Those annoyances may morph into anger or even contempt. Contempt is an emotional reaction we have when a person or group violates our standards of conduct. We judge the behaviors as immoral or unethical, resulting in avoiding or distancing ourselves from those we disdain.
Some of us are more prone to scorn others. Rigidity and perfectionism correlate with those who are more likely to feel contempt toward others. Known as “dispositional contempt,” contemptuous personalities have a greater tendency to denigrate others.
The difficult people who we believe make our lives miserable can be difficult in their own right, but they are often a reflection of ourselves.
The Sand in Our Shoes
When thinking about how we react to annoyances, I am reminded of the apocryphal story of a man who completed a solo trek from U.S. coast to coast. Upon his completion, a reporter asked the man, “What was the hardest part of your journey? Was it the mountains you had to traverse or the heat of the desert?” The man replied, “The hardest part was the sand in my shoes.”
The sand in our shoes is an apt metaphor for life’s little annoyances, specifically the grating behaviors of others. At the moment, public cell phone conversations reportedly top the list of specific annoying behaviors we’re subjected to by strangers, acquaintances, and friends alike. Because we can only hear one side of the conversation, our brains work overtime to construct the other side of the exchange or to try to ignore it.
In their book Annoying, authors Joe Palca and Flora Lichtman suggest that our quirky and sometimes intrusive behaviors annoy others because of our inability to control or ignore the irritating behavior. Not all annoyances rise to the level of contempt, but they can still grate on us, nonetheless, especially when they’re repeated over time.
A colleague of mine used the word “again” to begin every third sentence, even when he had not previously expressed that particular thought or opinion. I came to anticipate this filler word with the dread of knowing the mosquito buzzing in my bedroom is about to take a nosedive toward my head.
The more time we must spend with others, the more their quirky behaviors annoy us. Repetition of these behaviors is what drives us crazy. Most couples can readily recite all the annoying behaviors of their partners—for many good reasons.
For one, if the relationship is unbalanced or suffering in other ways, annoyances get magnified. In addition, as we settle into our relationships, we worry less about impressing our partners. Personal hygiene may be sacrificed, along with our desire to please the person we love. Overlooking a bothersome behavior in those outside the relationship is much easier than overlooking this same behavior in our partners.
A good friend was married to a man who regularly interrupted her hyperbolic stories and corrected them. I couldn’t understand why he reacted so negatively to her entertaining exaggerations. Then, I caught myself doing the same to my partner, who would get the details wrong in stories and would sometimes take poetic license in the retelling of stories.
Engaging in behaviors we know will irritate our partners can also be a secret weapon. Unconsciously, we might resist modifying our behaviors as a way to “balance the scales” in a relationship we deem tilted in favor of our partner. As a passive/aggressive ploy, purposefully annoying others is highly counterproductive.
The word “annoying” can be either an adjective or a verb. “Annoying people” are either those who annoy us or what we do to annoy others. Regrettably, the behaviors can be one and the same.
“Everything that irritates us about others can lead us to an understanding of ourselves.”
~Carl Jung