The Shadow: Individuation, Wholeness, and Becoming Your True Self

Being Well with Forrest Hanson and Dr. Rick Hanson

Being Well

Health & Fitness, Education, Self-improvement, Mental Health

4.8 • 2.4K Ratings

🗓️ 12 August 2024

⏱️ 69 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Dr. Rick and Forrest explore one of the most interesting concepts in psychology: Carl Jung’s concept of the shadow. The shadow includes the “the things a person has no wish to be,” the uncomfortable aspects of ourselves that we deny or ignore. Facing those parts can be difficult, but becoming aware of the shadow, accepting it, and integrating it allows us to embrace all of who we are. They start by explaining what the shadow is, where it comes from, and why it’s valuable. Rick shares some examples of shadow material, what we lose by leaving them behind, and how we can start reintegrating them. Forrest talks about modern approaches to shadow work, and viewing the shadow through a less dualistic lens. They then map out the “typical” path of what is usually a highly individualized process. Hope you enjoy it! You can watch this episode on YouTube. Key Topics: 0:00: Introduction 1:50: Defining the shadow - things we leave out, or don’t care to know 4:30: Individuation 12:05: Some examples of shadow material 18:35: What do we lose by not incorporating the shadow? 23:10: Agency, creativity, authenticity, and unrecognized capabilities 26:50: Patience, knowing your why, inner refuge, and befriending parts 32:00: Acceptance, awareness of projection, and being in dialog with our shadow 38:10: Deliberate practice, stepping into the wild, and showing curiosity 46:25: The golden shadow, and accepting impulses vs. acting on them 55:30: Recap I am now writing on Substack, check out my work there. Support the Podcast: We're now on Patreon! If you'd like to support the podcast, follow this link. Sponsors Sign up for a one-dollar-per-month trial period at shopify.com/beingwell. Transform your health with the ZOE Science & Nutrition podcast. Find it wherever you listen to podcasts. Trust your gut with Seed’s DS-01 Daily Synbiotic. Go to Seed.com/BEINGWELL and use code 25BEINGWELL to get 25% off your first month. OneSkin focuses on delivering more than superficial results for your skin. Get started today with 15% off using code BEINGWELL at oneskin.co. Join over a million people using BetterHelp, the world’s largest online counseling platform. Visit betterhelp.com/beingwell for 10% off your first month! Connect with the show: Subscribe on iTunes Follow Forrest on YouTube Follow us on Instagram Follow Forrest on Instagram Follow Rick on Facebook Follow Forrest on Facebook Visit Forrest's website Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Hey everyone, welcome to being well. I'm Forrest Hansen. If you're new to the
0:10.9	podcast, thanks for listening today. And if you've listened before, welcome back.
0:15.0	We all have different aspects of who we are, parts of ourselves that we're maybe more proud of,
0:20.0	and then other parts we tend to ignore or hide away.
0:23.7	That second category is what the legendary Swiss psychiatrist Carl Jung called the Shadow,
0:28.6	a collection of our hidden desires, suppressed emotions, and disowned parts. In Jung's words, it's the thing a person has no wish to be.
0:36.7	Facing those parts is uncomfortable and it's understandable why we would want to keep them in the dark.
0:42.0	But Jung believed that we could only become our most
0:44.4	whole and authentic selves, a process he called individuation, by becoming aware of the shadow,
0:50.0	accepting it, and integrating it into who we are.
0:53.6	I've been prepping and looking forward to this episode for a while and in it we're going to be exploring
0:58.0	what the shadow is, why it matters, and how we can start to recognize and work with it in our everyday lives.
1:03.3	We'll be bringing in some of Jung's original ideas,
1:06.3	as well as much more modern approaches to this kind of work,
1:09.3	and to help me do that I'm joined as usual by clinical psychologist Dr Rick Hansen so dad how are you doing today?
1:15.2	I'm very good and as you know I have deep deep respect for Jung I did a six month therapy focused on dreams with a youngian therapist I got a lot out of that and
1:27.9	this whole territory of how can we be compassionate about that in ourselves which we push under the covers that we
1:38.0	push away and how can we then turn toward what we typically push away or leave out to include it in healthy ways.
1:47.2	It's a deep, deep topic, very personally relevant and I'm looking forward to talking about it with you.
1:53.0	Yeah, so I would love to start by just defining what we're actually talking about here.
1:58.0	How do you think about the Shadow Dad?
2:00.0	I first distinguish it from the I'd in Freud's notion in that the shadow aspects of ourselves
	...

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