The Election … and The Shadow Within Us All

In every relationship there is shadow.

Whether within a couple … or in a land of diverse peoples.

In a few days nearly half the population of the United States of America will be plunged into a nightmare. Which means that damn near everyone is bracing (at least subconsciously) for their own nightmare to potentially be the one to come true. Perhaps – due to the relentlessly antagonistic and contentious nature of what’s been unfolding for many years – we’ll all be plunging into some form of nightmare no matter the outcome.

I don’t mean to be negative or pessimistic. In my deepest heart, I’m an avowed optimist. My spiritual beliefs hold that all is always in Divine Order and Life doesn’t make mistakes. However, my embodied humanity understands that the stakes of whatever choice we’re about to collectively make are quite real. No matter who wins, many millions of people will be painfully affected by the outcome, in ways both foreseeable and utterly unpredictable.

From a psychological perspective, we are witnessing a historic moment in which “shadow” and “projection” are asserting themselves in massive ways unfamiliar to many modern Americans.

“Projection” is what renowned psychoanalyst Carl Jung identified as the unconscious act of seeing personality characteristics in others that you repress or deny in yourself, and what you repress or deny in yourself is what constitutes your “shadow” (think: blindspot).

For example, when I was in my 20s I passionately resented my father for being arrogant and condescending. But upon deeper reflection one day, it suddenly dawned in me that my righteous stance against him was pretty damn arrogant and condescending. Until that realization, those two characteristics lived in my shadow. I was unable to see them in myself but could very easily see them in others (especially my father). What’s more, when I saw them in others, they angered me (caused me to feel triggered), which is the telltale signal that these traits lived in my own blindspot, my shadow.

Once I saw this and realized that I, too, could be arrogant and condescending just like him, it allowed to actually soften my stance and even find compassion for him. For he and I weren’t so different. The only meaningful difference, really, was that I could see in myself what he couldn’t see in himself. We were otherwise equal in our capacity for arrogance and condescension.

(Side note: projection and shadow aren’t only for negative or unwanted traits; we also project repressed positive or wanted traits onto others, like confidence, intelligence, worthiness).

Projection of shadow onto others happens in every relational dynamic.

• The husband who suppresses his own emotions and gets agitated whenever his partner expresses hers.
• The mother taught to deny her adventurous spirit as a young girl who both resents and envies her daughter for hers.
• The politician who lies, cheats, and will do whatever it takes to win, who looks outward and can only see his ideological opponents as liars and cheaters willing to do anything to beat him.
• The citizen who believes he has no real agency or power to influence his own fate (or the world’s) will project his suppressed power onto a charismatic leader (who gladly accepts the projection) and then believe with great certainty that this leader is the only one who can save or transform that citizen’s world.

… and so on.

Projection and shadow are at play everywhere, endlessly.

Until we can see it, particularly in ourselves, we’re destined to live as puppets whose strings are tightly held by our own unconscious parts.

Deny your own emotions and you’ll always be suspicious towards those who express theirs. Deny your own arrogance and you’ll always be triggered when you see it in others. Deny your own power and you’ll endlessly project it onto others, unknowingly handing your power over to them.

Look, I know this is a wildly simplistic take on what’s unfolding right now in the real world.

Privately, I’m passionate about my views, discussing and debating regularly with friends over the real world implications of Trump and Kamala, Ukraine and Israel. Publicly, I’ve chosen to be more reserved in expressing my views. I don’t believe I can serve couples, or men, or women, who desperately need help  working through relational issues with intimate partners, or with themselves, if they disagree with my personal views and thus unconsciously project onto me all the negative traits they associate with their “opposition.”

I have very close friends and family who will vote on both sides of the aisle. They know plainly where I stand. But beyond the “side” I am currently on, I do my damn best to always be a fierce stand for mutual respect, respectful disagreement, and the reality that we’re all in this together, sharing this planet, and we simply must find a way to stop making enemies of each other.

For what if the only enemy you’re ever fighting, at least psychologically, is what lives in the darkness of your own shadow, cleverly hidden in your unconscious by your own psyche?

What if the most important work you could ever do is to bring that into the light of your awareness.

What if you were to realize we’re all wildly more similar than we are different?

“One who looks outside dreams. One who looks inside awakens.”
~ Carl Jung