No, I'm not talking about the Force, at least not directly. I ran across an article about Jung's take on the Shadow and it's been a few years since I did my deep dive on Jung (inspired by the Synchronicity album, so that gives you a hint how long it's been). You can watch the whole thing as a video:
It's been awhile since I've considered my shadow self, and now that I'm older and wiser (at least older) it feels like I have more perspective on it, but less instinct of what that shadow might be. Am I more integrated, or more repressed? Difficult to say. I feel like at my best I am easygoing, accepting, and creative, and at my worst I am difficult, judging, and controlling. The other language I use to understand this are my Myers-Briggs personality type of INFP where my shadow (all INFP shadows) is a dark version of ESTJ. This has come out under stress at my day job a number of times.
If you know your MBTI you can check out the description of your assumed shadow at Introvert, Dear.
Another article for exploring your shadow is this one from Mindfulness Muse. Personality Club has an interesting analysis of Shadow Functions. You may not know how functions work, but if you do it is an interesting read.
A quick visual primer on what the functions are all about:
A quick visual primer on who has what primary functions:
As an INFP my primary and shadow functions look like this:
So, an ESTJ's strengths are my weaknesses. I find this particular analysis fascinating because of the naming of the shadows. It makes me realize that most of my (INFP) and hubs (INTP) conflicts are solidly in that 'opposing role' territory where I have extroverted feeling and he has extroverted thinking. Personality Club writes about the Opposing Role: "This function acts in opposition to your dominant function, questioning the way it sees the world and the goals it sets. This is often the part of you that’s stubborn, argumentative, and refuses to go along with others and events. Basically, this is the part that will lash out when your ego is under threat. If used positively it can be used to strengthen and back up the dominant function, but few people use it in this way."
The most alien function for me is Introverted Thinking, and that doesn't surprise me. My husband, an INTP, has a brilliantly tidy and organized mind and I... do not. I mean sure, I think a lot, but everything is either very simple and linear or it's story. I'm really good friends with my fourth function, Extroverted Thinking, which is how I've succeeded at work in things like project management. It's why one of my favorite ways to relax is doing a crossword or logic puzzle. Introverted Thinking, when done right, is very rich and complicated thinking. Yeah, not so much. No science discovery prizes for me. I have a certifiable squirrel brain that leaps from thing to thing, never dwelling too deeply on anything logical or facty. To dwell I need story. Emotion. But apparently if I will just dig deeply enough the demon I will find is Introverted Thinking.
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