"I see epidemics, natural disasters, sunken ships, destroyed cities, terrible wild animals, famine, lack of love in men and fear, whole mountains of fear", wrote Jung in his "Red Book".
The psychoanalyst was going through a particularly turbulent period in his life. The news of the impending World War I deeply shocked him. In fact, he came at a particularly difficult time in his life, just when Jung had broken off his relationship with Freud, who was not only his mentor but also a great friend.
It was therefore a stage of profound disorientation and inner insecurity for Jung. Added to this was work in one of the Swiss camps where sick and wounded soldiers were welcomed during the war. In those camps Jung lived closely the erroneously called "Spanish flu" that loomed over Europe.
That dark and tumultuous era would have a profound impact on her life. But Jung didn't waste it. He took the opportunity to do a deep introspective work from which he emerged strengthened and with the firm conviction that we can overcome adversity through individuation.
He thought that to heal our traumas we must become aware of our shadows and fears, so as to reach a more integrated and stronger "I". "When the most intense conflicts are overcome, they leave a feeling of security and tranquility that is not easily disturbed," according to Jung. This is the prize.
The shadows that emerge in adversity
When adversity knocks on our door, it usually turns our world upside down. The unpredictability affects us further, causing our mental equilibrium to falter. In the blink of an eye we can find ourselves without holds. Adversity can deprive us of the cardinal points that up to that moment not only gave meaning to our life, but also showed us, approximately, how to behave.
Under these circumstances, everything becomes more difficult. And in that state that oscillates between amazement at what has happened and anxiety about what is to come, we can make decisions that we will later regret, show attitudes or behaviors that we will not feel particularly proud of, fall apart and touch the emotionally, discover weaknesses and fears that we did not know, see shadows that we would have preferred to remain hidden.
Indeed, many times what prevents us from completely overcoming adversity is not the traumatic event itself, but what brought out of us, that part full of regrets, guilt and recriminations. The part that wonders what would have happened if we had made another decision, if we had acted differently. If we had anticipated ...
Accept and acknowledge the darkness that is in each of us
Jung believed that we tend to hide traits we don't like or aren't socially acceptable. As a result, we fragment and develop a dislocated psyche that becomes a breeding ground for problems such as anxiety, depression and / or post-traumatic stress disorder.
Denying our shadows not only prevents us from recognizing and accepting our wholeness, it also becomes a recurring trap. Jung thought that “those who learn nothing from the unpleasant facts of their life, force the cosmic consciousness to reproduce them as many times as necessary to learn what the drama of what has happened teaches. What you deny submits to you. What you accept transforms you ”.
In other words, we stumble on the same stone many times because our behaviors and decisions lead us to that point repeatedly. We cannot expect different results if we always do the same thing in the same way, to paraphrase Einstein. Therefore, until we change, we will remain stuck in the cycle that generated adversity.
But “we can't change anything unless we accept it […] It's much better to take things as they come, with patience and fairness,” Jung admonished. Closing our eyes to reality, pretending it isn't happening, is a maladaptive strategy, as maladaptive as denying the part of us that we don't like.
For this reason, the radical acceptance of reality and that darkest part of each one is an essential condition for continuing to advance, turn the page or close chapters of our life. It is not about passive acceptance, unconditional surrender or resignation, but rather about taking action to rebuild our world.
The key to accepting our shadows and a reality we are not comfortable with is to get rid of value judgments, to stop thinking that darkness is negative or bad.
Jung proposes a different perspective. He claims that "one does not enlighten oneself by imagining figures of light, but by making darkness conscious […] Even a happy life is not feasible without a measure of darkness, and the word happiness would lose its meaning if it were not balanced by sadness".
In fact, Jung believed that shadows have tremendous power that we can use to grow as people, as long as we are able to integrate them into our "I". Accepting the shadow allows us to become more balanced and self-aware, so we will be much better prepared to face adversity.
For this, we must understand that adversity does not automatically turn into a party, it only gives us the opportunity to grow through suffering. If we really want it. Difficult situations allow us to test our strengths, expand our limits and, of course, discover unknown or little explored personal aspects.
But “all change must begin in the individual himself. Nobody can afford to look around and wait for others to do for us what is our responsibility ”, wrote Jung. Therefore, we have two options: to become a victim of circumstances or to go beyond adversity to develop a new level of self-knowledge.
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