Owning Your Own Shadow Johnson Analysis

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All of us have a shadow. Its hidden somewhere in one of our dark corners we seem to ignore. We might not see it, but it is there hidden inside all of us. Our shadow is everything we don’t want to be but in reality are. Our shadow is made up of negative emotional reactions through traumatic experience we encountered throughout our lives. Such emotions include anger, grief and shame. Emotions like these become an aspect to our shadow because we never confront it; instead, we ignore it, or deny it, hiding it from the whole world to see. And why exactly do we do that? Because we live in a society where we put out our very best in front and keep in/hidden all of our flaws from the world to see. Acculturation is the process by which somebody absorbs…show more content…
We try and keep him away from all our peers because having poor manners isn’t considered being normal in our culture. That’s the same thing we do with our shadow, we hide it; keeping it inside. In the book Owning Your Own Shadow by Psychotherapist Robert A. Johnson, Johnson talks about the shadow making process and how we divide our lives. He states “In the cultural process we sort out our God-given characteristics into those that are acceptable to our society and those that have to be put away” (Johnson 4). In other words, Johnson believes we behave in a particular way based on what culture sees acceptable. We show off all the good things about us for the whole world to see and put away what’s considered…show more content…
When we increase a particular quality in our ego, we also increase the opposite. It is who we as humans want to be according to society. It is the socially acceptable traits we display in the world. The ego prevents us from acting on our basic urges, but also helps to balance with our moral and idealistic standards. For example, if you’ve ever worked in customer service you know the struggle of having to be in your best behavior even when you get a rude customer. I know for most of us we’re cussing out that one person in our heads for being so rude but instead what do we do? Politely smile and attend them. Our ego is telling us to calm down and attend the customer when our shadow is wanting to tell off the rude

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