Self-Acceptance & the Shadow (the Stuff We Don't Put on Instagram)

I've spent a good portion of my adult life exploring human behavior, spirituality, psychology, and the fascinating ways we make sense of ourselves and the world around us. I genuinely love learning about what makes us tick, why we do the things we do, and how our experiences shape the people we become, but I also notice that, in our enthusiasm for personal growth, we've gotten a little carried away with the whole becoming-a-better-version-of-ourselves thing.

There's tremendous value in understanding our patterns, questioning our beliefs, and recognizing the ways we sometimes get in our own way. I've watched it literally transform lives (and it's done some pretty amazing things in my own life, too). That said, the more we learn about ourselves, the more tempting it can be to convince ourselves that we should have it all together. Then, just when we think we've made some real progress, something happens that reminds us we're still perfectly capable of behaving like complete assholes. Nothing quite like losing your shit over something relatively insignificant to remind you that years of yoga, meditation, and personal development haven't magically transformed you into the Dalai Lama.

When Self-Awareness Becomes Self-Expectation

I think part of the problem is that we tend to approach personal growth as though there's some sort of finish line. We imagine that with enough self-awareness, healing, and emotional maturity, we'll eventually arrive at a place where we no longer get triggered by the same old things, make questionable decisions, or react in ways we're not particularly proud of. And when we inevitably do, we can be awfully hard on ourselves about it.

In other words, the more we pursue our self-understanding, the more opportunities we seem to find to criticize ourselves. Can ya feel the irony? I wonder if this is where we sometimes begin losing touch with our authentic selves. Not because we're intentionally being dishonest, but because we've developed such strong ideas about who we should be that we become uncomfortable acknowledging the parts of ourselves that don't fit the picture. We want to be kind, generous, emotionally mature, and understanding, so when jealousy, resentment, anger, or insecurity show up, we treat them like unwelcome guests rather than perfectly ordinary parts of the human experience.

Getting to Know Our Shadows

Carl Jung had a name for these less acknowledged parts of ourselves: the shadow. In Jungian psychology, the shadow refers to the qualities, feelings, and desires we've learned to suppress because they don't fit with the image we have of ourselves. While we often associate the shadow with undesirable traits like jealousy or selfishness, it can also contain perfectly wonderful qualities we've learned to reject through messages from our caregivers, peers, and society. Someone taught that anger is inappropriate, for example, might struggle to stand up for themselves, while someone raised to believe that humility is essential might have difficulty acknowledging their own accomplishments. The qualities themselves aren't necessarily good or bad, but our relationship with them can become distorted.

Last month, I wrote about ontological shock, which happens when something challenges our fundamental understanding of reality. I think we can experience something similar when we discover parts of ourselves that don't fit the identity we've created, particularly because we aren't always conscious of what we've learned to suppress. Maybe you've always considered yourself a patient person until you had children (I know LOTS about this one), or perhaps you've spent years believing you're someone who puts others first, only to recognize the resentment you've been accumulating towards someone you love lately. These realizations can be uncomfortable, but they also offer an opportunity to better understand and accept our FULL selves.

Jealousy might reveal something we secretly desire, resentment might suggest we've been neglecting our own needs, and sometimes our reactions simply remind us that we're human and occasionally behave like assholes. The point of shadow work isn't to justify our behavior or eliminate the qualities we don't like, but to understand them and grow in self-acceptance. Denying these parts of ourselves doesn't make them disappear, and acknowledging them gives us an opportunity to make more conscious choices about where they show up and how we respond to them.

The Parts We Don't Put on Instagram

I think social media has made this whole process even more complicated because we've become so accustomed to presenting carefully curated versions of ourselves to the world. We share our accomplishments, our beautiful moments, and even our struggles, provided we've had enough time to process them and turn them into something inspirational. We're happy to talk about the lessons we've learned from our mistakes, but we're generally less enthusiastic about admitting when we're still right in the middle of making them, and I get it. Nobody particularly wants to broadcast their jealousy, insecurity, or occasional irrational behavior to the world. I'm certainly not suggesting that we start posting videos of ourselves losing our shit in the grocery store in the name of authenticity, but I do wonder what happens when the version of ourselves we're comfortable showing other people becomes the standard we feel obligated to live up to in private.

We can become so attached to being the compassionate one, the successful one, the spiritual one, or the person who always has everything under control that we start treating anything outside those identities as a personal failure. And because those roles often give us a sense of purpose and belonging, questioning them can feel surprisingly threatening. If I'm not the person who always has the answers, who am I? If I stop doing the things I've always done, what does that say about my value?

I think this is where our desire for purpose can sometimes get tangled up with our need for approval, including our own. We want our lives to mean something, and there's nothing wrong with that, but we can become so invested in proving that we're living meaningful lives that we forget we're allowed to change our minds about what meaningful actually looks like. We don't have to keep playing a role simply because we've gotten good at it, and we certainly don't have to pretend to possess qualities we haven't quite mastered yet.

There's a difference between having values we aspire to live by and requiring ourselves to embody them perfectly. I can value kindness and still occasionally be unkind. I can believe in compassion and still have moments when I'm feeling particularly judgmental. Those contradictions don't necessarily mean I'm being inauthentic, but pretending they don't exist probably does.

Embracing Self-Acceptance

I think one of the greatest misconceptions about self-acceptance is that it means we have to love everything about ourselves. Personally, there are plenty of things about me that I don't particularly love, and I imagine that will continue to be the case for the foreseeable future, but I'm learning that I can acknowledge those qualities without making them evidence that something is fundamentally wrong with me.

In fact, I think there's something rather freeing about being able to recognize when we're not showing up as the people we'd like to be without immediately turning the experience into another self-improvement project. We can take responsibility for our behavior, apologize when necessary, and make different choices moving forward without needing to beat ourselves up in the process. When we approach our shadows with curiosity instead of shame, we give ourselves an opportunity to offer ourselves some much-needed grace, and you know what? When you offer it to yourself, it's a hell of a lot easier to offer it outward to others, too.

To me, that's where authentic personal growth really begins. Not so much in perfecting the image we present to the world, but in developing a more honest relationship with ourselves that actually makes room for our contradictions, changing beliefs, uncomfortable emotions, and the occasional realization that we're not nearly as evolved as we'd like to think.

As we approach the end of another year, I find myself reflecting on how much my understanding of myself has changed over time. There are things I once believed wholeheartedly that I no longer agree with, roles I thought I'd occupy forever that don't fit quite the same way anymore, and parts of myself I'm only just beginning to understand. I used to think that getting older and gaining wisdom would eventually bring a certain level of clarity about who I am and what I'm here to do. Instead, I'm discovering that the more I learn, the more there seems to be to explore, and I think I'm actually beginning to appreciate that. Who knew?

I don't think we're ever supposed to reach a point where we've figured ourselves out completely. We're constantly being shaped by new experiences, relationships, challenges, and perspectives, and it makes sense that our understanding of ourselves would continue to evolve right along with them. The person I am today isn't the same person I was ten years ago, and I sincerely hope she won't be exactly the same person I am ten years from now.

Perhaps the goal of self-acceptance isn't to finally become someone we're completely satisfied with, but to develop enough compassion for ourselves that we can continue growing without constantly feeling inadequate in the meantime. At the end of the day, I don't think the most authentic version of ourselves is necessarily the most polished, enlightened, or impressive one. I think it's the one we're willing to be honest about, even when there are parts we'd rather not put on Instagram. How can you make room for all of you as move towards the close of another year?