But although the shadow personifies everything that we fear, and therefore refuse to acknowledge, it remains a part of us. He viewed “the shadow” as our unknown, dark side-made up of the primitive, negative, socially depreciated human emotions such as sexuality, striving for power, selfishness, greed, envy, jealousy, and anger. For example, Carl Jung introduced the notion of the shadow side of our personality. The idea of a “true self” and a “false” or “shadow” self has long preoccupied psychologists. But what did the “True Tina” really want? Where was all of this coming from? Was there a hidden part of herself she didn’t understand – or maybe even know about? She remembered how as an adolescent she had always been preoccupied with: “What do people want me to do? And who do they want me to be?” Perhaps, the time had come to revisit these questions-to take an honest look at what she really wanted to do, not what others expected her to do. Tina increasingly began to question herself. Now, at the age of 45, she was wondering if these choices were really pseudo-choices, given the pressure her family had put on her? And even more frightening: what other choices did she have at this point in her life? What if all her choices had been in response to what others expected? She had always been her parents’ golden child – a star student who married a man they approved of and went into the same industry her father and grandfather had pursued. This stream of consciousness carried Tina to deeper, more revealing questions. But what would her colleagues and bosses think of her? For some time, she had been asking herself whether she should quit. And although she’d once enjoyed banking, she now bore little interest in her work. Her daughter had recently left for college, and her husband had his own pursuits.

I am a shadow the true self