How to get to know yourself?
A bit of pre-talk before diving deep into my personal thoughts on this. Read this, this, and this website as it summarizes the concept in a neat and clean way, possibly better than me explaining it from zero. I'm not in any way expert in this but I wrote this post basing it on my own understanding of the theory. In short, Individuation is a process and journey of one's conscious and unconscious psyche inside us. As the model seen above, The whole, the center of the psyche is called SELF. It is a balance between our conscious and unconscious part of our psyche.
In the conscious world, we have Persona and Ego. PERSONA is what you present yourself to the outer world, your mask to the public. This decision of yours sometimes is a combination of your true self, your thoughts that are developed over time, what is acceptable to society, and more importantly which direction you choose to go with despite all other choices. EGO is one of the subsections and is the center of the conscious self. This is the machine that decides what to put on your persona but also the mixer of all your conscious thoughts where you process and filter each and every information you received. It is not the driven points of the process of individuation though, it is part of it that helps the SELF to perform a wholesome process of individuation.
In the unconscious world, we have Shadow and Animus-Anima. SHADOW is the traits inside us which we don't wish to see due to its lack of moral, unaccepted in public, or thoughts that have been thrown away by the conscious world. It is our evil and inferior qualities that often enough we resent all the time. ANIMA is a personification of all feminine tendencies, positive or negative, in a man’s psyche. ANIMUS, on the other hand, is a personification of masculine tendencies in a woman’s psyche. Many argue that dividing it into feminine and masculine traits is a shallow arbitral stereotype, however, it does present inside each individual. Inside men, there are also feminine traits inside them and vice versa. I think among Jung's theory, Animus-Anima is one of the most interesting topics to investigate deeper into and easily get confused.
As my roommate may know this, I hate it when people describe me as someone who is kind. It feels like they’re sarcastically telling me that and asking for my ego to come to work. Maybe being nice is my persona that I want to put on the public after going through the filtered section in the ego part. But deep inside I may not want to be nice. Nice is a too broad adjective and when people describe me as so, it feels like they just don't know what to say. Persona and Ego have a very complicated relationship in my opinion. For me, it is hard to accept my persona in which sometimes I feel like I'm lying to myself. The attitudes and the appearance I put in public sometimes making me guilty. If you asking the reason, I don't know. Maybe it was too different on how my shadow looks like, maybe it's too 'celebrity-like' trying to be flawless with no downside, or also maybe because it has been so long engraved in myself that it becomes the true me without me knowingly. Because even when I feel my persona is too different than my true self, I couldn't imagine myself living my life otherwise. In onetime persona is my wall to hide from the cruel world but also another time my persona is really who I am no matter what.
OKAY.. that part really just confusing isn't it?
I don't know if there's really one way of flow during the Individuation process, I believe not, but what important is to acknowledge the fact of we are going through a process. When I was in denial about my persona a couple years ago, when I think I'm all fake, I think it was also due to the fact that I have not grown enough. My theory is that a couple years ago I haven't been exposed to what is good and what is moral. I have not understood why these thoughts shouldn't be here, I shouldn't think this way, and why it is wrong. I just pretend to be nice to the outer world because society telling me to. But now, I have heard more perspective and understood the world properly. It may not be complete, it may never be, but it is bigger than before. This is why I felt my persona is also part of me. The conscious world process my experience, what I've heard, what I've seen, into these characteristics and traits that I have now.
Honestly speaking, I have not quite understood the idea of the inner world. I know it roughly what it means, but it doesn't feel familiar to me. The question is whether you could get your inner thoughts (shadow and animus-anima) influenced by the outer world? Or does it become part of ego? Because inferior qualities and lack of morals usually found after I compare it to others. Here is an example. The negative thoughts, feelings that are part of me were built after I feel something is wrong with me because I was different than others. The shadow inside me speaks loudly about how I'm lacking everywhere, don't have anything to be proud of, not quite skillful in any field, not be pretty enough, afraid of what others think, and being jealous of other people life. It all appeared because of one reason; I see others people live being superior to me. Unconsciously I have those thoughts deep inside which I feel as a weaknesses for me. There are also some feelings such as the ignorance of other people's lives in whose 'lower' than me. Superiority and Inferiority dynamics have always been the center of my inner world. I won't talk about Animus-Anima since I wasn't quite sure about what mine has.
If this post helps you to figure out about this whole concept, I would like to request one thing. Take a closer look at yourself and think where you at right now. What's on your inner and outer world? What is your Persona, Ego, Shadow? I believe by looking at yourself, you discover a lot on how to handle with things and think differently knowing about your own conditions.
It's like you have been diagnosed to have certain diseases (your own traits) which is totally fact and real. But you will ask a doctor (yourself) to kinda explain what caused what and what's happening with your disease (understanding the psyche combination inside you). With this, you will be able to cure it, get help, and receive treatment (you know why you're feeling this way, why you are the person you are right now).
Hit me up if you have a question! Email me, free of charge! I hope this post helps you a bit in terms of finding your true self.
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