Growing up my main wish was to please my parents. My secondary wish, for many years, was to behave in such a way that no one would be upset with me.
To make it possible to meet these goals, I needed to hide my negative traits.
Hiding or ignoring my negative traits (even from myself) consumed as much energy as I spent on developing positive traits.
So you can guess my sense of bewilderment when I learned that a healthy mature adult recognizes and accepts, even embraces, all parts of the self.
Knowing my anger, selfishness, jealousy, talent, didn’t appeal to my perfectionist self.
Robert A. Johnson* describes a healthy adult as one who stands in the center of a seesaw: positive traits piled on the right side and negative traits stacked on the left. When we get in the middle, then shift a little to the left, then a little to the right – we encounter the wholeness of balance.
I was skeptical I could make this work. My fear was that if my negative stuff was no longer hidden, it would weigh the left side down; everyone would see what a low-down rotten person I was.
Little did I know the others already knew my negative traits! I also wasn’t aware that many of them would cheer if I was my authentic self.
When we hide our negative or our positive traits, we build up our shadow. Unfortunately we don’t hide these negative traits from anyone but ourselves. Other people know long before we do when we are selfish, inconsiderate, mean, or that we have a lot to offer our community.
When we have an awareness of these traits, we come to the middle of the seesaw.
Successfully balanced we can be our authentic self. Please take your balanced (or unbalanced) self to the comment section and share your struggles and successes. It is important to express ourselves plus it encourages others.
Thanks for exploring the mystery – Nicky Mendenhall