An introverted speaker describes learning to embrace shame rather than fight it, using Jung's shadow self concept. Authenticity means integrating your dark and light sides instead of hiding behind a thin positive mask. Real wholeness comes from making peace with the parts of yourself you'd rather hide.
I know what my demons are and I've made friends with them.
One of the biggest problems that people have when they start the social media and they start exposing themselves is the shame. And you said your story with your first YouTube channel 12 years ago, and probably you were feeling something similar. How can you go through this shame? Is it vanishing anytime or it comes back and you have your tools to fight it?
I think as an introverted person, English is my second language, as a person who didn't have social skills, still working on it, and a person who never felt like I belonged anywhere in any group, it's something that I've just gotta live with the rest of my life. I say instead of fighting it, instead of pushing it away or trying to defeat it, I have to learn to dance with it. I'm just gonna lean into all of that is me, not just some parts that are me. I have this graphic I'll tell people, you feel so ashamed of yourself that you become this fractured person that you only wanna show the positive parts to you, and there's lots lots of pieces missing. Yeah, yeah, right. We all do this. We're like, oh, I don't like the way I look, I don't like the way I sound, my, my backstory, I feel a lot of shame or guilt around. We just present a shell of who we are that's paper thin, this mask, and that's what I'm trying to stop. But when we lean into using the Jungian term shadow self, if we make friends or come to some level of peace or resolution with these dark parts, and the light parts can come together, so we become a cohesive person We become the full person. So I'll tell people, you are a whole person, not a hole person, a person with holes in it. You are complete, but you have to do this inner work that's really hard, that's going to be healing, and you develop your own self-story. Mm-hmm.
