When I first came across Jung’s idea of the shadow self, it made me think. I was seventeen; I kept a dream journal.
The shadow is the notion that we hide away the most vital, instinctive parts of ourselves — only for them to leak out in frustration or longing. My father made me angry as a boy. I’d ask ‘why?’, then ‘but why?’ eager for engagement as much as an answer. Mum gave more, when she had time not traipsing after his lordship, being the ‘perfect housewife’ which her world had been reduced to.
I can see it now in the choices I made. I suppressed my creative side, convincing myself that practical, structured work was more “acceptable.” Performing was a hobby, art could never be a career, and I was rubbish at writing despite my desire to write because I was so late to reading. So I was told, so I understood.
I chose History at Cambridge as that had been where my father had been awarded a scholarship to study history in the 1950s. He didn’t take up up because his domineering mother wanted him at home and studying law so he went to Kings College, Durham – since a long time ago Newcastle University. He had his own frustrations; tjis is where they has started for him. I can see him as a bachelor academic with a string of girlfriends and no kids – but that’s his story. I had been angling towards studying film or going to drama school. ‘Get a proper degree first I was told’.
Later, I went into advertising rather than keeping my small video production company alive or applying to the BBC, or even pursuing acting — all things I was drawn to but dismissed as unrealistic. Others had, I didn’t. The Milk Round of graduate careers interviews had its appeal – like auditions. I had no idea of the consequences rhat leaving university for the real world was like diving blind into a swimming pool before checking what was in there, not least water.
For years I told myself I was being sensible. In truth, I was building a persona — the mask Jung described — the version of me that others would approve of: articulate, employable, reliable. It worked for a while. I left advertising within months then eventually spent sixteen years being “creative” within other people’s structures, chasing success that never quite felt like mine. My own production company was an achievement. And we were making money. Eventually, I sought stability — a full-time job, a salary, some peace. But when that ended abruptly, I decided there must be something wrong with me.
That’s when the ground really shifted. I was diagnosed with ADHD, which at first felt like another label — something to fix. An excuse. A reason. But with time I’ve realised it also explains the restlessness, the constant ideas, the inability to sit still inside a box. It’s part of the same pattern: a mind that resists being tamed, even by its own good intentions. CBT offered tiny cautious steps; what I needed was revelation.
Looking back, I see that every “failure” — the job ending, the creative dead-ends — wasn’t punishment but pressure release. Each collapse made room for the shadow to breathe again: the artist, the storyteller, the coach, the observer of trees and time. The part of me that creates not for approval but to feel alive. To be me.
Jung said that integrating the shadow is how we become whole. I think that’s what I’ve been doing all along, though never quite consciously — letting the hidden self step into the light, piece by piece, print by print, story by story.
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