#6 - Our Alter Egos
Jungian shadows, inner child, IFS all circle the same tool for understanding ourselves
To others, I am Jorge. Singular. One unit, one body over time that other people call a friend and interact with.
But often, when you are trying to understand yourself from within your own mind, you are better conceptualized as many parts. This frameworks for conceptualizing and interacting with these parts has taken many forms:
Jungian complexes/archetypes - integrating the shadow, the stages of animus/anima
Reparenting your inner child
Have a confident alter ego (Fight Club, Sasha Fierce, Slim Shady)
Internal Family Systems (IFS) / parts work
The main thread between all these systems is acknowledging your repressed, darker, immature desires and drives without shame. It's understanding yourself as a unification of several competing desires, many that are "unconscious" that you don't really understand. And if you distance yourself from these desires by acknowledging its just a part of you, its easier to understand and deal with.
Once, I went to an IFS workshop where the host describes how she found it immensely healing to conceptualize herself as 7 distinct personalities within her. She could mentally summon and interact with these parts and ask them questions about their desires or their name. She could feel if the answers were right and her job was to mediate between all these personalities. There are meditations meant to induce a state where you can interact with these parts.
I've personally found the concept of a shadow self to be valuable. There are really parts of myself with motivations I would rather not have in my drive to be a good person. Once after a night of sleep deprivation, I felt like I deeply understood that I had a shadow. My shadow wanted credit, he wanted glory, he wanted prestige and I spent so much effort suppressing him and confusing him. Sometimes I would actively avoid enjoying any sort of admiration just to spite my shadow and prove to myself it wasn't there. But it was. I decided to stop ignoring this part of myself and welcome his drive. In this moment of "integration", I felt the world sharpen and I felt more alive and present. It's like some capacity of my brain dedicated to infighting was unlocked and my focus was sharper.
Let me flesh out this shadow self into an alter ego called Eden Emerson. Jorge is just a normal tech bro. He's a pretty smart guy and good coder, but he really doesn't care about anything. He maintains this nonchalant, calming attitude about everything and is very agreeable to those around him. Few things really matter to Jorge. It's a mix between general equanimity and a numbness maintained by distractions like video games and Youtube.
Eden Emerson emerges from a pure ambitious drive. A desire to accomplish something significant in any form. Eden is a passionate beast that charges towards love and greatness. Without a goal, Eden feels this gaping hole of meaninglessness that is akin to death. He is deeply emotional and sensitive to his environment. While he can spend years driving towards his goal, it comes from not a place of resilience, but fear of nothingness. He is willing to sacrifice everything and failure is tantamount to death.
Jorge will tell you the truth if you ask. The goal doesn't really matter. So Eden operates in an unstable world that will collapse if he stands too still and let's Jorge interact with him a bit too much. Eden is thus always on the verge of death and is scared of everyone. He feels like everyone hates him, his disgusting raw drive and illogical hope. Maybe even Jorge hates him.