Permission to Be Yourself: a Lesson From Jungian Psychology

One of the states that Jungian psychology tries to make sense of and help us deal with is guilt.

And it recognizes different types of guilt.

There is one of them that I found particularly interesting. Perhaps because I believe that many of you who are reading this will be able to relate to it, or, selfishly, because I relate to it.

This type of guilt, or this thing we call guilt, is not real guilt. It is a defense against greater angst, or anxiety.

For example, we often hear people say how they feel guilty for saying no to someone or for expressing their anger, or maybe even a less "problematic" emotion. We hear people say how they feel guilty for not being the perfect parent, or another role that they identify with.

It will probably come as no surprise that Jungian psychology recognizes that these feelings have been conditioned since childhood.

The child naturally acts out all its desires and impulses spontaneously. However, in a lot of cases, it immediately runs into the walls and barriers of the adult world. The adult world that has the power to punish or deny approval and affection. And, as Jungian psychologist, James Hollis says,

"No child can last long in such a wasteland, and quickly learns to curb unacceptable impulses."

Such encounters with restrictive authority are inevitable in the childhood of every person. From those encounters, one begins to internalize restraints against one’s impulses. Therefore, what we call guilt in such cases is often a child’s protective, reactive feeling state. Hollis gives a metaphor for it, saying

"It is as if, when a natural impulse arises, anger for example, a hand reaches out like a governor in a car and throttles the impulse. Such a reflexive reaction can so govern a person’s life that he or she will suffer considerable self-alienation."

Feeling guilty for saying no to someone or for expressing an emotion that might be deemed inappropriate is actually a defense against the possibility that the other, or others, will be displeased with us.

The fact is that most people were conditioned since childhood to be nice rather than real, accommodating rather than authentic, and adaptive rather than assertive. And although this kind of conditioning has its value and helps make people into civilized members of society, it can be taken too far. And Jung believed that it is, in fact, taken too far more often than we think.

Conditioning someone to be nice and appropriate, even at the expense of them getting in touch with everything that is inside of them, creates a "shadowless person," which is to say that one is unconscious of one’s shadow. And a shadowless person, according to Jung, is a shallow person.

What this kind of guilt as a defense against angst reflects, then, is a lack of permission to be oneself.

However, this is where Jungian psychology really shines, in my opinion. Every negative state is also an opportunity to get in touch with our psyche, or our soul, and find out what it wants from us at that moment or that point in our lives.

Therefore, in moments of this type of guilt, we are invited to ask ourselves:

"Against what am I defending myself?"

Often, the answer will be that we are defending ourselves from the possibility that someone else might not be happy with our decisions or actions.

However, in the real world, one should aim to be, as Hollis says, "a person of value rather than an emotional chameleon." In order to do that, we must live our own lives and make our own choices, and pleasing others cannot be our priority in life.

We need to become aware that this angst that we are trying to protect ourselves from comes from the time of one’s childhood vulnerability. And because that feeling of vulnerability is never fully lost but resides in one’s unconscious, at moments it springs forth and takes over.

Jungian psychology helps us to deal with this by reminding us that, since that time of childhood vulnerability, you have evolved and developed into an adult. An adult who is perfectly capable of thinking and acting as an independent individual. Most importantly, an adult who is capable of living a fulfilled life even if others are dissatisfied or unhappy with your choices.

Give yourself permission to be yourself.

Thank you for reading.

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