Divisiveness. It’s crippling. It’s depressing. It’s scary. There is so much divisiveness in the USA right now, as well as many other countries. Where does this divisiveness come from?
It’s tempting to believe that all the divisiveness comes from the external world, but when I pay close attention, I can see that it comes from within me. I can feel how I disown parts of myself that I consider undesirable. The more judgmental of myself I am, the more judgmental of others I become. I see the correlation clearly at times, and at other times, it’s more difficult to see.
Carl Jung, the Swiss psychiatrist and psychoanalyst who founded analytical psychology, describes this disconnect with ourselves as the shadow. He describes the shadow as “the unknown dark side of the personality.” According to Jung, the shadow, “in being instinctive and irrational, is prone to psychological projection, in which a perceived personal inferiority is recognized as a perceived moral deficiency in someone else.”
In other words, what we judge in others can be found within ourselves. Now, I don’t know about you, but that feels a tad confrontative to me. And, yet, in recognizing that I am projecting my divisiveness outwards, I have the opportunity to examine what I reject within me. It’s an opportunity for healing and for inviting all parts of myself to reunite. Only in reuniting, can I be whole. The same is true for this country.
If we truly do want to come together and reunite again, we must heal the divide within ourselves first. Of course, this does not mean that we let just anything go. Of course not. But it does mean that we recognize our own humanness and our own tendency to reject parts of ourselves. We could lovingly invite those parts back into the whole again where they can heal.
I believe that as we heal the divisiveness within ourselves, we’ll be much more capable of helping to heal the divisiveness in our communities, nation, and world.
For more, please listen to this week’s podcast episode.
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The Story He Thought Would Disqualify Him with Courtland Warren
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Carla is a private coach for founders and CEOs. She began as a psychotherapist in 1990 before becoming a coach. She has focused on founders since 2019. More about Carla.
