Persona and Shadow: What is Destructive For Themselves And For Others

The persona is the "social mask," a part of our personality developed according to an adaptive pattern. It is the shell of our self, the "public relations" part, that we want or allow others to see. It originated to adjust to the expectations of our parents, teachers, and society in general during our maturation process.

The other qualities that are considered objectionable or unacceptable are repressed or hidden. In this way, another area of our personality (subpersonality) is born, called the "shadow."

The acceptance or recognition of our "shadow" is a difficult, feared, and painful task, one that we avoid with various defense mechanisms, ranging from denial to projection.

Masks

The apparent sculpture is one of formality, self-control, and reliability, depicting a rational and balanced person. Beyond shyness in new situations or with unknown people, the individual shows affability, within sobriety. With discursive ability, they can make strong arguments and be a convincing advisor. In the family sphere, they adopt a paternalistic role, and the tendency to control makes them worried. At work, the relationship with authority is one of compliance with unlimited dedication.

The Shadow with Itself

Troubled experiences lead to psychosomatic reactions and self-harm. The internal contraction robotizes the individual with inhibitory mechanisms of spontaneity.

The relentless "critical eye" paralyzes them in vital rigidity, with an internal choreography of codes, trials, and sentences, in a thunderous loop of inquisitorial internal dialogues. The intimate experience becomes a bloody atmosphere of polarization with a painfully split self.

The Shadow in Relationships

The individual is hypervigilant to the world, scrutinizing signs of hidden intentions and lurking negative events. They become a monster with a paranoid gaze, obsessive ideation, and defensiveness.

With authority, behind the mask of blind obedience lies mistrust, accompanied by internal movements of a critical attitude, passive (and even active) rebellion, and ambivalence that translates into a paralysis of dedication and involvement.

The transfer of power to authority is a strategy to feed the boss's ego with loyal adherence. In return, the individual projects their own vital responsibility onto the authority. The Social 6 clings to the script established by the authority (concrete or abstract), thus avoiding the anguish of choosing or deciding for themselves, with all the possible catastrophes associated with error and mistakes. The "sheepskin" is their manipulative strategy: the other brings them certainties that exempt them from uncertainty.

The rigid submission to authority entails polar compensatory movements of dominance, excessive demands, and authoritarianism, with even tyrannical behaviors and outbursts of anger and aggression.

The line of duty implies dogmatic and fanatical positions, with ironclad loyalties that exclude dissent. Freedom becomes a threatening option, both internally (risk of error, guilt, exclusion...) and externally, since the other can break their precious certainties. Cohesion, uniformity, and blind obedience to a common cause or leader become imperative.

In the original group (the family), the Social 6 learned to absorb the multiple normative chains, handles of acceptance, and belonging. The indigestion of codes is accompanied by the assumption of family secrets: many agree they have been victims of confidences with large doses of toxicity. This loaded them with negative emotionality toward their father or mother, causing paralysis, inhibition, and, of course, an early "adulthood" position, parenting (a dark investment in the genuine role of simply being a child), which transformed them into "older" beings, kind, and loyal to the explicit and secret codes of the family. The innocent, creative, and playful child was engulfed by the toxic demands of the clan.

The poisonous ingestion of coercive scenes and normative messages gave rise to the tyrannical ideal, the limitless fulfillment, and the poisonous ingestion of coercive scenes and non-dogmatic messages of faith—the fierce demand.

In the workplace and elsewhere, competitiveness emerges linked to a secret feeling of superiority and being "right," protected by rational constructs, leading to blind dogmatism. The terror of error entails an ingratiating attitude, with a desire for applause and to feel seen. The counterpart is a perfectionist position from the judge: "I comply, I follow the

script, so I feel completely legitimized to regulate the laws of operation." From the watchtower of reason, they become judges possessing the truth. The luminous idealism, beautiful utopias, and sublime intentions turn into "scythes" with which to throw into the bonfire any dissent that questions the long-awaited certainty.

From the gray robotization and desert emotional security emerges the pathology of normality, with its routinization, ritualization, and control of spontaneity. It is the shadow of normality: inauthenticity, repetition, boredom, and vital exhaustion.

The Elongated Shadow of Sisyphus

The continuous efforts to which the Social 6 is subjected lead to "burnout" syndrome. The granite stone is pushed over and over again, compulsively, without limits, since "if I don't make an effort, they won't want me." Not only do they bear it resignedly, but they embrace it, clinging to it, digging in their nails to perceive some meaning. A sense of sacrifice for something greater, sublime—a totem to adore that calms anguish and frees them from vital decisions. This makes them feel alive, even when turning the weight onto themselves.

The price of this great self-injurious exhaustion, fatigue, and chronic weariness remains fixed in the aching body, embedded in the joints and entrails.

Distrust

The Social 6 lives in permanent threat. They distrust the natural flow of life, turning it into a dark, turbulent river, always on the lookout for sea monsters. This state of tension invades all interpersonal relationships. Like a jealous jailer on permanent guard, self-doubt devours the most innocent aspects of their inner world.

"I find that the lack of love for myself comes from realizing my insecurities and fears when doing something and needing the approval of others. I get overwhelmed, angry, restless, and distressed. I feel time pressing on me, and it is then that my mind doesn't stop, like a hamster running around in so many thoughts that wear me down. I realize it, as if I were leaving my body and seeing myself from afar: how I suffer in vain, senselessly, how I find myself in hell."

So I don't like it, I say to myself: "What use have my courses served if instead of progressing, I go backward?" I realize my shadow, and the worse I fall. As Dr. Claudio Naranjo once said: “A man goes to the eye doctor because he sees only spots and wants more clarity. The oculist makes some lenses, puts liquids in them, reinforces them, and

gives them to the patient to use. He asks: 'And now, how do you see?' 'Better, better, now I see the spots clearly!'"

Aggressiveness

Beyond the affable compliant mask, and despite the rigidity (constant inhibition of natural and spontaneous impulses), dark expressions emerge.

Despite the intense conflict that the experience and expression of aggressiveness brings for the Social 6 (with much repression and blocking), not only passive aggression appears but also an icy, metallic, and gray "hardness," with a resounding and radical affective withdrawal.

Along with these expressions of subtle annihilation, they allow angry reactions and aggressive outbursts with people close to them or who are from "another echelon" (different from the idealized leaders). Children, loved ones, partners, students... can be the receptacles of lightning and thunder locked in their "Pandora's box."

The Shadow In Privacy

The self-incriminating position generates multiple psychosomatic manifestations and self-injurious mechanisms for the Social 6. It is not only the result of the internal pressure of unattainable ideals and exhausting norms but also a dark defensive exercise in an anguished attempt to avoid external condemnations. These condemnations are ghosts of catastrophic voices, coming from childhood and adolescence, full of humiliation, rejection, and punishment. Intimacy itself is surrendered to the floating "black cloud" of self-loathing.

The consequent position of demand and distrust toward the outside world is evidently exercised with greater intensity in relationships where the exposure of intimacy and affectivity is more evident.

Thus, in the relationship of a couple, in the field of love, the closure and the armor of control get in the way of the flow of the encounter, in the face of giving and receiving, fragility and tenderness. The tributaries of distrust are harshness, dryness, emotional and physical distance, the lack of explicit tender expressions as well as affective involvement (beyond sexual expressions), suspicion, passive waiting, and negativity.

The Social 6 launches scanning beams in search of feared signs of betrayal or invasion, of gestures that may induce hints of doubt or questioning, with the fear of abandonment and loss as a backdrop.

This paranoid position is accompanied by compensatory attitudes, such as paternalism and guidance, which are supported by rationalism with implicit dynamics of possessiveness and tyranny.

The difficulty for surrender is the panic of letting oneself be, letting oneself go. Leaping into the void. It is, ultimately, the fear of love.

The Shadow in Spirituality

To begin with, the pseudo-spirituality of dogmas. The tyranny of dogma is built not out of love for humanity and life, nor out of surrender to the mystery, but in a compulsion to search for certainties.

Beyond altruistic ideals, arrogance emerges: the feeling of omnipotence, ingratitude (for the mere fact of existence), and competitiveness, as well as demands directed towards God Himself. The Social 6 is a secret judge of God's actions. He is angry with Him, resentful even, accuses Him, envies His power, and creates "supreme ethics" to supplant Him.

The Social 6 establishes secret pacts with God and with the devil disguised as God, entering, based on excessive efforts, into delusional beliefs where it is special in the eyes of the "Our Father," who will save him even from death. He can thus secretly entertain crazy ideas of immortality.

Spiritual cowardice prevents him from letting go of "substitutes" to delve into true faith and embrace the God who resides in the depths of his soul, flooding himself with the divine light that drinks from the eternal essence. Tied to control, the Social 6 fears the total freedom of supreme surrender to the luminous internal Being, to the current of life. A surrender entrusted to the mystery and the threads of destiny generated by the "divine architect."

Destructiveness and Retroflexion

The internal dialogue of the Social 6 is not very affectionate. Negative with himself, ruminating and gossiping are common behaviors. Due to fear and anxiety, introspection and self-talk often become processes of isolation and means for a fanciful relationship with the

external. Frequent self-sufficiency and grandiosity are more aspects of isolation than genuine self-support.

In the isolated world of the Social 6, due to the difficulty in managing anger and the guilt derived from it, fantasies of aggression and destruction appear. The imaginary is filled with "sacrifices," "struggles," "disciplines," "punishments," "control." Bodily rigidity becomes the "jailer" of sexual and aggressive impulses, with bodily expressions often appearing as frozen movements.

The self-destructive behavior of the Social 6 manifests itself through overexertion in the realization of the overvalued external norm or idea. Suicide is unlikely, but if it does appear, it can be classified as "altruistic suicide," which is reached by excessive integration into a group, sacrificing the individual for social purposes, for an ideological or religious cause.

Shame is a feeling that accompanies the Social 6’s life experience as "not being okay" and "not being fit enough." The idea he embraces serves, in short, to hide this shame.

Guilt is a feeling that accompanies the Social 6, and with it goes not only the fear of punishment but also resentment in the face of "shoulds" and introjected, self-imposed or externally imposed expectations. The Gestaltists S. and A. Ginger define retroflexion as "a permanent masochistic inhibition of drives, or, on the contrary, an exacerbation of narcissistic satisfactions," considering guilt not as an unexpressed and projected resentment, as F. Perls maintained, but as a feeling of retroflection.

After the projections of the superego (self-accusation) and of the id (impulses not accepted) accusing others with claims of self-exculpation, we find previous introjections, which are the basis of the feeling of guilt. To the extent that we are capable of detecting these introjects that give rise to guilt, and of directing the anger, frustration, and pain outward, making the appropriate contact, the retroflection of these feelings that accompany guilt will no longer be necessary.

Compulsion also accompanies the Social 6. In it, the person tends to go directly from the sensation of need to the stage of action, skipping two steps: awareness or consciousness, and energization or mobilization. This creates an immediate or impulsive pattern of action. Also, in the compulsive act, the functions of contact and assimilation or realization, as well as the withdrawal time to integrate the experience, are reduced and avoided, preventing the subject from learning from what has been experienced.

The feeling of inferiority arises from the experience of never being valid enough for the expectations of the parents. The norms and duties imposed by them in an authoritarian and even tyrannical way are never satisfied, nor are achievements recognized or acknowledged.

Good and bad are the parental judgments that help the child to value himself and his behavior. The love and approval of the parents are his guarantees of security. By not obtaining them, this lack of appreciation and the anxiety it entails will lead him to create within himself an ideal self that responds to the paternal demands to try to deserve his recognition.

This internalized father figure will be as demanding, cold, and tyrannical as his experience of parents, continuing within himself, disqualifying and devaluing everything he does. The complex is thus fixed, and the conviction of invalidity is reaffirmed once again by this internal father.

All this is accompanied by fear of hostility from the parents (for not doing things the way they want), which they try to avoid by hiding, hiding from them.