Dark Impulses

coolhandluke

I wrote the following on another thread regarding knowing if you are in love:

it is in my nature to seek out chaos. i love violence. i like to hurt people. i would like to watch the world burn and hear its screams knowing that im the one that poured the gasoline and lit the match. the idea of it makes me smile. this is my shadow self.
i love people. i love to make them smile. internal peace exported externally is my constant goal. if i can find and champion a cause that i believe in, the day is better. this is my sunny self.
i am in love. funny, the voices from my shadow self are there but calm, docile. i feel them but they dont matter so much and their adgendas don't have any weight in the real of my hands or the imagined world of my thoughts. nothing seems impossible and at the end of the day i feel an inner satisfaction with myself. im not saying that being in love brought these things but the peace from it helped me to see them much easier. the goals that i'd set for myself that seemed unreachable seem like only a matter of time now. the parts of me that dwelled in the shadows find no need to exist there anymore. home is where she is and im content. i expect so much more of myself and i seek out ways to manifest the man that i am inside. the idea of children isn't far off from me but seems like an eventuality instead of a curse or some unimaginable pressure. i think i've loved women before but it was for a reason... to get something to fill some void or to shore up some insecurity about myself, to mask something that i hated about me. now i know that i love this woman for no other reason than that i don't know how not to.

another poster wrote this in response:

Anyone who admits that they "like to hurt people" or would enjoy watching "the world burn and hear its screams" is just sick. I would suggest you seek professional help asap.

Sadly the idea that a shadow self is lost in the context of what is said saddens me. Here is my basis for that thought:

The Shadow, is a psychological term introduced by the late Swiss psychiatrist, Dr. Carl G. Jung. It is everything in us that is unconscious, repressed, undeveloped and denied. These are dark rejected aspects of our being as well as light, so there is positive undeveloped potential in the Shadow that we don’t know about because anything that is unconscious, we don’t know about.

The Shadow is an archetype. And what an archetype simply means is that it is typical in consciousness for everyone. Everyone has a Shadow. This is not something that one or two people have. We all have a Shadow and a confrontation with the Shadow is essential for self awareness. We cannot learn about ourselves if we do not learn about our Shadow so therefore we are going to attract it through the mirrors of other people.

Everyone carries a shadow, and the less it is
embodied in the individual’s conscious life,
the blacker and denser it is.
At all counts, it forms an unconscious snag,
thwarting our most well-meant intentions. — Dr. Carl G. Jung

So with that basis I submit that being aware of who I am is healthy.

str8?so is spaghetti..until you heat it up

I guess the fear lies in whether you would knowingly act on your dark 'shadow' impulses or not?

it is a fear. its why i write, meditate, practice a martial art for discipline... why im not upset about being raised a witness. being raised so made me responsible for my decisions, forward thinking about how my actions affect others. in my life i have had many bad experiences but have only been truly angry twice. both times i walked away, calmed down and returned to a sound mind. i know what is inside me and i face it, daily. i try my best to do a lot of self work at recognizing my potential for good and potential for harm.

honestly, i'm a really gentle person. i think anyone who has met me from the board would say so.

Mary

CHL, I understand that no one has a one-dimensional character....we are all capable of doing good and bad. However, I still found your statement that you "enjoy hurting people", very disturbing. Even when I'm angry or lashing out, I truly cannot say that I would ever "enjoy hurting people" nor do I have any desire to "....watch the world burn and hear its screams knowing that im the one that poured the gasoline and lit the match. the idea of it makes me smile...." Not even in the dark recesses of my mind can I say that watching something so horrific, would "make me smile". That-is-just-sick

i'm a really gentle person. i think anyone who has met me from the board would say so.

And that's why I'm surprised you would write something like this.

coolhandluke

im not saying that it is how i feel Mary. I'm saying that in dark moments I have felt that. There are parts of me that would enjoy suffering... those are the hurt parts, the pained parts, the parts that have suffered. but those parts co-exist with the parts that are overjoyed to be alive, to laugh, to love, to experience wonders of life. not acknowledging them for me is wrong... and ya know? i'm okay with them... all of them. if you've never looked at the news, saw an injustice against a child or wholesale genocide based on skin color or national origin and not felt your blood boil then i'm shocked at you.

coolhandluke

wait wait wait. hold the phone.

Anyone who admits that they "like to hurt people"

so, um.... its not that i think it, but that i admit it? im guessing you just wrote this off the cuff so i'm going to read into it some... the idea then is not that i think dark thoughts or have these impulses but that i admit them? curiouser and curiouser.

one more for you:

And that's why I'm surprised you would write something like this

not think... but write....

Mary

if you've never looked at the news, saw an injustice against a child or wholesale genocide based on skin color or national origin and not felt your blood boil then i'm shocked at you.

Of course I have. The fact that this sort of suffering exists is horrifying. That's why I don't understand why you say you would enjoy hurting people. Maybe I'm reading this wrong.......

Blasty

that's an intersting concept, shadow selves. And thinkinig about it, I have to agree we all have it. Although some of us may be more aware of it then others. For example, we all have a conscience that helps us choose between what we feel is right and wrong. However, sometimes our conscience isn't sharp enough to poke us into a certain course of action, upon which time we have to decide what we want to do. Well, we all have tendencies, things that people would expect us to do, because we choose "A" instead of "B". The idea that we could possibly go either direction, and generally choose A instead of B, alludes to this concept of a shadow self. If you didn't have a shadow self, you wouldn't really even need a conscience, since you never question your own actions. Or at least, this is the way I perceive this concept of shadow self.

It's like the guy doing tech support for you when you call in for help with your computer. He'd probably like to tell you how stupid, crude, and rude you are and ask you to throw your computer away, but he represses that, and does the right thing by being considerate and helpful.

Of course this concept can go both ways, a generally mean person could want to be a better person, but they don't act on it.

yknot

All of us are capable of many dark and twisted things.....

The difference is being able to recognize right and wrong actions that define what is heathly and imbalanced.

BTW my dark impulse......."to take over the world"......sadly I am not joking.

So much can be achieved when you look at life as a game to be played.

Mary

Anyone who admits that they "like to hurt people"

so, um.... its not that i think it, but that i admit it?

Actually, I find both disturbing.........Am I being naive here?? Do the majority of people have such a dark side to them as described by CHL??

Dark Impulses

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