The Shadow as a Mirror: What We See in Other People
Shadow Series 1.2
In my last Musing, I introduced Robert Bly’s idea of the long bag: the invisible bag we gradually create during the first twenty years of our lives, putting into it the parts of ourselves that we learn are unacceptable, inconvenient or simply not wanted. Our anger might go in there. Our ambition, sexuality, creativity, neediness, independence or assertiveness might go in too.
But once we have put these parts of ourselves away, something rather interesting can happen. We can start seeing them in other people.
This is one of the most fascinating aspects of the shadow: what we have disowned in ourselves can become something we notice, judge or react to in someone else. In psychological language, this is called projection. Bly explores this idea through the shadow, and I think it gives us a very useful way of understanding some of our strongest reactions to other people.
Think about somebody who really irritates you. Not somebody who occasionally gets on your nerves, but someone who seems to get under your skin in a way that feels disproportionate. Perhaps they are incredibly confident and you find them unbearably arrogant. Perhaps they are very emotional and you think they are needy. Perhaps they are ambitious and you find them pushy. Perhaps they are spontaneous and you think they are irresponsible. Perhaps they seem to take up an enormous amount of space and you find yourself thinking, Who do they think they are?
Now, before we rush to conclude that this person is actually awful, I want to make something clear. Not every dislike is projection. Sometimes people really are arrogant, selfish, irresponsible or manipulative. We don’t need to turn ourselves into psychological detectives every time someone annoys us. But sometimes the intensity of our reaction is interesting. Why this person? Why does this quality bother me so much? And perhaps the most useful question is: what would happen if I allowed myself a little bit of what they have?
For me, a huge one was a friend who would let me down. She would make a plan with me and then cancel at the last minute, and it used to make me absolutely furious. It was years before I realised that the reason I got so pissed off was because it both hurt me, and I envied her. I put a very high value on commitments. If I had made a commitment to somebody, I felt I couldn’t cancel, even if cancelling would actually have been the best thing for me. I would put the other person’s needs before mine. And eventually I realised something rather uncomfortable: I envied her ability to put herself first. What I had judged as her selfishness contained something I had put in my own long bag: the ability to say, Actually, this doesn’t work for me anymore.
That doesn’t mean her behaviour was necessarily okay. Letting somebody down repeatedly can be hurtful, and I didn’t need to pretend otherwise. But I could separate two things: what she was doing and what her behaviour was stirring up in me. That distinction was incredibly useful.
Imagine someone, let’s call her Betty, who has spent their whole life being the “good girl”. She is considerate, helpful, thoughtful and endlessly available to other people. Along comes Jane, who is much more comfortable saying, “No, I don’t want to do that.” Jane takes care of herself, asks for what she wants and doesn’t seem particularly troubled by disappointing people. Betty might think, She’s so selfish. She’s completely self-centred. Perhaps she is. But perhaps something else is happening too. Perhaps the capacity to consider her own needs has been put into Betty’s shadow bag. She learned that being good means putting everyone else first, and now she is confronted with Jane, somebody who appears to have the freedom she has denied herself.
Or perhaps someone we will call Harry has always been the sensible one. Harry plans everything, thinks ahead and rarely takes a risk. Then he meets Lawrence, somebody who travels spontaneously, changes careers at fifty, starts painting, falls in love unexpectedly or simply says, “I don’t know what’s going to happen, but I’m going to give it a go.” Harry, the sensible person may think, That Lawrence! He’s irresponsible. He hasn’t thought it through. And perhaps he hasn’t. But there may also be a tiny voice underneath in Harry, saying, I wish I could do that.
That is where the shadow becomes really interesting. Sometimes the person who irritates us is living out something we have denied ourselves. Perhaps someone who has spent childhood being told to keep the peace becomes deeply uncomfortable around an assertive person and calls them aggressive when they are actually just holding a boundary. Someone who has learned that being needy is shameful may become particularly irritated by people who openly ask for reassurance: They’re so demanding. Yet underneath might be the quieter recognition: I wish I could ask for what I need.
The shadow can work in the opposite direction too. Sometimes we don’t hate someone. We admire them intensely. We put them on a pedestal. She’s so confident. He’s so creative. I wish I could be like that. This can also be a clue. What we admire in another person may be a quality that exists within us but hasn’t yet been claimed.
Our shadow isn’t simply a collection of terrible qualities. It can contain our gold as well as our difficulties. It can contain the parts of us that were too big, too lively, too ambitious or too different for the environment we grew up in. Perhaps you continually admire creative people while telling yourself, I’m just not creative. Perhaps you are fascinated by confident people while believing that confidence is something other people possess and you don’t. Perhaps you are drawn to people who are free and spontaneous while living a very controlled life. Sometimes what we are admiring is a part of ourselves that is waiting for permission.
But there is an important caution here. Shadow work should not become an excuse for other people’s behaviour. If someone is cruel, we don’t have to decide that our irritation means we secretly want to be cruel. If someone behaves abusively, we don’t need to reclaim their behaviour as our own shadow. And if somebody genuinely is selfish or manipulative, recognising our own projections doesn’t mean we ignore what is actually happening.
The invitation is simply to become curious about our response. We can say, “Their behaviour isn’t okay, and I’m also interested in why it affects me so strongly.” That is a much more interesting question than simply deciding that the other person is the problem.
So perhaps our reactions to other people can become little invitations to investigate ourselves. Not, “They’re doing that, therefore I must secretly be like them,” but rather, “Something about this person has caught my attention. I wonder why?” That question creates curiosity instead of judgement.
The person who irritates you may not be your teacher. They may simply be showing you something about yourself. The person you envy may be carrying something you have put in your bag. And the person you admire enormously may be reminding you of a part of yourself that is waiting to be reclaimed.
Perhaps the shadow is not something we need to get rid of. Perhaps it is a mirror. And every now and then, when we feel that strong reaction to somebody else, we might pause before deciding what it says about them and ask a slightly more uncomfortable, and potentially much more useful, question:
“What might this person be showing me about myself?”
Juliet Grayson
August 2026
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