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Comment by Trasmatta | Hacker News Reader

From Carl Jung:

> By not being aware of having a shadow, you declare a part of your personality to be non-existent. Then it enters the kingdom of the non-existent, which swells up and takes on enormous proportions…If you get rid of qualities you don’t like by denying them, you become more and more unaware of what you are, you declare yourself more and more non-existent, and your devils will grow fatter and fatter.

You can't "optimism away" the "negative" emotions. You just bury them, but they continue to live in your system, and find their own ways out eventually.

It's easy to fall into the trap of endless negativity. It's also easy to fall into the trap of toxic positivity, where you refuse to process pain or the "negative" because you're trying so hard to force the positive.

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Bertie Wooster

> “I never actually knew I had an unconscious mind, but I suppose I must have done all along, without realising it.”

If you’re optimistic then you don’t have negative emotions or at least fewer of them.

Nobody is advocating denying negative things, optimism is not letting them grow in the first place.

> If you’re optimistic then you don’t have negative emotions

You cannot totally rid yourself of these emotions.

Jung's point is that the negative emotions are there, just hidden from view. I actually think that "negative" is inaccurate, to be honest. Jung referring to it as the Shadow works better. These emotions aren't evil demons that should be expunged at the altar of optimism. They're parts of ourselves that need to be integrated.

Agreed, but with combative therapy you can change how you respond to them.

The same negative thing can happen to two people and you might get entirely different emotions as a result.

The way that people “process” external events can have a large impact on the emotions that result.

> You can't "optimism away" the "negative" emotions. You just bury them, but they continue to live in your system, and find their own ways out eventually.

That means you're doing it wrong.

Sadness, anger, grief, loneliness, fear, these are all emotions that are part of being human, and they don't just go away (they just get buried or bypassed).

They're also emotions that contribute to the richness of being human, and shouldn't go away. Instead they should be understood and integrated into the whole.

What I know for sure is that shallow dismissals are wrong.

I believe I've heard that there are people who make a living by, among other things, showing how to do it right.

People make a living showing how to do astrology right.

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