the shadow that shaped me
Found the shadow self. He’s messy, complicated, and unapologetically hanging out. Guess I better set him a place at the table.
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My twenties didn’t creep in—they blasted through the door with all the reckless hope of someone who thinks they’ve got the world figured out.
Big dreams, bigger plans.
I came from nothing, but I wasn’t staying there. I wanted to flip my family’s story, rewrite the ending.
Standing at the edge of something huge, my eyes were wide open.
I saw change coming—thought I could touch it.
But life’s funny.
Cosmic jokes, all of them.
I got sucked into this shiny, too-good-to-be-true trap—Quixtar.
Multilevel marketing wrapped in a bow. They’d rebranded from Amway, or as the smart ones called it, Scamway. They promised the moon, but that pitch was rotten at its core.
It wasn’t wealth—it was a ruse.
As disillusioning as this was, getting conned woke me up in ways I didn’t see coming.
In crowded rooms and buzzing workshops, I stumbled onto something bigger than cash.
A hunger.
No, more like a craving—a craving so deep it could swallow galaxies.
Learning became my obsession, eclipsing any short-lived thrill of chasing cash. These weren’t just business crash courses. They were mind-bending shifts, shaping me in ways I never saw coming.
Even as the facade of Quixtar fell away, I didn’t flinch.
I stayed locked in.
What started as a quest for family cashflow morphed into something much bigger. I found fire—an insatiable drive for knowledge. That’s what stuck.
Year after year, I waded through books, drowning in thoughts from minds far beyond my reach. Each one cracked open a new corner of my brain.
No distractions, just me and the words. The kind of quiet that buzzes with ideas.
Slowly, a library took shape.
Every book added a layer, feeding this bottomless need to know more.
Five years in, I was two hundred books deep.
Every one, a step. A breadcrumb on this endless path of discovery.
With every page turned, my journey stretched out before me. From humble beginnings to a horizon that shimmered with possibilities. Ideas became my hideaway, my place to feed that insatiable need for more.
As life rolled on, it threw new titles at me. Each one shifted my course in ways I didn’t expect. Then came my kids—chaos and joy wrapped in tiny bodies.
They didn’t just walk in—they burst onto the scene like a full-blown symphony, every moment a note, every tantrum a shift in tempo.
Was it chaos?
Sure.
But the kind that makes you grin.
Their arrival rewired everything. The quiet hours I once guarded for myself were gone. Now, it’s giggles and nonstop chatter.
The books that used to fly through my hands now gathered dust while I played with bright blocks and stuffed animals.
But don’t get it twisted—I never lost my obsession with learning.
It just took a new form, stretched in a different direction.
I flipped the game. Turned time into a tool, not a trap. Every commute became a classroom on wheels. The hum of the engine mixed with audiobooks dropping knowledge bombs. Breakfast became a time for caffeine and podcasts. Learning while sipping coffee was multitasking at its finest.
And when night crept in, wrapping the world in darkness, I wasn’t done.
Not even close.
That’s when I plunged into the digital abyss of YouTube. Educational videos lined up, each one opening a new door, leading me down a different rabbit hole.
One video after another.
New ideas. New thoughts. A flood of information.
But, funny thing. Even with all this info, something gnawed at me. Like an itch you can’t scratch. It wasn’t enough. I was stockpiling knowledge like it was going out of style, but the pieces didn’t quite click.
It felt like I was building a puzzle, but the picture was missing.
The more I learned, the more I wondered—where was the real change?
All that input, and yet the output…
Flat.
Betrayal hit like a freight train. In my late thirties, I was blindsided by the person I thought was my forever. My fiancée was gone. My anxiety was at full throttle. And somehow, I ended up baring it all on TikTok—messy thoughts, shaky breaths, and everything in between. What started as venting turned into something else, but I wasn’t ready for what came next.
Around the same time, I stumbled across Dr. Nicole LePera on Instagram. Her posts felt like medicine disguised as memes—connecting childhood patterns to grown-up chaos in a way that just clicked.
I devoured her book, How to Do the Work, page by page. It didn’t teach me something entirely new, but it felt like validation—a reminder that healing is a real, tangible thing, not just some abstract, feel-good idea.
But buried in all that wisdom, one little phrase stood out.
Shadow self.
A concept I hadn’t encountered before.
The words lingered like a dare. I didn’t fully understand it, but it planted a question that refused to go away. What was hiding in the parts of me I didn’t want to see?
TikTok’s algorithm must’ve read my mind because suddenly, shadow work videos were all over my feed. Like the universe had slid me a playlist.
Each video peeled back a little more, poking at the uncomfortable bits I’d tucked away. It was addictive. Pandora’s box with a play button.
I wanted more.
YouTube became my next rabbit hole.
That’s when I discovered old university lectures by Jordan Peterson. His words hit like a lightning strike—sharp, relentless, and weirdly comforting.
Every lecture was another breadcrumb, pulling me deeper into myself.
I wasn’t just watching; I was unraveling.
This wasn’t just content. It was excavation. A search for the parts of me I’d locked away without even realizing it. And somewhere in the chaos of algorithms, old ideas, and personal wreckage—I found something I didn’t expect.
Me.
The road ahead buzzed.
Not a light hum—a full-on static charge under my skin.
With no map, no GPS, just a gut feeling pulling me forward.
Instinct kicked in.
Curiosity took the wheel.
I wasn’t flipping through a few psychology books for fun. Nah, this was a headfirst plunge into the weird jungle of human consciousness.
No shortcuts. No easy answers.
Just dense forests of thought, tangled motives, and emotions hiding in the underbrush, waiting to ambush. And honestly, I was ready to get lost.
Analytical psychology hit first—sharp and steady, like a compass spinning back to true north. Not some feel-good theory but a toolset. A way to pry open the strange gears running our everyday actions.
Growth, awareness, all that self-improvement jazz—it started to click. Like puzzle pieces falling into place, only the picture kept shifting the more I stared.
And then came Jung.
Boom. The door blew off its hinges.
Archetypes. Symbols. The collective unconscious.
His take on the shadow self was all brutal, yet needed. The kind of truth you dodge until it punches you in the teeth. This wasn’t about collecting knowledge—it was about staring down the parts of myself I spent years pretending weren’t there.
But Jung was just the warm-up act.
The big names rolled in like a rogue wave.
Skinner, laying bare how rewards yank our strings without us even noticing.
Piaget and Erikson, sketching out how we stumble through life, stage by messy stage.
Maslow’s pyramid, yeah, that smug stack of needs, pointing the way to self-actualization like a road sign to someplace you never quite reach.
And Rogers—reminding me that real healing doesn’t come wrapped in applause. It starts quietly, with the kind of acceptance you give yourself when no one’s looking.
Each thinker held a shard of the truth.
Like spinning a crystal under the sun, every angle bent the light differently. One theory dragged out shadows; another illuminated them. Every framework cracked open my understanding a little more, scattering familiar ideas into new, unsettling shapes.
But here’s the thing…
There’s no blueprint for this ride. No step-by-step guide to the self.
Just a mess of jagged edges and unexpected clarity. It’s layers—some sharp, some smooth, some that cut deep when you’re not careful.
And the only way through is to keep going.
Piece by piece.
Soon enough, life yanked me sideways, straight into the depths of Eastern thought. No polite nudge. More like a cosmic hand on my back, shoving me toward wisdom wrapped in strange metaphors and ancient paradoxes.
These weren’t just lofty ideas drifting by like incense smoke.
No, they moved like rivers—each with its own beat, carving deeper into the mind’s murky waters. Every one of them promised a peek into the shadow I was hell-bent on charting, the twisted maze I couldn’t resist mapping out.
Zen hit first. Quiet, sneaky.
Like a breeze rearranging the room without touching a damn thing.
No rituals, no robes, no big “aha” moments.
It didn’t teach me—just pointed inward.
Toward stillness. Toward noticing without judging.
Sitting there felt like staring into water so still it reflected every crack, every scar, without filter or flattery. No rush, no noise. Just you, naked under the weight of your own reflection.
And let me tell you, sitting with yourself like that is no picnic.
Then Daoism barged in and flipped the script.
No binaries. No “this or that.”
Just opposites waltzing together—yin and yang, chaos dancing with calm, shadow cozying up to light.
Daoism didn’t ask me to fix anything.
Just flow.
It smirked and said, Stop fighting. Move with it. And suddenly, my shadow wasn’t a problem to solve. It was just... hanging out.
Waiting for me to stop freaking out and sit beside it.
Other traditions—Hinduism, Jainism, Sikhism, Confucianism—brought their own vibes. Some got deep into karmic loops, others shared wisdom about breaking free.
But the consistent theme was balance.
Inner peace.
None of it was fast or flashy.
It took its sweet time, each philosophy another slow spark in the kindling. The kind of lessons that sneak up on you—small at first, until they’re too big to ignore.
Then mythology stepped in, dragging old stories with it.
Dusty, ancient things, crammed with truths disguised as monsters.
The Hydra made an entrance—heads sprouting faster than you can kill them.
One down, two more take its place. A classic.
That one hit hard: demons don’t just vanish on command.
You gotta wrestle with them. Face them. Every. Single. Time.
Then came Jekyll and Hyde.
That story was brutal. It was not just good vs. evil. It nailed the truth—how we split ourselves, mask the mess, try to stuff what we don’t like deep down.
But it’s all still there.
Both sides. Side by side, whether you want them or not.
That story left me with one uncomfortable question: How much Hyde is hiding behind the parts I let the world see?
And then Prometheus showed up.
Fire in hand. A gift, sure, but dangerous as hell.
His myth wasn’t just about light—it was a warning. Shine that light too bright and you’ll see things you wish you hadn’t.
But hey, that’s the trade-off.
You want knowledge, then be ready to burn a little.
Every story, every idea, clicked into place. A collage—philosophy, myth, psychology—all swirling together, revealing more than I’d bargained for.
Layer by jagged layer.
By the time it was done I was no longer the same.
The shadow self was not a monster anymore.
It was just... there.
A little wild. A little broken. Part of the whole messy picture.
And that was the breakthrough: self-acceptance isn’t about scrubbing out the dirt. It’s about sitting with it. Letting the ugly parts breathe.
Days bled into each other, and somewhere along the way, I added mirror work to my daily rhythm. Just me, a reflection, and the uncomfortable silence between us.
I’d stand there, locking eyes with myself, peeling back the layers that kept the shadows hidden behind the mask I wore.
No pretense. No small talk.
Just me—face-to-face with the parts I avoided for years.
It felt strange at first.
Almost too simple to matter.
But it wasn’t.
It was like sneaking into a room you thought was empty, only to find parts of yourself sitting there, waiting. Each session became a quiet unraveling. The kind of conversation that doesn’t need words but cuts deeper than any you’ve had with another person.
There’s one session that clings to me.
Like it just happened.
Afternoon sunlight filtered through the blinds, soft and indifferent. I looked in the mirror, expecting the usual face—confident, put-together, the guy people listened to when he spoke. But what stared back wasn’t that man. It wasn’t the polished persona I’d built.
It was a child. Small. Fragile. Scared.
He looked like he’d been waiting forever, lost in the noise, begging for someone to notice. And in that moment, I did.
The walls I’d built around my emotions didn’t just crack—they crumbled.
My throat tightened. My chest caved.
The tears came hard, fast, relentless. They weren’t polite tears, either. They were messy, ugly—years of unspoken pain crashing down like a dam finally giving out.
I cried for him—the little boy who never felt seen.
I cried for the young man who thought success might finally buy him peace.
I cried for the version of me standing there in that mirror, exhausted from carrying things that were never his to hold.
It wasn’t just sadness pouring out—it was everything.
Grief. Regret. Relief.
A lifetime of emotions squeezed into those few minutes.
It hit me like standing under a waterfall, the weight of the water knocking the air from my lungs, but somehow making it easier to breathe.
And in the middle of that flood, something unexpected arrived: understanding.
Not the kind you find in books or conversations, but the kind that sneaks up on you when you finally stop running from yourself. The mirror wasn’t just showing me a reflection—it was a reunion. A meeting between who I’d become and the parts I tried to bury along the way.
The tears stopped eventually, but the shift stayed.
There was no going back from that moment. Each wave of emotion had carved a deeper channel into my awareness, making room for a truth I couldn’t ignore: Every part of me—light, shadow, fear, strength—belonged.
The reflection didn’t change that day.
I did.
—Ryan Puusaari
P.S. Your time and engagement with this edition mean a lot. Every reader adds value to our journey together. Thank you for being here!
P.P.S. What are the traits you dislike in others? Often, they are a mirror to the parts of your shadow self. How can acknowledging this change your perspective?
Healing Thoughts — A Journey of Reflection, Poetry, and Healing, Made Possible by You
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Each page is a step toward healing, filled with wisdom, introspection, and emotional insight to guide you on your personal journey.
This book is more than just words—it’s our story.
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