Why People Who Trigger You Can Be Your Greatest Teachers
Reclaim the gold buried in your shadow
Prefer to listen? Here’s the audio version by Jon:
Do you know someone that just gets under your skin?
Maybe a friend who plays the victim…
a relative who always must be in control…
or someone at work who does the bare minimum and still gets all the praise.
I certainly do, and it wasn’t until I began my psychotherapy training that I discovered why.
In class, there was a student who triggered flashes of pure rage in me, making the volcano inside want to explode. All because he wanted to get praise for his ‘insight’. I couldn’t stand to be in the same room. Other people found him a bit annoying, sure, but nothing close to my reaction.
So, I took it to my therapist, who asked me: “what part of yourself are you denying that is asking to be heard?“
And that was my aha moment. It wasn’t about him. It was about the part of me I had buried.
The part that also wanted to be seen. To be acknowledged. To stand out. The version of me that was 5 years old, that had been made to hide, be quiet, be safe.
And this is the uncomfortable reality: the people who trigger you most often aren’t the real issue. They are holding up a mirror…to something you’re not willing to see in yourself.
This is the heart of what Carl Jung called the shadow, the hidden dark place where everything in us we’ve repressed or denied still lives. Not pushed aside consciously, but buried so deeply we no longer recognise them as our own.
Repression means unconsciously burying parts of us that feel unacceptable. We can’t see them in ourselves, but they often show up as strong emotional reactions to others.
What you reject in others often points to what you’ve abandoned in yourself.
The weight we carry
Poet Robert Bly described the shadow this way: imagine dragging an invisible bag behind you, filled with parts of yourself the world didn’t welcome.
Your anger? Into the bag. ‘Nice girls don’t get angry.’
Your ambition? In it goes. ‘Don’t be pushy.’
Your playfulness, grief, desire: all shoved in, one judgment at a time.
These parts weren’t cast off because they were wrong. They were cast off because expressing them once threatened something vital: belonging, fitting in.
And so, the shadow forms as a survival tactic. If I hide this part of me, I’ll be accepted. I’ll be safe. By adulthood, most have built a polished self, socially acceptable, well-behaved, agreeable.
But the banished parts don’t vanish. They linger in the dark, shaping your choices, your reactions, your relationships.
They leak out sideways: the supportive friend who erupts after one too many drinks or the tireless giver who quietly keeps score.
Why that person annoys you so much
The shadow makes itself known through projection.
It’s when you unconsciously give to someone else a trait or desire you’ve denied in yourself. We do it all the time, without realising it. As Jung says, we encounter the shadow almost always through projection.
How can you tell? Disproportionate emotional reaction.
Jungian psychology likens repression to holding a beach ball underwater. It takes constant psychic energy to keep it down, and eventually, it bursts to the surface.
The intensity of your reaction reveals just how much energy you’re spending keeping that trait or desire submerged.
Someone cuts you off in traffic, you’re annoyed, then it’s gone.
That’s not shadow.
But when a colleague’s very presence fills you with contempt… or when a family member makes your skin crawl just by speaking…
That’s shadow.
Take Sarah. She prides herself on selflessness; volunteers nonstop, never says no, always puts others first.
Then she meets Julia: who’s confident, assertive, unapologetic. Julia protects her time, she asks for what she wants.
Sarah feels immediate, intense resentment. “Julia is so selfish,” she mutters.
This is the shadow talking. Sarah has cut off her own capacity for healthy self-worth, the right to take up space and get her needs met. If she had integrated that part, Julia’s behaviour wouldn’t trigger her so much.
The strong emotional flare-up is the message for Sarah: ‘There’s something here I’ve denied in myself.’
The gold in your shadow
The shadow isn’t just a dark pit of shame or rage. There is the hidden gold, the unclaimed brilliance, silenced creativity, and dormant courage.
Think of someone you deeply admire. Not just someone you like, someone you think is amazing, brilliant.
Now ask yourself: is there a belief under that admiration? Maybe ‘I could never be like that.’
That’s your golden shadow. You wouldn’t see those qualities so clearly in others unless they already lived inside you.
The powerful speaker reflects your unheard voice. The gifted artist shows your stifled creativity. The confident leader mirrors your dormant courage. When you idolise others, you give away your power. When you reclaim those projections, something shifts.
You step up, you start to live as someone who owns that gold, no longer watching from the sidelines.
This is alchemical gold. You put your own gold onto somebody until you’re able to hold it yourself - Robert A Johnson
Beginning shadow work: The 3-2-1 practice
Shadow work is more than recognising what you’ve buried. It’s about reclaiming the lost parts of you and integrating them.
One of the most effective methods is the 3-2-1 Shadow Process, adapted from philosopher Ken Wilber.
Step 1: face it (3rd person)
Start by identifying someone who triggers a strong emotional reaction: irritation, disgust, contempt, envy, obsession. Now write what annoys you about them, in the third person (he, she, they).
Don’t edit. Be honest.
Example: “She’s so attention-seeking. Always needs to be the centre of everything. It’s pathetic how much validation she craves.”
Tip:
Brief irritation? that’s probably just circumstantial.
Repetitive, emotionally charged reactions? That’s shadow.
The stronger your reaction, the deeper the repression.
Step 2: talk to it (2nd person)
Now, shift perspective to talking with this person.
Speak directly using ‘you’ language.
Ask questions like:
“Why are you doing this?”
“What do you want from me?”
Then imagine, and write their response, without editing.
Example: “Why do you need so much attention?”
Response: “Because being invisible feels like I don’t exist…I want to be seen. I want to know I matter.”
Step 3: be it (1st person)
Now take it further. Become the person, or more specifically the part of you they’re reflecting.
Speak from it in the first person (I, me, mine).
Example: “I need attention. I want to be seen. I matter.”
Don’t just write the words: Feel them.
This is where the alchemy begins.
You start reclaiming the parts of yourself you’ve been projecting onto others.
The Invitation
Shadow work isn’t easy. It asks you to face the parts of yourself you’ve spent years avoiding. But it is one of the most powerful ways to reveal the unconscious stories running your life.
Most of your patterns aren’t conscious; they’re inherited, absorbed, or built from early experiences. Shadow work brings these buried beliefs to light.
As Jung said: “Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life, and you will call it fate.”
Brilliant!