I have a friend who used to get “hangry” all the time. If you’re not familiar with that term, hangry is a portmanteau of “hungry” and “angry”—and I’m sure we are all familiar with that irritability that often comes at lunch time.
One day he said to me, “I was doing my devotions this morning... and I think I figured out why I get hangry all the time.”
“Do tell,” I said, offering him a biscuit. He accepted.
“God showed me that I actually struggle with the spirit of anger, and I’ve just been using food to cover it up.”
I paused, pondering on his profound insight, before finally responding, “I’m glad you’re eating that biscuit.”
We rarely consider the various things we use as sedatives, painkillers, and stimulants just to avoid confronting uncomfortable emotions, impulses, and truths. The food we eat to soothe the pang of hunger is just one example of things we can binge on to smother the pang of conscience. Other common numbing agents include social media, TV, video games, even shopping.
There are sneaky ones too. Busyness can be a subconscious trap where we pile on work or errands so there’s no time to sit with ourselves in reflection. Even exercise can double as an escape, pushing the body to outrun the mind. None of these activities are inherently bad, but they can easily be used as distractions from a deeper problem.
Psychotherapy and many spiritual traditions recognize this tendency. They understand that unhealthy behaviors often stem from deeper, unseen problems, and that addressing the root cause is crucial for resolving those behaviors.
It’s currently the season of Lent in the Christian calendar, and it offers a framework for this kind of self-examination. It’s the time when devouts engage in a form of fasting for forty days leading up to Easter. Traditions differ in which days count in the forty (e.g. some don’t include Sundays) and in exactly what participants fast from. Very traditional groups focus on fasting from meals (even water). More commonly, people abstain from something they sense they have a dependency on, such as sugar, social media, and Netflix, for the sake of focusing on God.
But the core idea is: Christians observe Lent to meditate on Christ’s suffering leading up to the cross and his eventual death. (Meditating on death is a strange thing to the modern mind, but it’s importance is cross-culturally recognized)
But fasting does so much more than just remind us of hunger, humility, and spiritual needs. When we fast, we intentionally remove something we’re inclined to use to anesthetize emotional pain, fulfill a desire, or meet a need. And when we do that, what usually happens is things start bubbling to the surface. Deep frustrations, cravings, lusts, anxieties, and everything you’ve suppressed come rearing their ugly heads. Carl Jung would call this the emergence of the shadow.
You can easily experiment with this right now: the next time you feel the urge to pick up your phone, turn on the TV, eat a snack, or do anything else to distract yourself… stop. Sit in the discomfort, and watch what happens.
Very quickly, the pain will become unbearable. Your mind will start screaming, your nerves will writhe in agony. You crave something—anything!—to soothe yourself. And you will grow irritable, restless, maybe even depressed. And you wonder what the whole point of this experiment is anyway...
And that’s the point. This is why confronting the shadow is so difficult—but also why it is so transformative. The hidden mess within must be brought to the light of consciousness if it is to be transformed.
Now, you might say, “Why do this at all? As long as I can keep the shadow dormant, I’ll be fine.” But this is a dangerous illusion. The shadow is never truly dormant; it merely operates subconsciously. Jung argued that suppressed energies will inevitably manifest in other areas of life where it will cause more hurt (think self-sabotage, emotional outbursts, and susceptibility to harmful behaviors).
In short, if you don’t master your shadow, it will master you. The Christians understand this when they say that the extent of our depravity is beyond our initial comprehension, and that sin not dealt with is sin that controls us.
But the story of Christ also illustrates the importance and power of confronting the mess within. Christ voluntarily embraced the darkness, into death and hell, because that is the pathway to new life. Similarly, we have undeniable evidence that people who confront the worst parts of themselves often emerge the other side having become the best versions of themselves. This is the story Christians meditate on during Easter, and I’m sure we all can learn something from it as well.
Stay purposeful.
– Nathanael
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