The hero myth: perhaps the most human story there is
There is a story you know in one form or another. A protagonist – man or woman – lives inside something that resembles a comfort zone: a city with a wall around it, a garden with a fence. As long as they stay inside, everything is fine. Then something stirs. It feels uncomfortable, so they try to push it away, ignore it, carry on. But it grows louder and louder – up to the point where it can no longer be pushed away. And with that, the adventure begins: the protagonist has to leave the safe space and venture into the dark forest – the classic image for the unknown. Somewhere in there waits a cave or a castle, often guarded by a dragon. The dragon has to be fought, the treasure has to be won – and as a consequence of that fight, the hero transforms. Then they return, changed.
This story has been told for thousands of years, in countless variations – and that is no accident. It isn't mere fiction; it puts its finger on something that is real for us: in our lives, too, there is a safe space, an unknown – and something we turn into a dragon. We never quite know what's waiting out there; it might be only a little stressful, it might feel like catastrophe. And there are moments – a calling, a need, a suffering – in which we have to leave that safe space.
Jung: the shadow and individuation
Carl Gustav Jung, a depth psychologist, made a decisive contribution to how we understand this story. For Jung, there is something he calls the shadow: everything about ourselves that we don't like, that we suppress – truths we don't want to see, parts of ourselves we don't allow to be expressed. The image is meant quite literally: you can see your own shadow if you turn your head – but normally it sits behind you, out of sight. And that is exactly where we keep the parts of ourselves we would rather not know about at all.
Jung's reading of the hero myth is this: when the hero ventures out and fights the monster in the cave, it is rarely about a real task in the outside world. What we encounter out there is our own shadow – the parts of ourselves that we have excluded.
The process of meeting those parts and integrating them is what Jung calls individuation. And here lies a point that is easily missed: individuation is not about becoming stronger. Not better, not faster, not more efficient. Individuation is about becoming more whole. The excluded parts belong to you either way – not looking at them doesn't make them any less real. Whoever integrates them, makes them their own again, hasn't gained anything new in the end. They have stopped excluding parts of themselves.
An example: anger that was never allowed
Many people have difficulty expressing anger. Often it looks like this: swallow it, push it down, swallow again – until at some point a trigger comes and all of it rises at once, in one great wave. And afterwards: shame.
From the perspective of individuation, we would say: anger is not integrated in this person. Perhaps showing anger used to carry a high price – the people around them couldn't hold it, couldn't stay present when someone was angry, and shut it down immediately: Don't do that. That's not okay. The lesson learned: anger must not be shown. So it went into the shadow – where it continues to exist, just without expression.
The decisive point: anger itself is not the problem – and neither is expressing it. It helps to distinguish two forms of aggression. Reactive aggression protects boundaries: if someone oversteps mine, anger is how I make clear that a boundary exists. A real "no" means: if you keep doing what you're doing, there will be consequences you don't want. That isn't malevolent – that is someone taking care of themselves. Destructive aggression is something else: its goal is not to protect anything, but simply to cause as much damage as possible.
Individuation, in this example, would mean building a relationship with your own anger. Being allowed to be angry without feeling ashamed of it – and finding an outlet that is neither harmful nor unhealthy. The result is not a stronger person. It is a more whole one. What is there was there before, too – the difference is that it is now allowed to belong.
Anxiety as a compass
In the first article, anxiety was a signal: it guards what is meaningful to you. Jung's perspective takes it one step further. Anxiety doesn't just show you that something matters – it gives you a direction.
"What you most need to find will be found where you least want to look." – a thought that goes back to Jung.
To put this in its proper frame: anxiety is, first of all, an emotion with a job – it signals danger. It is what makes you jump away from an oncoming car, and what makes you tense up when you're climbing high in a tree. That is good, and nothing about it needs fixing. But then there are the recurring fears – the ones that shape your life, narrow it, quietly co-author your decisions. If Jung is right, that is exactly where it's worth looking. Because that is where the treasure lies: the thing you would most need to learn in order to deal with whatever you are battling.
The misunderstanding: it's not about getting stronger
The hero myth is often misheard as a success story: go out, be tough, be disciplined, have willpower – and come back stronger. But that isn't what happens there. The treasure the hero brings home isn't the gold, and it isn't the sword. It is that the fight changes them. The person who walks into the experience is not the same person who walks out on the other side.
And that hurts. Not only because it is painful in the moment – but because parts of the old self that no longer serve have to die in the process. What comes out on the other side is not better, stronger or faster. It is more whole. Letting go of parts of yourself that no longer serve you genuinely hurts. And yet this seems to be the central human story – it ran through all the lives lived before us, and it will run through the ones after.
What this means in the end
If you face your anxiety – if you confront, one way or another – you don't become stronger. You become more whole.
So whenever we deal with doubt, uncertainty, nervousness, tension, even anxiety: the point is not to stop having these feelings. Not to control them. Not to become fearless – that is nothing you want to be. What we want is to be able to hold the feeling, to listen to it, to go where it points – and to learn what is there for us to learn.
Perhaps that is the story – the adventure – of your life: to live your own hero myth, to fight your own dragons, and to keep changing as a consequence. Not aimlessly, but toward becoming ever more of who you were meant to become. Ever more yourself – only more whole.