“The angrier you are at your partner, the more likely you are to psychologically split. All of a sudden, when they do something you don’t like, they’re the worst person in the world - this person that you formerly loved. Idealization turns to demonization. They’re two sides of the same process.

We also see this with a teacher we put on a pedestal: we see them as completely good, then they disappoint us or say something we disagree with, and suddenly that person becomes completely bad, and everything good about them disappears.

From a Jungian perspective, we can understand this through shadow projection, where we initially project our golden shadow, our positive qualities, onto someone and we put them on a pedestal.

But then when that person disappoints us or fails to live up to that idealized image we have of them, the pendulum swings in the opposite direction. Now we are projecting our negative shadow onto them, and we need to tear them down, when this person often hasn’t changed at all. We have changed our projection and our perception of them.

To be psychologically mature means developing that capacity to recognize that several things can be true at the same time; someone can be wrong about one thing and right about another. A person can do something hurtful to us and still have positive qualities.

This doesn’t mean we abandon our discernment or we pretend everything is relative. It means that we can make clear distinctions without reducing the complexity of reality to overly simplistic binary categories.

Discernment requires the capacity to hold these opposites in mind without immediately feeling the need to identify with one side and reject the other.

Shadow work is essential for recognizing that you have good and bad qualities, as do the people around you, and to not automatically divide people into good or evil, the right side of history, the wrong side of history, or whatever the label is.”


-Laura Matsue

Episode 182 – Why We Don’t Understand Each Other: The Confusion of Tongues

Listen to this podcast episode by clicking the link below or by searching Cosmic Matrix on iTunes, Spotify, or any other podcast streamer. https://veilofreality.com/2026/09/17/why-we-dont-understand-each-other-the-confusion-of-tongues-tcm-182-part-1

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