Shadow and Responsibility in Video Games

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I like to allow my shadow to express itself through games. I think it is a somewhat healthy way to learn about your shadow side without causing much pain or distortion for self and other-selves.

In my current dungeons and dragons game (not a videogame, but same idea I think) I play as a evil little goblin with a gun. He's sly, sarcastic, conniving and power-hungry and I admit, I have a lot of fun with the little guy . Sometimes I surprise myself with my bloodthirstiness and capacity for evil plots in the game, which is interesting to me, because it's a side of my personality that I suppress most of the time. I see at as a learning experience, because I think it's important to integrate and understand all portions of the self.

One thing that really surprised me after I started playing as him is that I started getting this little voice in my head that would criticize me and lead me to become more argumentative and selfish in my dealings with others. I meditated and did a lot of work to balance that shadow aspect and in the process I asked it for it's name. The name it gave me was Gu'ug which I thought was weird until I realized that my goblin character was named Gug

Reintegrating that part of myself was actually quite helpful, as it brought out a part of me that doesn't allow itself to get pushed around and isn't afraid to voice it's opinions (which has always been a big problem for me).