How Pullman’s "His Dark Materials" Taught Me to Choose Myself
I never thought my brain and body were two separate beings with different needs—until I watched His Dark Materials.
Have you ever watched a movie “Golden Compass?” What about the HBO show “His Dark Materials?”
Context: they're both set in the alternative world from Pullman's book trilogy “His Dark Materials.” In that world, all humans’ souls are separated from their bodies, manifesting as animal companions called daemons (not demons!).
People and their daemons appear to be separate creatures, yet they are whole: a human cannot live without a daemon and vice versa.
In a way, it’s not a “soul” that got separated, but rather Freud’s id (pure subconscious driven by instincts). The daemon—the companion animal—is literally the animalistic part of identity.
You see different characters interacting with their daemons differently throughout the story in both the movie or the TV show.
The Two of Me
When I got into therapy, it became obvious that I practically had two different people living inside of me. One is my rational self: she does what she thinks is right and rational, she wants to present herself in a certain way, and she has no time for nonsense. Another one is my subconscious self, which is in charge of my dreams, subconscious beliefs, mindset limitations and... my body.
Here are more words to describe this split: ego/superego for the rational side, id/inner child/shadow self for the subconscious side.
And in my case, these two selves were NOT friends.
Here’s an example: I started therapy because I was losing my mind over a heart-wrenching breakup. Not only was it with a man whom I considered to be “the one that got away,” but we also worked together. I felt bad about leaving his project after just two months: it was important for my portfolio, plus, no one on his team knew we were dating.
So we kept working together, I kept seeing him on calls, and my brain felt set on fire for every hour of the day.
Shortly after the breakup, intense mood swings took over my life: one moment I felt like I was over him, and the next I cried at a bus stop.
I found my therapist by accident, in the comments on Instagram. We set up a call and I started crying right away. “It looks like you’re in a lot of pain from seeing him all the time,” she said.
‘I know,’ I sobbed, ‘But I can’t just walk away.’
‘Why not?’
‘Well, it’s really awkward. I feel bad quitting, feel bad for his business partners. Also, I don’t want to be the person who’s not over her ex-boyfriend.’
‘And who is this person? The person who’s not over her ex-boyfriend?’
‘She’s pathetic. I don’t want to be her. I want to be chill and mature. Can you just tell me what to do so that I stop caring so much about it?’
She didn’t teach me how to stop caring.
But with more calls, she gently pointed out that there were two people inside of me:
the superego who had an idea of how she wanted to present herself to the world (‘chill and mature’)
and the inner me who was losing her goddamn mind because the man who hurt her, triggered her, and broke up with her inhabited her little Zoom window twice a week, her DMs, and every other thought she had—all while expecting her to act cool and collected.
Four years later I see that I tortured my inner self and didn’t even know it.
I just thought there was something fundamentally flawed about me because I couldn’t control my feelings.
Mind vs. Body
I see the daemons in Pullman’s books as a metaphor for our subconscious/inner self that is emotionally intelligent but is separate from our rational self.
But the subconscious also affects our bodies in mysterious ways. Psychosomatic pains, stored trauma, the necessity to close the stress cycle through workouts and breathwork all stem from this connection.
Our bodies are highly responsive to how our brain reacts to the outside world—both consciously and subconsciously.
So if you think about it, your subconscious, which manifests in your body, IS your daemon.
Your body reacts to stress before you realize you’re stressed,
it gets alert before your brain recognizes the danger
and gives you a “gut feeling” before your rational mind can fully establish what’s wrong.
How Do You Treat Your Daemon?
In “His Dark Materials',” Lyra, a teenage girl, takes good care of her daemon Pantalaimon; even if they don’t always agree, they always have each other’s back.
While Mrs. Coulter, a woman who’s cold and rational to the point where she appears almost inhumane, is very cross with her golden monkey daemon.
Despite all daemons being capable of human speech, her daemon never talks to her—potentially because she keeps him in fear, but even if he would, she’d never listen.
When they end up in the city where specters—ghosts—attack humans with daemons and feed on their fears and emotions, she manages to suppress her feelings to the point where they don’t notice her, considering her something other than a human being.
Isn’t that the corporate dream? The employee with self-control that stops them from feeling things. A robot who’s never affected by personal matters at work.
I began imagining my body/my subconscious like a little animal, unable to communicate with me; perhaps a little dog or a fennec fox?
This really moved the needle for me: how could a torture an animal? I didn’t want to be Mrs. Coulter slapping her golden monkey, forcing him to do things he feared. So I had to find the new way: offer my daemon comfort and shield it from harm if possible.
The Inner Daemon Child
With progress in therapy, forcing me to say the uncomfortable truth over and over to my therapist, I learned much more about my daemon’s (aka my own) personality. She was actually very shy (unlike my regular loud self), craved love, and feared being judged.
This knowledge didn’t come to me for free: in our sessions, I shared internal thoughts, embarrassing fantasies, buried resentment and pain, and straight-up cruel judgments of other people—things that made my cheeks burn, things that made my rational self hate my inner self.
We’re often pressured to be good people, but our secret side equally makes us who we are. No wonder many call it “the shadow self,” scared of a weird alien being who just sits inside them quietly like a virus, waiting to come out and embarrass them in public, ruin their relationship and get them fired.
And the more afraid you are of that side, and the more separated you feel from it, the more destructive it gets when it leaks through the cracks, spills over on a bad day.
My therapist, however, taught me to see it more as an inner child.
Kids are irrational, illogical and at times cruel, but that’s just who they are. Social norms don’t make sense for them yet, and when they’re hurting, they’re ready to either burn the whole world down, or close up completely and never open up to anyone again.
So I learned to interact with a 5 y.o. me.
Most days, when in distress, she’s quietly crying in fear as I often was before morphing into an outgoing extrovert at the age of 12. I learned to grab her tight and promise to have her back.
That’s how my long journey back to myself has started.
What is Real Self-Love?
The lesson for me was choosing to do what I want (or what my daemon wants).
Not what’s “right for me” or admirable or appropriate.
Just do what I want, at least a little, as often as possible.
Here are some things I did throughout the years: turned down opportunities that would make my family proud, ended friendships that made me miserable, embarrassed myself many times when going after something unattainable, and didn’t pursue side projects that showed great promise based on how my body truly felt about them.
And it was glorious—all of it.
But I’m far from perfect; I still choose to be around plenty of people who make my skin crawl and do things I dislike. My ultimate goal is to shed as much unwanted stuff as possible, including limitations shaped by my past experiences.
The Words of Warning
Over a year ago, I quit a job without another one lined up.
I was burned out of my mind. I had severe IBS, started showing signs of depression, and my body was falling apart. My daemon didn’t ask me to get it out of that workplace; it begged on its knees. Recognizing that the survival of my inner self is more important than rationale, I fled.
I don’t advise it, and I don’t recommend it—it was a financially irresponsible decision—but I never regretted it once. Multiple (former) colleagues messaged me soon enough, sharing their own mental health struggles in our toxic workplace. A few quit shortly after.
But that wasn’t the full story.
For months before I quit, my management gaslighted me into believing that I was stressed out for nothing and should simply get through my tasks faster.
I believed them and tried gaslighting myself, and that’s what nearly broke me.
Your body knows the truth. It has thousands of years of genetic code built into it, and it knows how to recognize the danger instinctively. You can try reframing your situation and look at the bright side, but the highest price gets paid when you try to bullshit yourself.
Be kind to your demon, and treat it with respect. Even if you don’t always do what it tells you.
It’ll help in the long run, I promise.
P.S. In case you found this helpful, here are three questions about your daemon if it was a metaphor for your body. You can use them for journaling or just self-reflection in the shower.
What animal is your body/daemon? Or is it your own self?
What is your relationship like?
How well do you understand what it tells you every day?