You Don’t Have to Keep Fighting Your Ego
All the parts
Stroll down any direction of Self Development Boulevard and you’re sure to encounter the concept of ego. Your ego is:
overly concerned with past & future
narcissistic
insecure
insatiable
After explaining how to identify the ego, the follow-up advice usually centers around how to conquer it, banish it, and cleanse yourself from it.
Understanding ourselves as having an ego that is the antithesis of our true self can relieve a lot of pressure and self-judgment. “I didn’t do that bad thing, that was my ego.” “My ego feels threatened by failure. But the real me knows it’ll be OK.”
But when viewing ourselves as having just two parts, we set them in opposition to one another, which guarantees struggle. The defiance to “not let my Ego control me” blocks the path towards acceptance, where the wounds that necessitate the Ego can be healed.
Seeing All The Parts
Finding a way to accept all aspects of yourself can counterbalance the extremes that come with the Ego vs True Self battle. We are a collection of parts or personalities, each of which is important and worthy of empathy. Although no parts are bad, some become entrenched in detrimental roles. An overdeveloped intellectual part can reason its way out of any situation that might expose emotional pain (and growth). (…🙋♂️)
Instead of having to shame or remove a part, this model allows us to listen to it. For example, an addict doesn’t have to solely focus on developing willpower but can get to know the addicted part’s value. The addicted part might explain how it protects from the pain that seems too difficult to deal with. Once that protective part feels heard and valued, it might feel safe to loosen its control.
There’s a lot more to this approach (Internal Family System), but the takeaway here is that developing a tolerance for all aspects of yourself presents growth opportunities that the binary Ego vs Self model cannot.
Having Both
The Ego model is an accessible and helpful way of understanding ourselves, and one that doesn’t need to be abandoned. Trying to do that would only be a sneaky form of binary thinking anyway 😉. But if we tire from fighting battles with ourselves, we can move forward by listening to all our inauthentic imperfections, empathizing with them, and negotiating change.
Just because Starbucks isn’t the best coffee doesn’t mean we have to spit it out or fasten a french press to our belt. The accessibility and imperfection of Starbucks, much like the ego, actually lead the way to higher quality options and deeper states of enlightenment.
Or maybe I’ve just had too much coffee today.
For the brave: What’s a part of yourself that has gotten really strong lately?
