HEALTHY EGOISM
15 NOVEMBER 2022 (16 MIN READ)
We all hear the word, “ego,” stated over and over again, all usually associating it with evil and how we should run away from it. This societal relationship with the ego is due to its popular definition: a person’s sense of self-importance. Thus, when we label people with big egos, it’s usually due to the fact that they are displaying an extreme grandiosity, where they act as if they are better than everyone else. And since being around these sorts of people can feel so demeaning and painful, we try our best to criticize and distance ourselves from this kind of egoism. However, this societal understanding of the ego is quite surface level and leaves us unable to understand its true connotation. And since we cannot fully understand our egos, it makes sense that we have a hard time taming them as a culture. In my eyes, without getting too complicated, the ego can be defined as this: a protective barrier of conscious analysis between a person and the present moment. In other words, our egos dictate how we relate to the happenings around us, but going deeper, how we dictate this conscious interaction is dependent on our core wounds, hence why I use the words “protective barrier.”
As human beings, we do everything we can to not feel our biggest wounds, which often stem from adverse childhood experiences. In order to not have to feel the wounds, we develop protective thoughts that allow us to avoid the pain, such as adopting the hyper-masculine thoughts of a tough guy to not have to feel the trauma from childhood abuse, using thoughts like “I’m too tough for this pain,” as a vehicle to not feel it. However, left untamed, these protective thoughts start attempting to protect us from ALL kinds of pain—as you can probably notice by how the speed of your thoughts increase the more you suffer—creating an identity built off of avoiding all sorts of pain, which is problematic since pain requires witnessing and releasing to heal. Quite interestingly, those who display the stereotypical large egos, filled with grandiosity and insufferable attitudes, are just the ones who are trying their best to hide something that brings up uncomfortable feelings, using the thoughts of self-importance to avoid the internal terror.
Since we all possess an ego that attempts to guide us away from suffering by using protective thoughts, potentially landing us in a place of dangerous self-repression and unlikeability, it serves us well to build a better relationship with this protective barrier. To do so, we must first figure out the consequences of an undisciplined ego to build awareness, work our way backwards from there, and arrive at an understanding of what a healthy ego looks like, as well as how to step into that reality of healthy egoism ourselves.
AN UNHEALTHY EGO
To eventually arrive at an understanding of a healthy ego, it’s imperative to first unpack everything a healthy ego is not. An unhealthy ego has three layers: combatting reality, victimhood, and grandiosity. Portraying how these qualities create the unhealthy ego, if you imagine a circle divided into three internal parts, (the circle as a whole representing the sum of the unhealthy ego), the core of it would be combatting reality, while victimhood goes over that circle, and grandiosity over that one. What this visualized graphic is trying to convey is that at the core of any expression of an unhealthy ego is a need to combat reality, which feeds the expressions of victimhood and grandiosity. (Other expressions exist, in my eyes these are just the most common, as well as most damaging ones). In terms of what an ego that combats reality looks like, put succinctly, it appears as repeated thoughts that allow one to deflect and numb themselves from the suffering reality may cause. In action, this looks like having someone break your heart and using thoughts like, “their loss,” or, “I was too good for them,” to deflect from the emotional terror arising in one’s body. Funnily enough, this habit can transfer down to mundane everyday troubles, such as telling yourself you’re not tired when you’re exhausted, or convincing yourself you’re not that hungry when in reality, you are starving and operating off of fumes. This perpetual habit that all of us possess, or have possessed, to protect ourselves from emotional pain may seem innocent and a necessity to survive in this world of suffering. However, if this mental strategy is left unchecked, then it will inevitably lead to bouts of serious victimhood or grandiosity.
With regard to victimhood, one of the most popular thought patterns humans use to not feel their pain is to place blame of the expulsion of pain in their system on something or somebody else. And since our brains love to repeat the thoughts we feed it, once we use this coping strategy frequently, it becomes a wired path of neurology that we use to soothe ourselves. In today’s day and age, a popular example is people blaming their emotional triggers on the language of somebody else, using that as an excuse to project all the anger and hatred in their system onto the person they blame for it. In its extreme form, victimhood removes all responsibility over one’s pain and hands it to anyone or anything who one believes caused it. Portraying this habit vividly, consider the constant blame of all of one’s negative feelings on a certain politician. When we reside in this form of thinking, we land ourselves under complete egoistic control, in the sense of having our accusatory thoughts distract us from feeling our pain.
At this moment, you may be thinking that this does not make complete sense, as you are still feeling a certain emotion if you are blaming it on someone else, but to that I say: are you really feeling it? To truly feel something, there has to be a degree of identification with the sensation and a willingness to be with it. If you constantly blame a negative sensation on an external situation, then this reflexive compulsion leaves out any sense of identification or willingness to sit with it as its own entity. Instead, you usually don’t even realize it’s there or that you created it, and instead settle for casting it onto someone or something else, hence why victimhood doesn’t allow you to truly feel your internal pain. Next, although the connotations may be different, grandiosity comes from the same place as victimhood: a refusal to feel the terror in the body.
Similar to how thoughts of blame are used by victims to avoid facing the feeling of suffering, thoughts of grandiosity are used to deflect and repress pain in the body. If one creates an identity about oneself that is designed to put them above everyone, then the chances are that those grandiose thoughts that coincide with that identity are designed to avoid any feelings of insecurity or pain. For instance, if one sees themselves as the toughest, best-looking, smartest person out there, then any situations that suggest otherwise would be immediately forgotten about, in the form of using the egoistic thoughts of power to repress the pain of inferiority. Consider a person like that, such as a tech CEO or a politician, and how easily they deflect objective criticism about the harm they cause. The reason they deflect criticisms like these so easily is that they use their thoughts of grandiosity to deflect from the pain of the criticisms, such as labeling the critique as stupid and calling it a day, which allows them to repress the necessary human feelings it takes to create personal change. This grandiose habit of unconsciously deflecting one’s pain to the stupidity of someone else serves as extreme victimhood disguised, because if you believe that no one else is as good as you, then you can hand off your negative feelings to their inferiority. Going back to the previously described visual graphic, this is why I placed grandiosity outside the circle of victimhood, as although the personality gets expressed differently, it still uses the same philosophy: placing blame on external events for one’s pain, allowing one to not truly feel the discomfort.
To break the unfortunate, egoistic manifestations of victimhood and grandiosity, as well as the pain they cause to both ourselves and others, one must begin with understanding how they use their thoughts to protect themselves from feeling the pain inside themselves, as this protective barrier is what breeds the unhealthy ego. Now that we have covered what creates an unhealthy ego, as well as how it appears in reality, let’s move on to learning how a healthy ego arises and what it looks like in action.
A HEALTHY EGO
Similar to how the core of an unhealthy ego comes down to combatting reality, the core of a healthy ego is the exact opposite of that: accepting reality. Instead of combative thoughts that are used to create illusions of reality to protect oneself from emotional pain, a healthy ego feeds the mind objective thoughts about the truth of what is. For example, to illustrate the difference between both mentalities, consider a situation where a Starbucks barista is incredibly rude to you. Someone who possesses an unhealthy ego could jump straight to victimhood, such as immediately thinking, “this person is being rude to me because of my skin color or sexuality,” without having any morsel of evidence to make that bold claim. Stemming from the same wounded place, someone who is more grandiose could think, “I am so much better than that poor son of a bitch,” and use that thought to ignore their pain from being treated badly. On the other hand, somebody who possesses a healthy ego would think, “that person was rude. They’re probably having a bad day. It doesn’t have anything to do with me, but I will allow myself to feel the feeling coming up in my body without judgment.” To pick this ideology apart, a healthy ego both sees the situation as it is, while also owning whatever emotions arise in their body. The reason why I categorize this as healthy is because one who possesses this mentality moves in unison with life as it is, not how they want it to be, removing the protective barrier of the unhealthy ego in the process. When one begins to live life from this core philosophy of accepting reality, two branches of the healthy ego begin to evolve: curiosity and discipline.
In terms of curiosity, a healthy ego always asks, “why?” As you could see in the previous section, an unhealthy ego quickly castigates and condemns, creating a truth in one’s mind that only serves their self-protection, not the truth of reality as it is. To see reality as it is and escape our protective, self-serving egoistic thoughts, we always have to pull away from the veil of illusion and try our best to see the objective truth. As our friend with the healthy ego in the previous section did, instead of immediately creating a self-serving thought when faced with rudeness, they got curious and asked, “why was that person rude?” This question allowed them to put themselves in the shoes of the barista and see how they must be feeling internally to treat someone that way. When we take a second to pause and ask why of a situation, we separate ourselves from our reflexive, hyper-emotional thinking and give ourselves an opportunity to enter a space of objectivity. Even though this strategy is effective for understanding the objective truth of external events, it proves even more powerful when questioning our own self-limiting beliefs.
If a painful, insecure thought arises, such as, “I am not worthy of X person’s love,” then a healthy ego would immediately get curious and ask, “why would that be the case?” If used correctly, this investigative thought would let one remember a childhood where they did not feel worthy of love, allowing them to see the objective reality of the current situation: a wounded thought stemming from a time of one’s life where they needed healing. In comparison to how an unhealthy ego would handle that insecure thought—either doubling down on victim-based reasons of why they are not worthy of love or quickly replacing that thought with an overcompensating one—a healthy ego not only allows you to see what the truth is, but it also heals you in the process. So, for every event that triggers you or thoughts that bring up painful feelings, always ask yourself, “why?” And throughout this process, make sure to never repress the feelings that arise, because they are always part of the objective reality.
Next, when it comes to discipline, this is probably the most useful component of the healthy ego. In my eyes, each of us incarnated into this weird blue ball to carry through a specific purpose, hopefully aligned with a mission to make this place a little bit better than when we arrived. However, due to the mass toxicity of this culture and the amount of suffering it breeds, many of us find it hard to consistently engage with that deep calling, either due to needing to tend to one’s emotional needs or succumbing to self-limiting narratives of insecurity and victimhood. A healthy ego serves wonders when it comes to overcoming these difficulties and dedicating ourselves to a higher calling. In contrast to discipline rooted in grandiosity, which uses discipline to ignore one’s emotions and fuels it with a need to prove themselves as worthy, discipline created by a healthy ego is bred by feeling the need for the world to hear our voice, while also not ignoring one’s emotions. Put differently, a healthy ego has nothing to prove, as it does not combat reality, so it pushes oneself to work so the world can benefit from its unique voice. A healthy ego does not necessarily believe that its voice is better than anyone else’s. Rather, it believes that it needs to be heard, honoring that real need to motivate oneself to work on their mission. In terms of the emotional aspect, an unhealthy ego represses negative feelings in order to focus on work, which lands one in emotional chaos and an inevitable depression bred by burnout down the road. Contrastingly, a healthy ego observes and allows oneself to feel one’s feelings, while also pushing themselves to get the work done they promised they would do, for the good of all. In action, this can look like noticing and feeling a negative emotion like anger, while at the same time allowing oneself to do the work they committed to, but not allowing that sensation to breed soppy victimhood or a need to ignore the emotion.
In conclusion, a healthy ego is centered around the philosophy of accepting life as it comes and not combating it, which entails pulling back the curtain of self-protective illusion with a curious gaze, as well as honoring our ever-present need to make our voice heard, without falling into the typical camp of repression and victimhood most face when trying to overcome the resistance to do so.
MAKING THE MOVE FROM UNHEALTHY TO HEALTHY
Most Western therapists and self-help books will tell you the same bullshit: think your way out of it. If one asked one of these therapists or authors how to overcome a problematic pattern of thought that was breeding suffering, they would merely offer the simple solution of replacing the thought with another thought. While this may work on the surface, what’s forgotten about here is the emotional trauma causing the worrisome thoughts. If the fire underneath the words is left to burn, then it will keep spitting out different, negatively charged thoughts to keep the fire going, making you have to replace constant thoughts that you don’t desire, which creates a monkey mind that is deeply unpleasant to deal with. So, what’s the solution here? You need to become aware of where the resistance to the happenings of the present moment is coming from. In other words, what historical part of yourself is showing up in this moment that needs healing?
To show how this situation may come up in reality, consider a time where you were dating someone new that you liked and they weren’t answering your texts for a long time. The “smart” therapists and authors would see thoughts of worry or insecurity coming up from this event and immediately replace them with fabricated thoughts of peace and egoistic overcompensation, such as forcing the thoughts, “they’re probably just on a run,” or, “I’m a catch. This distance has nothing to do with me.” While there’s a small chance these thoughts might end up being correct, these “experts” are missing the opportunity to use the emotional trigger as a vehicle to gain awareness of an old wound and heal. Using this opportunity correctly, one could feel the uncomfortable sensations of feeling like they’re not worthy of love, or feeling like they are abandoned, and try their best to locate a point in time where they felt the same way.
Most of the time, it’s one’s child self resurfacing in the present moment, who was waiting for mom or dad at home to show them the love they needed to feel at peace. Once the point of origin is recognized, forget the story that triggered it in the present moment, and allow yourself to feel all the feelings that you did not feel safe to sit with at the moment of their creation. At its core, this is what a healthy ego does: takes what’s blocking you from moving with the events of reality and uses that as an opportunity to heal and return to homeostasis. And the success of this opportunity lies in getting to a place in your mind where you can feel your way out of the blockage, not think your way out of it, as that is the black magic of the unhealthy ego. The healthy ego uses thinking to arrive at the truth: a wound that needs witnessing and compassion to move through the body. The unhealthy ego uses thinking to repress the wounding and create an illusion that it does not even exist. So, choose one wisely.
Although this way of moving through the unhealthy ego works wonders, sometimes the beast of the ego can be too much to bear, requiring something a little different when it starts to feel truly overwhelming.
TAMING THE BEAST
In an ideal world, whenever we feel the protective thoughts associated with our unhealthy ego arise, we can quickly let them go and return to peacefully coexisting with the objectivity of reality; however, sometimes the protective thoughts and the intense emotions that come with the unhealthy ego can be too much to deal with. Sitting and tolerating these overwhelming sensations can seem impossible at times, and while I recommend you try your best to defeat it that way, sometimes it just won’t get the job done. When dealing with these moments of exasperation, channeling the energy to a creative output can work wonders. As energy is energy no matter its expression, it can always be channeled away from internal chaos into external beauty. For instance, consider the amount of incredible songs, books, or movie scripts bred out of a horrible heartbreak. Due to this reality, a blank page is often the best therapist out there, begging you to bleed your broken heart all over it and heal. For some reason, recreating your current emotional circumstances into a mythology where the main character is going through the same things as you can prove the most cathartic. During one of the most painful and lonesome periods of my life, I wrote a collection of short stories based on a young, troubled man trying to find his place in the world. To this day, nothing has healed me more than channeling all my pain and trauma onto those mythological pages. To hypothesize a reason as to why this worked so well, observing my plights from a third-party perspective allowed me to see how much pain I had overcome, which bred a sense of compassion in myself that I had never felt before—a powerful healing force.
Another great way to settle down the boiling kettle of emotions inside you, caused by the limitations of the unhealthy ego, is paradoxically to actually turn up the heat. If you are dealing with intense anger because something didn’t go your way and it is too intense to bear, then unleash the beast and let loose. During the COVID lockdowns, I bought a punching bag, which ended up becoming my best friend, as it helped me release all the intense anger I had at the government at that time. If sadness is what you’re dealing with, then cry for hours and don’t feel bad about it. Although emotional overindulge is a terrible long-term strategy, as it leads to victimhood and a good source of creative energy diminished, sometimes letting the beast out of its cage for a moment is the best solution, as it can lessen the charged load we have stored in our bodies for so long. However, and this is the most important part to consider, never let the beast cause harm to anyone else, so channel and express it in ways that only benefit you, such as a blank page or a punching bag.
