We’ve all heard of the ego and have a sense that it makes reference to how cock-sure someone is about themselves. To accuse someone of being egotistical isn’t usually a compliment and yet we live in a culture that seems set up to promote egoic living with a focus on individualism, competition and often, entitlement!
It also seems that the ego a psychologist talks about might be slightly different to that which the spiritual teacher talks about – or anyone else come to that.
So what do we really mean by the term ‘ego’ and what does it do? I can only answer from my own understanding and experience of course…
From my considerably more egoic younger self, I see the ego as our need to protect (and even promote) the image we have of ourselves. It seems to go hand in hand that if we have a strong ego, we can hold on to our self-constructed identity very tightly such that any challenge to this identity is perceived as threat and can make us defensive, avoidant and/or consumed with rumination!
Ego is about how we see ourselves, our identity (who we tell ourselves we are), what gives us our separate sense of self from others. It drives our fears and desires – unconsciously for most of us. In fact I would start by saying that we will not only each have different ego motivations/manifestations, but also a different amounts of awareness of it and what it’s often compelling us to do.
As with most things it’s hard to know whether ego comes mostly from nurture (or lack of it) or whether evolution gave us a big dollop of self-centredness for survival. But it seems to me that the ability to acknowledge, laugh at or let go of the need to be seen a certain way is likely to be reduced if we weren’t accepted fully as we are as a child. Our image of ourselves will be held rigid (with fragility) if we only got approval for certain aspects of ourselves.
When left without awareness, I suspect the ego is what:
- makes us need to feel significant and need recognition – and in many cases – certainly approval and often admiration.
- drives us to make continuous comparisons with others, judging them ‘better’ or ‘worse’ than us. (pedestal or gutter – black or white thinking – non-acceptance that people can actually be a mix of ‘good and ‘bad’!)
- gives us a need to consider ourselves better than others which can manifest in putting others down, dismissing others, telling them they are wrong and/or judging them.
- navigates our relationships with others – and when strong – will always see things only from our own point of view
- enables us to hold onto offence as offence means we’ve decided we are ‘right’ and the other person is simply ‘wrong’ – no nuance, flexibility, forgiveness or allowances for the fact we all mess up – because we truly believe we would never mess up like they did!
- tries to control and push others into always coming round to our – way of doing things, beliefs, opinions etc.
- can mean we over-identify with labels or roles: ‘the kind one’, ‘the clever one’, ‘the victim’ etc.
- can trigger strong reactions if we feel our image of ourselves has been threatened.
- can push us to explain away mistakes rather than taking responsibility for them.
- makes us predominantly focus on our own needs and less able to consider what might be going on for others.
- drives us to always believe we never are/have/do enough because the aspects of ourselves we got disapproval for are unconsciously and perpetually ‘nagging ‘us. We always feel a sense of non-arrival. This means we are often driven to always need more, search frantically for answers that don’t exist and can be frequently and agitatedly unsatisfied. This therefore prevents us from feeling peaceful or calm.
The ego seems to be an integral part of being human and maybe while young, it drives us to achieve and get on in the world and therefore can’t be seen as all bad!
But I would argue that awareness of what the ego can drive in us can help us to make better choices and become more mentally healthy. Here are some questions to reflect upon to possibly gain better ego awareness:
- When you first encounter someone, do you quickly look to evaluate their worth in your eyes in terms of better or worse than you?
- Do you ever share things about your life with the main motivation that others will be impressed?
- How good are you are accepting you might be wrong?
- Do you have frequent feelings of ‘not being enough’?
- Once you have achieved something, do you quite quickly move on to feeling you need to achieve something else as the last achievement soon becomes unsatisfactory?
- Is it important to you that others admire you?
- Can you let others share opinions that oppose yours and accept this with an ‘it’s Ok to disagree’ approach easily?
- What could a person say that you’d be sensitive about because it might challenge how you think of yourself?
- Do you have a tendency to look for someone to blame (other than yourself) when things go wrong?
- Do you feel personally attacked when someone disagrees with you or criticises your ideas?
- How much of your sense of self is tied to your job, role, opinions or achievements?
- Do you replay arguments or imagined conversations in your head long after they’ve ended?
- Can you be at ease when you are not achieving, improving or proving something?
- How comfortable are you with being ordinary, unseen or not special in a given moment?
I can totally see how therapy helps as it can liberate you from your fixed patterns, reactions and identities and relax into a state where you don’t mind people seeing the unmasked version of yourself – with all your delightful imperfections!