Dear Friend
As predicted the self criticising fearful socially anxious self has made it’s appearance. It was always going to do that. I can think of some people who might not know who or what I’m talking about. Not everyone criticises, belittles, limits, doubts or beats up on themselves for relatively trivial misdemeanours, but most of us do.
It’s a rare person who is free completely of the false self.
A majority of us are to more or lesser degree, tormented by taunts from within. We are definitely enough, but we can’t quite shake the feeling that we’re falling behind or something bad will happen. Trying our best, we dread the day we’re be found out to be a fraud.
I’ll not labour the point any further. It’s a rare person who never experiences self doubt.
My false self showed up the night before I made my third post. I’m realising that was the point of committing to this project. I said I’d communicate as truthfully as I can so we need to talk about this internal bully.
I’m calling him (mine identifies as male) my false self, because he’s a mentally constructed self, made up out of past experiences. There’s a logic to him that becomes clear when you enter therapy or adopt some kind of spiritual or self development practices. For example, my Dad, bless him, was afflicted with something often called a ‘victim’ mentality. For him this showed up as a refusal or inability to acknowledge his role in creating interpersonal conflicts.
A beautiful wounded man, he would lose his temper at me and my brother, sometimes for simply being under his feet or for the lack of parking spaces in town or any number of environmental irritants. We’d all be pretty miserable during one of his outbursts which he’d crown with a stock phrase. The one that resonates with me still is - “Now look what you’ve done, you’ve upset your mother.”
The false self feeds on memory stuff like this. Even today, if a friend or loved one is unhappy, my first suspicion is that I have unwittingly caused it. We grew up walking on egg shells and yet when I think of my Dad I have nothing but love for him.
Having a false self in inevitable. We have to form an identity. The point is, that just as we’ve co-created our internal world through our interactions with our environment, so we’ve created a false self.
What we made can be unmade.
It’s a process, it can be slow and sometimes there will be great leaps of insight as we free ourselves of what no longer serves us.
Being free of the false self might come in sunny patches or perhaps you might have days or weeks of feeling good about yourself. The false self withdraws, lying in wait until you do something like sharing your writing or performing, or speaking in public or trying to make a decision about how you really want to live.
There is a true or real self, we can increasingly identify with.
Next time your false self wades in on you, what if you were to turn and look them in the eye? Sure, we are afraid. Yes the world is confusing. Economic worries destabilise us, dominant cultural voices insidiously seek to convince us that we are powerless. But we can be kind. All of the books of wisdom, all of the great teachers from every tradition insist on compassion.
We are human. We don’t always make sense to ourselves. Our human side is imperfect. The false self’s demands for perfection are the cornerstone of it’s false reality.
Chip away at that cornerstone and see what happens. Reach for the kind side of your mind.
My writing is not perfect, my body is no longer as youthful as it was, I’m reactive to my own internal dialogue, I am sometimes overwhelmed by the suffering caused by my fellow humans, I judge, I criticise and so it goes on.
Just knowing about the false self, with its demands for perfection helps a lot. When we feel like imposters, we’re identifying with the false self.
It is the imposter.
When we withdraw our belief in it, it fades.
I see you friend through the eyes of love. Maybe that’s what makes us friends.
Maybe one definition of friendship is that we do that for each other. We see each other in loving ways especially when we can’t do that for ourselves.
Till tomorrow
Love
Mike