What does it mean to be trapped in ego?
There are many perspectives we can take.
We can look at a break/fix perspective, that you’re broken and you need to be fixed or you’re dysfunctional and you need to be moved to more functional.
That may be true but if you know me, watch my videos and read my blogposts, I actually hate that perspective.
I don’t think it does so much good personally and it can keep people trapped in their dysfunction rather than having issues.
You are a human being and there’s nothing wrong with you at all.
You are who you are, you got some issues connecting with people.
That’s okay. We just have to work through these issues and we’re going to figure what’s best for you.
We can even take sub perspectives like you need to work on your beliefs, awareness in order to overcome these.
I want to discuss about perspective of focusing on working with the ego to help get through your social anxiety.
But what is ego?
It’s a type of psychological, mental, emotional structure that helps us keep safe out of danger especially in social situations and social context.
I’m taking this online course about human development, consciousness and human evolution.
The instructor was talking about our base survival instinct is we grew more socially complexed.
This ego structure was developed to protect us from social danger.
Our basic survival instinct which makes us run from the wolf that’s coming at us or get under cover when the storm comes.
It is good but with all these fears get built in the ego structure to keep us safe aren’t justified in the way our society is.
They are not justifiable for things for us to be really afraid of, to keep us held back.
Remember there are people who live in fear that don’t have social anxiety.
We all have this ego thing.
I know I have mine and I am working on it too.
You just have to get through some challenges and really bust through.
I’m doing this work too.
I don’t have nearly as much social anxiety as you might but you might have your challenge.
This is what the ego is and this is one that is not serving you.
And one interesting thing is in Latin ego means I.
But if we take this ego and see that you are not the I.
We have to learn to separate from this.
You have to have this desire to burn the ego away. If you just want to dance around and play and you just want to test it. It won’t work very well.
You’ve got to challenge yourself.
The things you think about yourself and others, you need to challenge them.
When we work with the ego, the interesting thing is that we want to challenge to see who we are without them, without trying to replace it.
In my Dissolve Social Anxiety program, I talk about different approaches. Like using rational statements, mindfulness which is the big base of the program.
And those approaches are very useful when working with ego.
And what will happen when we remove those self limiting thoughts if we don’t control the emotions controlling us?
What is possible for how we could be in this world? How we could be in our social interactions with people?
One thing I want you to see is this ego, when you’re caught in your social anxiety state.
When you say something about yourself, start replacing the I with ego like:
Ego feels this way…
Instead of:
I feel this way…
or
Ego feels that everytime I speak I feel awkward.
Instead of:
I feel that everytime I speak I feel awkward.
Remove the I because it is not you but your ego.
So when we do that, we have to look at our introversion.
Most of us are introverts.
You have to separate your introversion from your ego.
That’s a characteristic of you that is sort of difficult to change and it’s not a bad thing.
You own your introversion.
And your high sensitivity is separated out so you only got your ego.
So the structure is only self-limiting beliefs and thoughts and fears. These make up the ego structure that aren’t true.
So you have to challenge these things and let them come up.
How do we do this?
You have to get out there and expose yourself to situations, stepping up to your next level.
If you’re not going out very much, I’m not going to tell you to go out and meet people but you can start to take a walk around the house.
See what happens and how your ego is trying to make you safe.
And maybe you can start doing something beyond like when you see someone while walking down the street, give a smile to that person.
You can go to a coffee house for 15 minutes, or go to the nearest grocery store.
Push yourself out of your comfort zone just enough, not too far.
Again, you are not your ego.
Burn away this ego that’s holding you back, one that is not serving you.
– David
