Death of an ego
Yesterday afternoon, I sat down with myself to see if I could process some of the anxiety I’ve been feeling all day for the last couple of days. I started to really struggle and get beat up in my head about my inability to interact with my Self. So then in a moment of inspiration, I decided to see how it would go if I wrote about my situation as if I were a client and see if that hacked my brain to give me better perspective. And it did. Here’s what I wrote.
A new client started with me. They recently found out they have ADHD and C-PTSD from going on through life without a neurodivergent diagnosis. Their identity is feeling even more chaotic and frightening than usual given their awakening and having to contend with all the comorbidities of their condition over decades.
Things that kept them mildly balanced in the past (husband, boyfriend, 40 hours of admin work, taking care of friends, hustling, binge eating) are now not available with her new awareness of her cognitive situation. These were addictions, hyper control, codependency, and stories she told herself. She doesn’t want them to balance her anymore. She wants to balance herself. The framework for their mind (traumatized as it is) and the world is disintegrating rapidly. Meanwhile, she has nothing to replace it with. Dealing with the death throes of an ego whilst not understanding how the replacement works is causing her a lot of mental anguish, dissociation, shame, layered thinking, and ever-present anxiety.
She feels like she’s doing everything wrong including thinking or even how she tries to explain what she’s going through to others. Organizing and scheduling and planning have been how she’d dealt with this chaotic mind in the past but she realizes now that it was the dysfunctional structure put in place to survive. She tries to use this same organization “skill” to wrap her head around what’s happening to her, but it only seems to drive her more mad.
Even without the final vision of what she is in her mind, she’s managed to change her life structure in the last 2.5 years, leaving a full-time job, starting her own business, and creating more freedom in her days to help her slow down, something she’s known for a very long time that she’s needed.
However, in the removal of hurry, rush, order, she’s found her deep pain.
She tries to be compassionate to it but she struggles to remember how to not BE the pain. Despite releasing herself from many obligations, setting new boundaries, and going through the motions of meditation, her mind only becomes more furious and threatened.
Moreover, not many understand her when she talks about it so she finds herself lonely on a frontier. She cannot imagine a mind that doesn’t feel like this. This incessant negativity and self-hatred and perpetual fear and performance. She feels she is losing her mind and/or it’s rebelling against her. She thinks about it ALL. THE. TIME. and has since October.
In fact, her boyfriend is also consumed mentally by his uncertain future and they talked about that the other day. She confidently advised him that he has clearly not accepted the reality of the situation he is in since he’s ruminating about the uncertain future and trying to solve for something he can’t know about until much later instead of solving for how to survive this time of uncertainty. Damn good advice.
What if this client accepted that they are going through an ego death and that it may take some time, especially as she confront her lifetime of dysfunctionality? Maybe this is how it’s supposed to feel. Maybe it wouldn’t be so scary if she knew this was normal and that it just takes time AND that she is absolutely doing the work correctly despite constant self-doubt. What if she released her need to be cognitively/narratively in control for a few months and let this play out without distressing or controlling? Maybe shit is happening behind the scenes despite her feeling like her mind is actively against her. What if panic is expected and normal? What if she just needed reassurance that this is normal, don’t panic about the panic, and know that a neurological facelift is messy and takes time.
She’d have to have faith in the human psyche to adapt to consistent guidance to a new cognitive path, even if she consciously can’t cause it to happen or actively influence it other than getting out of its way. She’d have to accept that she only feels like she embodies 1% of her mind while the rest is toxic and terrified. What if she knew it wasn’t her that is dying but her animal psyche? And what if she let go of her desire to take up more space in her mind and just let the Monster Turtle leave when it’s good and ready to leave. But… that she needs to stay patient and calm if the Turtle is ever to leave or calm down.
What if she knew that losing your mind is a normal part of transforming your brain? What if whenever she noticed getting anxious from those tense thoughts, she responded, “Oh, yeah, that’s right. My ego is dying and I can’t take up a lot of space in there right now or it’s just going to kick harder”. What if she agreed with herself not to expect any cognitive clearing for quite a while? Stop resisting what is and believing that she can consciously influence it. Accept it’s happening, will happen for a while, and that it’s normal and healthy as a part of healing.
What if this phase of her growth isn’t about love or peace but of surrender and witnessing the death of an ego? What if this practice of accepting her ego death and giving it room to die is the very practice needed for the next healing stage of her psyche? What if how she interacts with the ego is of MUCH less consequence in this time than her simple acceptance that it is happening and will continue to happen and that her job is just to get out of the way and not panic. Maybe this isn’t the proving grounds for the new Self.
