Your Ego is Lying to you
The (not so) silent killer
There is something in each of us that loves suffering. It leaches into us, infecting our mind, body and soul. Asking to find more grief, more problems, more reasons to be sad and miserable. The suspect is our ego. Just as violent as the spread of Covid, Ego does worse, hurting everyone you come into contact with too.
The CDC actually says to social distance from large ego beings, and to quarantine after being exposed, in hopes of stopping the spread of unnecessary negativity.
Your ego loves to be in control, and make you the puppet to your own life. It holds onto beliefs about who you are, what you like to do, what you believe in and how you dress. It will try to tell you how to identify yourself, because to your ego, you are nothing without your “identity”, you can’t just let yourself be. You constantly try to define yourself and when you can’t, comes an anxious identity crisis flowing in with full force depression following. Your ego will try to control every aspect of your being - only if you let it.
It’s tricky though, because you want to feed confidence to your soul, but not to your ego and how do we distinguish which is which? Anything that attaches itself to your identity - is ego.
In high school I didn't know the difference between people with large egos and people who were genuinely confident, but it's more visible than ever, with a little perspective. Confident people don’t put others down because they are already secure within themselves. The one’s fallen victim to ego are unhealthily competitive, they don’t feel like enough to themselves, and are so relentlessly desperate to prove themselves. To anybody. They tear others down, feel above everyone, and try extra hard to seem confident. Only confident people don’t have to prove they’re confident.
Ego always wants more. Nothing is ever satisfying enough. This leads to a constant feeling of emptiness, unworthiness, and hopelessness. Why do we continue to feed it? The hunger will never be cured, it’s an endless deadly cycle.
Alternatively, our ego doesn’t only hold on tight to positive attributes of ourselves, but negative ones too. Don’t you notice when you’re sad or mad, it’s almost easier to sit in that wave of pity and complain rather than fight out of it? You find yourself in this loop of misery, almost making it worse for yourself. Telling yourself you deserve it, or you don’t, that the world isn’t fair, everyone is out to get you and no one loves you. Baby, take a second and breathe. Those aren’t your thoughts, it's your ego talking. The ego does not want to see you do good - because then it has no control over you. You wont need it to flex, or to sulk. It needs you, like I said before - think of it as a leach. Not pretty to peel off of you, but damn does it feel good once you get to keep your own blood for yourself.
For a better image, think of a body next to yours. It’s skinless, ghostly, scary. It looks like death - let's not sugar coat it. But it’s you, it’s a whole part of your being. Your “pain body”. Every time we react, it's not us - but that scary self. Our pain body gets triggered - some more easily than others. Once you wake up the devil - it's hell. You lose control over what you say, do, feel. You see red and you’re willing to take down anyone in your way. You’d rather just cry all day. Or yell. It’s hard to quiet the devil huh - and it's even harder when it’s a part of you - literally. I’ve talked to friends, watched family, even experienced it myself and it's all the same story. Have you ever heard “I don’t know what came over me, I just couldn’t help myself” after someone is reviewing a negative confrontation? They’re not wrong and it’s not an excuse. It really wasn't them - it was their pain body. It took over, the ego was hurt and was gonna make whoever pay, just for that slight temporary delight.
And what if i told you, the only way to work on seizing the ego’s control is by looking at that scary monster body- right in the face? Acknowledge it, see it, feel it. But refrain from getting angry at it, remember - this is you. This is every part of yourself that you don’t accept. Treat it as you, but kindly tell it to be quiet. Tell it you don’t need their help, that they can surrender now. Once you just acknowledge it existing next to you, pretending to be you, it’ll slowly fade. Let your ego live quietly among you, but don’t water it.
Last night after starting this essay I was led into an interesting conversation by a friend, and ironically - about ego. He asked me if people are scared to show their true selves out of fear of rejection and I said absolutely. I almost think no one truly knows who they really are, and yet here we are- trying so desperately to always be proving who we are - as if we know. He explained his thoughts further saying the ego must have such tight control on our inner worlds that we try our hardest to control how people see our outer worlds. Makes sense. But it's a deadly cycle. All of our ego’s are competing so hard with one another- we’re trying to always put on our best face to the world because everyone has perfectly mastered that skill- and we need to keep up with it, right?
Strengthening our masked face may help the actress in a way, but seriously harms the mental health of the viewers. And we’re all the viewers. See what I mean when I say it's a deadly cycle? He also made another fair point that I’ve been contemplating since. The people who are so open on social media, who don’t necessarily go with society’s standards regarding what is socially accepted to post on social media- the raw ones who may post that really depressing black screen Snapchat stories basically crying for help… we think they’re weird and attention seeking but are they the ones most comfortable with themselves? Have they put their mask away? They don’t feel the need - or publically at least to put on their happy face, the perfect filters, the witty captions. They just post how they feel. Now that may deserve more of our respect than we are letting on, because I’m sure you couldn’t do that. God forbid everyone knew how you really felt, especially about yourself.
Our ego not only subconsciously hurts yourself, but everyone in your life too. You’re unable to fully see someone for who they are, listen intently, or feel empathetically because you’re so caught up with your own identity. It causes you to constantly be on guard, to be defensive and lash out on the people you love because you could feel threatened.
Every time you feel triggered, reactive, or threatened, ask yourself where it’s stemming from before acting on anything. My favorite quote is “Feel your feelings, dont be your feelings”. Listen to you, not your ego. Once you stop watering your ego, you can finally hydrate your true inner being- who is probably so desperately ready to bloom.