Strong ego? good for you!

Meaning “I”, ego is the moderating, deciding, discerning aspect of the mind.  It is, when strong enough, the part of you that relates to both internal and external worlds, and helps you take up space-time in your environment through a well-judged assertion of self.  

Narcissists are renowned for having weak egos, rather than strong ones.  When someone rolls their eyes at a narcissistic person, and says “they’re all ego!” they’re really saying that someone’s distastefully grandiose, that they do not relate horizontally, and instead compulsively dominate.  In effect, they’re actually experiencing someone who does not, and cannot, relate well because they don’t have the strong, mature ego that is a prerequisite of authentic give and take.  

The importance of the strong ego cannot be underestimated when we discuss surviving narcissistic abuse, because this is exactly the area of self that can be profoundly compromised in such environments.  Children who grow up in a narcissistic soup have, by definition, not had an environment conducive to internalizing a model that leads to self-respect.  Rather, they’ve been taught to dismiss themselves, to please, conform or rebel.  None of these correspond to healthy ego functioning.  Healthy functioning must result from healthy relating, just as plants require light to grow strong and healthy.  

We all start out from narcissistic origins, but as we grow, we discover that others are separate from ourselves. In health we find that this is safe and manageable, because the Other loves us, and we love in return. What was once experienced as an extension of ourselves, separates, and our ego allows us a sense of “I” and “You”.  Pathological narcissism occurs when this process goes wrong: the Other either remains a buoying extension of self, or must be put down as if it is unreal.   This is why the question of the ego is so profoundly important for survivors of such environments.  They are accustomed to an annihilating presence that claims, controls and manipulates them as if they were an extension, and no matter what they do, they cannot gain the relationship they need in order to stabilise their own sense of reality, grow their own self-esteem and mature their own ego. 

It is not uncommon as a result, to find survivors who have a very poor relationship to their own feeling states.  They may not be able to name particular emotions, or to be able to experience them as real, valid and meaningful.  They may encounter a lot of self doubt, or lack a sense of direction. Long term aims, based upon desire itself, can feel absent, confused or elusive.  If you’ve grown up in an environment in which your whole sense of the world, your feelings, and what you want are systematically invalidated, and confused with another person’s, you are highly unlikely to be able to form a strong, mature and stable ego.  In place of that mature ego, you might people please, or be reactive.  You might experience a lot of social anxiety or feel like an impostor.  You might dissociate and disappear into the background. You might become narcissistic and grandiose. In other words, you are likely to have to try to solve the problem of a weak ego, and struggle to know how.

The point I’d like to touch on is the widely-held societal belief that ego is bad.  Ego is not bad.  Ego is essential to healthy functioning.  Interestingly enough, a healthy ego inherently requires a healthy form of narcissism: “I” is important enough to be respected, to exist.  This healthy narcissism is not to do with grandiosity, compulsivity and fragility; instead, it’s to do with authenticity, horizontal relating, self-esteem, a sense of being balanced and solidly present, and that being so is a good, desirable thing.  A healthy ego, in essence, is primary narcissism that has been transformed into a respected relational node.  The “I” in maturity welcomes the Other and cares about its reality, just as it cares about the reality of the self.  In order to perform this task, it asserts the reality of “I” in time and space.  

All too often, I come across a cultural misunderstanding, whereby ego is equated with pathological narcissism or selfishness.  This misunderstanding tends to couple with poorly understood spiritual references to selflessness, or having “no ego”, as if these were simply desirable things.  They are not.  While it is true that self and ego can be transcended in mystical or spiritual practices, just as they can be through love in general, if the stage of healthy ego growth is skipped, authenticity is the casualty.  Noticing the ways we unconsciously continue the destructive influence of the internalized narcissistic parent, by dismissing, hating, doubting and undermining the emergent ego is a key part of therapy.  A therapist who’s able to challenge this internalized negation is vital in all senses of the word.  For these reasons, you need a therapist who’s very present and engaged, very attuned to the emergent ego, and not someone who mistakenly encourages the “spiritual bypass” (John Welwood), pleasing, diminishment of the Other, or similar interventions that actually mirror childhood relational traumas.

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