From the SOULutions monthly newsletter:

The first step in developing an Aware Ego is to understand how all of the parts of your ego work. At this month’s Essence Circle, we are going to discuss Dr. Stone’s work of Voice Dialog. With this technique, we break the ego apart into its primary selves and have a conversation with each part. By doing this, we better understand the motivations and patterns behind our behavior.

Your ego’s number one job is protection. To cope with fear and vulnerability, it created a system of personality segments called primary selves. The captain, also known as the Protector, is the first-born. The co-captain or Controller comes next. Your ego can best protect you from vulnerability by controlling yourself, others, your environment, others’ perception of you and anything else it thinks it can control.

Under the protection of your Protector and the Controller, your ego-self began to form an interconnected team of primary selves. Examples of these may be the Rule Follower, the Pleaser, the Perfectionist, the Pusher, the Friend Maker, the Funny Self, the Responsible Self and as many others as you need. Each primary self is a control strategy to help you to fit in and get what you want and to feel safe.

During your process of socializing, you disowned many ways of being. The most commonly disowned parts are basic instincts like being selfish, angry or afraid. At around the age of seven years, your ego had developed a pretty solid team of primary selves. Most of us adopt about a half dozen main or “first-string” primary selves, also called sub-personalities. It is the job of the ego-team co-captains, the Protector and Controller, to choose the self you use in any given situation. While all of this is happening inside you at lightning speed, you are mostly unaware of it. Meeting and having a dialog with these sub-personalities is the beginning of developing an Aware Ego.

By the time you were a young adult, you had a highly functional ego-team or false self that you have mistaken as being the real you. The problem is that this false self causes most people to suffer from feelings of alienation, shame and unworthiness. The real you is a unique soul, an embodied presence, a spiritual being or what I call Essence. Your Essence has been covered up by your false self because of its need to protect and become functional in the world.

You can learn about the origins of this work in the classic work of Dr. Hal Stone, Embracing Your Many Selves. In my private practice, I offer two options, a six-month Ego to Essence program or my six-session, Finding the Aware Ego.

For more information on my private practice programs, call me directly at 404-246-1036 for a free 20-minute consultation.

In Wholeness, Michael