Tales of the Inner Critic
Have you ever found yourself struggling to balance your personal life with work obligations? Have you ever set boundaries for yourself only to find yourself breaking them due to anxiety and self-doubt? In this episode, I’ll be exploring how Freud’s theory of personality, specifically the superego, can impact our lives and how we can manage our gremlin, aka our inner critic.
Get comfortable and listen in as I break down Freud’s theory of personality and look at the id, superego, and ego, and how these three components interact and impact our behaviour. I’ll also hone in on the superego and offer tips on how to identify and track yours and uncover situations where your superego is most likely to show up in your life, and discuss the importance of having a learning mindset and building awareness of your superego!
And as with everything I share on the podcast, this is what I believe based on what I’ve read and researched. But please don’t take my word for it. Keep what sticks, discard the rest and for goodness sakes, go out and test drive it!
What You’ll Learn In Today’s Episode:
The three parts of our psyche.
How these three parts interact to form our personality and behaviours.
How to manage the superego to manage our inner critic.
How learning to manage the superego can lead a more enjoyable life.
Prompts for superego spotting mindfulness activity:
Notice how audible it is, Does it yell? Whisper? Is the voice familiar?
Notice its particular brand of harshness. Does it shame you? Criticize you? Berate you?
Notice what it focuses its attention on. Not “doing it right” Your intelligence, Appearance, Level of success?
Notice how it might work on you in silent ways.
Notice how you relate to it. Do you cower in response? Feel tight in your body? Feel angry or anxious?
More Superego spotting questions shared in this episode:
How much trouble do you have saying no?
How much effort do you put into avoiding conflict?
How much do you feel like an imposter?
How much do you try to fit in?
Who’s voice am I hearing?
What does this remind me of from my past?
What is familiar about this?
What were things like for me growing up at home, school, with friends? What are similarities that I am experiencing now?
What Was Mentioned:
Taming Your Gremlin (Revised Edition): A Surprisingly Simple Method for Getting Out of Your Own Way by Rick Carson
Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis by Sigmund Freud
Ego and the Mechanisms of Defense by Anna Freud
Breaking the Chains: Finding Relief from a Harsh Superego by Ben Ringler
How leaders can manage their own inner critic by Meredith Somers
Ideas Worth Sharing:
“In the eyes of the superego, we can’t win for trying.” – Christina Sestan
“The id is full-on impulsive, bouncing around like a pinball. If the id could speak, and in many ways, it does, just not consciously or intelligibly, it would probably say something like (and I imagine this in all caps) I WANT IT NOW!” – Christina Sestan
“If the id had a bumper sticker, it would read ‘if it feels good, do it.’ Trust me when I tell you – you don’t want the id on the invite list to your next dinner party.” – Christina Sestan
“In essence, the ego has three bosses, and, it turns out, three types of anxiety to go along with that.” – Christina Sestan
“What you can’t see, you can’t change.” – Christina Sestan
“Time-out is not just for kids anymore.” – Christina Sestan
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Speaker 1 0:01
Hey, it's Christina. Thanks for joining us. And welcome to the Squeeze. If the ID had a bumper sticker, it would read, if feels good, do it. Have you ever had one of those experiences where it feels like you're damned if you do and damned if you don't? Maybe your work-life balance is completely out of whack, and you feel somehow like you're failing at the game of life, and that feeling spurs you to draw some lines in the sand. You make a commitment to leaving work at work next weekend, so you can spend some much needed time with your family or friends, and just unplug. But then, midway through Saturday morning, you find yourself thinking of an unresolved situation at work, or something you forgot to do, and your anxiety lures you over to your laptop to reveal your emails. A couple of hours go by, of course, and you suddenly look up, realizing you've completely forgotten about your commitment to your well-being and spending time with family or friends. You shut your laptop, you feel guilty, you berate yourself because you haven't even been able to hold your boundary until lunchtime. This is the damned if you do, damned if you don't that I was talking about. On the one hand, there's pressure to try and foster more of an ideal life, but on the other, there's pressure to work hard and uphold your reputation. Welcome to one of the preferred pastimes of the superego, otherwise known as the inner critic, the judge, the accuser, the gremlin, the peanut gallery. Take your pick, it's a big job. So naturally, it will have a lot of titles. The superego, that's a psychological mechanism that was coined by Sigmund Freud in 1923 to describe an internal critic that watches us very closely and judges us constantly is just one part in a trio of structures that make up the psyche of our personality, the other two being the id and the ego, which I'll get into shortly. The double bind in the example I've just provided about work-life balance, well, it's got the superego's fingerprints all over it, because that's the thing with a super ego - it's one part ideal self, that imagined version of who we ought to be, which in this example is someone who maintains good work-life balance, but it's also one part conscience, scanning for where we make mistakes, and then flooding us with guilt and causing us to feel bad about ourselves. In this example, the fear of screwing up at work causes us to open our laptop and check our emails. So, which is it? Superego, who do you want me to be, the person with balance or the person who maintains an impeccable reputation at work? The answer, well, that's easy. Both the superego can and frequently does judge us negatively for both doing and not doing the same thing. If that sounds crazy, like, hold on, because we've only just gotten started in the eyes of the superego. We literally can't win for trying, but don't despair just yet, because the good news is that by understanding even the most rudimentary overview of the workings of this trio within Freud's theory of personality, you can negotiate something of a foothold for working with and managing what for many people can be a pretty debilitating mental hurdle, but let's not get too far ahead of ourselves. Let's meet the trio. I don't know about you, but aside from a fairly superficial brush with Freudian theories in first year university psych, I haven't really had much to do with his work until recently, when I was researching for the last podcast in the Cult of the Self series. In spite of the fact that I've been supporting clients to work with the hyper critical part of their psychology over the last 20 plus years, and I've generally referred to it as your inner critic or your gremlin from Richard Carson's work, Taming Your Gremlin. I've never directly utilized Freud's models and methods to support that work.
Speaker 1 4:19
The human potential movement of the 70s generated such an immensely powerful wave that many foundational psychological theories and concepts prior to the 70s were just kind of obliterated, and the coaching pathway that was available to me 20 years ago when I started out, it just didn't have anything prior to that time, but if my research for this podcast series has taught me anything, it's that a historical context is essential for a more fulsome appreciation of how something as complex as the human mind works, and how we can best approach our work with it. So, let me introduce you to the individual parts within the trio of Freud's personality. Theory first, with the understanding that the interactions between these parts are really where we'll be able to harvest the insights necessary for managing ourselves during some of the more challenging interpersonal experiences of life that we find ourselves in. So, without further ado, I present to you your id, and if you think your id is standing still, ready to shake your hand in this moment, think again. Do you remember the Tasmanian Devil cartoon from Looney Tunes? It's not a bad representation, or you can just imagine a little kid at Chuck E. Cheese after several large Cokes and ice cream cake. The id is full on impulsive, it's bouncing around like a pinball. If the id could speak, and in many ways it does, just not consciously or intelligibly, it would probably say something like, and I imagine this part all in capital letters, I want it now. The id is full of uncoordinated instinctual desires, bodily needs and wants, emotional impulses, especially aggression and the libido, according to Freud from the new introductory lectures on psychoanalysis. Quote, it is the dark, inaccessible part of our personality. It is filled with energy, reaching it from the instincts, but it has no organization, produces no collective will, but is only striving to bring about the satisfaction of the instinctual needs subject to the observance of the pleasure principle, and quote the pleasure principle. Well, what Freud is referring to here is pretty straightforward. Essentially, the id wants immediate gratification at all costs and complete avoidance of pain. Let me just say, don't we all? The id is part of the unconscious that contains all the urges and impulses, including what we call the libido. It's kind of a generalized sexual energy that is used for everything from survival instincts to appreciation of art. For perspective, a baby's personality is entirely id, you know that cartoon image of someone with a little angel on one shoulder and a little devil on the other. Well, guess which one represents the id. If you guess the devil, well, yeah, you're onto something. If the id had a bumper sticker, it would read, "If it feels good, do it. Trust me when I tell you, you do not want the id on your invite list to the next dinner party. It's going to get messy, and you will instantly regret it. And if you're finding it just the teeniest bit unsettling thinking about this id character lurking around in your unconscious, take heed, because it turns out you have your own built-in bouncer, that's right. Let me take this opportunity now to formally introduce you to someone you encountered briefly at the outset of this episode in the double bind example that I shared with you, the super ego. Right now, your super ego is probably wearing the long dark robes of a judge, and is probably sitting up much higher than you, like a judge, so it can hurl sentence after sentence after sentence down upon you for all your wrong doings, and trust me, there will be plenty of those, because the super ego settles for nothing less than moral perfection, made up of mostly parental influences and expectations, as well as society's moral values. The super ego is here to control what it deems the unmanageable part of you. Freud believed it formed during the emotional tumult that takes place in the toddler years and is an internalization of the voices of a child's parents. It relies on a storehouse of information that is constantly being updated and used to push you to what often amounts to very unrealistic goals. It will compare you generally unfavorably to others.
Speaker 1 8:52
It will keep a running tab of your screw-ups and issue commands all day long without really taking reality into account. This description at this point, it's reminding me of like one of those Olympic gymnast coaches from the former Soviet Union, and yeah, it doesn't sound much better over here with the superego than over there at that shaker with the id, and that's kind of the point, because the main job of the superego is to counterbalance the id, keep it in check, and attempt to control its wild impulses. The superego is the master of the double bind, as I already illustrated in the opening example. Its judgments are not necessarily logical or consistent, making it pretty tough to please the superego, though when you do particularly well at something, it will hand out rewards in the form of feelings of pride and satisfaction. And you can imagine then how we might become kind of addicted to pleasing something that is almost impossible to please. Maybe sounds like some of those parents we had growing up. We might even raise. Ask our more authentic self for its praise, but even though the super ego is a master of words and mostly encountered through what may appear internally as your own voice or the voice of others, it can also communicate through physical sensations, as in something I'll just call the psychic gut punch, when you feel like you've just royally and perhaps publicly screwed up, and parts of the superego's activities are unconscious, which is why we may feel guilt at points, but have no idea why. Like AI, the superego is continually learning and can effortlessly upload the influences of real-life situations and reshape its idea of perfection as new ideals emerge from the current culture. Becoming conscious of the contents of the superego is for the most part something we can become quite adept at once we start paying attention, but without any awareness of the concept of the superego to begin with, I suspect most people simply chalk up all the noise in their heads to a busy mind or believe that they're just blessed with the quirk of analysis, paralysis, and overthinking, and though the id can be a really out of control force when we step back far enough to contemplate all the moves of the superego, the balance between these two can seem like a bit of a more balanced balance, but without an intermediary to operate between these two, we're in for a pretty hardcore teeter totter ride that starts to feel like George Orwell on one side and like Anything Goes Thunderdome on the other. A slightly tamer, albeit great representation of these two parts of our psyche was masterfully portrayed through the characters of Dr. Jekyll and mr. Hyde. Are you ready to meet the third part of Freud's trio? Ego, come on down, you're the next contestant on The Vice is Bright. Okay, that was silly. Latin for I, the ego seeks to please the ids drive in realistic ways that in the long term bring benefit rather than grief. It is the home of our ordinary sense of who we are, and by extension, our sense of self-esteem. Our ego helps us organize our thoughts and make sense of them in the world using reason and common sense. Essentially, the ego sorts out what we really need, which probably differs pretty substantial from the ids version, and it figures out how to get it. Our conscious awareness resides in the ego, although to maintain a little mystery, not all of the operations in the ego are conscious. The ego operates based on something called the reality principle, and that's a regulating mechanism that enables us to delay gratifying immediate needs in order to function effectively in the real world. Pretty useful for adulting. Its main concern is with our individual safety. It's the part we're probably referring to when we say I bottom line, if you're beginning to visualize something of a peacemaker, or perhaps good cop, or even an understanding, though at times a bit too nice to be believed, friend, I think you're on the right track.
Speaker 1 13:12
Freud described it this way: the ego is like a man on horseback who has to hold in check the superior strength of the horse, so hopefully by now you are at least grasping a high-level character sketch of the members of this personality trio, and as I said earlier, understanding how they interact provides the key insights for better managing and withstanding the sometimes demoralizing blows from the superego. Isn't that why you're sitting here listening to this podcast, you're not just here for the Freud primer, are you? But, of course, I could be wrong. The most important interaction, it turns out, is between the parts and how they coalesce around the ego relationship to both the id and the superego, as I've already described, if left to their own devices, the id and the superego interaction becomes a wild teeter totter of insanity that might drive us all to drink, if drinking weren't so looked down upon by the superego. I came across a description of the interaction of the trio, and it kind of cracked me up. It described it as a struggle in a locked, dark basement between a homicidal, sex-crazed monkey and a puritanical old maid being mediated by a timid accountant. Good visual there. Accountant, I'm not sure, but most of the ego's work is mediation, that's for sure. I'm not sure what the hourly rate is that they charge, but I can guarantee it's not enough. I mean, imagine just like the craziest nonstop union negotiation ever, you've got someone with an insatiable need to fulfill prohibitive desires on one side of the table and societal norms 10. Taboos and values on the other, but there's a third party in the room as well. I mean, besides the mediating ego, the external world and reality have shown up to weigh in, because the superego, though it purports to speak for reality, is really just parroting the rules and social norms it has absorbed, which are not in effect necessarily reality. So, yeah, in essence, the ego has three bosses, and it turns out three types of anxiety to go along with that. Awesome moral anxiety comes from the superego, neurotic from the id, and realistic anxiety from the external world. I mean, I knew anxiety was pretty ubiquitous, but who knew it could be so customized. By the way, everything I'm writing about here comes from Freud's new introductory lectures on psychoanalysis, though clearly I'm taking some poetic license with my telling. In the psychoanalytic perspective, author David Myers succinctly describes the ego's defense mechanisms, because hey, with three bosses who wouldn't need a defense strategy. Quote, the ego lessens tension by covering up impulses that are threatening, end quote. It sounds like it could get a bit codependent to me. He goes on to explain that this is not always conscious, great, even more stuff lurking beneath the surface. Anna Freud, Sigmund's daughter, explains further in her book, The Ego and Mechanisms of Self-Defense, that was written in 1936 Quote, the super ego's contents are for the most part conscious. Our picture of the superego always tends to become hazy when harmonious relations exist between it and the ego, we then say that the two coincide. For example, at such moments the superego is not perceptible as a separate institution, either to the subject himself or to an outside observer. So that basically means when all things are going well, you probably don't notice your superego. Its outlines, however, become clear only when it confronts the ego with hostility, or at least with criticism. It's important to note that much of what I've included about the superego precedes the conceptualization of the inner critic as it appears in contemporary therapies, such as the internal family systems model. I personally have adopted the term inner critic in work with my individual coach and clients, though following the research I've added some more of Freud's theories a little more explicitly. See, ideally all three parts of the personality trio would play together nicely. However, in Olivia Guy Evans' article in Simple Psychology, that was called Freud's theory of personality, the id, ego, and superego. She paints three different scenarios, depending on which part of the trio is in charge. Spoiler alert, it's kind of a zero-sum game in most of the dynamics.
Speaker 1 17:54
So, if the id wrestles its opponents to win the Iron Throne, the resulting experience is something she refers to as psychotic psyche. Based on that handle, I feel like I almost don't need to elaborate further. I will, though. Just try and imagine your life if you're id or in charge. Did you ever read that book, either as a kid or to your kids? It was called The Cat in the hat you remember thing one and thing two well a day with them would be like a cake walk in comparison to what I'm talking about here as Guy Evans explains quote every wishful impulse should be satisfied immediately regardless of the consequences end quote the Roman Empire under Caligula might be a very fitting representation of a culture ruled by the ID. Perhaps some of the demented deeds within Hitler's inner circle, even the reported eccentricities of Kim Jong Un in North Korea, might make the cut. Though much of the structural elements holding these power structures together have super ego fingerprints all over them, which might give some insight into how these dynamics work together in the world. In the next scenario from Guy Evans' article, when the superego manages to overthrow the id, which, to be frank, probably happens small scale many times a day, the resulting experience is known as neurotic psyche, that also seems quite self-explanatory, and there are unending historical examples that I could reference here, including many dystopian future depictions. Essentially, the ego and id are imprisoned in a kind of police state. In Guy Evans' depiction, the superego is speaking to the id and the ego, saying, Listen up, I'm in charge, and you are not here to enjoy yourself. Get ready for a double size portion of anxiety with a side order of guilt. Fun, nope, nowhere to be seen. In the third scenario from Guy Evans, this is when the ego. Manages to clamber up to the top of the hill and heave the others off. We finally arrive at what is known as ding ding ding healthy psyche, and ideally this is the organizational arrangement that pays the biggest dividends to our personal sense of fulfillment. There may be some real life cultural examples that point in this direction. Perhaps the original ideals of the formation of the United States of America were aiming in this direction, though currently it's much easier to see evidence of the id and the superego clawing back power today. Regardless of the larger cultural projections, as individuals we can strive for a healthier psyche, and this next part of the podcast will be divided into two important parts in this endeavor, firstly techniques for seeing your ego and superego at play, because remember the id is entirely unconscious, so even if you have the iPhone 414 pro max, you will not be able to snap a photo of it awareness is half the battle, because as they say, what you can't see you can't change. Secondly, we'll look at how to work with and manage those parts as you become more aware of them. These pieces are the differences that can make the biggest difference to your overall satisfaction. Hey, you're listening to the Squeeze, and if you like what you're hearing, there's a whole world of Citrus Couching to discover. We've got an online leadership program, it's called Citrus You, and it features those three key tools you need to be a better leader, well, to be a better human. We also have a number of mini learning bundles that you can get into, and there's plenty more. If you're interested, you can follow us on Instagram, or check out our website@www.citruscoaching.com And the show resumes now. Most, if not all, of the techniques I share here are things I've used with clients for the last couple of decades with pretty good results. There's never going to be a one size fits all approach to this kind of work, so if you only grab one thing here that fits, go with it. And before we step in a decidedly more practical direction, it's probably worth me pointing out here that all of the techniques and suggestions in this podcast constitute something called a practice by its very nature. This requires you to let go of trying to get anywhere, and for the hyper-logical and linear folks listening, this is going to be frustrating.
Speaker 1 22:37
But try to think of it this way: if, for instance, you love World Cup football on some level, you know that the excitement of those matches would not be possible had the players not invested so much of their life in practice. What I'm going to be pointing to are intended to be the skill drills for life. They're meant to be lifestyle shifts, not one-offs. Okay? You ready to go spot us some super ego. In order to track your super ego, you need to be able to recognize its footprints, that is, the situations where you get reactive or triggered, the times and the places where you respond with a volatility that is out of proportion to the actual event during these what can be extremely uncomfortable experiences. You can bet your bottom dollar that the superego has stepped out from behind the bushes and is swaggering around like it owns the joint. This, of course, would be a great time to get your camera ready, but hold up a moment, because observing your superego when it's in action can be darn near impossible, and that's because the observant, logical, and rational part of your mind is generally relegated to the background when your superego is in the vicinity. If you were pinned to the ground with someone's boot on your head, would observation really be your automatic response? No, of course not. You'd be in full on fight or flight. I don't want to set you up to fail here. So, let me try to ground this in an example that maybe you can relate to. I'll set it in a work scenario, but obviously the dynamic of having a hard time saying no is transferable in many directions. I think most of us can relate. So, let's say that you are very overwhelmed at work, you're barely getting by as it is, because your boss continues delegating things to you with crazy deadlines. As you survey your desk, you resolve to start setting boundaries. Okay, we're not yet in the territory of the super ego, but it has probably received some kind of early warning text message that you are about to go rogue. So, just as you finish your thought, you look up to see your boss approaching with a folder, your mouth becomes dry. This is your first clue, and before they're even. In the door, they're talking 100 miles an hour about this project that has just come down from an ED, and the CEO is waiting for it, and you notice your hands are clammy, that's your second clue, and your heart starts pounding. Third clue, your boss finally stops talking, and your whole body feels rigid and tense. Fourth clue, and as you're trying to figure out the best way to cry, uncle, and say no, a voice in your head suddenly powers up and starts yelling, "Don't do it, don't do it, this is suicide. Fifth clue, and now you're starting to heat up, and you can feel your cheeks redden. Sixth clue, and your boss is looking at you funny, and you feel so insanely uncomfortable that you end up mumbling something unintelligible as you reach for the outstretched file folder and watch your boss pivot and walk away. Super ego one, you zero. Okay, they may have won the round, but now you get to go back and comb through the evidence as I've just done, and start to piece together the clues in this example, your super ego is clearly miffed about you challenging authority or something along those lines, and that's why it's coming on so strong. Perhaps you have an old fear of poverty, and your super ego issues a gag order to safeguard your paycheck. Whatever the case, your reaction is out of proportion to reality. If you are in fact as insanely busy as you say, then saying no is actually a very reasonable response. But we don't say no because our super ego is standing on our head, making it difficult to see the logic. Everything in that moment has been eclipsed by the fear churned up in us by the super ego.
Speaker 1 26:40
Now the additional possibility is that the id may very well have been poised to leap out and tell your boss what they can do with their folder, and arguably this wouldn't be a good look, so at least part of the superego's attempts to make us pump the brakes could be kind of advantageous, but of course they go too far. The trick here is not to get sucked into the polarity of black or white thinking. In other words, to either suck it up or tell them to shove it. The goal is actually to seek the middle ground. I'm going to park this example for a minute, and I'm going to come back to it during the second part, where we explore techniques for managing the superego. In the meantime, I've got some more tips to help you track your super ego. These questions that I'm going to share with you in a second, they're designed to coax your superego out from its hiding place, in kind of the same way that when you throw bait fish into the ocean, you might lure a big great white. Just make sure to stay well back from the gunnels and pay attention. Okay, so here are four questions. The first one, How much trouble do you have saying no? Were you relating to that example that I shared there? That's question one. How much effort do you put into avoiding conflict? How much do you feel like an imposter? And lastly, how much are you really trying to fit in? So, as a bonus, try and listen for times that you use the word should. This is like your super ego's calling card, and you've probably heard it said before. And I often say this, you know, don't should on yourself. So, if you haven't already figured this out by now, keeping track of what you're learning is kind of a good thing. I mean, why waste time listening to this. If it's just for entertainment, I say, go all Jane Goodall on yourself. Observe, make notes. Trust me when I tell you that the more intel you can gather on the super ego, the faster you'll be able to spot it when it steps from the bushes, and that means the faster you'll be able to utilize some of the techniques you're learning about. Remember, awareness is half the battle, if not more, and perhaps from just this rudimentary reflection thus far you're beginning to form a kind of an impression of your own super ego. I hope you are, and listen, this work is, I mean, it's just not for the faint of heart. It can feel heavy and deep, which it is, because that's just the way it is. Humans are complex. Why wouldn't we need a complex operating system in the psyche? I hope you've even been able to start imagining some of the super ego's more common phrases, the repetitive chastisements that you've heard in your head for years. To hone the picture further, I've got some additional finessing questions to add. You may want to pause the podcast for a moment and write them down, or you can check out the show notes at the end of the podcast. The important thing in super ego tracking is that you go slow and take lots of time to put together the picture of your superego that is beginning to emerge. I hear those questions. Whose voice am I hearing? What does this remind me of from my past? What is familiar about this? What were things like for me growing up at school, at home, with friends, what are the similarities that I'm experiencing now? Like I said, those will be in the show notes. The next practice comes from the article "Breaking the Chains: Finding Relief from a Harsh Superego" and it's by Ben Ringler. He suggests engaging in a five to 10 minute awareness mindfulness practice, where you think about your superego while prompting your awareness in a specific direction. In other words, how audible is their voice? Does it yell or whisper? Personally, my superego has what I refer to as a very judgy church voice, a kind of pointed hiss. If you've ever watched Lord of the Rings, the trilogy, my superego sounds a bit like worm tongue. I'm also going to include those suggestions that I've just said in the show notes.
Speaker 1 31:11
By now, you may also be forming some hypotheses of where and when the super ego is most apt to show up, and this is critical. Are there certain types of people that trigger you more than others? What about situations where you feel more insecure? The more you study this, these contexts in which your superego is most comfortably going to show up, then the more likely you're going to start to see common patterns. Tracking the superego can be tremendously empowering, so remember the most important part of this practice is to simply build awareness of your superego, and through your awareness, you're going to cob together a pretty thorough description of the superego, as well as a pretty detailed list of situations and circumstances where it is most likely to show up. Some of my clients have gone one step further to depict their super ego more visually, through drawing or even models. Do whatever works, keep it top of mind. The reason this practice can be so powerful is that you're essentially recodifying your relationship with your super ego. You're moving from subjectivity, where it's operating mostly invisibly, to objectivity, where you're able to kind of hold it at arm's length and like see it in all its glory, and of course that's important, because what you can't see, you can't change. Now that you have a pretty good understanding of the superego, what it looks like and sounds like, what it says, where it likes to hang out, you now get to consider how you want to manage it, when not if it shows up next. Superego management strategies fit neatly into two buckets. On the one hand, you need those kind of first aid strategies for those times when you find yourself in the heat of the kitchen, and you need to get the heck out of Dodge right now, and on the other hand, you need longer term strategies, you know, the kind of skill drills for life that I referenced earlier, so if it's not obvious, you're going to have more success if your strategy includes things from both buckets, and just in case you're wondering why I've put so much emphasis on the super ego and not so much on the id or ego, that's because your id, as you may recall, is entirely unconscious, so trying to manage that would be like, well, I guess just think of anything that's impossible, and in terms of your ego, try and think of it as the vantage point from which you're listening to this podcast right now. You are, in effect, your ego. This podcast was, in effect, written to give your ego a leg up. Okay, let's talk about first aid, those times when you need help right now, because you're in the middle of it. So, remember when I told you how challenging it can be to recognize the superego in action when you're being bullied by it. It's because you're in a kind of emotional hijacked where reason and logic are out the window. The super ego has effectively bound and gagged you as it takes over your psyche, and in situations like this, your first strategy has to be to notice as quickly as possible what's going on, and then get the heck out of the triggering situation. Full stop. Okay. To demonstrate, let's refer back to the earlier example that I gave, where your boss is walking towards you with yet another deadline-oriented project, and you know that if you don't say no, you're absolutely positively going to drown, but when the moment to push back arrives, your mouth literally cannot form the word no, even. It makes complete logical sense to push back. You more than likely won't, because the super ego is standing right next to you, threatening and screaming in your ear that you'd better not screw this up. Look, no one can think clearly or logically under these conditions. No one. It's not as if you're going to be like, "Oh, wow, hey, it's my super ego. What's going on? Hey, just hang on for a second, and then calmly turn back to your boss and say no. In other words, when the super ego is on the war path, our sympathetic nervous system gets triggered - think fight, flight, freeze, appease - and adrenaline and possibly even cortisol, they're racing through our veins.
Speaker 1 35:43
The only first aid strategy in this case is to recognize as quickly as possible that the superego is present. This is where all your awareness practices should pay off, and then to buy yourself some time without committing to anything. This is a good time for something I'm going to call a pocket phrase, something you can whip out without too much thought, that buys you the time without committing yourself. Could be something like, I'd be happy to take a look. It's respectful, but it's neutral. And if that doesn't sound like something you'd say, convert it, put it into your own words, but maintain the spirit of it, that you're not agreeing to anything. Oh, and also that you are not not agreeing. It's actually a pretty good idea to write your pocket phrase down and practice saying it, so it's going to feel more natural when you whip it out of your proverbial pocket. And then, once your boss has left, move to the timeout practice that I'm going to walk you through in a second, but first, what if you didn't have a pocket phrase at the ready? Let's assume that you went along to get along, and the folder is now in your hands, and your boss is gone, just like I talked about earlier. No problem, don't beat yourself up. Head directly to the timeout practice that I'm about to explain. It's not too late to salvage the situation, so the timeout practice - this is something I created for my clients many, many moons ago, and it takes into account both our physiology and our psychology when we are triggered. So, here's how it goes. Step one: if you haven't already moved away from the reactive situation, get out of dodge, leave, head for the hills. Pretend you have to go to the bathroom. Distance is needed. Step two: once you're safely away from the triggering situation, sit or stand and take five deep breaths, wiggle your toes and roll your shoulders a few times. Next, ask yourself a few truing questions during a super ego hijack. Things get scrambled, and trueing questions help you to recalibrate your metaphorical instrument panel to ensure that your compass is in fact pointing true north. These can be questions like what just happened, or what got triggered. Take your time, try to spot your super ego's footprints again. This is where your awareness practice is going to come in handy. The more you know about your super ego going into these things, the faster you're going to recognize that they're there. Number four, try to probe even deeper in your inquiry. What am I afraid of? What was the super ego trying to prevent me from doing or saying, try and find your vulnerability underneath the situation, because this is undoubtedly what your super ego is trying to prevent you from seeing. And number five, try reassuring yourself with things you actually know, such as I'll be okay, I'm going to be able to cope with whatever happens. I might not know in this moment what I'm gonna do, but I know I'll figure it out. And number six, ask yourself what you need right now. You can just finish the sentence. What I need right now is, and it could be to connect to someone I trust, it could be to get a drink of water, could be to go for a walk, whatever it is, and number seven, ask yourself, How you want to address the situation that's just happened. This is where you need to be really simple, clear, and practical, and if you're not ready to do anything yet, that's okay too. The most important thing is that you have your own egos back. So that example that I provided earlier, it was fairly middle of the road in terms of the severity of a super ego hijack. Clearly, there are more intense possibilities out there where you would do well to step away before you make things worse. I mean, imagine like you're in a meeting where a very political colleague starts undermining you in front of a VP, or someone older and more senior than you that you've just started supervising challenges your authority in front of your entire team. Imagine you're making a very important presentation, and you look out and see a sea of bored faces, or perhaps just having an argument with a romantic.
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Partner at a party, and they just turn and walk away, leaving you standing alone. I could keep churning out more examples, but just so long as we're all clear that in these types of triggering situations, the only answer is to take a time out. And remember, time out is not just for kids anymore. I've often said that, with the exception of, like, an ER doc or an airline pilot, and probably some other things I haven't thought of yet. It will rarely be beyond the realm of possibilities for you to step away for a few moments under the guise of using the restroom, and whether you had for the actual restroom or not, it doesn't matter. Removing yourself does trust me when I tell you that you will never make anything better by hanging in there and going another round. It's a hard pill to swallow, because I think most of us enjoy identifying as rational adults, but when we're under the thumb of a maniacal id and a power hungry super ego, sorry, not gonna happen. The only chance your ego has to regain its foothold and salvage the situation is by stepping back and taking a few breaths, and just because something happened in the past, it's never too late to go back and reflect on that upsetting situation that happened, whether it was yesterday or last week, or even last year. You may feel some trepidation because maybe you're still smarting from, like, acting like an idiot in front of your colleagues, sometimes in situations like these, our ego gets so beaten up we can hardly blame it for wanting to crawl into a pint of beer and pretend the whole thing didn't happen, but it's also true that those are the best situations for harvesting the clues left by your super ego. This is not an opportunity to miss. In fact, you can think of it like a treasure map. And remember, the more thorough your super ego dossier, the faster you'll spot it in the future, giving yourself the edge you need to head it off at the past before it tears the place apart. Throughout all of this reflection, having a learning mindset, aka a humble one, that's pretty essential. Here is another tool that I want to give you for managing the super ego. A reframe uses three questions to shift how you think of a situation or event. I'll use the same example. A reframe asks, what happened that led me to feel this way? What are the facts versus the interpretations, and what is an alternative interpretation? So, upon reflection of the situation with your boss, you may discover that you felt the way you did because you believe that setting boundaries would be career limiting, but when you look more closely at the facts, you discover that there really aren't any limitations, and most of what you believe is based on an interpretation that comes from what you fear. Now you are freed to look at the situation differently, choosing a more empowered interpretation, such as I haven't yet learned the specific influence tactics that I need to know to manage this dynamic, but I'm already looking into it, simple but effective. Okay, let's take a beat here. I've covered a lot of complex territory, so I want to give you a bit of a recap, because it can be actually quite simple. According to Freud, personality, which is essentially the way we show up and behave in the world, it's determined by the interaction of three distinct parts within our psyche, the id, the super ego, and the ego. Much of the contents is unconscious, the id in its entirety and parts of the super ego and ego, but by becoming well versed with the conscious aspects, particularly the super ego, we can learn to manage, and in some cases head off entirely the super ego's debilitating impact in triggering and reactive situations, and this, this can make life infinitely more enjoyable. Our success in this endeavor relies most heavily on the degree to which we're willing to track and observe the super ego across a multitude of life circumstances and situations, scanning for where our volatility seems out of proportion to the current event. Once we have a sort of super ego template, in other words, we can more or less predict how the super ego is going to behave in certain situations.
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We can then build strategies to defuse the superego before it gets out of hand and starts wrecking the joint, for instance, if we know that the superego has a habit of becoming quite reactive around authority figures, and we have an upcoming meeting with someone in authority, we can build a script or design a boundary or determine how much to disclose, etc. in advance of the meeting, even if the actual contingency plan isn't that effective, and even if you never put it into play, just taking the time to think through our approach beforehand, it emboldens us. It makes reactivity less likely. In other words, we're going to be much more likely to notice the superego as. Soon as it shows up, allowing us to take evasive action before it gets a foothold. Management strategies range from first aid, help, I'm in the middle of a super ego hijack, to after the fact reflection, gosh, that sucked. What did I miss? to a more generalized ongoing practice that combines observation with a learning mindset and humble inquiry. By now, I shouldn't have to tell you the costs of a reactive super ego. I think we've all been through incredibly stressful and reactive situations in life that we could really do without. So, it should be no surprise that there is much research that details the costs within organizational life. Meredith Summers, executive coach with MIT, cites the following damages that can be traced to the bottom line: conflict, stalemates, low productivity, low innovation, and a judgmental environment that harms psychological health and safety in the entire team, this podcast is definitely not intended to replace a robust psychotherapy session. It's an attempt to shine some light on the machinations of our everyday psyche, in the hopes of discovering some agency we didn't know we had. In the standard edition of the complete psychological works of Sigmund Freud by Sigmund Freud and Carrie Lee Rothkub, that was written in 1961 Freud explains, quote, analysis does not set out to make pathological reactions impossible, but to give the patient's ego freedom to choose either way. End quote. I think what Freud is saying is that while we'll never entirely tame those pesky aspects of our psyche by building our awareness, we may succeed at achieving some level of choice in how we respond, and that truly can mean the difference between meaningless and painful superego hijacking events and enough agency to influence more desirable outcomes from our interactions. Good luck with your super ego. So, you've been listening to The Squeeze. Thanks for joining us today. If you want to continue tuning in, don't forget to click subscribe. And, as always, we want to hear your thoughts, your comments, your feedback, and challenges, if there's anything you don't agree with. Thanks for joining us, and see you next time.
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Bye.