Self-Less Psychotherapy
Modern psychotherapy is designed to help people cultivate greater self-awareness and a healthier relationship with their sense of self. In doing so, we hope our clients will feel more confident and motivated to make positive, lasting changes in their lives.
Although I believe wholeheartedly in the efficacy of modern psychotherapy, I also wonder, as a therapist, if the process of helping clients “cultivate greater self-awareness and a healthier relationship with their sense of self” actually requires a philosophical shift toward believing the “self” is not so important after all.
Dating back to Ancient Greece, philosophers, spiritual figures and scientists have debated the origin and purpose of consciousness. And while there remains little consensus regarding the “how and why” of consciousness, we can all agree that humans experience a very unique form of consciousness because we experience it from the perspective of a “self” (In this context, the “self” is the experiencer, doer and witness of our own subjective reality).
Self-awareness is so innate and instrumental to human nature that we can hardly imagine what or who we’d be with out. The “self” functions as the narrator, biographer and the main character of our lives. It’s also the currency we trade both socially and professionally. Your resume is a summary of your externalized identity as a business professional. Your online profiles offer a glimpse into your desired social identity. Your clothes and appearance are shorthand for the values and interests you choose to share with the world. Without a sense of self, we’d be lost.
At the same time, a number of well-respected philosophers and scientists, including William James and Sam Harris, suggest that our sense of self is an illusory creation of our minds; nothing more than an epiphenomenon of brain activity. And beneath the mental narratives about ourselves and the identity we present to the world, we share many of the same basic human instincts.
So how do we reconcile the felt experience of being a unique someone with our biological reality as just another living thing? For starters, it’s important to imagine that feeling like a someone with a story and a purpose likely benefits our species. After all, self-consciousness is a product of natural selection, and from some perspectives, humans are the most successful living species on earth.
To that point, it’s understandable that so many modern societies promote individualism and celebrate those of us who achieve great things. We hang portraits of great men and women on our walls. We read their biographies to our children and aspire to write our own stories as adults. In doing so, we incentive each other to fully actualize our talents.
While there are certainly benefits to our individualistic culture, you don’t have to look very hard to see the profound cost of our self-centered motivations. Social media is awash with anxious generations chasing moments of fame by curating and promoting their own virtual identities. Meanwhile, identity politics, which encourages people to associate their sense of self with a political belief system, is fueling waves of violence and hatred within our species.
The easiest reaction to our mental health crises and political divisiveness is to blame TikTok or Donald Trump. But if we are honest with ourselves, individuals in power only exploit the culture that we buy into everyday. We wake up and think to ourselves, if only I could improve my appearance, get a better job, or be more like that other person. Then we open our phone and there are self-improvement products, services and programs advertising to us. Sadly, there is no end to self-improvement. Our culture of “more and better” only pushes us keep striving, leaving so many of us feeling dissatisfied, lonely and depressed at the end of the day.
While our felt experience of being a “self” who strives for meaning is natural and important to our survival, we often fail to perceive self-consciousness as a tool in the mind and nothing more. Instead, we condition our children, implicitly or explicitly, to believe that their identity, achievements and legacy encompass the whole of their value.
When we inevitably experience failure in life, we’re left with a choice to make; Do we continue to subscribe to our individualistic culture and turn toward endless self-improvement as the solution to our pain? Or do we create a sense of self and a value system that is uniquely sustainable for ourselves?
The human capacity for self-consciousness can expand well beyond the notion that we are fixed identities in pursuit of self-exceptionalism. For example, I can conceptualize myself as a member of our species or within nature as a whole. I can identify as a timeless soul traveling the infinite, ever-expanding universe or as an illusory self in an imagined reality. I can view myself as an ever-changing thing in each passing moment or in the child I once was. All of these ideas about who I am, including the sense of self I associate with our co-created reality, are equally valid because they are all creations of my mind.
Of course, no one can get a job if they exclusively identify as a timeless soul in the infinite universe, so we need to hold two opposing beliefs at once. On the one hand, we can maintain a stable, congruent sense of self to exist in the world, and on the other hand, we can conceptualize our sense of self as a creation of the mind that we can control.
Practically speaking, if you buy into this dialectical premise, you might feel less shame about failures and feel more inclined to simply learn from your mistakes. After all, the “someone” who made the mistake is just an epiphenomenon of your brain’s activity. It isn’t who you are. Furthermore, you might focus more on how you feel and how you make others feel rather than the story in your mind about yourself. Ultimately, it’s just that; one of many stories in your mind that you can choose how deeply to believe in.
Unsubscribing from mainstream cultural beliefs might not get you a promotion or a slimmer waist line, but from what I’ve seen as a therapist, the people that do unsubscribe feel lighter, more connected to others and more at peace with themselves.
A good starting point in shifting your self-context is the “I Am” exercise within Acceptance and Commitment Therapy. All you need to do is write out all of the things “you are” starting with the simple phrase “I am…” For example, I could write, “I am a therapist on the weekdays, I am anxious sometimes, I am adventurous other times, I am a human, I am a brother…etc.” After fully exhausting the possibilities, read through the list. And whenever you feel you aren’t “good enough” at one thing, recall the list. Perhaps you might then add “I am being kind to my self.”
