Self-something: making a good relationship with your self

“I feel hollow,” he said, and from his blank expression and monotone, I believed him. Over our first weeks of therapy, I got a sense of someone with a nearly constant consideration for others—he mentioned taking care of more than one neighbor’s pet when they’re away; and indicated that his happiest times were leading a volunteer organization in college— but an atrophied sense of his own self. One of his biggest struggles was how to manage the deep loneliness that set in whenever he was home, by himself, without falling into a depression. I wish I could say this was unusual but it’s a not uncommon complaint that I hear: a description of emptiness when all the lights and noise of the day have faded, leaving nothing-ness, a self disintegrated or perhaps never integrated at all.

What is the word for this? Words are important, after all. They help us frame our world, parse the things we find in it, and take aim at what we aspire towards. To describe a healthy relationship with one’s self, do you call it self esteem? Self worth? Self care? Self-love? Self-respect? When I was talking to my husband about this subject, he suggested the word “dignity.” We need words like this to know what to cultivate when we have lost contact with our own self, as my client had, and have realized the precarity of living only on the social stage. For the purposes of this post, I will use the term “self-relationship” as one that covers both the vital, present version of this relationship and also helps us to examine its damaged or absent aspect.

What’s onstage in your mental theatre, once the audience has left?

Your relationship with yourself works in many ways like your relationships to other people. It becomes strained through insensitivity or neglect in the same way. It forms with many of the same elements: history, patterns of interactions, tone, and trust (or lack thereof.) I find myself gesturing almost frantically towards the self in so many sessions, pleading with my clients to consider that there is someone in there, and that the normal rules of courtesy and civility apply as the barest minimum. However common and socially condoned, you commit an act of violence when you blot out your own selfhood. Fairly often depression, anxiety, substance use, and a host of other mental health conditions are created or maintained by this refusal to acknowledge one’s self as a person, with as much a right to fair and civil treatment as all the external personages encountered in the day.

What’s strange is that in many ways our culture seems to encourage the diametric opposite, a near obsession with ourselves. We gratify ourselves with whatever consumer purchases we feel we deserve. We broadcast our image and achievements via social media. We are tetchy and sensitive about not being understood or respected immediately, the way we feel we ought. But these are the shallow waters of self-relating, the equivalent of the absent parent who shows up sporadically with an armful of gifts and tickets to Disney World.

Heheh.

Sometimes the “selfless” clients I see are directly influenced by this culture, and seem to have turned themselves into clumsy rebels against it. Repelled by examples of narcissism in their lives, they have sworn to themselves to not be that, whatever it takes. In other cases, they have grown up praised for kindness and unselfishness, and developed a rigid identity around these traits, a sense of “this is who I am and this is who I must be.”

Real self-relating, though, is formed as any other relationship is, through time and attention.  And if you are someone who feels that lack of a sense of self, you heal and rebuild a self-relationship the way you would any strained relationship: you have a conversation. Talking to yourself has connotations of fragmentation and schizophrenia. But in fact, most of us need to have internal dialogue to integrate our often conflicting thoughts, feelings, and opinions. This open and ongoing conversation is the bedrock of knowing who you are.

When it comes to self-dialogue, you can imagine a tone of “honest coffee chat with a good friend”. Another paradigm I’ve heard is “caring parent and inner child.” Whatever feels more right to you.

I can hear so many of my clients over the years, and what they invariably ask next with a look of anguish is “But how do you do that?” Don’t make it complicated, I tell them. You know how to have a conversation. It’s the strangeness and self-consciousness of doing it between different perspectives within your own self that needs to be overcome, not the basic skills. If you ask yourself what you think or how you feel about something that you know feels unresolved, almost always there are at least two subparts that posit opposing views. For example, a common case is whether to say something about problematic behavior to a friend, relative, or coworker. One part might begin angrily, “You should tell so-and-so that they were out of line” with another part responding with resignation “It’s not necessary, for the following reasons…” That conversation needs to keep going until a compromise reconciling and respecting both sides can be reached.

Making the conversation between your various parts productive, however, sometimes needs a referee, a kind parent who makes sure the kids talk right. Essentially, I’m asking you to moderate the discussion so that you don’t allow any part of you to be an asshole to the other. This takes awareness of the language you’re actually thinking in, which can be slippery and elusive at first. Many people start by having these conversations out loud or via journaling so as to stay aware of the process, to know when sarcasm or self-denigration or simply abandoning the project out of frustration or absent-mindedness come in.  When you see these patterns you can troubleshoot them. If you don’t know how to shift the language and the tone, or find consistency to be difficult to achieve on your own, therapy or a structured workbook on the subject can help.

This artist depicts via a set of cards reminiscent of a tarot deck a few of the various “distractor” parts that might be present in an IFS understanding of one’s parts. From left to right they are workaholism, overeating, partying, and exercise. Available at http://www.inneractivecards.com

Many, many kinds of therapy emphasize the skills of self-talk and self-relating. One of them, Internal Family Systems or IFS, has risen dramatically in popularity in the last several years. IFS is based on a particular model of subparts, namely the “protector” parts who help manage crises and stress, and the unwelcome “exile” parts who represent aspects of ourselves that we devalue. Its colorful ways of dramatizing our inner conflicts helps many people visualize and facilitate inner conversations.

One branch of existential therapy, Personal Existential Analysis, appeals to me because it emphasizes not just the “how” but the “why” of self-relating. PEA stresses that our internal conversations are not just for our own wellbeing, but in fact can and should connect us more meaningfully to the rest of our world. The steps of PEA begin with assessing the actual circumstances of the situation that one is responding to, and continues with open and curious identification of one’s thoughts and feelings in response. From there one uses this information to conceptualize a rooted inner position; and ultimately to create a plan for values-based action…which, by the way, might include the conscious decision to refrain from acting differently for the time being.

The importance of self-dialogue as PEA sees it is that it helps point the individual toward their personal best way forward via committed choice and action. My own internal conversations help me know when to step in and show the responsibility that Fred Rogers espouses (and is a personal value of mine), and when for whatever reason I cannot.

If this sounds like a foreign language, you are not alone. For much of my own life it would have struck me as some kind of New Age-y nonsense to consider my self-relationship. But experience has convinced me that, for my clients and myself, self-relating is in fact a practical necessity. Without it, even when someone is doing well, it is a fragile balance. When a healthy self-relationship is present, however, you have a mechanism for rebalancing when bad things happen (as they inevitably do), so that you can self-correct and find stable footing again and again.

Self-relating may feel strange and awkward at first, but in fact it is simply extending responsible relationship skills inward. Consider yourself as someone with the same right to being treated decently as anyone you encounter outside your own skin. Ask yourself questions and really try to understand the complexity of the answers. The words you use to yourself matter. Ultimately a closer relationship to yourself helps you to check your work so that you live on purpose rather than being jerked around by the first reactive impulse. By building habits of self-relating you show care and attentiveness to your values, so that you can be someone more like the person you want to be in the world.