Most self-help literature deals just with the surface-level symptoms of deeper problems. So the solutions they provide are mostly band-aids — just cultivate good habits, simply change your beliefs, come on make better decisions! Or they try to instill wisdom through propositions — think positively, be authentic, dream big! (as if you just need to flick a switch)
I mean sure, those are important and useful ideas. And they may even help you. But you can’t really expect transformation through platitudes or surface-level strategies. The strategies anyway won’t work long-term if the foundations are flimsy. What we need is a more nuanced understanding of the problems that are at the core of all the friction in our lives.
The Core Problems
The majority of our psychological problems originate out of maladaptive emotional/thinking patterns we formed in response to psychological wounds (traumatic events) or psychological malnutrition (lack of proper attention/love in formative years — attachment disturbances).
Of course, there can also be other problematic forms of conditioning that aren’t necessarily traumatic in nature. For example, parents may over-protect a child and obstruct his/her learning and development. But there’s a common mechanism of action at play across the board — fear.
Anxiety, self-loathing, overthinking, perfectionism, validation-seeking, regret, resentment, hostility, arrogance, addictions, dissociation — all are born out of either attempts at making sure our wounds don’t get exposed or the need to fill some gaping hole in our sense of self. These things run deep and become the invisible forces behind our behavior — shaping our self-esteem, our worldview, and our approach to life.
Are you free?
Most people live either in denial or ignorance about the impact of their childhood on their life. They think they had a “normal” upbringing and sophisticatedly rationalize their emotional difficulties at the surface level. Then they beat around the bush trying to fix their problems through various self-improvement “tactics”. Or else they try to alleviate their pain through external achievements, people, cope-y philosophies, grown-up toys, or numbing drugs like alcohol.
We think we are designing our lives consciously, but so many of our decisions and opinions are pre-determined by fears that were instilled into our subconscious at a very young age. You see, until we overcome our conditioning, our life will be organized around avoiding pain. We can’t truly be free until we heal our wounds, overcome our conditioning, and integrate our split-off parts.
“Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.” — Carl Jung
An Integrated Sense of Self
An integrated sense of self is fundamental to everything you seek in life, especially happiness. It’s also fundamental to all the problems you’re trying to solve. After all, you don’t have work or relationship problems. You have personal problems that show up in your work and relationships.
Confidence, energy, productivity, empathy, kindness, motivation, authenticity — all these aspects of your personality are largely determined by your sense of self.
Of course, there are other important developmental endeavors like pushing your physical limits, developing a solid worldview, learning to solve complex problems, and building your focus muscles. But again, your ability to do these things well (or get better at them) is also strongly dependent on your sense of self.
And so, shouldn’t the project of psychological integration be our highest priority?
If you are relatively “functional” and mostly happy, you wouldn’t feel the need to dig deeper and put in the effort to do elaborate inner work. You’ll get by without it. You might even lead a fun life and go on to achieve a bunch of cool things. But as Jiddu Krishnamurti said, it is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society. Have you ever considered that your idea of a 7/10 level of well-being may actually just be a 4/10 in reality?
Can you imagine how much attention and mental energy would get freed up if you did not get caught up in the game of self-preservation?
Insight is Not Enough
The idea of psychological integration is not really a new one. The problem is that most people approach it with the frame of “gaining insight” into their unconscious. Sure, that can be considered an important first step. But a stutterer does not stop stuttering because of his insight into the fact that he doesn’t vocalize properly. You cannot reason your way into a transformation.
While insight can give us the awareness required to slowly update some of our maladaptive behaviors and become more “functional”, it cannot heal us. And healing (which comes from the German word heilen meaning “to make whole”) is what actually enables transformation.
Your wounds structured your psyche to hold certain beliefs, body tensions, and emotions. Letting go of these deeply held structures is a slightly complex endeavor and it needs to happen at a somatic level. That’s why thinking alone can only take us so far (and that’s why traditional psychotherapy is so ineffective).
Our Conditioning Runs Deep
Things often go far deeper than we can imagine or remember. For example, critical attachment-forming experiences occur in the first eighteen months of our life, and our narrative memory system is not live during this period. So if something went wrong during this period of life (which it often does), you’d have no memory of it. Just a visceral fear of abandonment or a sense of inadequacy (often covered up by layers of defense mechanisms) that will repetitively play out in your behavior and relationships.
Some of the unconscious stuff is buried so deep that you wouldn’t even get access to it without altering your consciousness. Because there are limits to the degree of emotional safety you can simulate in a normal waking state. (If we want to integrate our shadow to the fullest extent, we need to think beyond conventional ideas and methods)
That’s why an important thing to bear in mind while embarking on this journey is the risk of a “false finish”. Until you are overflowing with love for yourself and others, the work is not done. Be existentially ambitious. (When I say “overflowing with love”, I do not mean a cessation of suffering or eternal bliss. I see it as being able to be deeply present, with compassion and wonder, to everything within and around us. Even the disturbing bits.)
Where does one start?
The world at large spends so much time discussing external achievements and how we can attain our goals more quickly, easily, and bigly. But very few people are discussing and investigating the possibility landscape of internal achievements. Even when it’s obvious that the latter will automatically lead to the former.
The way to find those few people and uncover what they know is by asking the right questions —
- What are my maladaptive behavioral patterns and where do they originate from?
- What flaws do my parents exhibit and how might I have inherited those flaws?
- What events in my childhood may have permanently altered my emotional incentives?
- What are the most effective healing modalities out there?
- What little-known psychotechnologies can accelerate this process?
- What is happiness? What would it be like to be a happiness billionaire?
- Who are the most integrated people I know? What do they do differently?
- What is the most ambitious existential goal I can set for myself?
- What big decisions can I take to move towards that goal?
Once you start asking these questions, you’ll eventually stumble upon tools and ideas that hold immense transformative power (some of them are almost too good to be true). From there, the results you get will be proportional to your courage, efforts, and patience.
Closing Thoughts
As you integrate the various fragments of your self and come into your own, your priorities will change. The people you relate to will change. The kind of games you want to play will change. A new world of possibilities will open up. You’ll discover new ways of being.
Only after you’ve healed your psychological wounds will you realize how many of your desires and “goals” originated from unconscious fears.
That’s why I think it’s wise to make psychological integration your highest priority and stall a bit on big irreversible decisions. Because, at the end of the day, it’s about who you want to be, not what you want to have.
Remember, extremely amazing things are possible.
“What we achieve inwardly will change outer reality” — Plutarch
Thank you for reading. Most of the content on this website has emerged from conversations with readers like you. Every other Sunday, I send out an email dissecting some aspect of the human mind.
If you can take out a few minutes every once in a while, I’ll try to help you develop a deeper understanding of how our mind works. So that you can create a life full of beauty, joy, and love.
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