Controlling the Disabled Ego
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Mike Pillinski
Author, High Status Male
The central driving force pushing Man to
greater and greater heights is his Ego. The Ego's determination to
overcome whatever Nature throws in its way certainly has great survival
value, but anything this powerful can cause problems when it becomes
focused in the wrong direction, namely... back at yourself!
Here's the dictionary definition of this mysterious beast: "The
personality component that is conscious, directly controls behavior, and
is most in touch with external reality". While true, this
simplified description fails to capture the complex issues that can
arise when one's ego gets in the way of his own existence. Discord
creates frustrations that lead to anger and rage, feelings that can be
turned inward on oneself in the form of self- destructive behaviors or
directed outward in a way that attempts to harm others. Either way
it's a bad deal that can completely disempower your social
relationships, to say the least!
Hell, you may even meet some fine women doing this! You've got to
get out there and mix after all, and women are drawn to people
professions. You'll meet more of them in places like this than
you will working down at the garage with the other miserable grease
monkeys, that's for sure. Helping the less fortunate can produce
the kind of "ego shock" experience that becomes life-altering, and it
will leak through in your attitude in ways impossible to predict.
So get off your self-satisfied ass and get busy experimenting with some
perspective alteration.
The exceptional sensitivity of the male ego is something that's
especially misunderstood. A chronically frustrated ego is like a
tender open wound that can be painfully jolted with even the slightest
negative comment. An ego turned inward to the point of extreme
self-preoccupation is what John Bradshaw calls the Disabled Will.
The problem with this deal is that protecting a sensitive ego from
continuing harm soon becomes a higher priority than seeking rich life
experiences. This condition sets the table for all manner of
thought distortions like mind-reading, global stereotyping,
defensiveness, jealousy and the like. But the real trouble begins
when, in their ego-bloated grandiosity, men start taking even the
slightest criticism or rebuff too personally. Locked in a
perpetual fear-state, their ego becomes arrogant and over-reactive.
Guys with hyper-sensitive egos have a tendency to turn the act of
meeting women into a life-or-death issue for themselves, and this kind
of intense pressure to "never be disliked" can become a destructive
mental burden. Sometimes this problem can be traced back to a
single socially-traumatic event, but just as often it begins insidiously
as a series of lesser failures to connect with people all throughout
your life. It sneaks up on you until one day you realize that,
well... you've just plain GIVEN UP trying to be social or attractive to
anyone. This loss of motivation can be devastating. Soon,
you don't even consider the possibility of getting laid any more -- it's
become accepted by your unconscious mind that it's just not in the cards
for you. This is the point where you begin to slide into porno,
drugs, sexual addictions and similar behaviors which are desperate
attempts to fill the void of a lonely, isolated soul.
But it doesn't need to be this way. It's possible to begin
steering yourself back in the direction of sanity if you can just find a
way to make peace with your troubled ego and stop being so hard on
yourself. In simple terms, you must learn to hold yourself
to normal human performance standards and not to some impossible
"SuperMan" standard that no one can achieve. An elevated
fear of rejection is directly tied to a disabled will, so dealing with
this problem can make an enormous improvement in your emotional-
thinking process and lead to a richer experience in your dating-sex
life.
In that spirit, here's three ideas to get you started taming your
out-of-control disabled ego...
1) Get Some Perspective
An ego turned inward is overly obsessed with itself, which leads to a
distorted view of reality. It's healthy to get some kind of
perspective of where you fit in along the continuum of human existence
every now and then. Anyone who is too wrapped up inside his own
head is usually isolated from others to some extent as well.
People begin to seem like emotionally dead animations, and so it's easy
to hate them all. The simplest thing to do is get out of your
shell and help out -- contribute to society in some way and begin to
reconnect with humanity. Sign up for some volunteer work at the
city mission or a nursing home. Maybe start out at the SPCA if you
find it easier to deal with animals rather than people (because you're
too judgmental), but do something with people eventually because the
idea is to pull yourself up out of isolation, remember.
Your life is a grand experiment after all, have you forgotten?
A mind expanded to new dimensions never returns to its original shape.
If your thinking style sucks, it's likely that you're also stuck in a
rut going round and round with the same old sour ideas about EVERYTHING.
Often one of the major causes of self obsession is insecurity...
an inward focus on your own fears that just won't allow any other
thoughts much quarter. You can't bullshit confidence -- it's
always the result of real life experiences that get sucked down into
your unconscious and processed through into your self-esteem.
The only effective way to tackle insecurity is to get right up in its
grill and challenge it. Pick out something that scares the
shit out of you and dive into it! It doesn't even necessarily have
to be anything to do with women or social anxiety, it can be something
like getting on a plane for the first time if you've been scared to fly.
Just pick a fear and face it down. This creates a
shock to the system that will re-program your sense of what's personally
possible for you. This is how you build confidence all throughout
your life, by pushing the envelope here and there wherever you can...
just a little bit at a time. If it's been a while since you last
tried something new, then you've stopped growing. Growth
creates confidence, and confidence is the foundation upon which any
major upgrade in your life experience is launched, including your
relationships with women.
3) Take a Deliberate Punch
Any boxer knows that there's more to becoming a great fighter than 10
mile runs and flailing away at a speedbag for hours on end. While
this stuff may be essential for maintaining the power and stamina he
needs in the ring, a boxer's training would be utterly inadequate if it
didn't include work with an actual sparring partner. That's
because a prizefighter needs more than just intense aerobic and strength
training -- he needs to be able to take a punch. A lot
of punches in fact!
To play in the social ring requires the same ability to become callused,
but here what's needed is a MENTAL toughness rather than a physical one.
And this is where the disabled ego is particularly weak since it's
provoked by the slightest perceived put down or "dis" and is always on
the defensive and ready to strike back. You've become highly
rejection sensitive, and this problem can get so bad that you'll
eventually become paralyzed to act in your own sexual / romantic
interest.
The solution is to take a punch, not to the
face but to the EGO for the express purpose of toughening it up!
Many guys are afraid to get in a real fight because they have no
experience at ever having been punched, even as a kid, and therefore
have no idea of what their tolerance for this sort of pain is.
Well, the same thing can happen to you mentally as well if all
you do is run around ducking every situation where there could possibly
be some risk to your ego. You'll never get a sense of just how
tough it could actually be. So go out and do something
deliberately embarrassing or humiliating and take a nice nasty shot
to your ego.
Seriously. See how painful the mental bruise really is -- how long
it takes you to shake it off and not give a shit anymore. I'll bet
you'll be very surprised at the reserve of mental toughness you may
discover. This exercise will teach you some HUMILITY and back you
away from the god-like grandiose thinking flaws that are the common
signature of the disabled ego. You'll find that once this element
of your "fear package" is dragged out into the light, it'll burn up just
as quick as a vampire in the sunlight!
A point of fear will then have become a point of courage, and
you'll be on your way to better things.
Personal change is tough. You might not be able to force yourself
to do all of this stuff I'm suggesting, but to the extent that you CAN
you'll find it will make a tremendous difference in how you begin to
relate to the rest of the world. And to women as well.
Mike Pillinski
High Status Male
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About the author:
Reformed "social nerd" Mike Pilinski overcame an incredible case of rejection phobia by learning how to mimic behaviors and attitudes that women universally find attractive in so-called high status or "alpha" males. Visit Mike's website High Status Male where you'll find his highly acclaimed e-books "Without Embarrassment: The Social Coward's Seduction System" and "She's Yours For The Taking: A Man's Guide to the Seduction and Enchantment of Women".