My Invented Self is Struggling

It’s been with me as long as I can remember. “I have to… I need to… I can’t afford to… I should…”

I feel the struggle in my chest. There’s a deep sadness in my heart, a longing to be free of the struggle, to soar.

When I think about my early years, I don’t remember any mistreatment per se… certainly not from my parents. But I don’t remember much joyful play either. Just kind of learning how to keep my parents pleased with me and avoid my dad’s anger.

My dad used to try to shape or direct me with that anger… I guess it was the only way he knew how. Meanwhile, I was engaged in building a persona I could use to both deflect the anger and cover up the feeling that I was its victim. I felt diminished in Dad’s presence, both in terms of his height advantage and what I believed to be my inability to make him proud of me. I know he wanted me to succeed, but I was never sure whether his desire was for my benefit or to make himself feel better as a father.

That persona I was building back then became an “invented self.” I shaped it in order to find ways to feel safe and valued and, well, significant. Constructing that invented self required virtually all my time and energy, and there wasn’t much of it left to remember my true Self.

Here’s what I wrote in my second book, Hoodwinked: Exploring Our Culture’s Profound Illusions:

“Each of us has a self-image to which we cling mightily.  My self-image is that I am a kind and gentle person, warm and caring and considerate of all the people I encounter in my daily life.  I like that self-image, and I’m happy to project it to everyone, old friends and new.  The only problem is that it’s a contrivance.  It’s part of who I learned to be to ensure that people would like me and include me so that I wouldn’t be alone.  I think that, by far, the most difficult thing any human being could possibly do is to allow that self-image to crumble so that the real Being can emerge.  It’s a terrifying prospect, giving up the mask that one has worn for so long and that we have fervently believed to be who we are.  Who might we turn out to be?”

I’m feeling that difficulty now in my chest. My identification with that self-image, that invented self, is strong. I spent more than 70 years grooming it, hoping it would be resilient enough to cover up my true feelings.

These days, that invented self is struggling. It is increasingly being undermined by my true Being, my growing awareness of who I truly am. It’s being forced to tell the truth about what it’s been up to. It wants to continue to lie, to appear to have all the answers, and to hide its failures. For much of my life, it got away with all that because I identified my true Being with it. One day a number of years ago however, it made a critical mistake and I suddenly saw it as an imposter. Turns out, that was a one-way door. I couldn’t un-see it. And now, I find that I’m progressively withdrawing my support.

Without that support, the invented self teeters, like buildings on an unstable California coastline during one of these latest storms. It struggles to survive, to remain upright, and that’s what I feel in my chest. Perhaps it’s afraid, fearful of being found out, of being revealed as a fraud. Fortunately, my sense of the true Self within me rises to take its place. My invented self will never go away, not while I’m still here on Earth. It will remain, but it is increasingly confined to the back seat. Hands off the wheel, self-image! Your days are numbered, after all…