Dear Seaturtle:

I have more time this morning, sitting in front of the computer, to reply to your yesterday’s posts more attentively. You asked me yesterday: “Him calling me selfish, cold and that I made him feel used. Those are things my father also told me. I don’t want to be those things, do you think those could be false selves?”

From Wikipedia/ true self and false self:

“The true self (also known as real self, authentic self, original self and vulnerable self) and the false self (also known as fake self, idealized self, superficial self and pseudo self) are a psychological dualism conceptualized by English psychoanalyst Donald Winnicott. Winnicott used ‘true self’ to denote a sense of self based on spontaneous authentic experience and a feeling of being alive, having a real self with little to no contradiction.

“‘False self’, by contrast, denotes a sense of self created as a defensive façade, which in extreme cases can leave an individual lacking spontaneity and feeling dead and empty behind an inconsistent and incompetent appearance of being real, such as in narcissism…

“when what Winnicott was careful to describe as good enough parenting—i.e., not necessarily perfect—was not in place, the infant’s spontaneity was in danger of being encroached on by the need for compliance with the parents’ wishes/expectations. The result could be the creation of what Winnicott called the ‘false self’, where ‘other people’s expectations can become of overriding importance, overlaying or contradicting the original sense of self, the one connected to the very roots of one’s being’. The danger he saw was that ‘through this false self, the infant builds up a false set of relationships, and by means of introjections even attains a show of being real’, while, in fact, merely concealing a barren emptiness behind an independent-seeming façade”.

Back to your words from yesterday: “I have been called ‘cold’ by the people that I do in fact intend to distance myself from. Like F, my friend P and N… Him calling me selfish, cold and that I made him feel used. Those are things my father also told me. I don’t want to be those things, do you think those could be false selves? Because if they are, then he saw them.. What do you think about the concept of the people we meet in life are mirrors into ourselves? I don’t like my reflection looking at him, does that make it wrong?”-

– First, “What do you think about the concept of the people we meet in life are mirrors into ourselves?”-  the people we meet generally show us who they are, more than who we are. Generally, the mirrors we look at in others show us a murky mix of who they are and who we are.

Second: “I have been called ‘cold’ by the people that I do in fact intend to distance myself from. Like F, my friend P and N… Him calling me selfish, cold and that I made him feel used. Those are things my father also told me. I don’t want to be those things, do you think those could be false selves?“- I don’t want to answer this because I don’t want to either join the people who call you cold, selfish and/ or a user, and I don’t want to tell you that you are not these things because you may be, at times.

Therefore, I will tell you about me in regard to my true and false selves: my true self was loving and trusting and felt ALIVE, but then, it was terribly abused by my mother, twisted into knots and generally emptied of the feeling of being ALIVE. What followed was a feeling of emptiness, an inner death of sorts, depression, shame and guilt.

My mother was paranoid and very much emotionally detached from me and often, angry at me. One of my false selves was the angry, judgmental self that was invested in a misguided loyalty to my abuser: I was angry at the people who hurt her, and since she claimed that everyone (sooner or later) was hurting her, I hated everyone, including myself. The purpose of this false self was to be on my mother’s side so that she will be.. on my side, so that she and I will be together.

These days, I am in the process of dissolving this false self and resurrecting the generally trusting, loving self, loving and trusting myself and others.

anita