Our Self

A Guide to a ValueCentered © Life

How We Know
What We Know
(Simplified)

To Build strong children and relationships we need to know our self, but we must not get tangled in words or pop psychology that confuse and obscure; Our knowing our “Self” requires making words work for us: to clarify and discriminate ... not to interfere.

Words are funny characters: Each word plays the part of a metaphor --  representing the concrete and the abstract. They mean just what we want them to mean and yet they almost have a life of their own.

They can uplift us or hurt us; Make us laugh or make us cry; Inspire us or leave us in despair; Free us to dream and move ahead or create a prison for us from which we must struggle with patience and diligence if we are to escape. They can facilitate understanding or become barriers and stumbling blocks. They can give insight or block enlightenment. It is our job to use them as carefully as we can.

Our Self
An Organizing Force in  Our Lives
How We Know

Before we can clearly understand what’s up and gain the control over our lives that we want, we must understand how we work. It’s a little complicated, but fascinating.  I would skip this part if I thought that we had a good chance of proceeding with little room for error, but we need to know this.

This way we won’t be fooled by things that seem right but are based on false principles. With knowledge we can think clearly about ourselves.  We can free ourselves of many of our blind spots and unravel our own responses to many situations as they naturally occur.

Our Self
Our Self is a curious thing:  probably because it’s not really a thing so much as a construct (something  we build in our minds) to try to understand who we are and what we should expect and experience from this world.

Our Self is also our collection of Feelings/Values and Images that define who we are and how we make decisions.

It is the resolution of the many aspects of Self that make us a complete person.  We can’t escape, so we might as well get it as right as we can.

Experience
Let me show you a picture that shows (in a simple form) how we get in touch with experience.

There are layers to our Self (or that’s how we define it for practical purposes). We operate at all these levels at once.  They interact from the outside in and from the inside out, in a feedback loop that just keeps going.

There are all kinds of things going on around us and inside us.  Some we directly pay attention to; some we experience without paying attention to directly but it still gets through unnoticed; some things we miss; and some we can’t experience because our bodies can’t pick up or organize the signals. Some things happen silently inside; some of the inside stuff we believe actually happens outside when it’s not; some of the inside stuff we get right on the nose and manage effectively.

There’s two parts to experience: (1) the “outside” stuff that comes in through our senses and (2) the “inside” stuff that comes from body functioning, senses, thoughts and feelings, or images… all that stuff inside our Body.  Sometimes we can tell the differences and sometimes we get confused about what’s what.  The difference can be very important.

Our Body: It All Starts with the Body

We are stuck with the instrument we walk around in.  Our senses pick some stuff up; shape the stuff into signals that we have learned to understand; and transmits it throughout our body.

We’re talking about all our body, but there is a remarkable instrument that initiates, and organizes and records and a whole lot more. Yes, our body / our brain inseparable ... although we know that we have memories at the cellular level.  The master is the eight pounds of gray matter that is in touch with most of our experience.  If electro-chemical or structural things go wrong here, we have some serious things to do to make it right or learn how to work around it.

Although there are only some things we can do; we can enhance what the body senses and gain some control over how things are shaped and formed.

Remember that what we experience is not direct and that we have distorted things a bit.

- We may miss important parts.
- Things may get tangled … what we see and hear and feel.
- The system isn’t made to process everything at once or to manage too many things.

What we intentionally left out about our bodies

There are those in medicine, physiology, anthropology, paleontology, psychology … who say that our brain is made up of many brains.  They talk about our “reptilian brain” or “mammalian brain” or our “conscious brain” ….

While it’s true that we have layers in our brain and that some centers or ganglia (bundles of nerves) have a major impact of certain functions, we just have to remember that our brain is connected in complex and (often) surprising ways.  We don’t stress the disconnection but stress the whole, interrelated, interactive nature of the brain.

If you want to learn about the parts, read physiology.  It’s silly to read paleontology (or other sciences that have to speculate about brains) to learn about how our brain functions, unless you just have an interest.

I’ve read physiological research for 30 years and find it very useful, but not as the source of speculation about a Self-based psychology of human beings. 

Then, there’s the unconscious.  Others allude to the subconscious while still others address an additional dimension in the preconscious.

Unconscious. Personally, I always thought of the unconscious mind (or unconscious part of the psyche) as that state that follows a good whack on the head usually accompanied by darkness.

Others would have you believe that our conscious mind is but a tip of the iceberg. Beneath the surface most of the determinants of our choices and experience lies.  We have but to embrace the workings of the unconscious. (A good excuse … by the way … to decide that we are barely responsible for our choices and actions.)

You can “blame” almost anything on that vast unconscious over which we have little conscious control.  Gives us lots of license to do lots of “shadow-y” things.  These things are (of course) supposed to be channeled by our consciousness so we can be socially responsible.

Personally, I’d rather think of levels of awareness.  Eastern masters of some of the arts seem to be able to become acutely aware of and exercise control over the most automatic parts of their bodies… like heart rates and breathing and body temperature.

While it is certainly true that there’s lots going on inside that we generally aren’t aware of (lots of electro-chemical stuff and automatic stuff), we still have the opportunity to expand our awareness and master our Self.

We don’t need the idea of an unconscious for that.

Our Physical Self:  More than Our Body is Our Perception of Our Body

No matter who we are and what we look like, most of us
build a picture of what we are like.  Our pictures of
ourselves do not have to be much like what others might say.

A model may think herself “too fat.”  A “leading man” may think of himself as “ugly and unattractive.” All this thinking usually began when we were quite young.  We can literally have a picture of our unattractiveness “beat into us.” Children who have been abused typically believe themselves to be “unattractive” or “ugly” or “monstrous.”

We may consider our bodies as “weak” or “ineffectual” or “inadequate.”   When we make decisions, we reference those decisions to who we think we are and how we believe we can act in the world.

We literally do not see ourselves as others might see us when we look in the mirror or review pictures that have been taken of us.

Our seeing is shaped by the magnification as we stare through the prism of our Physical Self.

We see every line or wrinkle or pudge-spot or “ugly” aspect. 

Or … we may see a vision of perfection.  There is no reason that the Physical Self has to be bad.

If we have treated our bodies with respect and have been reinforced by those who love us, we can have a very positive, personal image of our bodies.   The prism can produce a beautiful spectrum of light as well as magnifying any trouble.

How we get so sad about our bodies?

The best way to get sad about your body is to have sadness beat into us.  Abuse always creates a sad Physical Self.  Another way is to have few people touch or hug or really love you.  A third way is to have someone touch you inappropriately.  Finally, we can just have difficult bodies that don’t play sports well, don’t look like the stereotypes of beautiful or handsome.

But no matter what we get, we can manage.  We can treat our bodies with respect.  Maybe we can’t get all the hurt out, but we can make wise choices about who we are going to be.

Our Social Self: The Rules of Engagement

Our social rules allow us to initiate social behavior and to act in social settings, influencing responses of others in our circle.

Our value systems define our relationships with others and set our expectations about them.  Our families and friends are included as are strangers we meet in settings in which the circumstance dictates what we should say and do.

Wanting to feel connected to others is organized within this social set of rules.  At a time when we can have more entertainment and a greater variety of input at home than ever before, people are going out to social events … the movies ... sporting events … religious activities in record numbers.

If we know the social rules by which priorities are set we can operate successfully in a variety of situations.

Priorities change from group to group.  It’s like moving from one culture to another.  Each one has its own set of priorities. 

As we build a family, we set those priorities for that culture.  As we join an organization, we enter a culture. Sometimes we can change cultures that we enter, but that’s difficult (so be careful what you join).

Sometimes the success of a group or company depends on its cultural priorities as much as its management processes.

There are many companies who have different success rates region to region or store to store or office to office.  They try to understand the differences in terms of demographics or location or buying or competition.  While these factors may make a difference, the cultural priorities and their influence on functioning and success are completely overlooked.

In our family we need to know what the “Social Values” are like, making them explicit and knowing how our social self may be different from those of our spouse or children.

We need to know us.  Our happiness or success may be directly related to our ability to make our social self work within a variety of cultures or in dealing with important differences between individuals.

While it is important to know how things are working and how we are operating, we do not need a huge set of rules and priorities.  There are some basic issues we need to understand that will serve us well. We’ll talk later about those.

Our Private Self: Our Deeper Private Thoughts

Beyond how we think of ourselves in relationship to others, there are the private ways that we think about ourselves. These private thoughts may be organized and clearly articulated or may be rambling noise ... a variety of voices … which discourage us or interpret what we see and do and feel in positive or negative ways.

If we are to be successful, we definitely have to deal with this private material. 

Negative voices need to be understood and allowed to sleep.  We think of the negative voices as if they were a very small, undisciplined child … voicing things that we learned about ourselves from others and from experience before we had the power to manage ourselves, protect ourselves, and reflect on the limited extent of any failure that we are likely to face.  I do not believe that this negative child grows up, but it can be coaxed to take a long, long nap.

With this unorganized (often negative or helpless or frightened) child asleep, we can more clearly listen to the empowered voice within us.  We can more clearly articulate things.  We can find the emotion associated with the Personal Values that set our priorities and form a basis from which we make our choices.

Be careful about hiding our negative or frightened or helpless self away and pretending that it is gone or is grown.  Instead, become aware of our Private Self … be reflective … recognize the differences in what we “hear” … learn how our Private Values and Feelings work within us.

It is in our Private Self that two tasks take place:
1. We muse and define who we are.
2. We decide whom we would like to become – Ideal.
These are essential tasks with success riding in the balance.

If the “Who I Am” remains undefined, we experience what Erickson called “Diffusion” – a state filled with uncertainty and anxiety.

If the “Who I Want to Be” is not sensitive to the best in my culture (superego like), we will suffer guilt and depression – consider The Sopranos and the therapy.  If the “Who I Want to Be” is corrupt, we’re looking at a sociopathic or psychopathic personality with all the accompanying trials.  We can get by, but it’s not a pretty picture or a noble one.

Our Inner Self:  Universal Rules

At the center of all of us is our deep structure.  There we find the CoreValues  from which all others are generated. There lie the universal rules that govern the lives of every one of us.

How, then, do we differ?  We differ in how we express those CoreValues  … that is: we differ in that which the expressed feelings and values are attached to. How we attach our selves to the world differs … how we express our CoreValues differ … the universal rules do not.

Experiencing Our Inner Self:  Universal Rules

Some years ago, a psychiatrist/psychologist named Carl Gustav Jung tried to understand what drives our inner organization and what happens deep inside.  When he couldn’t put his finger on it he proposed Archetypes as the deep, organizing principles that we could not experience directly.  We could sense order and dreams and images and symbols that express the archetypes indirectly.  He also established a Self psychology and the concept of Identification.

I have a different notion: those deep inner organizing forces are our CoreValues.  We experience them throughout our experience with Self.

Experiencing Our Inner Self:  Universal Rules

1.  Our Bodies
We experience Security and Freedom in our Bodies.
We experience feeling good about ourselves through
pleasure, excitement and just plain feeling deeply good
- Esteem.  We experience a completeness from time to time – everything seems in Harmony or Balanced.

2.  Our Physical Self
We experience Security and Freedom in Physical Self.
The feelings can depend on our direct experience, or it can come from deep inside. Even in a neutral (or even positive) circumstance, we can believe ourselves vulnerable or secure. We may have so structured our beliefs that we feel secure even in what might appear to be vulnerable situations.  We believe that we are safe.

We have also probably noticed that some of us are more comfortable in our skins than others. That comfort is the expression of the Core Security with which we live.

We experience our sense of Freedom in our Physical Self. We decide at times whether we are in control or out of control.  We decide at times whether we have the power to do what we want to do – even when others may doubt us.

In a real sense, we have to will our bodies to experience pleasure (although some bodies are created with a greater capacity than others).  At the least, this willing or allowing, is the Physical Self’s experience of Esteem.  There are even times when we have to push on through difficulty to find the “feeling good” physically.  This feeling good is the experience of Esteem.  (A hint: Respect your bodies and your bodies will respect you.)

And of course, there are times that we just feel out of Balance even when everything seems to be fine when we take inventory.  That is (in part) construction of our Physical Self.

3. Our Social Self
Of course we have experienced Security of our Social Self as we negotiate relationships.  As long as we remember that experiences can be generated from expectations and direct experience – from memories as well as anticipated future events, we can easily see the relationship between our Social Self and Security/Insecurity, Comfort/Discomfort, Trust/Distrust ….

It is just as easy to be aware of the experience of Freedom or lack of freedom that we might have in any relationship.

Esteem – feeling good about Self – can be easily appreciated in social situations.

Sometimes a relationship feels In Balance and sometimes it doesn’t.

4. Our Inner Self
Of course, it is the Inner Self that holds the essence of this deep structure:

×Security

×Freedom

 ×Esteem

 ×Balance.

Perhaps, Jung was right:  We cannot experience the deep structure directly; but we can come to know the dynamics of our existence and learn to make decisions that create the most positive outcomes for ourselves.

Potential, Connection, Organization and Use:
The Politics of Experience

Potential. Before we connect with anything, we have the potential to connect.  Even as a one cell creature, we have the potential to connect.  We have that internal potential in our life force that will become our CoreValues. It connects, organizes and uses what comes in and what goes out.

“The seed contains all that the tree will become” is not quite true but reflects the nature of “potential.”

We don’t have a Self yet, but we are developing. Connection comes after.

Connection. Our potential connects with our internal and external experience. Even in embryo we begin to react to the environment and to our internal experience. Finally, it is the nature of the connections that make the difference.

Organization. The Deep Structures – our CoreValues – begin their work. They sift and structure and organize and present our experience.  Our Body becomes the first screener.  Our construction of what we are – our Physical Self – further screens.  Social implications – Social Self – and personal and interpersonal implications – Personal Self further screens our experience.  This assumes experience from the outside.  We can follow the same path from the inside out. Starting with musings from the Personal Self, we can see the filters through which things pass to get to our expressive senses: Social to Physical to Body.

While one might get the sense that this happens without personal involvement, such is not the case. Things may happen without our taking heed, but usually (except at the Body - unless we exert special energy) we can come back to the structures that we have established through which we channel our experiences.  Some are just far more difficult than others.

The Politics of Experience

Use. We use our organization to experience our world. Do you want to change your position? Change your channels. Change what you are doing, but also reflect and change the rules.  Then, follow the new rules – your new construction of your Self.

Choice.  In all of our processes we have an “Agency.” Agency seems (as far as I can tell) to be the properties of Self that are introspective, reflective and able to choose whether we are to act on what we have concocted within ourselves.  In addition, we are able to change the attachments that we have made between our Values and the world and create new relationships and connectedness.

Agency supposes that we have to start with capabilities and correct principles if we are to make right choices.  We propose that our CoreValues are the correct principles and that the Self is the seat of those capabilities called Agency.