EGO DEFUSION: Turning down the volume on suffering.

EGO DEFUSION - Ego Defusion comes from many different psychological disciplines, particularly Freudian/Jungian ego psychology and the term defusion comes from ACT therapy. The chief difference between Ego Defusion and ACT or CBT is that we are actually labeling the two chief parts of the mind and identifying their roles in thinking.

"Defusing Techniques in ACT and CBT involve distancing, disconnecting or seeing thoughts and feelings for what they are (streams of words, passing sensations), not what they say they are (dangers or facts). STOP, STEP BACK, OBSERVE (the thoughts and feelings, what's happening to/for the other person)." LINK

DEFUSION: "I'm noticing I'm having the thought..."

The first part of Ego Defusion is being able to differentiate between the two types of thinking, ego and Higher Self.

HIGHER SELF: Is your Truth. It’s the part of you that is clear, calm, thoughtful, rational, logical, realistic and oriented to reality as it is. It is the part of you that can be in the moment or even experience the benefits of FLOW, because there are no ego-centered complaints informing you of how things "should" be or what you "must" do instead of how things actually are and what you're actually doing. The Higher Self engages SLOW, thoughtful consideration of facts and responds rather than reacts. The Higher Self can adapt to stress without emotional reactivity.

EGO: The ego is an exaggeration of the self and magnifies the importance of everything, negative and positive (with positive experiences it can lead to addictions, narcissistic and selfish behaviors). It takes normal problems and magnifies them, making it often difficult to think clearly. It uses black and white, catastrophic thinking and blanket generalizations that distort actual reality. Everything it tells you seeks to elicit an emotional response. The ego is NEVER satisfied and nothing is ever good enough.

Essentially the ego is the mental apparatus of suffering. But everything it thinks is a lie, because it thinks in blanket generalizations and has no capacity for considering actual facts due to being involved in emotional reactivity.  It thinks FAST and engages knee-jerk reactions from emotion as opposed to thoughtful consideration of facts. The ego is often non-adaptive to change and demands life be as it says it should be and becomes extremely antagonistic to circumstances that demonstrate otherwise. An apt nick name for the ego is "King Baby."

You can feel pain, even chronic pain, but the ego will inform that "this is horrible, I can’t stand this! Why is this happening to me?" If this Ego Script goes on for too long (and it does become a repetitively scripted inner dialogue) we can eventually wind up with physical symptoms, such as anxiety, panic attacks, heart palpitations, dizziness, depression, suicidal thoughts, depersonalization, irritable bowel symptoms, etc, etc, due to the constant hijacking of the stress response.

Stress Response Hijacking - In the stress response (often called the HPA axis), the Hypothalamus is a threat detector designed exclusively for physical survival, with no consideration for ego-centered concerns. The hypothalamus detects a threat, sends a message to the pituitary which provokes the adrenals to generate the fight or flight response through hormones like cortisol, epinephrine (adrenaline), norepinephrine,  etc.

How Stress Effects Your Body

The problem is when the ego hijacks the hypothalamus, rather than seeing an external threat, the ego generates a hypothetical threat in the mind, which engages the stress response. It will literally equate everyday problems as if your physical survival were threatened and that's how the body will respond.

The ego can hijack your stress response, which informs your body (through symptoms) that an argument with your spouse equates with death, or loss of a job means your life is over or a bad grade on a test means you're a complete failure or a breakup with an intimate partner means you will be alone forever, resulting in actual hormonal effects equivalent to physical threat, demanding activation of the "fight, flight or freeze" stress response.

In other words, if you're driving on an icy road and suddenly lose control of your vehicle, your HPA axis, or stress response, will kick in completely absent the ego. Actual matters of physical survival do not require egocentric emotional reactions. However, when the ego hijacks the stress response it is because of hypothetical ego-centered fears that have nothing to do with physical survival, but the messages sent to the body are equivalent to such a threat.

Ego Defusion: In Ego Defusion, we are simply trying to uncouple the ego from the Higher Self, because for years you've equated them as one unit, "I-me." This uncoupling consists primarily of differentiating between the distorted messages of the ego and the factual truth of your Higher Self. The Self then confronts and disputes the ego's blanket generalizations through rational and realistic assertions of actual facts or what's actually going on.

The language of the ego is criticism, blame, judgement, belittling, labeling, diagnosing and most especially anger, towards other people, but primarily toward yourself. If you’re experiencing depression and/or anxiety you can be sure the ego is either the cause or making it worse. The ego runs on emotion and emotional responses magnify it.

You cannot get rid of your ego. Many ancient spiritual traditions identify the ego as cause of suffering and encourage "ego transcendence." But many of those traditions tend to lump ego and self as one unit to be transcended as a whole. We need a Higher Self to experience and engage the world in ways that increase and improve the Higher Self by increasing and improving the world. 

Ego Defusion simply seeks to turn the volume down of the ego, so that your engagement with the world happens primarily through the Higher Self, without ego-centered fears and stress and without the physical symptoms that fear and stress eventually cause. We want to be able to perceive the world through the Higher Self and not the ego. This results in less stress because the Self learns to ignore the rantings of the ego and seek out the actual truth.

Every morning, upon waking, ask yourself, "what am I going to dedicate this day to, the ego or the Higher Self?"

Internal Struggles by Dr. Russ Harris