WOW! This hits the nail on the head! Illuminated here is why I remained stuck for so long in a range of painful and harmful symptoms of old trauma — including for many years into my recovery from substance addiction. That said, one of my earliest and deeply beloved resources on my healing journey, the psychologist and author of Circle of Stones Judith Duerk,, frequently spoke of the need to develop a strong healthy ego. But I didn't truly understand what she meant.
At that time, I was also swept up in Eckart Tolle and other New Age spiritual bypassers — all of whom, in part, served to keep me lost, hurting, disassociated, and disempowered. What I recognize today that is also true is that the counselors and therapists I was seeing for the first two decades on my healing journey had not done their own deeper work of strengthening their healthy egos and their connection with Self. They were largely unaware of cutting edge trauma-informed practices and what Lissa Rankin articulates so well in this article. And what I understand so well today is that no one can empower anyone else to go further than they have first gone themselves.
Illuminated in this article by Lissa Rankin are glimpses into why I was continuing to react out of trauma triggers for years into recovery, why I was vulnerable to being drawn to a charismatic therapist who I saw for years and who turned out to be a narcissist, why I was part of and stayed in an unhealthy marriage for 31 years, and why each of our sons developed symptoms in adolescence of generational trauma. All of this and more continued to happen years into my sobriety and years into getting the counseling and help that I thought I'd needed to break painful cycles of ancestral trauma for myself and my children.
I have learned so much the hard way. And today I am profoundly grateful for those such as Dr. Lissa and other wise souls who truly understand trauma and how we can be empowered to heal, unburden, and transform even the most painful wounds we have experienced in our lifetimes. Read on. Powerful medicine. — Molly
“Your ego is the problem,” says the guy on stage from the lotus position. “You have to transcend your ego,” he bellows, while claiming he has the 411 direct dial to God and seeming clueless about how egotistical such a claim might be. While informing you that the monkey mind is a pig you need to kill, while demanding that you meditate more in order to shut up that monkey, while inviting you to get your ticket to the next workshop, he promises you that if you do this, all of your optional suffering will finally be over. Then you can rest in enlightened bliss, no matter what’s happening around you, just like him, the one who has successfully killed his ego and is now perpetually in the “no self” of non-duality.
If you’ve spent any time in spiritual circles, you’ve probably heard some version of these “get out of your ego” teachings. They are repeated so often that they’ve become almost unquestioned in certain communities. The implication is that your ego is the sole obstacle standing between you and enlightenment, inner peace, divine love, awakening, spiritual guidance, perpetual bliss, and freedom from suffering.
But what if that’s exactly backwards? What if, instead of needing to destroy your ego, you actually need to strengthen it? Sure, some people are full of themselves and humility might be the right medicine for them. But many people who are drawn to spiritual seeking are not suffering because they have too much ego; they’re suffering because they don’t have enough.
Your Ego Is Not Your Enemy
Your ego is not a demon you need to slay. It’s not a monkey mind that needs to be silenced. It’s not an annoying stream of thoughts floating by like clouds during meditation. Your ego is a child in need of your unconditional tender-hearted love.
It’s the psychological structure that allows you to know who you are. It helps you distinguish “me” from “you.” It’s a constellation of parts that, when reasonably integrated, help you build a stable identity that allows you to distinguish yourself from someone else, that helps prevent enmeshment and boundarylessness, that protects you from cult leaders who want to encourage you to merge with them (in the name of divine merging.)
Your ego lets you make clear decisions, tolerate not getting what you want, delay gratification, regulate reckless impulses, and maintain healthy boundaries. It allows you to remain yourself while staying connected to others.
When we think of egos, we tend to think of loud, arrogant, or narcissistic people, but those people don’t have healthy egos. They have overbearing, unhealthy egos that often mask an unstable identity because of childhood trauma. A healthy ego is quietly sturdy. It knows where you end and someone else begins. It can say yes without collapsing into people pleasing, and it can say no without drowning in guilt or fear. A healthy ego can tolerate disagreement without feeling annihilated. It can admit mistakes without falling apart and receive feedback without becoming defensive. Ironically, when someone has genuine ego strength, they usually don’t spend much time defending their ego. They don’t need to. They have enough ego strength to handle the nuance of “I’m a generally good person who just did something not so great.”
Early Childhood Trauma Impairs Healthy Ego Development
Developmental trauma doesn’t simply leave painful memories; it interrupts the normal development of the self.
Children who grow up with chronic neglect, emotional abuse, coercive control, parentification, enmeshment, narcissistic parenting, addiction in the family, or unpredictable caregivers often never get the opportunity to develop a stable internal sense of who they really are. This core confusion of identity actually makes people with weak ego strength more likely to pursue spiritual seeking, to try to fill a void that wouldn’t feel so empty if they had a healthy ego.
When there’s not enough ego strength, kids grow up not knowing how they actually feel and what they really need. Instead, they learn to ask, “What does everyone else need me to feel?” Instead of wondering, “What do I want?” they become experts at asking, “What will keep me safe?” Instead of trusting their own perceptions, they learn to distrust themselves and depend on external authorities to tell them what’s real.
Survivors of the kinds of trauma that impair healthy ego development often develop wobbly identities organized around pleasing others, avoiding conflict, disappearing, caretaking, perfectionism, over-achievement, or hyper-independence. These strategies may look like a self, but underneath them is often a fragile sense of self that never got the chance to fully form.
When people like this encounter teachings that tell them to “let go of your ego,” they may eagerly comply. This isn’t spiritual surrender. It’s survival. One problem with this is that there isn’t much self there yet to let go of. The other problem is that it’s also catnip for cult leaders who are looking for people with weak enough egos that they’ll cooperate with the program of surrendering their free will, personal agency, and self protection—and do whatever the cult leader orders them to do.
The Difference Between An Unstable Self Or Weak Ego Strength & IFS’s “Self”
One of the reasons conversations about the ego become so confusing is that psychology and spirituality are often talking about two different things using the same language. When psychologists talk about a healthy ego, they’re talking about the developmental achievement of having a stable sense of selfhood, of identity. This includes knowing who you are, being able to separate and distinguish yourself from others, trusting your own perceptions, regulating your emotions, making choices aligned with your values, maintaining healthy boundaries, and staying connected to others without losing yourself. Developmental psychologists sometimes call this ego strength. Internal Family Systems would describe much of this as having protectors (parts) that are no longer forced into extreme roles because the inner system feels fundamentally safe.
Self, with a capital “S” in Internal Family Systems, is something else entirely. The IFS version of “Self” is not your personality, identity, or a constellation of parts. It’s not your life story, the roles you play, your preferences, your beliefs, or even your character strengths. Self is the spacious, compassionate awareness that can hold all of those things without becoming identified with any of them. Every religion has a name for this aspect of your being that is your birthright, that you’re born with, that can’t be damaged by trauma. The IFS “Self” isn’t something you create. It’s something you uncover as your wounded and protective parts begin to trust that they no longer have to run your life.
What creates a lot of suffering is that people with developmental trauma often have less access to both a coherent, healthy ego and to Self. Self is already there, but a healthy ego often has to be built, because you’re not born with a healthy ego. You’re supposed to develop it as a developmental task of childhood.
When your nervous system has spent decades organized around survival, you’ll tend to stay blended with protective parts almost continuously. The inner critic is bashing you. The people pleaser is fawning and accommodating and throwing other parts under the bus to keep the peace. The perfectionist is striving. The overachieving part is succeeding. The caretaker is scanning everyone else’s emotions and trying to juggle everyone’s needs. The intimacy avoider is trying not to bond, not to love, not to feel. These parts aren’t your Self, but they often become mistaken for your identity because they’ve been running the show for so long. But they’re not a solid, stable core identity, or ego.
Trauma treatment helps build ego strength by healing the developmental injuries that left the personality fragmented or unstable. As that healing unfolds, something else happens. Protective parts begin to relax, and when they relax, Self naturally becomes more available.
Notice the order. We don’t try to kill an unstable ego, and we don’t strengthen the ego instead of accessing Self. We strengthen the ego enough that it no longer has to defend itself so relentlessly or act out in unhealthy or even reckless ways. A healthy ego becomes a good steward of ordinary life while Self becomes the wise, compassionate leader of the inner family. They’re partners, not competitors.
If your psyche is a sailboat, Self is the captain. It knows the destination, remains calm during storms, and can see the horizon. But your ego is the ship itself. It provides structure, stability, boundaries, navigation systems, and protection from the waves. Your parts are the crew, each with different jobs, strengths, and fears. No one would suggest throwing the ship overboard because the captain is what really matters. Without a sturdy ship, the captain has nowhere to stand. Likewise, a strong ego doesn’t compete with Self; it makes it possible for Self to lead.
Ego Development Comes Before Transcendence.
Long before anyone can transcend the ego, they first have to develop one. Erik Erikson described healthy psychological development as unfolding through predictable stages across the lifespan. In the earliest years, infants develop basic trust. Toddlers discover autonomy. Young children begin to experience initiative, competence, and eventually a coherent sense of identity. Each stage builds upon the one before it. When these developmental tasks are interrupted by trauma, neglect, abuse, or insecure attachment, the resulting wounds don’t simply disappear because someone starts meditating or attends a spiritual retreat. They wait, undeveloped, often remaining hidden beneath spiritual language, under spiritual bypassing belief systems and practices, until life’s inevitable challenges expose them and reveal the cracks.
Object relations theorists like Donald Winnicott similarly recognized that a child develops a stable sense of self only when caregivers consistently mirror, protect, and delight in the child’s authentic experience. A securely attached child gradually internalizes the feeling, “I exist. I matter. My thoughts and feelings make sense. I can survive disappointment without losing myself.”
When those developmental experiences are missing, people often grow into adults with weak ego strength. They may struggle to know what they feel, what they want, or where their boundaries belong. This makes these people vulnerable to enmeshment, coercive control, authoritarian leaders, or dominating, narcissistic relationships in which someone else defines reality for them and they give their power away because they lack the ego strength to stay separate enough without collapsing.
This is why trauma therapy often begins not with helping people become less attached to themselves, but with helping them become more securely attached to themselves—parts to Self. We learn to notice our feelings and bodily sensations. We learn to trust our own perceptions of reality. We discover that we can tolerate conflict and hold people who hurt us accountable without exploding. We learn to protect our boundaries, to recover a sense of agency, to become someone who can remain connected without disappearing.
In Internal Family Systems, this process isn’t viewed as inflating the ego, as cultic narcissistic spiritual leaders would have you think. It makes sense that spiritual teachers who seek power and control over vulnerable spiritual seekers without enough ego strength would perceive someone else’s no, someone’s firm boundaries, or someone holding them accountable as “being in your ego.” If your ego is bad and you’re in your ego when you’re angry or calling out the cult leader, then by golly, that ego best be smashed so the cult leader can get away with anything they want, no matter how out of control their own overbearing ego might be.
But don’t take the bait. That’s just a strategy to silence dissent, shut down your healthy protest, demonize anger, and scare you into spinny-eyed compliance.
Your ego is supposed to protest when someone is controlling you. It’s supposed to hold your boundaries when someone else is crossing them. It’s supposed to feel angry when you’re being violated or someone else you care about is getting hurt. It’s supposed to resist oppression and retain agency. That way, your ego can ultimately surrender to the greater wisdom of your own Self inside.
Only then does genuine surrender become possible. Otherwise, what looks like surrender is often unhealthy compliance. What might look like egolessness is often identity diffusion. Identity diffusion can masquerade as egolessness, but healthy egolessness is the ability to loosen your identification with a stable identity, to be less rigid and more flexible. Identity diffusion is what happens when there was never a stable identity to loosen. Healthy surrender of the ego to the Self reflects psychological integration; whereas identity diffusion reflects developmental disruption and can make people vulnerable to coercive control and other forms of oppression.
The mystics of every tradition speak of becoming “nobody,” of “no self,” of non-duality. But paradoxically, that invitation only becomes psychologically safe after you’ve first had the chance to become a somebody. If the pursuit of “no self” happens before your identity solidifies, you can become much psychologically sicker, sometimes to the point of psychosis or a dissociative disorder.
Only a solid self that feels securely rooted can safely relax into the experience of being part of something infinitely larger.
A strong ego is not the same thing as a big ego. Egotism is often an unstable identity, marked by insecurity, wearing a costume of grandiose superiority (like that of many spiritual teachers.) Healthy ego strength is something entirely different.
Healthy ego strength means you can:
- Know who you are without needing constant validation.
- Maintain your own thoughts even when others disagree.
- Set boundaries without excessive guilt.
- Hold people accountable when they’re hurting you.
- Say no.
- Respect the autonomy of other people.
- Protect yourself from abuse.
- Take responsibility for your mistakes.
- Recover after failure.
- Stay connected during conflict without losing yourself.
- Trust your own perceptions.
Notice that none of these qualities make someone arrogant or narcissistic. Quite the opposite. They’re the very qualities that make genuine humility possible. Make choices based on your values rather than blending with scared parts.
Suffice it to say you can’t voluntarily surrender a self you never developed. And if you’re working with spiritual teachers who demand that you do, please…for your own protection, consider seeing a therapist with experience treating spirituality-related psychological issues, like those who specialize is cult recovery.
Spiritual Bypassing Often Mistakes Dissociation For Enlightenment
Many traumatized people with weak ego strength are drawn toward spirituality because they genuinely long for healing, belonging, transcendence, and unconditional love. There’s nothing wrong with that longing. But some spiritual communities unknowingly reward trauma adaptations.
People who have poor boundaries are praised for being “selfless.” People who suppress anger are called “peacemakers” or praised for their dispassionate equanimity. People who abandon their own needs or safety are considered spiritual martyrs. People who tolerate mistreatment without holding anyone accountable are admired for their endless compassion. People who ignore their self-protective spidey senses are congratulated for trusting the teacher.
What psychology recognizes as fawning can easily be mistaken for spiritual surrender. What looks like ego transcendence may actually be self-abandonment. The nervous system cannot tell the difference between “I am surrendering to God” and “I am giving away my agency in order to survive in the presence of this flaming narcissist.”
Only careful discernment can make that distinction, and learning that kind of discernment requires healthy ego strength.
Cult Leaders Love Weak Egos
There is a really important reason so many high-demand spiritual groups emphasize ego death long before they emphasize psychological health. If every disagreement can be dismissed as “your ego talking,” legitimate concerns become impossible to raise. If someone questions financial exploitation, sexual misconduct, emotional manipulation, or abuse of power, they are told they simply haven’t transcended their ego yet, and blame is redirected to the one protesting, who is insulted for not being spiritually advanced enough.
If you say no, your ego is resisting. If you call out hypocrisy, notice contradictions, or protest two sets of rules, then your ego is judging. If you express hurt, your ego has got the best of you. If you’re grieving, you aren’t practicing non-attachment enough. If you leave, your ego has won. Lather. Rinse. Repeat.
This is psychologically dangerous. Healthy ego strength is precisely what allows someone to recognize oppression, resist manipulation, trust their own perceptions, spot gaslighting and reality distortions, maintain boundaries, and leave abusive people or systems.
A person with healthy ego development can still be deeply spiritual. They’re simply much harder to exploit.
You need a strong ego before you can safely loosen your grip on it.
The paradox is beautiful.
The stronger your psychological foundation becomes, the less desperately you need to defend it.
People with secure identities don’t cling so tightly to being right. They don’t require constant admiration. They don’t collapse when criticized. They don’t lose themselves inside relationships. Because they’re internally anchored, they can become more flexible, more compassionate, more open, and more capable of experiencing awe, wonder, bliss, and interconnectedness.
That’s not because they destroyed their ego. It’s because their ego became healthy enough to relax. A mature ego is not a prison; it’s a secure home from which we can safely explore the vastness of consciousness. Without that home, transcendence can become dissociation. Surrender can become submission. Devotion can become dependency. Community can become cultic. And spiritual seeking can become exploitation.
Instead Of Ego Death…Healing
If any of this sounds familiar or feels confusing, give yourself a big hug. Take a deep breath. Take a moment of silence to regulate yourself. Then read on…
Perhaps the frightened child inside you doesn’t need another lecture about letting go of yourself. Perhaps he or she or they need someone to finally help them become themselves. To know where they end and another person begins, to trust their own perceptions, to protect what is sacred, to say yes with their whole heart, to say no without apology or justification, to love without disappearing, to belong without conforming, to surrender without abandoning themselves.
When that happens, something remarkable unfolds. The ego doesn’t have to be bullied or crushed into silence. It no longer needs to shout or act out so strongly. The child inside can finally exhale. And from that place of safety, something deeper naturally emerges: the spacious awareness, compassion, and connectedness that spiritual traditions have pointed toward all along.
Not because the ego was destroyed, but because it was finally loved enough to stop being so lonely, lost, confused, and scared.
The wrong kinds of spiritual teachers don’t want you to figure this out. If you send them this article, they’re likely to say “Don’t listen to her. She’s in her ego.” But the right spiritual teachers will celebrate you, support you, encourage you, gently nurture your ego strengthening, tolerate being challenged, admit when they’re wrong, and get curious about your efforts to deconstruct harmful spiritual teachings.
If you need support with ego strengthening, practicing IFS, or learning relational life skills to help you learn to love (yourself and others) in healthier ways, please join us for LOVE SCHOOL, a twice monthly IFS community of practice where we focus on learning, healing, practicing IFS meditation and other IFS tools, writing for the purposes of healing, and rest in Self together, in community.
In our next session, we’ll be focusing on Self-led friendship, how to meet new people, get to know the parts of you that show up when meeting new people, build healthy, safe enough community, heal ruptures with friends, practice discernment, spot red flags, and build more nourishing, reciprocal offline friendships. And we’re always focusing on building healthy ego strength—coming down from grandiosity and coming up from pits of shame or low self esteem.
If you’ve been harmed by spiritual teachings, especially if you developed psychiatric or medical problems because of it, my heart goes out to you. My partner Dr. Jeffrey Rediger, a Harvard medical school professor who also went to Princeton seminary, who is the co-author of our upcoming book RELATIONSICK, has started a small private psychiatric practice for those who live in California or Massachusetts, and he’s uniquely qualified to treat those in recovery from spirituality-based psychiatric or psychological issues. He sees clients remotely via Zoom. You can learn more about him here. And buy our book RELATIONSICK here.
