Skip to main content

Reflections on Self: The Observing Ego Exercise


It is difficult not to judge yourself or others or overanalyze a situation when going through challenging times. Strong emotions emerging from the cognitive processes of judging or analyzing prevent you from using your rational mind to arrive at solutions to solve a problem or use mindful acceptance if the problem is unsolvable. In these circumstances, observing ego, a skill used in many mindfulness practices, helps you increase your self-awareness and allows you to perceive an adverse event non-judgmentally. 

The word “ego” in observing ego refers to your healthy, rational, logical, and compassionate self. An important function of the ego is the capacity for self-observation. This is your ability to monitor or reflect upon your feelings, impulses, and thoughts rather than impulsively acting on them (Glickauf-Hughes et al., 1996). While your thoughts, images, feelings, sensations, and physical body change, your observing ego, also called the observing self, remains the same (Harris, 2008). When you focus your attention on a thought or feeling and as you notice it, the awareness of it is the observing ego. The steps for this technique are as follows (Glickauf-Hughes et al., 1996; Graham, 2013):
  1. Identify a recent adversity that is still unresolved. It could be dealing with unpaid bills, financial issues, relationship problems, work issues, etc.
  2. If unrelated thoughts and emotions bother you, step back from them using statements like, "My mind is telling me to feel...or think...Thanks, mind." 
  3. Bring on your “observing ego” and reflect on the issue. Be cognizant of your thoughts, feelings, and body sensations.
  4. Allow yourself to experience these thoughts, feelings, and body sensations without using one of the six "control" strategies: dwelling, judging, avoiding, analyzing, suppressing, or trying to get rid of them.
  5. Ask yourself these two questions: "What story am I telling myself?” This is the personal narrative you have created to explain a particular situation. “What would I think if this happened to my best friend?”
  6. Observe any emerging patterns of thoughts or coping strategies that you default to in situations like these.
This exercise helps you gain a better perspective on your problem by allowing you to consciously feel more detached from the problem's overpowering thoughts and emotions and have a more objective view.

Check out Dr. Duggal’s Author Page to learn more about evidence-based self-management techniques that promote mental health and well-being.
 

HARPREET S. DUGGAL, MD, FAPA

REFERENCES

Glickauf-Hughes, C., Wells, M., & Chance, S. (1996). Techniques for strengthening clients’ observing ego. Psychotherapy, 33(3), 431-440.

Graham, L. (2013). Bouncing back. New World Library.

Harris, R. (2008). The happiness trap. Trumpeter Books.
Labels:

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular posts from this blog

10 Poor Listening Styles to Avoid

When we talk about communication, we mostly focus on speaking, writing, and reading. Listening is seldom emphasized as a primary form of communication, even though listening enables us to satisfy an individual’s deep psychological needs – to be understood, to be affirmed, to be validated, and to be appreciated (Covey, 2020). We mostly listen not to understand but to prepare response, judge, or interpret information through our own motives and frame of reference. These poor listening styles can be subsumed under these 10 categories (Covey 2014, Harvard Business Review Press, 2019): 1. Spacing out or ignoring is when you zone out because you are too preoccupied with your own thoughts. This does happen to all of us, but you don’t want to be labelled as a spacey person if this keeps happening to you.  2. Pretend or removed listening is where you may be multitasking and give the speaker the impression that you are paying attention using fillers like “yeah,” uh-huh,” “right,” “cool” or...
Post a Comment
Read more

The 6 Facets of Impostor Syndrome and its Relation to Depression

A lot has been written recently about impostor syndrome, also called impostor phenomenon in scientific literature. Most pop psychology descriptions of this condition, which impairs professional performance and leads to burnout, skew towards making this a syndrome of perceived fraudulence or fear of being seen as fake. However, the fact is that people with impostor syndrome describe a myriad of thoughts, feelings, and behaviors and none of the existing scales capture all the facets of this complex and multifaceted syndrome (Mark et al., 2019). Also, contrary to popular belief, impostor syndrome is not limited to highly successful individuals and depends more on how people respond to specific achievement tasks when there is an element of being appraised.  The six facets that define this phenomenon are discussed below: (Bravata et al., 2019; Clance & Imes, 1978; Walker & Saklofske, 2023). 1. Fake: This attribute is the closest to the original conceptualization of imposto...
Post a Comment
Read more

Value-Based Goals: The Antidote for “Success Depression”

A disconnect between your present accomplishments and your core values may make you suffer from success depression  wherein despite “having it all” (e.g., successful career, stable relationships, healthy children, etc.), you still struggle with depression and view your accomplishments as hollow (Zettle, 2007). The cure for this malaise is to clarify your core values and have goals and actions that are driven by these values. Psychotherapist Russ Harris describes values as our heart’s deepest desires for the way we want to interact with the world, other people, and ourselves. They are what we want to stand for in life, how we want to behave, what sort of person we want to be, and what sort of strengths and qualities we want to develop (Harris, 2009). Values are subjective; what one may consider as a value (e.g., being famous) may be considered as being cocky by another person. Moreover, values do change with time. For instance, you may value social popularity and raising a fa...
Post a Comment
Read more