Tales of the Inner Critic
Have you ever had one of those experiences where it feels like you’re damned if you do and damned if you don’t? Maybe your work life balance is completely out of whack and you feel somehow like you’re failing at the game of life and that feeling spurs you to draw some lines in the sand. You make a commitment to leaving work at work next weekend so you can spend some much needed time with your family or friends and just unplug. But then mid-way through Saturday morning, you find yourself thinking of an unresolved situation at work or something you forgot to do, and your anxiety lures you over to your laptop to review your emails. A couple of hours go by (of course) and you suddenly look up realizing you’ve completely forgotten about your commitment to your well-being and spending time with family or friends. You shut your laptop feeling guilty and berating yourself for not even being able to hold your boundary until lunchtime. This is the damned if you do, damned if you don’t I was talking about. On the one hand, there’s pressure to try and foster more of an ideal life, but on the other, there’s pressure to work hard and uphold your reputation. Welcome to one of the preferred pastimes of the Superego, otherwise known as the inner critic, judge, accuser, gremlin, peanut gallery, take your pick, it’s a big job so naturally, it will have a lot of titles.
The Superego, a psychological mechanism coined by Sigmund Freud in 1923 to describe an internal critic that watches us very closely and judges us constantly, is just one part in a trio of structures that make up the psyche of our personality – the other two being the id and the ego, which I’ll get into shortly. The double-bind in the example I’ve just provided about work-life balance has the superego’s fingerprints all over it. Because that’s the thing with the Superego. It’s one part ideal self – that imagined version of who we ought to be, which in this example, is someone who maintains good work-life balance. But it’s also one part conscience, scanning for where we make mistakes and then flooding us with guilt and causing us to feel bad about ourselves. In this example the fear of screwing up at work causes us to open our laptop and check our emails.
Which is it superego? Who do you want me to be? The person with balance or the person who maintains an impeccable reputation at work? The answer? Well that’s easy. BOTH! The superego can and frequently does judge us negatively for both doing and not doing the same thing. Sound crazy? Hold on because we’ve only just gotten started. In the eyes of the superego, we can’t win for trying.
But don’t despair just yet because the good news is that by understanding even the most rudimentary overview of the workings of this trio within Freud’s theory of personality, you can negotiate something of a foothold for working with and managing what for many people can be a pretty debilitating mental hurdle. But let’s not get too far ahead of ourselves. Let’s meet the trio.
I don’t know about you, but aside from a fairly superficial brush with Freudian theories in first year university psychology, I haven’t really had much to do with his work until recently when I was researching for my last podcast, the Cult of the Self. In spite of the fact that I have been supporting clients to work with the hyper-critical part of their psychology over the last 20+ years (I have generally referred to it as the inner critic or gremlin, from Richard Carson’s work – Taming Your Gremlin), I have never directly utilized Freud’s models and methods to support that work. The human potential movement of the 70’s generated such an immensely powerful wave that many foundational psychological theories and concepts prior to the 70’s were kind of obliterated from the coaching pathways available twenty years ago when I was starting out. But if my research for my podcast series has taught me anything, it’s that a historical context is essential for a more fulsome appreciation of how something as complex as the human mind works and how we can best approach our work with it.
Let me introduce you to the individual parts within the trio of Freud’s personality theory first, with the understanding that the interactions between these parts are really where we’ll be able to harvest the insights necessary for managing ourselves during some of the more challenging interpersonal experiences of life that we find ourselves in.
So, without further adieu, I present to you, your id. And if you think your id is standing still ready to shake your hand in this moment, think again. Do you remember the Tasmanian devil cartoon from Looney Tunes? Not a bad representation. Or think little kid at Chuck E Cheese after several large cokes and ice cream cake. The id is full-on impulsive, bouncing around like a pinball. If the id could speak, and in many ways, it does, just not consciously or intelligibly, it would probably say something like (and I imagine this in all caps) I WANT IT NOW! The id is full of uncoordinated instinctual desires, bodily needs and wants, emotional impulses – especially aggression and the libido. According to Freud from the New Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis, “It is the dark, inaccessible part of our personality.” “It is filled with energy reaching it from the instincts, but it has no organization, produces no collective will, but only striving to bring about the satisfaction of the instinctual needs subject to the observance of the pleasure principal.” New Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis, Freud, 1933, p. 105-6
The pleasure principal Freud refers to here is pretty straightforward. Essentially, the id wants immediate gratification at all costs and complete avoidance of pain. Don’t we all.
The id is part of the unconscious that contains all the urges and impulses, including what is called the libido, a kind of generalized sexual energy that is used for everything from survival instincts to appreciation of art. For perspective, A baby’s personality is entirely id. You know that cartoon image of someone with a little angel on one shoulder and a little devil on the other? Well guess which one represents the id? If you guessed the devil, well you’re onto something. If the id had a bumper sticker, it would read: “if it feels good, do it.” Trust me when I tell you – you don’t want the id on the invite list to your next dinner party. It will get messy and you will instantly regret it. And if you’re finding it just the tiniest bit unsettling thinking about this id character lurking around in your unconscious, take heed. Turns out you have your own built in bouncer!
Let me take this opportunity now to formally introduce you to someone you encountered briefly at the outset of this episode in the double-bind example. The superego! Right now, your superego is probably wearing the long dark robes of a judge and is probably sitting up much higher than you, like a judge, so it can hurl sentence after sentence down upon you for all your wrong doings. And trust me, there will be plenty of those because the Superego settles for nothing less than moral perfection. Made up of mostly parental influences and expectations as well as societies moral values, the superego is here to control what it deems the unmanageable part of you. Freud believed it formed during the emotional too-mult that takes place in the toddler years and is an internalization of the voices of a child’s parents. It relies on a storehouse of information that it is constantly being updated and used to push you to what often amounts to very unrealistic goals. It will compare you (generally unfavourably) to others, keep a running tab of your screwups, and issues commands all day long without really taking reality into account. This description reminds me of an Olympic level gymnastics coach from the former Soviet Union. And yeah, it doesn’t sound much better over here with the superego than the shaker going on over at the id’s house, and that’s kind of the point. Because the main job of the superego is to counterbalance the id, keeping it in check and attempting to control its wild impulses.
The superego is a Master of the double-bind, as I already illustrated in the opening example. Its judgements are not necessarily logical or consistent, making it pretty tough to please the superego, though when you do particularly well at something, it will hand out rewards in the form of feelings of pride and satisfaction. And you can imagine then, how we might become kind of addicted to pleasing something that is almost impossible to please. We might even risk our more authentic self for its praise. But even though the superego is a master of words and mostly encountered through what may appear internally as your own voice, or the voice of others, it can also communicate through physical sensations, as in a psychic gut punch when you feel like you’ve just royally and perhaps publicly screwed up. And parts of the superego’s activities are unconscious, which is why we may feel guilt at points but have no idea why. Like AI, the superego is continually learning and can effortlessly upload the influences of real-life situations and reshape its idea of perfection as new ideals emerge from the current culture.
Becoming conscious of the contents of the superego is, for the most part, something we can become quite adept at once we start paying attention. But without any awareness of the concept of the superego to begin with, I suspect most people simply chalk up all the noise in their heads to a busy mind or believe they are just blessed with the quirk of analysis paralysis and over-thinking. And though the id can be a really out-of-control force, when we step back far enough to contemplate all the moves of the superego, the balance between these two can seem a little bit more, well, balanced. But without an intermediary to operate between these two, we’re in for a hard-core teeter totter ride between a George Orwell style lockdown on one side and an anything goes Thunderdome on the other. A slightly tamer albeit great representation of these two parts of our psyche was masterfully portrayed through the characters of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde. Mein Got! Are you ready to meet the third part of Freud’s trio?
Ego, come on down! You’re the next contestant on the Vice is bright! Okay, that was silly.
Latin for “I,” the ego seeks to please the id’s drive in realistic ways that in the long term, bring benefit rather than grief. It is the home of our ordinary sense of who we are, and by extension, our sense of self-esteem. Our ego helps us organize our thoughts and make sense of them and the world using reason and common sense. Essentially the ego sorts out what we really need (which undoubtedly differs substantially from the id’s version) and figures out how to get it. Our conscious awareness resides in the ego although to maintain a little mystery, not all of the operations in the ego are conscious. The ego operates based on something called the ‘reality principal,’ a regulating mechanism that enables us to delay gratifying immediate needs in order to function effectively in the real world. Its main concern is with our individual safety. It’s the part we’re probably referring to when we say “I.” Bottom line, If you’re beginning to visualize something of a peacemaker or ‘good cop’ or even an understanding (though at times a bit too nice to be believed) friend, I think you’re on the right track. Freud described it this way, “the ego is like a man on horseback who has to hold in check the superior strength of the horse.”
So hopefully by now, you are at least grasping a high-level character sketch of the members of the personality trio. And as I said earlier, understanding how they interact provides the key insights for better managing and withstanding the sometimes demoralizing blows from the superego. Isn’t that why you’re sitting here reading this blog? You’re not just here for the Freud primer, are you? But maybe I’m wrong.
The most important interaction between the parts coalesces on the ego relationship to both id and superego. As I’ve already described, if left to their own devices, the id/superego interaction becomes a wild teeter totter ride of insanity that might drive us all to drink if drinking weren’t so looked down upon on by the superego! I came across a description of the interaction of the trio that cracked me up – “it’s a struggle in a locked, dark basement, between a homicidal sex crazed monkey and a puritanical old maid; being mediated by a timid accountant.”
Accountant? I’m not sure, but most of the ego’s work is mediation. I’m not sure what their hourly rate is, but it’s not enough. Imagine the craziest, non-stop union negotiation ever. You’ve got someone with an insatiable need to fulfill prohibited desires on one side of the table and societies norms, taboos and values on the other. But there’s a 3rd party in the room as well (I mean besides the mediating ego). The external world and reality itself have shown up to weigh in, because the superego – though it purports to speak for reality, is really just parroting the rules and social norms it has absorbed, which are not, in effect, reality. So yeah, in essence, the ego has 3 bosses, and, it turns out, 3 types of anxiety to go along with that. Moral anxiety from the superego, neurotic anxiety from the id, and realistic anxiety from the external world. I mean I knew anxiety was pretty ubiquitous, but who knew it could be so customized! By the way, everything I’m writing about here comes from Freud’s New Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis, though clearly I’m taking some poetic license with my telling.
In the Psychoanalytic Perspective, author David Myers succinctly describes the ego’s defense mechanisms, because hey, with 3 bosses, who wouldn’t need a defense strategy? “The ego lessens tension by covering up impulses that are threatening.” Sounds a bit codependent to me. He goes on to explain that this is not always conscious. Great. More stuff to imagine lurking beneath the surface.
Myers, David G. 2007 Module 44 The Psychoanalytic Perspective. Psychology Eight Edition in Modules, Worth Publishers
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Id,_ego_and_super-ego#cite_note-Meyers-28
Anna Freud, Sigmund’s daughter explains further in her book, The Ego and Mechanisms of Defense, written in 1936, “The Superego’s contents are for the most part conscious. Our picture of the superego always tends to become hazy when harmonious relations exist between it and the ego. We then say that the two coincide, i.e. at such moments, the superego is not perceptible as a separate institution either to the subject himself or to an outside observer. Its outlines become clear only when it confronts the ego with hostility or at least with criticism.”
It's important to note that much of what I’ve included about the superego precedes the conceptualization of the inner critic as it appears in contemporary therapies such as the internal family systems model. I, personally, have adopted the term inner critic in work with my individual coaching clients, though following this research, I have added some of Freud’s theories more explicitly.
Ideally, all 3 parts of the personality trio would play together nicely however in Olivia Guy-Evan’s article in Simple Psychology called “Freud’s Theory of Personality: Id, Ego and Superego,” she paints three different scenarios depending on which part of the trio is in charge. Spoiler alert – its’ kind of a zero sum game in most of the dynamics.
If the Id wrestles its opponents to win the iron throne, the resulting experience is known as psychotic psyche. Based on that handle, I feel like I almost don’t need to elaborate further. Just try and imagine your life if your id were in charge. Remember the Cat in the Hat? A day with him and thing one and thing two would be a cake walk in comparison to what I’m talking about here. As Guy-Evans explains, “every wishful impulse should be satisfied immediately, regardless of the consequences.” The roman empire under Caligula might be a very fitting representation of a culture ruled by the id. Perhaps some of the demented deeds within Hitler’s inner circle. Even the reported eccentricities of Kim Jong Un in North Korea might make the cut. Though much of the structural elements holding these power structures together have superego’s fingerprints all over them, which might give some insight into how these dynamics work together in the world.
In the next scenario from Guy-Evan’s article, when the superego manages to overthrow the id (which to be frank, probably happens small scale many times a day) the resulting experience is known as neurotic psyche. That also seems quite self-explanatory and there are unending historical examples that I could reference here, including many dystopian future depictions. Essentially, the ego (and id) are imprisoned in a police state. In Guy-Evan’s depiction, the superego is speaking to the ego and id saying “Listen up! I’m in charge and you are not here to enjoy yourselves. Get ready for a double-size portion of anxiety with a side order of guilt.” Fun? Nowhere to be seen.
Third scenario from Guy-Evans. When the ego manages to clamber up to the top of the hill and heave the others off we finally we arrive at what is known as healthy psyche. And ideally, this is the organizational arrangement that pays the biggest dividends to our personal sense of fulfillment. There may be some real-life cultural examples that point in this direction. Perhaps the original ideals of the formation of the United States of America were aiming in this direction, though currently, it’s much easier to see evidence of the id and the superego clawing back power.
Regardless of the larger cultural projections, as individuals, we can strive for a healthier psyche and this next part of the blog will be divided into two important parts in this endeavour. FIRSTLY: techniques for ‘seeing’ your ego and superego at play (because remember that the id is entirely unconscious so even if you have the iPhone 14 pro Max, you will not be able to snap a photo of it). Awareness is half the battle because as they say, what you can’t see, you can’t change. SECONDLY: we’ll look at how to work with and manage those parts as you become more aware of them. These pieces are the differences that could make the biggest difference to your overall satisfaction.
Most, if not all, of the techniques I share here are things I’ve used with clients for the last couple of decades with good results. There will never be a one-size-fits-all approach to this kind of work, so if you only grab one thing here that fits, go with it. And before we step in a decidedly more practical direction, it’s probably worth me pointing out here that all of the techniques and suggestions in this blog constitute a practice. By its very nature, this requires you to let go of trying to get anywhere, and for the hyper logical and linear folks listening, this will be frustrating. But try to think of it this way. If, for instance, you love world cup football, on some level you know that the excitement of those matches would not be possible had the players not invested so much of their life in practice. What I’m going to be pointing to are intended to be the skill drills for life. They are meant to be lifestyle shifts. Not one-offs. Okay, are you ready to go spot us some superego?
To track your superego, you need to be able to recognize it’s footprints, that is, the situations where you get reactive or triggered. The times and places where you respond with a volatility that is out of proportion to the actual event. During these, what can be extremely uncomfortable experiences, you can bet your bottom dollar that the superego has stepped out from behind the bushes and is swaggering around like it owns the joint. This, of course, would be a great time to get your camera ready, but hold up a moment, because observing your superego when it’s in action can be darn near impossible. And that’s because the observant, logical and rational part of your mind is generally relegated to the background when you’re superego is in the vicinity. If you were pinned to the ground with someone’s boot on your head, would observation be your automatic response? No. Of course not. You’d be in full on fight or flight. I don’t want to set you up to fail here, so let me try to ground this in an example that maybe you can relate to. I’ll set it in a work scenario, but obviously the dynamic of having a hard time saying ‘no’ is transferable in many directions. I think most of us can relate.
Let’s say that you are very overwhelmed at work. You’re barely getting by as it is because your boss continues delegating things to you with crazy deadlines. As you survey your desk, you resolve to start setting boundaries. Okay, we’re not yet in the territory of the superego, but it has probably received some kind of early warning text message that you might go rogue. So just as you finish your thought, you look up to see your boss approaching with a folder. Your mouth becomes dry (this is your first clue) and before they’re even fully in the door, they’re talking a hundred miles an hour about this project that has just come down from an ED and the CEO is waiting for it, and you notice your hands are clammy (second clue) and your heart starts pounding (third clue). Your boss finally stops talking and your whole body feels rigid and tense (fourth clue) and as you’re trying to figure out the best way to ‘cry uncle’ and say no, a voice in your head powers up and starts hissing “don’t do it, don’t do it, this is suicide,” (fifth clue) and now you’re starting to heat up and you can feel your cheeks redden (sixth clue) and your boss is looking at you funny and you feel so insanely uncomfortable that you end up mumbling something unintelligible as you reach for the outstretched file folder and watch your boss pivot and walk away. Superego 1. You zero. Okay, they may have won the round, but now you get to go back and comb through the experience – as I have just done – and start to piece together the clues.
In this example, your superego is clearly miffed about you challenging authority – or something along those lines – and that’s why it’s coming on so strong. Perhaps you have an old fear of poverty and your superego issues a gag order to safeguard your paycheque. Whatever the case, your reaction is out of proportion to reality. If you are as insanely busy as you say, saying ‘no’ is actually a reasonable response. But we don’t say no because our superego is standing on our head making it difficult to see the logic. Everything in that moment has been eclipsed by the fear churned up in us by the superego. Now the additional possibility is that the id may very well have been poised to leap out and tell your boss what they can do with their folder and arguably, this wouldn’t be a good look, so at least a part of the superego’s attempts to make us pump the brakes could be kind of advantageous, but of course they go too far. The trick here is not to get sucked into the polarity of black or white thinking. In other words, to suck it up OR tell them to shove it. The goal is to seek the middle ground. I’ll park this example for now and come back to it during the second part when we explore techniques for managing our superego. In the meantime, I’ve got some more tips to help you track your superego.
These questions that I’m going to share with you, are designed to coax the superego out from its hiding place in much the way that throwing bait fish into the ocean lures a great white. Just make sure you stay well back from the gunnels and pay attention.
How much trouble do you have saying ‘no?’
How much effort do you put into avoiding conflict?
How much do you feel like an imposter?
How much do you try to fit in?
As a bonus, try and listen for times you use the word ‘should.’ This is like your superego’s calling card. I often give people the advice that they not ‘should on themselves.’
If you haven’t already figured this out by now, keeping track of what you’re learning is kind of a good thing. I mean why waste time listening to this if it’s just to be entertained. Go all Jane Goodall on yourself. Observe and make notes. Trust me when I tell you that the more intel you can gather on your superego, the faster you’ll be able to spot it when it steps from the bushes. And that means the faster you’ll be able to utilize some of the techniques you’re learning about. Remember, awareness is half the battle if not more!
Perhaps from just the most rudimentary of reflections thus far, you’re beginning to form an impression of your superego. I hope you are. And listen, this work is not for the faint of heart. It can feel heavy and deep – which it is – because that’s just the way it is. Humans are complex. Why wouldn’t we need a complex operating system in the psyche?
I hope you’ve even been able to start imagining some of the superego’s more common phrases – the repetitive chastisements you’ve heard in your head for years. To hone the picture further, I’ve got some additional finessing questions to add. You may want to pause for a moment to write them down. The important thing in superego tracking is that you go slow and take lots of time to put together the picture of your superego that is beginning to emerge.
Whose voice am I hearing?
What does this remind me of from my past?
What is familiar about this?
What were things like for me growing up at home, school, with friends? What are similarities that I am experiencing now?
This next practice comes from the article, Breaking the Chains: Finding relief from a harsh superego by Ben Ringler. https://www.goodtherapy.org/blog/breaking-the-chains-finding-relief-from-harsh-superego-0426175#:~:text=They%20may%20feel%20isolated%2C%20experience,work%20or%20in%20a%20relationship
He suggests engaging in a 5-10 minute awareness/mindfulness practice where you think about your superego while prompted your awareness in specific directions – in other words, how audible is their voice? Does it yell or whisper? Personally, my superego has what I refer to as a very judgey church voice. A kind of pointed hiss. If you’ve ever watched the Lord of the Rings trilogy, my superego sounds a bit like Wormtongue. I’ll also include these suggestions in the show notes.
By now, you may also be forming some hypotheses of where and when the superego is most apt to show up. This is critical. Are there certain types of people that trigger you more than others? What about situations where you feel more insecure? The more you study this, the more likely you’re going to start to see some common patterns. Tracking the superego can be tremendously empowering.
So remember, the most important part of this practice is to simply build awareness of the superego. And through your awareness, cobb together a pretty thorough description of the superego, as well as a detailed list of situations and circumstances where it is mostly likely to show up. Some of my clients have gone one step further to depict the superego more visually through drawings or models. Do whatever works for keeping it top of mind. The reason this practice can be so powerful is that you’re essentially recodifying your relationship with the superego. You’re moving from subjectivity, where it’s operating mostly invisibly, to objectivity, where you are able to hold it at arm’s length and see it in all it’s glory. And of course that’s important because what you can’t see, you can’t change.
Prompts for superego spotting mindfulness activity:
Notice how audible it is, Does it yell? Whisper? Is the voice familiar?
Notice it’s particular brand of harshness. Does it shame you? Criticize you? Berate you?
Notice what it focuses its attention on. Not “doing it right” Your intelligence, Appearance, Level of success?
Notice how it might work on you in silent ways.
Notice how you relate to it. Do you cower in response? Feel tight in your body? Feel angry or anxious?
Now that you have a pretty good understanding of the superego – what it looks and sounds like, what it says and where it likes to hang out, you can now consider how to manage it when (not if) it shows up next. Superego management strategies fit neatly into two buckets. On the one hand, you need first-aid strategies for those times you find yourself in the heat of the kitchen and need to get the heck out of dodge. On the other hand, you need longer-term strategies or the kind of skill-drills for life that I referenced earlier. If it isn’t obvious, you’ll have more success if your strategy includes something from each bucket.
And just in case you’re wondering why I’ve put so much emphasis on the superego, and not so much on the id or ego, that’s because your id, as you may recall, is entirely unconscious so trying to manage that would be like … well I guess just think of anything that’s impossible. And in terms of your ego, try and think of it as the vantage point from which you’re reading this blog right now. You are, in effect, your ego. This blog was, in effect, written to give your ego a leg up.
Let’s talk first-aid first. Remember when I told you how challenging it can be to recognize the superego in action when you’re being bullied by it? That’s because you’re in a kind of emotional hijack where reason and logic are out the window. The superego has effectively bound and gagged you as it takes over your psyche. In situations like this, your first-aid strategy has to be to notice as quickly as possible what’s going on and then to get the heck out of the triggering situation, full stop.
To demonstrate, let’s refer back to the earlier example I gave where your boss is walking towards you with yet another deadline oriented project and you know that if you don’t say no, you’re absolutely, positively going to drown. But when the moment to push back arrives, your mouth literally can not form the word ‘no.’ Even though it makes complete logical sense to push back, you more than likely won’t, because the superego is standing right next to you threatening and screaming in your ear that you’d better not screw this up. No one can think clearly or logically under these conditions. No one. It’s not as if you’re going to be like, “oh wow, look, it’s my superego. Hey, what’s going on? Can you just hang on for a second?” and then calmly turn back to our boss and say ‘No.’
In other words, when the superego is on the war path, our sympathetic nervous system gets triggered (think fight, flight, freeze, appease) and adrenaline and possibly cortisol are racing through our veins. The only first aid strategy in this case, is to recognize as quickly as possible that the superego is present (this is where all your awareness practices should pay off) and to buy yourself some time without committing to anything. This is a good time for a pocket phrase. Something you can whip out without too much thought that buys you time without committing yourself. How about something like, “I’d be happy to take a look.” It’s respectful but neutral. If that doesn’t sound like something you’d say, then convert it into your own words, but maintain the spirit of it – that you are not agreeing to anything. Oh, and also that you are not NOT agreeing. It’s actually a pretty good idea to write your pocket phrase down and practice saying it so it will feel more natural when you whip it out of your proverbial pocket. And then once your boss has left, move to the Time Out practice I’m going to walk you through in a second.
But what if you didn’t have a pocket phrase at the ready? Let’s assume that you went along to get along and the folder is now in your hands and your boss has gone. No problem. Don’t beat yourself up. Head directly to the Time Out practice I’m about to explain. It is not too late to salvage the situation.
Okay, the Time Out practice is something I created for my clients many moons ago that takes into account both our physiology and psychology when we are triggered.
Here’s the Time Out process.
If you haven’t already moved away from the reactive situation, get out of dodge. Leave. Head for the hills. Pretend you have to go to the restroom. Distance is needed.
Once you’re safely away from the triggering situation, sit or stand and take 5 deep breaths, wiggle your toes and roll your shoulders a few times.
Next, ask yourself a few truing questions. During a superego hijack, things get scrambled and truing questions help you to recalibrate your metaphorical instrument panel to ensure your compass is pointing at true north. These could be questions like “what just happened?” or “what got triggered?” Take your time. Try to spot your superego’s footprints. (Again, this is where your awareness practices will come in really handy).
Try to probe even deeper in your inquiry “what am I afraid of?” “What was the superego trying to prevent me from doing or saying?” Try and find your vulnerability underneath the situation. This is undoubtedly what your superego was trying to prevent you from seeing.
Try reassuring yourself with things you actually know. “I will be okay. I will be able to cope with whatever happens.
Ask yourself what you need right now. “What I really need is to feel connected to ___”
Ask yourself how you would like to address the situation that just happened. Try to be very simple, clear and practical. And if you’re not ready to do anything yet, that’s okay too. The most important thing is that you have your own ego’s back.
While the example I provided earlier was fairly middle-of-the-road in terms of the severity of a superego hijack, clearly there are more intense possibilities out there where you would do well to step away before you make things worse. Imagine you’re in a meeting where a very political colleague undermines you in front of a VP? Or someone older and more senior that you have just started supervising challenges your authority in front of your new team? Imagine making a very important presentation and looking out at a sea of bored faces. Or perhaps having an argument with a romantic partner at a party and they just turn and walk away, leaving you standing alone. I could keep churning out more examples, just so long as we’re all clear that in these types of triggering situations, the only answer is to take a time out. Remember, time-out is not just for kids anymore.
I’ve often said that with the exception of ER docs and airline pilots (and likely a few other positions I haven’t thought of yet) it will rarely be beyond the realm of possibilities for you to step away for a few moments under the guise of using the restroom. Whether you head for the actual restroom or not doesn’t matter. Removing yourself does. Trust me when I tell you that you will never make anything better by hanging in there and going another round. It’s a hard pill to swallow because I think most of us enjoy identifying as rational adults, but when we’re under the thumb of a maniacal id and a power hungry superego, sorry. Not gunna happen. The only chance your ego has to regain its foothold and salvage the situation is by stepping back and taking a few breaths.
And just because something happened in the past, it’s never too late to go back and reflect on upsetting situations that happened yesterday or last week or last year. You may feel some trepidation because you are still be smarting from acting like an idiot in front of your colleagues. Sometimes in situations like these, our ego gets so beaten up we can hardly blame it for wanting to crawl into a pint of beer and pretend the whole thing didn’t happen. But it’s also true that those are the best situations for harvesting the clues left by your superego. This is not an opportunity you want to miss. Think of it like a treasure map! And remember, the more thorough your superego dossier, the faster you’ll spot it in the future, giving yourself the edge you need to head it off at the pass before it tears the place apart. Throughout all of this reflection, having a learning mindset (aka a humble one) is essential.
Here is an additional tool for managing the superego.
A reframe uses 3 questions to shift how you think of a situation or event. I’ll use the same example. A reframe asks, What happened that led me to feel this way? What are the facts? (vs. interpretations?) and what is an alternative interpretation? Upon reflection of the situation with your boss, you may discover that you felt the way you did because you believe that setting boundaries would be career limiting. But when you look more closely at the facts, you discover that there really aren’t any and most of what you believe is based on an interpretation that comes from what you fear. Now you are freed to look at the situation differently, choosing a more empowering interpretation such as “I haven’t yet learned the specific influence tactics that I need to know to manage this dynamic. But I am already looking into it.” Simple, but effective.
Okay, let’s just take a beat here. I’ve covered a lot of complex territory so let me offer a bit of a recap. Because it can be actually quite simple.
According to Freud, personality – which is essentially the way we show up and behave in the world – is determined by the interaction of 3 distinct parts within our psyche - the id, superego and ego. Much of their contents is unconscious (the id in its entirety and parts of the superego and ego), but by becoming well-versed with the conscious aspects, particularly the superego, we can learn to manage, and in some cases head off entirely, the superego’s debilitating impact in triggering and reactive situations. This can make life infinitely more enjoyable.
Our success in this endeavor relies most heavily on the degree to which we are willing to track and observe the superego across a multitude of life circumstances and situations, scanning for where our volatility seems out of proportion to the current event. Once we have a sort of ‘superego template’, in other words, we can more or less predict how the superego is going to behave in certain situations, we can then build strategies to diffuse the superego before it gets out of hand and starts wrecking the joint. For instance, if we know that the superego has a habit of becoming quite reactive around authority figures and we have an upcoming meeting with someone in authority, we can build a script or design a boundary or determine how much to disclose, etc. in advance of the meeting. Even if the actual contingency plan isn’t that effective, just taking the time to think through our approach beforehand will embolden us, making reactivity less likely. In other words, we will be more likely to notice the superego as soon as it shows up, allowing us to take evasive action before it gets a foothold.
Management strategies range from first-aid (help! I’m in the middle of a superego hijack) to after-the-fact reflection (gosh, that sucked. What did I miss?) to a more generalized ongoing practice combining observation with a learning mindset and humble inquiry.
By now, I shouldn’t have to tell you the costs of a reactive superego. I think we’ve all been through incredibly stressful and reactive situations in life that we could really do without. So it should be no surprise that there is much research that details the costs within organizational life. Meredith Somers, executive coach with MIT, cites the following damages that can be traced to the bottom line: conflict, stalemates, low productivity and innovation, and a judgmental environment that harms psychological health and safety of the team.
https://mitsloan.mit.edu/ideas-made-to-matter/how-leaders-can-manage-their-own-inner-critic)
While this blog is certainly not intended to replace a robust psychotherapy session, it is an attempt to shine some light on the machinations of our everyday psyche in the hopes of discovering some agency we didn’t know we had. In The Standard Edition of the Complete Psychological Works of Sigmund Freud by Sigmund Freud and Carrie Lee Rothgeb written in 1961, Freud explains, “Analysis does not set out to make pathological reactions impossible, but to give the patient’s ego freedom to choose either way.” I think what Freud is saying is that while we’ll never entirely ‘tame’ those peskier aspects of our psyche, by building our awareness, we may succeed at achieving some level of choice in how we respond. And that truly can mean the difference between meaningless and painful superego hijacking events and enough agency to influence more desirable outcomes from our interactions.
