4 Lies your Ego will tell you to Sabotage your Healing Journey

What is ego? Do I have one?

When we hear the word ego, many people think we are referring to the arrogant, self-centred part of a person. But the definition of ego is simply the part of your personality that is experiencing the world through the perception of “self” or “I”. 

Unbeknownst to most, there are perceptions that we are playing out from the ego-mind that is negatively impacting our reality. These stories play out and wreak havoc over our healing journey – throwing us off course, and sometimes leaving us worse off than when we first started. So let’s take a look at the most common lies, and stories, our egos are telling us that could be sabotaging your healing journey.

1. There has to be a quicker way or easier way.

We live in a world of instant gratification. The internet and smartphones have given us so much at our fingertips, which has unfortunately made us incredibly impatient. As Freddy Mercury sang – “We want it all and we want it now.” 

In the aspect of health, it doesn’t help that western medicine has a pill for everything, we call this the ‘Band-Aid fix’. Holistic health takes into consideration things like:

How long have you been eating this way? 

How many years have you been under stress or going through trauma? 

How often do you self medicate with drugs, alcohol, binge eating or compulsive numbing? 

When you look at the amount of time (sometimes a slow build over a lifetime) it took for you to become unwell, and the circumstances it took to get you there, you can start to understand that there is no pill or magic wand to cure this overnight. 

2. If I change I will be outcast or alone.

Humans need connection. Even from the womb, it is a basic, but imperative, requirement for healthy functioning. Sometimes people resist change because if they change it will affect how they connect or interact with the people around them. 

Alcohol is a great example of this. Many people resist making changes with their drinking because they feel it will directly impact how involved they are with their friends. So often we see our patients who will avoid making changes to their emotional health because they know deep down that once they face it, it may lead to having to leave their partner or taking a step away from a toxic family member.

Because we are so hardwired for connection, we can overlook the fact that the current connections we have in our life are actually having a detrimental effect on our health, mental state, and overall growth.

3. It’s too hard to face your shit.

If I push it down hard enough it’ll go away, right? Wrong. We live in a fast-paced world full of distractions – you only need to look at your phone app usage report to get an idea of how distracted you are. Younger generations can disassociate at an Olympic level. I cannot tell you the amount of people I meet who don’t even know what or why they are bottling it all down. 

Those who do know what they are running from, tell themselves that it’s too hard, scary, intense, traumatic to face what they’ve been pushing down. If this is you, I want you to ask yourself, what seems more overwhelming – learning how to face and work through the hard thing/s, or spending the rest of your life running from, numbing, pushing, bingeing, fighting, clawing your way through? We know which option we would choose. 

4. I’m not good enough, I’m not worth it.

Ahh yes, this old nugget. Around 97% of people will face this wound at some point in their lives. More people than you think battle with this complex their entire life. Every other point we have made in this list so far comes back to the “not worthy” story at the core. 

It doesn’t always show as blatantly as this statement. It can show up masked, for example, “this is too much money” can be translated as “I don’t value myself enough to invest in my health”, “I’m too busy” translates to “I place other things in my life as higher priority because I don’t think of myself as important enough.” I invite you to question the “reasons” or barriers as to why you haven’t/aren’t placing your health and wellness as a priority. 

Change is scary. We are hardwired to resist change. For basic survival, our brain creates connections and pathways for patterning and repetition. This allow us to do things without thinking about it; everything from breathing, driving, multitasking, etc. The part of us that creates these patterns or habits, can’t tell if we’ve created a good or a bad one, it’s all made from the same mechanical survival instinct. So when you think of it from this viewpoint, you can understand why it can seem “scary” to change something that was created from the same part of your body that keeps you alive and safe. 

There’s no doubt it takes courage to face these stories and persevere along your healing journey. But remember, courage isn’t something you need to seek outside of yourself, it already lies inside you. 

If you had the courage to read this far down this blog article, you have already located your courage, it is within you.