Your immune system is hard wired to maintain your well being by a simple and powerful directive: protect from harm by recognizing self from not self and, attacking the not self to neutralize it or destroy it. Likewise, your ego constructs a mental/emotional identity by erecting a subjective self/not-self boundary. Then, your ego’s directive is to protect its identity by means of psychological defenses.
Psychological defenses are unconscious core beliefs constructed in early childhood. Each core belief focuses your attention on a specific attitude and point of view that is supposed to provide safety, they don’t when you are an adult. Both your ego and your body’s immune systems can malfunction by the same mechanisms: mis-identifying a part of the self as not self and attacking it. For the body this becomes autoimmune disease. For your ego this are debilitating, devaluing and paralyzing self-judgments that maintain inner conflicts and negativity. The most injurious act in self-judgments is denying the ego’s shadow. Protection is costly and stressful to both mind (ego) and body.
You can mature into adulthood and master assuming responsibility for your well-being without generating stress doing it! Psychological maturation depends on your ability to discover and access an efficient, powerful and loving intelligence that can override biological drives and your ego’s self-identity.
Transcending your ego’s dominion happens naturally when you are better informed about other dimensions of you: awareness and the presence of your whole being. Assimilation of experiences into wisdom becomes your common sense, your higher intelligence free of beliefs, prejudices, fears and judgments.
Your psychological defenses become a hindrance to your continued personal development by sabotaging common sense wisdom. Mid-life crisis, burn out, relationship catastrophes, depression, panic attacks etc, are examples of your psychological defenses malfunctioning due to an inability to access and act on common sense choices.
· Environmental toxins
· Genetics and Heredity
· Viruses
· Stress & anxiety
· Poor diet
· Lack of exercise
· Lack of sleep
· Excessive intake of harmful substances such as alcohol and tobacco etc
My experience as an acupuncturist and my knowledge of Chinese medicine has confirmed the direct correlations between mind and body. Both have an interdependent relationship that produces wellness or the lack of it. My training in transpersonal psychotherapy helps me understand the mind as a structure, similar to the physical body, existing inside space. The physical body is contained by three-dimensional space and the mind is contained by the inner subjective space of your awareness. The transpersonal perspective is that your true identity is your boundless conscious awareness containing your mind and body.
The shift in perspective from being a mind/body entity to being awareness of mind and body has an enormous liberating effect. Self-awareness actualizes your untapped healing and creative resources. The ability to dis-identify from your thoughts, feeling, emotions and circumstances has a curative effect by virtue of allowing multiple perspectives. The more ways you can look at something the more you can understand it and influence it. As Einstein put it, you can’t resolve a problem from the level that you created it from. Resolution of mental conflicts requires a perspective that includes and transcends the conflicting mind that is stuck in problems.
· Codependent relationships are dis-empowering environmental toxins in your psychological space.
· False and limiting (inherited) beliefs are the drives for self-sabotage behavior that trigger many hereditary and genetic patterns manifesting disease in the body.
· Negative thoughts & attitudes act as viruses. Mental negativity attaches to ordinary events and keeps on replicating itself.
· Fear-filled thoughts are the source of stress and tension in the body. Fears exhaust body and mind.
· High consumption of violence and mindless entertainment is the same as poor diet. Your mind needs new stimulation in order to stay agile just as your body needs fresh variety of nutrients.
· Lack of mental focus represents a lack of mental strength similar to the physical weakness from a lack of exercise. Your ability to maintain mental focus supports carrying out uncomfortable and difficult actions. This is essential for self-transformation and healing.
· Continued worry during the day becomes a lack of sleep at night.
· Mental addiction to judging, blaming and complaining creates a toxic emotional environment just as substance addiction creates a toxic body.
The above are determining factors for the quality of mental health you enjoy. As these factors are addressed your wellbeing increases.
Your ego identity is your sense of being a separate person. The sense of separation, the boundaries between you and others is a psychological fence. Your ego identity is a mental and emotional wall that is needed for self-recognition and self-protection and for learning how to function in the world. This is necessary from birth until the end of adolescence. After that stage of development having psychological defenses is a problem. The mechanism claims to be all that you are, it thinks it knows what is best and, it defines the limits of what can be experienced, defines what is real and decides the limits of your potential. Your defenses become your prison for your Soul’s creativity and your spirit’s need for Self-expression.
Your ego identity is the product of your interactions with the physical and psychological environment in which you were raised. Your parents are your main psychological environments during early childhood when core beliefs are constructed. First your mother imprint and then your father’s imprint act as the influences shaping your ego identity.
The ego’s main concern is survival by means of avoiding familiar pain and moving towards familiar pleasure. For the ego familiarity IS safety. Over time, this biological drive to look for safety associates familiar discomfort with safety.
“Familiarity runs counter to personal development, which requires stretching into the exiting discomfort of the unknown”
So, to liberate your Self from the prison of psychological defenses requires that you pursue your personal development as a multilevel process: Emotional integration of childhood wounds, psychological maturation including cultivating Self-awareness as well as discovering a life vision compelling enough to pursue and have direction in your life. In the meantime, your life purpose is to utilize your common sense and take action to resolve all of your current challenges. Will you claim your freedom to be? When?