What's the difference between a big ego and a strong one?
That's what I'm talking about today.
I'm Dr. Tracey Marks, a psychiatrist
and I make mental health education videos.
The concept of the ego comes from psychoanalytic theory
and Sigmund Freud's structural model of the mind.
With this model, the mind is divided into three structures,
the id, the ego and the superego.
The id is like your lizard brain.
It represents your instinctual drives
including sexual and aggressive urges.
These drives are unconscious and beyond your awareness.
On the other end of the spectrum is a superego.
Your superego represents your values and moral principles.
It's like your sense of right and wrong.
Your superego is completely conscious
and some people even equate it to your conscience.
So you have your id part of your mind
that wants to run loose and do whatever it feels like doing
and your superego that makes the judgment about whether
what you really want to do or think is acceptable.
The moderator between these two structures is your ego.
It does all the heavy lifting
when it comes to making decisions and processing information
that you get from your external world.
It interprets that information and takes action.
The stronger your ego, the more adaptive you are.
Your ego develops in the first three years of your life.
Your view of the world is formed by your early interactions.
You form a vibrant healthy view of the world and yourself
if you have early relationships that affirm you
with acceptance, empathy and validation.
These experiences don't come only from your mother.
A baby can feel affirmed by a doting babysitter.
Similarly, negative experiences in this stage of your life
can chip away at your ego strength,
but the net result is the sum total of your experiences.
So one bad day stuck in a baby bouncer and ignored
doesn't destroy your ego.
It's the general experience that you have
with the people that you spend a lot of time with.
So you can think of your ego as your eye or yourself
because it's who you are at your core,
but the term has morphed into meaning
having an overblown view of yourself
and something negative that you need to leave behind
like leave your ego at the door.
That meaning is what people think of as having a big ego,
but a big ego is not strong.
It results from overcompensating to manage a weak ego.
Your ego strength is how well your mind
is able to fulfill the normal ego functions
that help you self-regulate
and adapt to prosperity, adversity and change.
And here are some of the functions of the ego.
Abstract thinking, perception and reality testing
and this is knowing when what you think is logical
and fits with reality.
Censorship which is being able to determine
when a thought or urge is appropriate.
Social judgment, affect tolerance.
This is how much you're able to tolerate strong emotions.
Impulse control, defense mechanisms for coping
and internal conflict resolution.
If you have a strong ego,
you have self-confidence, high frustration tolerance.
You can postpone gratification, you can compromise
and forgo your own desires and wishes for the greater good
when necessary and this is a measure of impulse control
and you can resolve internal conflicts
before they cause problems for you.
Here's an example of a conflict resolution issue.
Suppose you have trouble committing to things
because you don't want to make the wrong decision
and this is an internal conflict that can manifest
in any scenario of making daily decisions.
In this case, it affects your relationships.
You meet someone that you're attracted to
and you start dating,
but you're hesitant to become exclusive
because you fear you're going to miss out on someone better.
A way to resolve this conflict
is to accept that you can't control the unknown
and there's always the possibility
of finding someone that you think is better.
They may be better in some ways, but not in others
so you reason to yourself that you'll never know
how good or bad this person is going to be
until you give it a full try.
If it feels like it's a good fit for you,
you remind yourself that no one is perfect
and you could spend an eternity looking for someone better.
If you resolve the conflict,
you agree to having a committed relationship
and see where it takes you.
But if you get stuck on the conflict and don't resolve it,
you push the person away,
continue to have shallow relationships
that don't lead anywhere and end up unhappy
because you can't seem to find the right person.
Here are some signs of a weak ego.
Being impulsive and needing immediate gratification,
emotional instability in the form
of outbursts and explosions.
You may apologize for the explosions
and wish you didn't do them,
but you keep doing them because you don't have the control.
Feeling inferior and then needing to exert superiority
over others in order to elevate yourself.
An example of this is needing to see other people lose
to feel a win for yourself.
Another sign of a weak ego
is having distorted reality perceptions.
This may manifest as intense paranoia,
always feeling someone has ill intentions.
Another sign is having a fragile sense of self.
You need others to define who you are,
what you believe and what you should do.
You're dependent, but you don't want to be.
You look to others for direction,
but then resent them for controlling you
and making you feel like a child.
A last sign that I'll mention is using primitive defenses.
I talk about defense mechanisms in this video.
Ego weakness doesn't have to be all of these things.
It can affect certain aspects of your personality.
How do you strengthen your ego? Here are two ways.
First, engage in activities that increase your insight
like therapy or journaling.
There are many ways to journal
and some types are gratitude journaling,
developing affirming self-talk
or writing out daily observations for self-reflection.
Writing these thoughts out
rather than just thinking about them
makes them more concrete
and helps you consider other points of view.
Opening your mind to other points of view of a situation
increases your psychological flexibility.
A second suggestion is to engage in self-care activities
such as setting limits with people.
Say no to activities and requests that don't serve you
even if it's something that someone else wants.
Eliminate negative people and situations from your life.
Take care of your body with proper rest, exercise and diet.
Make time to be intentional in these areas.
For example, make having a regular bedtime a priority.
You don't want to fall asleep
only when everything is finished or when you feel tired
because if you stay up working on something,
you may not feel tired at your ideal bedtime
and your body will allow you to stay awake
for as long as it can until it gives up on you
and turns the lights out for you.
But that time may not be until 2:00 am instead of 10:00 pm.
In your mind, you can think I wasn't sleepy at 10,
but you could've fallen asleep
had you prepared for it and gotten in bed,
but since you were up, your mind and body
allowed you to keep going.
And it's easy for busy people to sacrifice sleep
in order to get things done, but all that does
is subtract from your capacity to self-regulate and adapt.
A third approach to strengthening your ego
is to recognize if you use primitive defenses
and change them to more mature ones.
Watch this video on defense mechanisms
and this one on psychological flexibility.
Thanks for watching. See you next time.