Therapeutic and the Egoic Selves

I have a metaphor I often tell my clients explaining how therapy works. Holding up my hands in front of myself I demonstrate to my clients two hands fused together. One hand is the Egoic Self which we all have and will probably not remove: it is easily hurt, prideful, scared and jealous; it unrealistically wants positive emotions to always stay not allowing the full range of all emotions. The Therapeutic Self comes about from deep therapy. We want to establish a mature supervisor of our Ego so that when our Ego is triggered by someone’s behavior we can choose how to respond. The Ego, on the other hand, wants to react with fight, flight or freeze, impulsively, which is rarely a wise choice. With ongoing therapy we develop the skills to put more and more space between the triggering event and our healthy response to it.