From the beginning of Dr. Michael Hall’s Meta-Coaching, he repeatedly noted that the main problem with most people who need counseling or therapy is that they lack the ego-strength to face life’s challenges head-on. Part of the reason for this is that they are not “okay” with themselves and/or they are living in the past. They spend their time and energy trying to finish up unfinished business so they can live with their past and focus on today and the future.
Eric Berns (Games People Play, 1965) and later Thomas Harris (I’m Okay; You’re Okay) developed Transactional Analysis (T.A.). It was created so that psychoanalysis could be explained in easier terms. When the self isn’t okay, they feel insecure and helpless, therefore they resort to numerous coping methods in an effort to feel better about themselves. In the field of psychology, this is accepted wisdom. To be at your best mentally and physically, you need to be comfortable in your own skin. A term for this is “ego-strength.”
Ego-strength means that you have enough power inside (“ego” is the Greek word for “self, I, me”) to deal with life as it comes. The “strength” comes from knowing yourself and being aware of your humanity, including the fact that you can make mistakes and will die. “Strength” here means being able to use your abilities of thinking, feeling, speaking, acting, and connecting in a way that helps you reach your goals of getting along with others, finding out what you’re good at, learning (and learning how to learn), building a lifestyle, etc. Meta-Coaching and NLP call this being resourceful.
To understand ego-strength, you need to first understand that no one is born with it. We don’t even have an ego or sense of self when we are born. That comes about. And it takes a long time to build up enough ego strength to be able to handle life’s obstacles. You have to learn a lot of things for that to happen. Most people don’t have enough ego strength to go out on their own into the wild, wonderful, and sometimes dangerous world until they are in their teens or even their 20s.
When you have ego strength, you know yourself and others well enough to know how to make friends, work consistently and well at a job, handle your finances, treat people well, avoid dangerous places and people, solve everyday problems, predict how things could go wrong and manage risks, and get back up when you get knocked down (resilience). Isn’t that a lot?
When you are at the edge of your skill set and have to go outside of your comfort zone to take on a new task, your ego is put to the test. It is put to the test when things go wrong, like when you get hurt, are very upset, lose a job or a best friend, are cheated, face a natural disaster, etc. Not everything is easy in life. It can be hard and even cruel at times. As one bad thing after another happens, you start to wonder about yourself, life, the world, or God. You have a psychological crisis when you start to wonder what it’s all about.
Some people are very unlucky to have to go through such hard times as kids. When that happens, they are the ones who suffer the most. Often, healthy parenting interrupts the regular way that a child’s ego gets stronger, so they don’t get the strength they need. They create different neurotic responses to help them deal with situations that are not normal. This is fine. Neurosis is a normal way for people to deal with this, and it generally helps them get through very strange situations. They don’t realise they aren’t ready for life until they get there. They don’t have the ego strength they need. This is where and when treatment can help.
A person who doesn’t feel safe inside and out needs healing (therapy) that builds up their ego strength and helps them find their inner resources so they can deal with things in a healthy way. Again, it’s about how much. Does someone need full and extensive psychotherapy or just a little counselling to get them out of the past, past their defenses, and into a strong, resourceful state to face life?
Curated by Danielle Tan.
Reference:
- [Certified_meta-coach] 2023 Morpheus #23 SECURE INSIDE—OUT by L. Michael Hall, Ph.D. Executive Director, ISNS.
