ego as bad voice inside depression

If, like most people, you are lived by your ego, your life looks like this: you are impatient, dissatisfied, easily irritated, you feel inadequate, and you fail to see the beautiful things in the world, in others and in yourself. You mull over misery in the past and misery in the future. You are stressed, angry and jealous. You retaliate against yourself (women punish themselves, edit themselves with a knife, become depressed) or others (men punish others, edit others with a knife, become psychopathic). You need to be special and belong to the successful group that “matters,” but whether or not those things work out (often they don’t), you never think it’s enough and three minutes after each success(es) you desperately move on to chase another success(es). Time passes, but you never arrive, never enjoy, never feel good enough with your job, your house, your car, your vacations, your partner, and all your impressionable success.

How do you know you’re talking ego? How do you recognize ego?

When your ego talks, it is restless in your head; the nagging, fearful, negative noise voice spoils your life. Here are some ways to find out when it is not your spiritual self speaking, but your ego.

• You keep comparing yourself to people who are doing better than you, who are more successful, and you start to dislike those people. Everything in your life becomes a competition, you have to be better than others, have and be more than others, more beautiful, more striking and richer. You make it loudly clear that you have more and are better than all those lazy slackers. Being the best!

• You also see meetings and conversations with others as competitions. When you talk to others, you don’t listen or listen poorly, and you’re always thinking about what you’re going to say next. You exaggerate and lie when necessary, which is quite often.

• You are easily offended and then start whining and getting even: “How dare they!” You first get angry, then bitter, and if you have to, you file a lawsuit.

• All your own, selfish acts you condone, yes, it may not deserve the beauty prize but in this case it was just really necessary. You are full of excuses: you behave badly because “everyone does it.”

• You are enormously keen on other people’s mistakes: if someone makes the slightest hint of a mistake, you won’t miss an opportunity to notice it, come back to it and make a mountain out of a molehill (many columnists, lawyers, politicians, TV talk-show hosts and all the Internet barkers).

• You must always be special, whether it’s a new, expensive car or meeting a Dutch celebrity, as long as you can brag about it at parties and make others jealous. For some, it is a full-time job to implicitly shout the childish “Look at me!” all day at every opportunity. For you, no vacation but super vacations, no job but super job, no sport but super sport, no house but super house, no partner but super partner.

• In your head is always that voice that undercuts you, that says you said this stupid and did that stupid. For your ego, you are never perfect enough.

• All that ego fretting makes you so unhappy that you start numbing that pain with one or more obsessions: food, sugar, booze, money, stuff, attention, applause, bragging, gambling, video games, porn, Netflix, religion, crime, television viewing, security, shopping, cutting back, skimping, slimming, winning, playing the victim, infatuation, relationship, sex, prestige or success.

• You think a lot about money and sex. Actually, the whole world is a potential victim to make money from and half the world is a potential sex object. All happiness you seek outside yourself.

• You feel bad, there is always shame, guilt, anger or sadness about things from the past, and you are always brooding, worrying and anxious about things in the future. So that you never enjoy, never can enjoy the present moment, the whole life in the form of all the now moments passes you by and after years and years of living in this zombie state, once you wake up you say you feel “empty.” Your life feels like a lie, a mask, a pretense, an exterior, a facade, fake. Is that all there is?

• There is always arguing, gossiping, conflict, tension, confrontation and wanting to convince. You are always judging others; you always have something to criticize. The ugly people are losers and the beautiful ones are braggarts. The fat people are pigs and the thin ones are obsessed with sports and health. The poor are pathetic slobs and the rich are boastful show-offs. It’s never good. You try to push yourself upward by bringing others down, condemning them.

• You set goals that you must stick to, you must be perfect. You set yourself tight deadlines like the most ridiculous: before I turn 40, I must be a millionaire. You will achieve your goal; if necessary with lying and cheating.

• You are happy when successful others go bad, when they get fired, when they are unhappy, when they get sick, get divorced, go bankrupt, get depressed, even when they die. Yes, including your “friends.”

• You are always busy busy busy, you don’t take a second of rest and want to do as many things as possible at the same time, work, run, smoke, drink, nail biting, do dangerous things, compare, have sex, watch TV, do everything fast, resulting in teeth grinding, muscle pain, headaches, stomach ulcers and heart attacks. And oh yes, someone who is not busy is “a wimp.”

• ‘Small’ (weak, poor, young, uneducated, subordinate) people you disdain, humiliate, treat badly, scold, laugh at, insult and ignore, but with ‘big’ (powerful, imposing, famous, “important,” rich, influential) people you are coquettish, nod your hypocritical yes and suddenly start sliming. Licking up and kicking down.

• You make your past more beautiful than it is, your father’s/mother’s job you make more important, the former, domestic happiness you make more beautiful, even your name you try to make more distinguished.

• You have eternal doubts about yourself, you have a lot of self-criticism, and others push you away because you are afraid they will then see that vulnerable side of you too. No one is allowed to get close to see your real, authentic, soft side (the vulnerable flesh under the plastic mask) and so you are also afraid of intimacy. All your relationships are not relationships.

• Appearance is very important, so fashionable clothes, eye-catching jewelry, prestigious car, boastful house (furnishing), pretentious hair, weird look-at-me makeup, tattoos and piercings, overly white teeth and plastic surgery, a vulgar glow-watch and spending money on your appearance without delay.

• Wanting to win awards such as diplomas, a ribbon, a title, honorary jobs, promotion and salary increases, because status and career are very important.

• Endlessly complaining about everything and everyone, but never to the person who could do something about it and never at all taking action to actually solve the problem.

• Get scared and mad when you’re alone and it’s quiet, but then call that “boring” and “bourgeois,” just as peace and contentment are things for “boring, bourgeois types. Seeking the noise to drown your pain in it.

• There is only one way, yours, and everyone else is crazy; so you secretly feel lonely, separate and excluded and disconnected from others.

• You are a taker, not a giver, and if you give at all, you do so only to get something, preferably something greater, in return. When that doesn’t happen, you go on tilt.

Another very innocent example of our ego

Your ego whispers in your ear that there is a delicious piece of chocolate cake waiting for you in the refrigerator. If you are wise, can control yourself and say “no, thank you,” ego will nag you until you start to doubt. He is cunning and will make up all the excuses and justifications to lure you to the refrigerator. Yes, he knows you like no other. Ah well, you love chocolate cake. He looks really delicious. You worked hard all day, you are entitled to one pleasure, right? Just for once! You can’t take it anymore and walk to the refrigerator, take it out and start. And while you are eating, ego is going to ruin everything, he is going to judge and scold you. Slapper! Fatty! What are you working on? Where is your willpower!

So first your ego seduces you, then he forces you, then you do what he wants, and then he starts judging you. In this way, there are countless, much, much worse things that ego causes and thus makes our lives hell. With ego, you can never get it right, a match lost in advance. Either way he will floor you, eat you with skin and hair.

From this enumeration, it becomes clear what kind of nagging hell most people live in on a daily basis

This also applies to Quote millionaires and BN’ers, nay, to them especially. Their fear is so great that they fought harder than the rest to get those fake solutions (fame, dough). But no matter how rich, famous, successful and powerful you become, you remain a trembling fearmonger, a slave of ego.

Realize that your ego knows only fake solutions and that there is only one real solution. Wisdom, calmness, virtue, self-control, common sense. Your ego is a spiritual cancer that whines, drones and kills. If you don’t break your ego, he will break you.

François de Waal Worked as a TV producer and lawyer. He now works as an experiencer with the Depression Association.

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