The second Personal Illusion is that we think we know ourselves. Not really.
We have a lot of illusions. Why? Remember we talked about the imprint period, during then we believed a lot of what other people told us, whether it was true or false and whether it was right or wrong. Well it was a good source or bad source.
Next we see through our biases we've talked about this over and over again. So I hope that you're beginning to understand what a filter is and how many different ways it works.
All these personal illusions that we're talking about right now are various forms of filters; we often see what we want to see, which is a bias. It's a filter I let in what I want and I don't let in what I don't want.
This is a defect of your brain which gives you the wrong information because it's trying to protect you and make you feel better.
So when you have painful memories it tries to move away from them. When you have pleasant memories it tries to move towards them. When people say nice things about you, you try to absorb it. When people say negative things about you, you try to move away from it, you reject it. This helps you by your brain to boost your self-esteem which isn't a bad thing. But in doing so it's giving you a massive amount of false information and you don't even realise you're doing it.
Next, we distort with our history, I remember one comedian, he said I've had a pretty good life, well it's not entirely true. I have an editing process in my brain and whenever there's something negative I like to snip it out. So I had a great life but I did some amazing things with editing. That is so funny, and that is so true. That's your positive use of your brain's editing tool. You literally do this. The comedian was saying it as if it were something funny, but it's something that's true.
Remember we're always going to protect our self-esteem. We do it as if we were protecting ourselves, so we'll distort things to make our self-esteem healthier. It's actually a brain defect.
We can't see ourselves. We think we know ourselves, but go ahead, say something, and listen to yourself on an audio recording.
You know the first time somebody hears themselves on audio, they're usually horrified unless they just had the most beautiful voice ever. They're horrified by the sound of their own voice, and they're like “No, you know, the tone and the cadence is the same. But that's not me. That's not my voice. That doesn't sound anything like I sound in my head and it sounds horrible. I hope to hell I don't sound like that.” And you do, and it's not horrible, it's only horrible to you, you're the only one that cares.
And we can't see ourselves, we can't literally see ourselves, we don't know how we look to other people, we don't know how much facial expression we give off or fail to give off. We're just all guessing. We don't practice our facial expressions in the mirror. We can't see ourselves.
And finally and I think everyone will agree this is true. We both hide and distort our pain. We deflect it. You distort your pain, your mental pain can become locked in the muscle and that becomes physical pain. It's one of the ways you distract yourself. That's how somatic disorders start. Soma is a Greek word just means body. So most somatic disorders are the pain of the brain going into the bodies- there is a mind body connection.
Plus most people can't remember back to their imprint period. You don't even know why you are the way you are because you weren't there. Even if you have memories of that time, you don't remember accepting or rejecting anything, you do remember when you learned every little thing, you know there's only one hundred people with an Identity Memory like that and isn't you.
If you are reading this post, you start to be aware of this personal illusion. Those people who missed this post probably know far less about themselves than you. This is the first understanding of a truly intelligent person: I don't know what I don't know.
Contact us to know more. Subscribe to us to receive updates and news about us.
Three Personal Illusions of Every Human:
Personal Illusions No. 1 We Think We Know Other People
Personal Illusions No. 2 We think we know ourselves.
Personal Illusions No.3 We Think We Know the World
Overcome provides CTAA accredited remote and tailored advice on solving mental health related problems in a few efficient and effective sessions with unbeatable strategies to give you an unfair advantage in life that can benefit you for all your life with 98% success rate. (Depression, Anxiety, Stress, Mental Health, Therapy)
Comentários