Supplemental Essay: Ego Expansion and Anxiety

 

In the main essay I said that ego expansion takes us from conventional one-sidedness to extreme one-sidedness, and that conventional one-sidedness represents healthy moderation while extreme one-sidedness is associated with excess and anxiety:

• Conventional one-sidedness (either conventional extraversion or conventional introversion) represents the narratives that we develop to explain our lives. They become the unconscious scripts (our "autopilot" or "gut instinct") that guide our routine actions. This becomes our comfort zone.

• Extreme one-sidedness (either extremely one-sided extraversion or extremely one-sided introversion) represents conflict, neurosis, and parental castration. Movement away from our comfort zone of conventional one-sidedness is accompanied by anxiety: The more one-sided we are, the more defensive, rigid, and combative we tend to become. 

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Socialization

As I described in the Intuition chapter (in the section entitled "One-sidedness and Centroversion at the N Level"), this state of affairs is the result of childhood socialization: Two-year-olds test the limits set by their parents, and their parents punish them for their opposition. In this manner children learn that ego expansion past certain bounds results in punishment from the powerful parents.

 

As a result, a conflict arises in the child between the desire for self-assertion on one side and the necessity of obedience to their parents on the other. The child engages in ego expansion (self-assertion), but as ego expansion approaches excessive amounts, the child begins to feel anxiety in the form of a "sense of approaching doom" associated with the increasing probability of parental punishment. In this way ego expansion (self-assertion) gets associated with anxiety, and ego contraction (backing down when faced with punishment) relieves that anxiety.

 

A bit later, at the S level, our earliest narratives in life incorporate these contests with our parents. As I said in the Sensing Chapter (in the section entitled "Description of Sensing"), our search for causality, consistency, and coherence allows us to develop narratives to explain our lives. Narratives explain the world around us, and with time and repetition they become the unconscious scripts (our "autopilot" or "gut instinct") that guide our routine actions.

 

When we are young our parents define the limits of our world, and our earliest narratives concern our interactions with them (actions, punishments, and rewards). In other words, in early childhood we develop narratives to explain and incorporate the socialization process and to help us understand limits in order to avoid anxiety and punishment. These are the roots of our eventual adult narratives about hero journeys and Great Mother fights or Great Father fights.

 

In the Sensing chapter (in the section entitled "Extreme One-sidedness at the S Level") I suggested that tragedy represents an intuitive understanding of ego expansion. A hero is compelled to fight some battle; but the stakes get too high, the battle becomes too much, and the hero is laid low. The moral is that when we expand too much and take on too much, destiny will intervene and set limits for us in a type of karmic balancing act. There is a sense of relief when a limit is reached, even if it means the downfall of the hero. The hero is the two-year-old who has tried to throw a tantrum but ultimately must accept his punishment. The audience instinctively recognizes the archetypal pattern of over-expansion leading to punishment, retreat, and contraction. We have all experienced it, because we have all been two years old.

 

Comfort zones and fixed beliefs

As we grow older our comfort zone equates to those areas where we have parental approval; and when we depart too much from our comfort zone we begin to feel that sense of approaching doom associated in our childhood with parental punishment. Our childhood fear of parental punishment becomes our adult superego (in Freudian terms) and our conscience (in religious terms).

 

Even in adulthood when our parents are no longer around to monitor our behavior, the association between ego expansion and anxiety remains, and we feel anxiety when our ego expands too much and we depart from approved narratives. When that happens, our anxiety--that "sense of approaching doom"--prompts us to restrain ourselves and retreat back into the comfort zone of our conventional, socially-approved narratives. In other words, in order to relieve our anxiety we self-punish by denying ourselves our desires.

 

In his book Self Matters, Dr. Phil McGraw talks about much the same thing. He describes the power of our internalized narratives, which he calls our "fixed beliefs": "Fixed beliefs tell you how things are going to turn out. They shape your expectations about your outcomes. They anesthetize your fear of the unknown by pushing you in the direction of something knowable and familiar, even if not fulfilling. When you start to feel offtrack or out of control, your fixed beliefs provide a refuge. Like a panicky actor grabbing for his script, you go back to your fixed belief. It tells you what to say and do and you instantly feel comforted. Equilibrium is restored."[1]

 

Departure from the comfort zone of our personal narratives tends to result in anxiety. Dr. McGraw continues: "When you're at the mercy of a fixed belief--in other words, when you're living from a script--you will resist any change to that script. When events go counter to your fixed beliefs, even if you recognize that you've never been happier or more peaceful, a sense of destiny intrudes. You get a queasy feeling, an apprehension that things just aren't right somehow. Your internal dialogue becomes something like, Oh my gosh! I'm going to be struck down any minute. This is not my destiny. This is not my role. What happens is that you cannot be happy being happy. You will be miserable if your script is to be miserable, because that is your self-ordained destiny."[2]

 

Naturally, a sudden negative change or trauma (an unexpected financial burden, illness, etc.) can also trigger anxiety. But anxiety can arise even from a change for the better. Dr. McGraw says: "People script a life with a certain income, certain relationships, and a certain lifestyle and although we say we want more, we're very uncomfortable about taking any steps toward change. Amazingly, people will often opt for a familiar lifestyle that is admittedly unfulfilling, rather than an unfamiliar alternative, even though that alternative may be clearly superior."[3]

 

Social validation of conventional narratives

Another consideration restricting our comfort zone is that our narratives aren't just something we personally identify with; they also represent social validation and approval. As we grow up our narratives tend to reflect the influence (and particularly the approval or disapproval) of the people around us; and the fact that we share many of our narratives with family and friends gives those narratives extra validity. So any departure from our narratives is bound to be accompanied by some level of anxiety due to social considerations.

 

Once we become adults, the conventional narratives of the social collective tend to "capture" us. When we question society's conventional narratives and stray outside them, we risk separating ourselves from the collective; we risk ridicule or ostracism from family, friends, jobs, etc. One sees this constantly on the internet: Social media are quick to criticize any departure from the norm.

 

Furthermore, those around us often see our inconsistency and disorder as a threat to them. Dr. McGraw says, "Other people may also be working from a script or series of expectations about how you should behave, what you should say and do. When you make the decision to go off script, they may feel highly threatened and anxious." If a husband suddenly embarks on a self-improvement regimen, the wife may object. She doesn't care if the change is positive or not; she doesn't evaluate it in those terms. She only knows that it is different and feels unsafe to her.[4]

 

Society approves when we stick to script, and we risk society's disapproval, shame, and guilt when we change course or otherwise don't measure up to expectations. The childhood model is our parents, who provided us love and approval but also punished us when our ego expanded past the limits they set for us.

 

As a result, in modern times we tend to bounce back and forth routinely between ego expansion and ego contraction. We get bored with conventional one-sidedness and engage in ego expansion to liven things up, but we risk slipping into extreme one-sidedness and anxiety. So we spend our lives trying to maneuver between the two evils of the boredom and predictability of conventional one-sidedness, on one side, and the unfamiliarity and "sense of doom" of extreme one-sidedness, on the other.

 

Link: Return to Thinking (T)

 

~Posted September 23, 2025

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