Do you ever feel like you aren’t acting like your true self, but don’t know how to get a handle on yourself?

You will hear people say things like, ‘I don’t know what possessed me to say that!’, ‘I really can’t believe I did that; that was so unlike me.’, or ‘I’m sorry, I don’t know what came over me.’ This happens to people all the time, and there really is a rational explanation.

To understand what is taking place in those seemingly unexplainable moments where it feels like you’ve been taken over by an alter-ego, let’s take a deeper look at what occurred inside of your mental and emotional bodies as a child born into a fear-based, right/wrong reality.

When a child is scolded, punished, criticized, shamed, blamed or otherwise judged or treated as ‘bad’, the child’s personality will fragment, developing into different aspects or what are called sub-personalities in psychology. It is as if your personality cannot deal with having a ‘bad’ part, so it pushes that part away from what it views as the ‘good’ or acceptable self, disowning the so-called ‘bad’ part in order to feel any level of comfort or self-acceptance.

This is a normal, natural, instinctive psychological coping mechanism that helps children survive. A child will do this unconsciously and repeatedly during their formative years, sometimes to the point of having no parts left that it views as ‘good’. These disowned parts may also be referred to as the shadow self, or the dark side of the self. Having lots of the personality stuck out in disowned sub-personalities – stuck in the dark – creates an illusion of separation, feelings of ‘not good enough’, ‘unworthy’, and so on. While this protective mechanism is great for children to allow them to cope in-the-moment, it creates all sorts of issues for the grown child to deal with later on as an adult.

Part of the awakening and healing process for us as adults involves gathering up all of our different aspects and bringing them into the light of our heart, into the compassion and acceptance of the Loving. This is the process of integration. Once a person begins to integrate the various aspects of their personality into their heart, they will feel more whole, joyful and content. They will start to hold themselves in higher and higher esteem, until they are one with their source of Loving.

There really is only one real underlying issue that is at the root of every problem that humans face, and that is the feeling of separation from our Loving source energy. If you look at modern psychology, each and every diagnosis involves a separation of some sort. Whether or not you have received a diagnostic label, we all have experienced a certain level of separation from our Loving source within our personality, depending upon how we related to our circumstances as a child. Understand that there is nothing wrong or bad with having placed aspects of ourselves in the dark; the act of doing so is a basic survival instinct of the psyche to protect itself from the harshness of the right/wrong reality.

Some people can become very triggered by this subject. They think that if they admit to having any disowned aspects it means that they might be viewed as having a mental health issue. If you have sensitivity about this sort of thing, I highly encourage you to just laugh at this idea! In my experience, I have never met a human who has not had some degree of personality separation, so you could say that until we go through the process of integration, we could all be viewed as headcases!

Do you have any alter-egos? This could be a mood you sometimes get into, an attitude or emotion, or a particular way of thinking, speaking or acting in certain circumstances that doesn’t feel like your most natural, authentic self. Be willing to look deeply at yourself.

Thankfully, most mental-level dis-ease – which simply means ‘lack of ease’ or lack of peace – is quite easy to heal. The first step toward integration is to acknowledge that you may have some parts of yourself that are operating unconsciously in the dark. Say, “I am now willing to look deeply at my own personality.”

Many Blessings of Joy and Vibrant Freedom

Action Step ~ Acknowledge that you may have some disowned aspects of your personality.

Declaration: “I am now willing to look deeply at my own personality. I’m willing to acknowledge that there may be some parts of myself that have been left out in the dark.”