The Fiction of the Self

A version of this article originally appeared in the January/February 2015 issue.

In the Buddhist traditions from which many contemporary mindfulness practices derive, mindfulness techniques evolved as tools for deconstructing our usual view of ourselves and the world and for waking up from conventional, socially reinforced fictions about who we are, all as part of a path to wellbeing. It involves realizing what’s called in Pali—the language in which the Buddha’s teachings were first recorded—anatta, or non-self.

The mindfulness practices that lead to recognizing anatta are deceptively simple. They begin with cultivating concentration—choosing an object of awareness, such as ambient sounds, the breath, or other body sensations, and returning attention to that object every time the mind wanders from it. Once some concentration is established, we open the field of awareness to attend to whatever predominates in consciousness. Throughout the process, we try to accept whatever arises, whether pleasant or unpleasant.

If we engage in these simple practices long enough, we discover that our sense of being a separate, coherent, enduring self is actually a delusion maintained by our constant inner chatter, which generally features “me” at its center. From mundane decisions (“I think I’ll get the salmon with wilted spinach tonight”) to existential fears (“What’ll I do if the lump is malignant?”), this chatter fills our waking hours. Listening to it all day long, we come to believe that the hero of this drama must exist—and is very important.

But if we practice mindfulness long and often enough, this conventional sense of self can start to unravel. By repeatedly bringing our attention to sensory experience in the present moment, we see that what arises in consciousness is a kaleidoscope of sensations and images, regularly narrated by subvocal words, which themselves arise and pass. Attention goes from the sensations of breathing, to a sound, to an itch on the scalp, to an image of a client, to remembering an upsetting email.

We never actually find the little homunculus, the heroic man or woman inside, the stable and coherent “I” so regularly mentioned in our passing thoughts. Rather, there’s just a continual flux of changing mental contents.

If we cultivate sufficient mindfulness, we may even see how we create our sense of self, and our understanding of the world around us, out of this flux. Seeing this in action can pull the rug out from under us in alarming—though potentially liberating—ways.

How We Construct Reality

Ancient Buddhists described the process by which we construct reality and our sense of self much as modern cognitive scientists do. It all begins with sense contact: the coming together of a sense organ (the eye or ear, for example) with an object of awareness. These sensations are then immediately organized into perceptions, conditioned by language, personal history, and culture.

The mind doesn’t stay at the level of perception for long, however. It immediately adds a hedonic or feeling tone to all experience (“I like this” or “I don’t like this”). And almost as soon as the feeling tone enters consciousness, intentions arise. We have an impulse to hold onto pleasant experiences and push away unpleasant ones. Over time, we develop habits of intention that we might call dispositions or conditioned responses—collections of habitual responses to our likes and dislikes.

These dispositions become important elements in our identities (“I’m a progressive,” “I listen to classical music,” “I hate jet skis,” “I’m into mindfulness,” and so forth). We may imagine that as sophisticated psychotherapists we’ve moved beyond this kind of primitive identity formation—but just ask a room of clinicians who listen to NPR how many drive a pickup truck or own a gun and not many hands go up. What we see through mindfulness practice is that creating a sense of self is actually an impersonal process. And this impersonal process—involving sensation, perception, feeling, and intention—unfolds moment after moment, relentlessly narrated by thoughts that themselves arise and pass.

Our sense of self has other dimensions, too. These turn out to be equally insubstantial. Most of us identify with the body as “me.” Outside the skin is the world; inside is me. But what happens when we eat an apple? At what point in the journey from your hand, to pulp in your mouth, to gastric mash, to sugar in your blood does the apple become “you”? And what about the cellulose, or fiber, aggregating and getting ready to enter a familiar white porcelain receptacle? Is that you? Is it still the apple? Or is it something else? (Most of us pick “something else” because we don’t like to think of feces as either “me” or “my food.”) Upon examination, our cherished division between “me” and the rest of the ecosystem in which we reside falls apart.

Most of our clients may never practice intensively enough to see clearly how their sense of self is constructed from these elements, but if we therapists can awaken to this reality, it can help us take ourselves less seriously, be less preoccupied with our personal pleasure and pain, and provide a therapeutic attitude that can help our clients do the same.

Non-Self in Psychotherapy

Seeing how our sense of self is constructed isn’t just a topic for abstract philosophy. In Buddhist psychology, awakening to anatta, or non-self, is central to psychological freedom. And even glimpsing anatta in our mindfulness practice can have profound implications for how we practice psychotherapy.

What might treatment look like if there’s no coherent self to be found or developed? What if trying to establish a coherent sense of self is itself a central source of suffering, as Buddhist teachings suggest? What does this mean about developing self-esteem? Identity? Authenticity?

Some implications are simple. Instead of asking in therapy, “How did that make you feel?” we could inquire, “What’s happening right now?” Instead of helping our client identify his or her authentic self, we could highlight how everything changes moment by moment, including who the client thinks he or she is.

Glimpsing anatta also supports parts work. The notion of a self composed of many parts is not new. From the Greeks’ pantheon of gods to Freud’s ego, id, and superego; Jung’s shadow and persona; and more recently Richard Schwartz’s Internal Family Systems, our therapeutic traditions have long suggested that the self is plural rather than singular. While seeing oneself as made up of many parts may feel a bit more like having a self than seeing oneself as a fluid organic process, all these models point to something we see in mindfulness practice: if I objectively observe consciousness moment by moment, I discover a continually changing landscape.

The Ron Siegel who appears to be a balanced, knowledgeable professional leading a workshop or treating a client is quite different from the Ron in an argument with his wife or daughter. Shockingly different, in fact. Angry Ron, frightened Ron, greedy Ron, generous Ron, and loving Ron may all share a common social security number, driver’s license, and physical appearance, but that’s where the coherence ends. Without the glue of a narrative about “me,” these selves are different organisms.

Mindfulness practice can dissolve this glue, with profound implications for psychotherapy. For example, my client Gretchen recently found herself stuck in a depressive funk. She’d lost hope again that she’d ever have a meaningful job or relationship and was ruminating about her inadequacies. Highlighting the fluidity of her sense of self helped her gain perspective.

“How are the thoughts and feelings arising now different from a few weeks ago after your promising date with the architect?” I asked.

“I was just fooling myself back then,” she answered. “He seemed like a great guy and I got carried away, imagining a great future. Now I see things more clearly.”

“Do you remember that you were struck back then by how negatively you see yourself when you’re down? How depressed Gretchen is so different from okay Gretchen? It sounds like depressed Gretchen is back,” I said.

“I guess so,” she replied. “It feels like she’ll be around forever. But that’ll probably change, too.”

Psychological treatments strive to move clients toward health. But this health is determined in large measure by cultural norms. Anthropologists have long noted that Western cultures tend to be more individualistic than Eastern and nonindustrialized societies. So it’s no accident that Western models of health include being aware of boundaries and one’s own individual needs, and having a clear identity and sense of self.

This is in marked contrast to cultures in which identification with nature, family, the tribe, or even ancestral lineages is emphasized and honored. As South African social-rights activist Desmond Tutu has said, in many African cultures, if someone asks, “How are you?” the answer is either “We’re fine” or “We’re having trouble.” Individual well-being outside of the group’s experience is inconceivable.

One effect of mindfulness practice is to dismantle our modern Western sense of autonomy, yielding several positive—albeit initially disturbing—consequences. If I’m identified with certain traits or dispositions as “me,” I’m going to have trouble when other aspects of my humanity appear. For example, if I like to think of myself as generous, hardworking, and intelligent, I’m going to have difficulty when my greedy, lazy, dumb sides show up. Indeed, this is what Jung called our shadow—split-off elements of the personality that aren’t acknowledged as part of our conscious identity. As long as I’m denying or resisting these elements and seeing them as “not me,” I’ll be in constant tension, inclined to project them onto others and be judgmental when I see them there.

So one result of embracing anatta is recognizing that it’s all part of a passing show. We can accept every aspect of this organism, rather than identifying with some elements as “me” while rejecting others. The alternative to accepting our varied states is dissociation, whether the mild form that we call having a clear identity and sense of self, or the stronger version, in which we completely split off unwanted contents—only to be haunted by them.

The Failure of Success

I had the privilege several years ago of traveling through an African wildlife park. Time and time again, our guide would point out scenes of a dominant male surrounded by a pack of healthy, fertile females. Somewhere nearby were other females, perhaps not at the peak of fertility, and the young kids. Off in the distance were adolescent males, honing their skills to compete for the dominant male position. It brought to mind what stress physiologists like Robert Sapolsky at Stanford point out: “It’s particularly bad for your health to be a low-ranking male in a primate troop.”

By helping us observe—rather than identify with—our thoughts, mindfulness practice reveals how often we’re concerned with our rank in our particular primate troop. Other species may stick to a few variables, like who’s stronger or more fertile-looking, but we compare ourselves to one another in a remarkable range of domains. For one person, it’s who’s smarter; for another, it’s who’s richer; for someone else, it’s who’s more popular. Then there’s who has the better body, the better-behaved child, the better clinical practice, the more developed sense of style, athletic ability, or social graces.

My client David was an anxious, episodically dysthymic young man with clear goals. He’d read all the latest books about success and had enthusiastically crafted his strategic-objective vision: a big house, a big car, and a beautiful wife, all of which he intended to acquire in the next five years.

I suspected that while he may indeed achieve his external goals, he’d soon recalibrate and be left feeling inadequate. So we began to explore in therapy how he came to believe that these achievements would bring him happiness. It took a while, but he eventually connected with a series of traumatic humiliations, including being dominated by an older stepbrother and cheated on by a college girlfriend. On top of this, he recalled his father’s oft-repeated disparaging names for the “losers” of the world.

As therapy unfolded, David finally got relief from his anxiety and dysthymia, not by fulfilling the imperatives of his vision, but by seeing them as attempts to insulate himself from the pain of feeling inadequate and noticing how winning made him feel good for a few moments but soon left him needing more.

Indeed, despite its obvious limitations, most of us persist in trying to bolster our own—or our kids’—self-esteem through pursuing countless goals. But as Joseph Campbell famously put it, we often “climb the ladder of success only to discover that it’s leaning up against the wrong wall.” Mindfulness practice and the awareness of anatta vividly illustrate the folly of trying to improve or maintain self-esteem. We see repeatedly that what goes up must come down, and we notice that eventually we all succumb to illness and death.

The alternative, which arises naturally out of the awareness of anatta, is self-compassion. Instead of trying to regain our competitive position after a fall, we acknowledge the painful feeling of disappointment and offer ourselves loving understanding. For example, if my daughter doesn’t make the soccer team, instead of reassuring her by saying, “But you’re better than other kids in math, and you’re a great ice-skater,” I might share with her, “I was disappointed when I wasn’t chosen for a part in the school play. I remember that it hurt, and I felt really bad about myself when it happened.” Then I might give her a hug.

Instead of pointing to a compensatory strength, we comfort others and ourselves with acceptance and a reminder of our common humanity—the awareness that we’re together in this life of winning and losing, joy and sorrow.

By seeing how our sense of self is constructed, how our quest to enhance self-esteem makes us miserable, and how we’re part of a larger whole anyway, we become less concerned with egoistic aims and feel more connected with others.

It’s Really Not Personal

Virtually every school of psychotherapy helps clients identify or “own” their feelings. Most therapists hold authenticity, genuineness, and being true to oneself among our highest aspirations. But when we glimpse anatta, these aspirations start to lose their importance. In fact, we discover that there are distinct advantages to not owning any feelings as ours.

As mindfulness practice deepens, we see emotions in greater and greater refinement. Rather than being vitally important, meaningful aspects of ourselves, with names like love, anger, fear, or longing, they increasingly look like patterns of bodily sensations, perhaps along with visual images, accompanied, like everything else, by the mind’s persistent narrative.

It’s said in Buddhist traditions that with enough practice, we can observe mind-moments. These are the briefest experiences of which a person can be conscious. Traditionally, a mind-moment is defined as 1/10,000 of the time it takes a bubble to burst. At this level of refinement, seemingly solid events like “my anger,” “my lust,” “my sadness,” and “my joy” are revealed to be more like a movie, actually made up of many separate frames strung together, producing the illusion of continuity.

Let’s say a friend to whom I’ve been extraordinarily generous treats me badly. In an ordinary state of mind, with a coherent and well-developed sense of self, I’d think, “I can’t believe he did that to me after all I’ve done for him.” And with each repetition of that thought, I’d feel more anger and review more reasons why he’s bad and I’m good.

If, in contrast, I’ve cultivated enough mindfulness to glimpse anatta, I might simply notice my back and neck muscles tensing, my heart and respiration rate increasing, and images of decapitating my former friend dancing across the screen of awareness. It’ll all unfold as an impersonal process—waves of psychophysiological arousal accompanied by images and subvocal words. Experienced in this way, as impersonal bodily events, emotions are easier to manage. Also, they don’t get reinforced continually by ruminative thoughts, so they tend to pass more quickly.

But what about “owning” feelings, and being “genuine”? Isn’t this an important part of psychological health? Indeed, if a fellow walks into my office and says, “You know the way your friend can piss you off sometimes?” or, even more removed, “Doc, I know this guy who has trouble performing in bed,” there’s certainly merit to helping him eventually say, “I feel angry at my friend” or “I’ve been having trouble maintaining an erection.” However, insight into anatta suggests an additional, more advanced therapeutic step that isn’t usually part of treatment. We can also help our clients observe emotions as events arising in consciousness, not experiences “owned” by anybody.

In the context of anatta, we can tolerate a broader range of feelings with greater intensity than from our habitual framework of “selfing.” Having practiced being with, rather than fixing itches, aches, and pains in meditation practice, we develop the capacity to tolerate, or even embrace, the bodily sensations of strong emotions. Experiencing them as simply states of somatic arousal drains them of their personal, narrative meaning. We then no longer feel compelled to do something about them. Rather, we can feel them arise and pass, like other contents of the body-heart-mind. And the more fully we accept them, the more readily they transform.

Of course, this attitude has potential pitfalls. In relationships, identifying and communicating the emotions that arise in response to one another are an important part of intimacy. Posturing as though we’re experiencing our emotions with awareness of anatta when we can’t actually do it experientially becomes just another defensive, intellectualized stance. Our underlying identification with the emotion will no doubt manifest in some other way, as our hurt, anger, or fear finds expression. In contrast, connecting with feeling while genuinely seeing its impersonal nature can allow for deep intimacy. We can share our experience with another person fluidly and openly, with less of the shame, righteousness, fear, or clinging than we might otherwise experience if we were identifying with or “owning” the emotion.

Copernican Therapy

As we come to see the reality of anatta and experience the relief and freedom that this realization brings, our orientation toward treatment may shift as we come to see how our hardwiring to enhance self-esteem, pursue pleasure and avoid pain, and identify with our thoughts and feelings causes endless, unnecessary suffering. As the 20th-century Taoist philosopher Wei Wu Wei said, “Why are you unhappy? Because 99.9 percent of everything you think, and everything you do, is for yourself. And there isn’t one.”