So, it’s an attribution error. It’s an attribution error. It’s when you mistakenly identify your introjects with yourself. You think your inner voices are your voices. You think these internal objects are part of you. They are you. They constitute who you are.
But that is, of course, an error, a kind of attribution error. The internal objects, the introjects, the voices that populate your inner world, they are not you. They are not a part of your core identity. They just appear to you to be so.
But that’s a mistake. Consider, for example, automatic negative thoughts and this is what we treat in cognitive behavior therapy. Automatic negative thoughts are such voices and they appear to you to be egodystonic. Egodystonic means you. These voices appear to be you. You talking to yourself. You reminding yourself how ugly you are, what a failure you are in case of a bad object or how perfect you are and what a genius you are in case of grandiosity and other cognitive distortions.
These are all voices negative and positive automatic thoughts. They emanate. They come from introjects.
Mommy told you that you are ugly. A very important teacher told you that you’re a genius.
But these voices are not you. They populate your world. They’re inside your mind. They interact with you. They are triggered by circumstances and environments and other people and events in your life. But they are not your identity. They are not your core.
If we were to strip away all these voices, if we had a magic wand or some kind of electronic device, a Faraday cage for introjects and we were to scream them out, silence them, block them, reverse them like some kind of noise negating device. If we were to do this, if we were to silence the inner tumult, this constant stream of consciousness dialogue that goes on in your mind, you would still be you. It would change nothing about who you are. It may affect your behaviors.
Silencing the introjects does have an effect on your behavior, does have an effect on your choices, on your decisions, including mate selection, does have an effect on compulsions, such as repetition compulsion, but it doesn’t have an effect on who you are.
What you do, how you act, what you choose, what you decide, this is not who you are. Your self, if it exists, does these things, but these things are not yourself.
The introjects interfere in the interface between you and reality. They are kind of adjuncts or auxiliaries to the ego. They interface with reality on your behalf.
You can have an introject that tells you you’re behaving like a slut, stop it. You can have another introject that tells you this is wrong to do this. Our conscience is such an internal object. It is an assemblage or a compendium of introjects inside your mind, but this is not who you are.
And so we have therapies, different modalities, such as cognitive behavior therapy, schema therapy, Gestalt therapy, even to some extent transactional analysis, other types of therapy.
These therapies silence these introjects. They remove them even to some extent.
And once these echoes of meaningful others in your mind are silenced, once it all goes quiet, there’s a single voice that is still speaking. One voice is left standing. One introject survives the onslaught of treatment. And that voice is you. That’s your core identity. That’s your authentic self.
In the description, I post a link to another video about changing your inner dialogue. Good luck with that. You can do it partly on your own and partly in the appropriate therapy. It doesn’t even take long.
Your introjects are in your way. Very often they are negative. Together, many of them constitute a bad object. Many of these voices tell you that you’re unworthy, unlovable, inadequate, a failure, a loser, evil, or whatever.
You need to get rid of these introjects. Other introjects mislead you in the opposite way. The grandiose.
You need to get rid of these introjects. You need to listen to one sound only in the desert of your soul. And that sound is the sound of your inner God, your authentic self.
