Re-selfing

• A skill that allows one to author the “centre” of ones selfhood

• It results in one becoming more into relationship with oneself by moving the perspective of self into a higher-order meta-self.. In Wilber’s terms one transcends and includes oneself.

• moving my perspective in relation to an experience from “self” to “other”.

• Moving from “through” to “to”

Impediments to re-selfing

• Uncomfortable emotions strengthen “self gravity”

Mechanisms of re-selfing

• becoming newly conscious of the intermediating value-theory

The elements of self and Re-selfing

1. The experiences of emotion & selfhood

2. The current centre of selfhood

3. The value-theories through which the experience is perceived

Cognitive fusion

• Ref “Cognitive fusion” from ACT

Steven Hayes, who developed Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT), coined the term “cognitive fusion” to describe times when we are so tightly stuck to our thoughts, we become “fused” to them. When we’re experiencing cognitive fusion, we can’t separate ourselves from our thoughts. Our thoughts become our reality

The opposite of “cognitive fusion” is “cognitive defusion.” Cognitive defusion involves taking a step back from what’s going on in our minds, and detaching a little from our thoughts. In this state of defusion, we can observe our thoughts and other internal processes without getting lost in them, stuck in them or fused with them. We can simply notice our thoughts, watch them, accept them and let them go if we choose to.

A concept from mindfulness-based cognitive therapy (MBCT) that can help us defuse from our thoughts is the idea that thoughts are not facts: Just because you think something doesn’t necessarily mean it’s true.

Another way to help get past the belief that, just because you’re thinking something it must be true, is to label your thoughts as thoughts.

• Labelling your thoughts as thought helps with this. “Just a thought”, “just worrying”. “I’m just having a thought that this is going to be terrible”

Associated concepts

• Constructive Developmental Theory

• From this comes “Working-on vs working-in”

• Self & Other

Tools of Othering

• Distinction

• [[Mirroring 🔘]]

• Psychodrama and Narrative Therapy and the DNA-v model are also examples of “Othering”

• Journalling makes the experience feel more “other”

• Disidentification & Breathing

• [[The 4 Heroes]] model. (This is similar to DNA-v)

Inspiration from Nick Williams

life is the type of journey which consists of us ‘going beyond ourselves’, not the type that is made up of us ‘extending ourselves.’ The mistake we are making is that we are assuming that the journey of life is one where the one who starts up on this journey is the same one who gets to the end of it from Nick Williams

Another term?

• It might need another name. The name doesn’t point to the essential element of the concept which is bringing self into relationship with self via making part of the self “other thereby becoming meta-self to “previous” conflated self

• I think I need a term (possibly 2; a noun & a verb) to refer to the meta- and emerging- self (and-or the process thereof)

Themes

• Disidentification

• Emerging or Emergent self

Verbs

• Re-selfing

• meta-ing

• meta-self

• Unself

• Unhook (Acceptance and commitment therapy)

• Othering

Self Talk

3rd person self-talk is better than 1st-person self-talk at changing behaviour

The reason this mechanism works is because of the circular or self-referential architecture of cognition. We see the world & ourself through the unconscious filter of our values and beliefs (ref confirmation bias); as such it is a positive feedback loop. The key feature of a positive loop is that it just repeats more of itself. For instance if (part of) you has an unconscious limiting belief about your ability to get out of bed in the morning then, come morning, that belief will unconsciously shape the attention of your thoughts and emotions to reaffirm its reality. Positive feedback loops are either vicious or virtuous and in the case of a limiting beliefs they are vicious.

What speaking to yourself in the 3rd person does is psychologically eject the centre of your psychological selfhood out of positive feedback loop. From here you are no longer “in” the loop but in a sense outside of it. From here it is easier to create a new experience and a new choice in this moment.