Many of us now understand the self not as a single, unified identity, but as a system of parts or sub-selves that can be in conflict or in harmony. The idea that a person has only one unified self is no longer universally accepted (even if most of the time our sense of self can feel undivided). In Internal Family Systems (IFS), for example, we think in terms of a system of selves, where different parts have different roles: some protect, some carry pain, for example.
Our overall sense of self is formed through our past experiences. Some of these experiences involve what we learn about ourselves from accurate mirroring by others, where they reflect back to us who we are in a way that feels true. When others respond to our cues and spontaneous gestures with accurate feedback, this helps us feel seen and connected to our true self, the person we experience ourselves to be from the inside out, the part of us that feels real, alive, genuine.
Other parts of us develop through internalization, imitation, identification. We adapt to the people around us, absorb aspects of their personalities, feelings, and behaviors, and make parts of their emotional world our own.
Then there is of course also Winnicott’s false self, in contrast to the true self, where what we show the outside world is not coming from our inner truth, but is an accommodation to caregivers or others who did not make room for our spontaneous, alive expressions. This self is a persona of sorts.
And then there are introjections.
These are parts of us we absorbed from others (perhaps to align ourselves with their point of view, or as a repository for the own unwanted parts) that feel foreign, unwanted, or disturbing inside, and that don’t feel like “us” deep down. An example would be when a person who was criticized repeatedly by their parents now carries a harsh, critical voice inside. This voice often feels like someone else’s, even though it lives within oneself.
But today I want to make sure to mention the alien self, based on distorted mirroring.
Fonagy and Target in the mentalization literature describe the alien self as developing when someone reflects back to us not our real emotional signals, but something that does not fit who we are.
For example, when a child tries to separate or become autonomous, a parent may experience this as aggression or rejection. The child then receives the message:
“You are bad.”
“You are hurting me.”
“You are aggressive.”
Over time, the child may start to believe this. Yet on the inside, it does not feel true.
So the person grows up with a painful dissonance:
On the inside: “I feel independent, alive, and well-intentioned.”
Internally also: “I am mean. I hurt people.”
This creates deep confusion and shame.
The alien self forces a person into a painful choice: either sacrifice their inner truth, or sacrifice the feedback they received from important caregivers.
Because this dissonance is so hard to tolerate, the psyche may try to rid itself of the alien self using projective identification, in which we symbolically evacuate our unwanted identity into another person and then behaviorally provoke them into enacting it. This temporarily relieves the inner conflict, because once again the alien self feels alien, as if it has been gotten rid of, or no longer belongs to us, yet at a high relational cost. This recreates the original injury and disrupts intimacy.
How do we heal if what feel like parts of us inside are not aligned with who we really are, or do not really belong to “us”?
The goal is not to erase parts of ourselves, but to differentiate what is truly ours from what was imposed on us, especially when those impositions involved distortions between our true intentions and the other’s perceptions or reactions.
We can have compassion for introjected parts, because after all on some level they have become a part of us, but it is perhaps a bigger dilemma to cope with the alien self– because it’s not based on something true. It is very hard to have compassion for something that never felt real. Healing means learning to trust our inner experiences again, rather than living inside someone else’s distorted mirror.
We are allowed to define ourselves from the in
Kew Gardens