Protecting your own ego comes at a price — stagnant growth.

Everyday situations are often accepted without being questioned. Why is that? Because many people are taught poorly — or not at all — to question things, especially when it means looking at themselves or challenging their own behaviour. Admitting mistakes hurts.

This is about the self-concept — the relationship between how others see us and how we see ourselves — and, ultimately, the ego.

Learning to evaluate yourself critically — and to work effectively with uncomfortable truths about yourself — isn’t on any standard curriculum. Yes, you can study philosophy, social work, or psychology, but if you don’t enjoy thinking for yourself and you always choose the path of least resistance, you’ll avoid challenging your conditioned values and moral beliefs — and, as a result, you’ll avoid changing your behaviour.

Instead, many people fall back on dissonance reduction, or on other strategies such as escape: escaping from truths, from insights that threaten their self-image — their ego. Truths like “What I did wasn’t right,” or even “What I’m doing isn’t right,” feel deeply uncomfortable for our self-concept.

As I said, that realisation hurts — and shame is an emotion that’s hard to control. When people don’t know how to sit with it, most choose two out of three ways of dealing with these feelings. I also talk about this in a video on my YouTube channel — have a look!

Option 1: You start reinterpreting it, dressing it up, playing it down, finding counter-arguments — dissonance reduction.

Option 2: You escape. You ghost it. You act as if the situation or the problem doesn’t exist, and you wait it out in silence. The problem gets postponed, but it doesn’t disappear.

Option 3: You work on your mindset — you begin to reflect, and you also hold yourself accountable.

But option 3, for many people — I’d even say for most — feels like an alpine climb for someone carrying 50 kilos of extra weight and no equipment…

And there are other mechanisms people use to keep their ego “safe”, too: devaluing anyone who threatens their self-image — their self-concept, the picture they have of themselves.

To what extent this is a narcissistic trait is something that should be assessed elsewhere by professionals who are qualified to make diagnoses under ICD-10.

I’d like to name an everyday example at this point:

There are people in your world who simply don’t like you, even though they don’t really know you — right? And then there are others who used to know you very well, but don’t like you anymore — right?

So what kind of situation are we looking at here? And what has created it?

Of course, misunderstandings can play a role — but so can deliberate hurt, or even betrayal. Connections break, friendships fall apart. But there’s also a question of perception here: Do you feel hurt quickly? Do you feel attacked easily? …I don’t want to go that far at this point, because that leads into the topic of inner engineering.

Back to the following situation:

Think of someone you know who doesn’t like you — even though you’ve never insulted them, lied to them, or betrayed them. I’m sure a few people come to mind…

People who tend not to hold themselves accountable — who genuinely believe they don’t need to change because they’re “perfect” — often cope by putting others down, so they can feel better, or “bigger”. As if they’re above you. And yes — that feeling can be strangely satisfying.

Question 1: Why do you want to change that? Does it bruise your ego? No? Then you’re on the right track.

If you’re trying to be everybody’s darling, and it niggles at you because their dislike feels unfair, and you keep spending energy trying to win them over — even though they don’t want to like you — then you’re giving away parts of yourself. You’re wasting energy.

If someone doesn’t know you, or only has bits and pieces about you, and they’ve already put you in a box, that’s their mindset — their way of placing themselves “above” you. And if someone does know you, but there was a situation with two sides to it, and they judge you on partial information and then condemn you… that’s their level, not yours.

Here’s a situation I often see in coaching: a man and a woman get to know each other a bit through messaging. At some point they speak on the phone. One of them says or writes something, the other reads something into it — and suddenly it triggers a sense of rejection in him (or in her).

The eye sees what it’s looking for…

Suddenly, the other person ghosts, and the communication fizzles out. The one who’s left behind is “left to starve at arm’s length” — they’re left in the dark, because nobody tells them what it was that triggered that inner rejection. That means they’re given no chance to put things right, to explain themselves, or even to apologise. So they remain uninformed and can only guess. And guessing costs energy — the other person knows that too. Can this be used deliberately?

So why is it that the person who withdraws and cuts off communication doesn’t give the other one a chance to clear up a misunderstanding — whether it was poorly phrased, or a genuinely mistaken perspective that could be revised?

Why do people so often not want their negative view of someone else to be changed?

If someone said to another person, “Look — I’ve judged your view (your way of thinking, your morals, your values) and your behaviour negatively. But maybe I’m also looking for exactly that, and maybe the issue is mine. Please explain it again,” they’d be taking a risk: the whole idea of “being above the other person” might collapse. “They’re an idiot” gives you a convenient reason to feel superior. But if you confront them and they can actually refute it, you lose that “I’m better than them” position.

People often want to hold on to their image of you because it feeds their ego. And they keep it intact by not giving you any chance to justify yourself.

Some people are habitual “box-makers”: they actively look for what they dislike in someone else, then they ghost — and they knowingly leave the other person stuck in exhausting speculation. It creates a power imbalance. You’ve been put in a box and you can’t get out. And the more people they can shove into the “they’re rubbish” drawer, the better it feels for the owner of that drawer — or that whole cabinet. Having lots of people labelled “rubbish” boosts their own sense of worth. Why do people do that? Because their self-worth is fragile — and this behaviour becomes a way of compensating for it.

Before you start looking around for all the people in your circle who behave like this, ask yourself whether you do it too. How many people have you not given the chance to put things right — to correct the negative, dismissive, or at least unsympathetic picture you’ve built of them, based on fragments of information or your own judgement (“The eye sees what it’s looking for”)? Are you afraid you might end up liking them? Or afraid of realising that your mindset was — or still is — unfair? Afraid that you’re too easily hurt? Afraid of recognising that it feels good to put other people into a box labelled “dishonest”, “unlikeable”, “immature”, “unprofessional”, “liar”, “faker”, “psychopath”, “pathetic little soul”?

I’ll help you learn to overcome the fears that stop you from openly saying what made you shut down on the inside.

Love and humility towards other people will change the way you move through life. Clear out those drawers full of people you’ve labelled and stored away — because they make your cabinet very, very heavy.

Happiness comes from within. Inner engineering takes time — and it takes facing a few bitter truths. Don’t run from that pain, because on the other side of it, things get better.

If you have any questions, feel free to contact me at any time.

Warm regards,
Gregor

Tags: conflict counselling Hessen, inner engineering Hessen, coach Gregor Schäfer, dissonance reduction, couples counselling Hessen, marriage counselling Hessen, single coach Gregor Schäfer