by Oli Anderson, Transformational Coach for Realness
The Unreal Self as A Reaction to Shame and How It Can Guide Your Whole Life Without You Knowing
Most of us go through life assuming that the image we carry of ourselves is simply “who we are” without question and so we describe ourselves in ‘fixed’ terms and phrases that we think encapsulate our core traits:
“Shy“, “serious“, “unlucky in love“, “bad with money“, “not creative“, “too emotional“, “not emotional enough“, and [“whatever else you can think of“] – we rarely question whether these descriptions are actually true; they just kinda feel as ‘factual’ and as ‘real’ as the biological ‘facts’ about us like height or eye colour.
We just assume that this is just how things turned out to be and that it is what it is.
But what if much of what you believe about yourself isn’t the the actual truth about you and it’s just a distortion?
What if the person you ‘think‘ you are is actually just a psychological construction built to protect you from pain and old wounds?
Well, this is where shame and ego enter the picture because many aspects of our self-image aren’t expressions of who we truly are in our realness but reactions to experiences in which we felt rejected, criticised, or not good ‘enough’ way back when.
Over time, these reactions harden into a sense of identity and – once identity forms – it ends up shaping our behaviour and by extension influences many of the results we experience in life as we try to reach our goals.
Of course, not everything in life is under our control and acting like it is just leads to control freakery (which is another reaction to shame):
Circumstances, health, opportunity, and sheer randomness all play their role in shaping our inescapable fate but when it comes to relationships, general patterns, confidence, our emotional lives, and a sense of fulfilment, our the unreal self often plays a far greater role than we realise.
This article is about understanding how shame shapes ego so that we can look at our own self-image as a powerful lever for change so that we can accept what can’t be changed (fate) but make choices that allow us to live up to an expression of our realness (destiny).
Let’s dig a little deeper:
The Unreal Self: What We’ll Cover in this Article
- The Unreal Self as A Reaction to Shame and How It Can Guide Your Whole Life Without You Knowing
- How Shame Begins to Shape Us
- The Ego: A Survival Image Mistaken for Identity
- How Your Self-Image Becomes a Self-Fulfilling Prophecy
- Reaction Versus Response
- Becoming Real: Reconfiguring Your Self-Image for Realness
- How REAL Transformation Actually Happens
- Why Understanding Ego vs. Realness Matters
- Practical Steps to Start Growing More Real
- The Final Word: The Truth Beneath the Unreal Self (Ego)
How Shame Begins to Shape Us
Shame rarely arrives in dramatic, turning-point type moments (though it can) – more often, it forms through repeated small experiences in childhood and adolescence that serve as a kind of “death by a thousand cuts” (maybe that does sound dramatic):
A child laughs loudly and is told they’re being annoying and to shut up.
A boy cries and is told to toughen up and so he detaches from his emotions.
A girl expresses anger and is labelled “difficult” and so she becomes a people-pleaser.
A child shows excitement and is ignored or criticised for being “too much” and so the become muted and subdued.
In moments like these, children do not conclude that adults are stressed or projecting their own ‘stuff’ onto them – instead, they internalise the experience and allow it to define them (because belonging and connection are essential for survival and so the child assumes the problem must be within them).
This is where they internalise SHAME: the core sensation that something about who they fundamentally are must be ‘wrong’ because they’ve become disconnected from the truth.
The end result of all this is that very important and very REAL ‘parts’ of the total self get pushed away:
Joy becomes embarrassing; vulnerability becomes weakness; curiosity becomes annoying; confidence becomes arrogance, etc. – but none of these disowned or exiled qualities ever disappear (because what’s real is always real): instead, they become hidden in the shadow self – the ‘good’ and ‘bad’ but very real parts of ourselves we learn not to own or express in the world.
Once parts of us are rejected, we begin constructing a more acceptable version of ourselves – the ego – to try and survive as though they don’t exist. This allows us to deal with things in the short-term but in the long-term it just means that we put a mask we put on, forgot about it over time, and then identify as the mask and bring all kinds of unnecessary friction, frustration, and misery to our lives.
The Ego: A Survival Image Mistaken for Identity
To avoid future shame, we unconsciously create an identity that feels safer.
This usually means that we end up compensating for whatever we think is ‘wrong’ with us – for example:
If vulnerability was punished, we become controlled and guarded.
If joy was criticised, we become serious and self-censoring.
If confidence led to rejection, we learn to shrink inside and away from ourselves.
This protective identity becomes the ego which can be seen as the self-image we present to the world and eventually to ourselves – over time, forgetting that it was just a filter that we created for survival and instead thinking it’s who we are.
The crucial insight here is that the ego is not an true expression of our nature – it’s just a reaction to past emotional pain and represents who we learned to be in order to avoid shame, not who we are when we feel safe enough to be REAL.
Unfortunately, because this identity feels so familiar, we rarely question it – even in cases where we think we don’t ‘like’ ourselves or whatever – instead, we begin to organise our entire lives around this unreal self-image and live in a way to make it seem real (so we don’t have to change and face that shadow self).
How Your Self-Image Becomes a Self-Fulfilling Prophecy
Your underlying emotional ‘stuff’ creates your self-image, your self-image shapes your beliefs about yourself, the world, and reality, your belief system shapes your behaviour in countless small ways, and then your behaviour shapes the results you get in life.
These results then reinforce the emotions and identity you started with and so, over time, this loop becomes self-confirming which makes you think that the (unreal) self-image must be true.
Consider this unfortunately common example:
Imagine a child who was naturally joyful and playful but grew up in an environment where this energy was seen as disruptive or irritating for whatever reason. To maintain acceptance, the child suppresses their joy and becomes serious and controlled.
Later in adulthood, this person now believes they’re simply “not the kind of person” who lets go or expresses emotion easily and so they struggle with vulnerability and intimacy because those experiences require openness and playfulness.
The end result of this belief system is that when they enter relationships, they hold themselves back, don’t fully express affection or emotional needs, and then, eventually, the relationship fails due to a brick wall that can never be broken down.
The conclusion this person then reaches becomes, “See, I’m unlovable – relationships never work for me”…but the real issue was never ‘un-lovability’ it was the protective identity/ego built around being unreal in response to shame.
The same pattern appears all over the place and you can see it every day if you look for it:
Someone who believes they always fail avoids taking risks, which ensures mediocre outcomes, and so they end up thinking their identity as a ‘failure’ is true.
Someone who believes they’re unattractive approaches dating with insecurity, creating awkward interactions that reinforce rejection, and the self-image of being ‘unattractive’.
Someone convinced they’re “bad with money“ avoids financial responsibility, perpetuating financial problems and confirming that their unconscious assumptions about money must be true.
In each case, behaviour aligned with identity produces results that confirm the original belief and so the unreal begins to look like truth.
Reaction Versus Response
The fundamental problem is that our self-image/ego is often a reaction to past pain rather than a response to present reality and so – instead of expressing who we are now in our realness – we continue expressing who we once thought we needed to be in order to survive emotionally in the past.
Reality in our experience is fluid and constantly changing and so human beings are ‘designed’ to constantly evolve, learn, and adapt as we go through life into a deeper sense of wholeness.
The ego and its identities are built around keeping shame at bay and so ask us to cling to fragments of ourselves whilst convincing us that growth is impossible because “That’s just how I am” (when it’s not), “I’m not the kind of person who [x]” (when you can actually cultivate and develop latent qualities), or some similar limiting belief.
In short, when a childhood survival strategy becomes an adult limitation, life keeps moving but our ego/identity doesn’t and so we become trapped in a web of outdated assumptions about ourselves, the world, and reality that stop us from showing up in a REAL way.
Becoming Real: Reconfiguring Your Self-Image for Realness
The way forward is not to invent a shiny, new personality or pretend to be someone that you’re not but to become more REAL:
This means replacing a fixed identity born from shame with an identity aligned with how reality actually works and embracing the fact that human beings are constantly evolving if they move with the Natural Drive Towards Wholeness that’s always inviting them into deeper truth.
Instead of believing “I’m unlovable”, for example, we begin to see ourselves as someone learning how to love and be loved more deeply.
Instead of saying, “I always mess things up”, we see ourselves as someone gaining experience and competence.
In other words, we identify as BEING and BECOMING in the process of life – not something that’s already fixed against it.
This isn’t “positive thinking” – it’s realism in the sense that growth is part of human nature and so when we start acting as though growth and wholeness are possible, the old ego structure begins to dissolve naturally and we become who we actually are.
This is why the process of Awareness, Acceptance, and Action that I use with my coaching clients and talk about in my books is so powerful:
Awareness is about deconstructing the ego and helps us see how shame shaped our identity.
Acceptance allows us to face these patterns without further shame so that we can integrate the shadow self.
Action creates new experiences that reshape self-image as we move forward by trusting ourselves and life.
It’s all about returning to realness instead of identifying with the distortion that came when you picked up shame and started living in the Void instead of reality.
How REAL Transformation Actually Happens
The process of returning to realness typically unfolds in stages that look like this:
First, we work to dissolve shame by growing more real and this happens on several levels – the Mind, the Body, and Purpose/Vision:
At the level of the mind, we challenge limiting beliefs and narratives that keep old shame alive.
At the level of the body, we regulate the nervous system and learn to process emotions instead of suppressing them.
At the level of purpose, we create a vision that moves us forward and contributes positively to the world (because when we serve we move beyond ego).
As shame softens, the need for the ego mask weakens and so, slowly but surely, our self-image begins to change.
Because the old identity functioned as a self-fulfilling prophecy, acting differently generates new evidence about who we are and so the image updates to something that works with reality instead of against it.
As behaviour changes, results improve because we stop repeating the same emotional patterns and sabotaging opportunities and start putting something real into life and receiving something real in return.
(If you put real in, you get real out; if you put unreal in; you get unreal out).
An final benefit of this work is that qualities previously trapped in the Shadow Territory return – for example, confidence, creativity, warmth, humour, and emotional openness often reappear…not because these qualities were never absent; they were simply hidden because they once felt unsafe to express.
This is an abridged version of what can happen for people who are serious about transformation but it all comes back to the self-image/ego which is the lynchpin which either a real or unreal relationship with life hangs on.
Why Understanding Ego vs. Realness Matters
Growth can be approached from many angles like therapy, coaching, spiritual practice, habit change, physical health, relationships, etc. etc. but understanding ego and self-image is always crucial if you actually want to get results because identity organises behaviour and determines how we show up everywhere.
The bottom line is that if the structure of identity is unreal, life feels constrained and repetitive but when identity becomes more aligned with reality, life begins to flow again.
Check out Trust: A Manual in Becoming the Void, Building Flow, and Finding Peace if you want to go even deeper into finding your realness and regulating your nervous system.
Practical Steps to Start Growing More Real
Change doesn’t require dramatic reinvention of who you are – it just requires small, consistent shifts to UNLEARN whatever is keeping you from yourself and life to produce real transformation over time.
Here are a few practical things you can do to get started:
Begin by noticing ‘fixed‘ identity statements: Whenever you hear yourself saying, “That’s just how I am” or anything similar then pause and question it. Look into when and why this belief formed because it might not actually be true.
Explore what you may have pushed into the shadow self: Traits you admire in others or feel triggered by often reflect qualities you’ve disowned in yourself. You can reclaim these if you’re ready to face yourself.
Start acting slightly at the edge of your old image: Speak up when you would normally stay silent, allow yourself to be playful if you usually stay serious, express vulnerability where you once hid. Go against the grain of who you’ve been told to be.
Remember to work with the body, not just the mind: Shame is stored emotionally and physiologically – not merely intellectually and so things like exercise, breathwork, meditation, and emotional processing help regulate the nervous system and release stored tension (when you’re stuck in fight-or-flight mode and have sympathetic dominance you’re body is usually tense and ready for action).
Replace ‘fixed’ identity with growth identity: Shift from saying, “I am this” to “I am becoming” or “I am learning to be” or “I am going deeper into [x]“. This keeps identity responsive and aligned with reality (though is still an awareness that never changes because what’s real is always real).
Build a vision bigger than your fear: Growth becomes easier when it serves something meaningful beyond just ‘You’ so ask how your growth can benefit others and what contribution feels alive for you so that you can serve in a real way.
The Final Word: The Truth Beneath the Unreal Self (Ego)
The real tragedy is that many people spend their lives trying to ‘fix’ or ‘improve’ themselves when they were never broken in the first place:
They were simply adapting to shame and identifying with that adaption.
Beneath the ego, the defensive strategies, and the stories we tell ourselves, there always has been and always will be something real and whole.
The journey is not about becoming someone new but about removing what you learned to survive so you can rediscover who you already are.
When we move from shame towards realness, our self-image and life both begin to change in ways that once seemed impossible because reality itself has a remarkable quality of working with us when we realise that it’s who we really are.
Learn to let go of your old self-image and you’ll see something better:
The truth.
Stay real out there,
P.S. If you’re ready to let go of an unreal self-image that’s no longer serving you then book a free coaching session with me and I’ll help you tap back into your realness by helping you take real action.
Trust: A Manual for Becoming the Void, Building Flow, and Finding Peace is a book about learning to return to your realness by cultivating trust in yourself and trust in life.
It contains practical exercises and dedicated meditations (Transformational Bridges) to take you DEEP in knowing yourself and life.
This book will answer many of the questions you have growing REAL and flowing towards wholeness. It covers everything from shame to addiction to the unconscious mind and synchronicity (and way more).
Personal Revolutions: A Short Course in Realness is a book designed to help you look at your life from the inside-out so that you can stop holding yourself back and go get what you really want.
It contains 166 practical ‘Revolutions’ for awareness and over 8,000 Self-Guidance Questions for you to uncover new insight about yourself, the world, and reality that you can translate into action and start building your real life on the realest possible foundation.
Shadow Life is an exploration of the human shadow and the hidden side of our personalities. It looks at the masks we wear, where these masks come from, and how we can take them off.
The book explores how we can better manage our relationships with shame, guilt, and trauma in order to remove the Mask that the world has asked us to wear (and that we forgot we were wearing) so we can live an authentic life with less drama, chaos, or BS whilst we’re still around.
The Flow Builder Journal has everything you need to make the next 21-weeks of your life a turning point.
It has monthly, weekly, and daily (morning and evening) check-ins, tools and reflections to keep you in the zone and keep you flowing with zest and momentum.
If you want to get unstuck and grow REAL then check it out.
Download EGO/SHADOW/TRUST - a free guide to transformation that will walk you through the vital stages of Awareness, Acceptance, and Action with practical strategies to implement right away.
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