Primary Selves, Disowned Selves and Self-Awareness

Posted on October 30, 2015

Your primary self is the self or group of selves that you identify with, that you call ‘me’. Primary selves are often experienced as one homogeneous entity - as one self - though this may be due to that they are challenging to tease apart from one another.

Disowned selves are those parts of you that are not acceptable in your family and culture, and so over time get repressed so that they are not included in your sense of who you are. They form what you might know of as your ‘shadow self’.

Many people needlessly suffer by believing that they should be only one particular type of person, or that they are only one particular self, and they try to suppress the contradictory thoughts, feelings and perspectives of their other selves.

When parts of yourself are suppressed however, they eventually distort and become more extreme. When they break loose, they do so with great intensity, often knocking you off our feet. Further, their energy doesn’t disappear simply because they are disowned – it finds a place in your body, depleting both physical and mental resources.

When you become increasingly aware of which selves you identify with, and how those selves affect your thoughts, feelings and behaviour, you gain the ability to have greater choice in how you experience life. Click on the link below to read the full article.


Category(s):Life Purpose / Meaning / Inner-Guidance, Self-Care / Self Compassion

Source material from Voice Dialogue