Three Ego Defenses that Destroy Character Growth
As a therapist, I’m usually supposed to not insert my values, opinions, or perspective on issues, at least when I’m sitting across from you live in session.
Well… blogs aren’t sessions, so here’s to me finally “giving advice” and not replying with “tell me more” or “you’re feeling blank because of blank” or paraphrasing.
The following sentiment is something I fully believe. If therapy is about change and I’m hired as a change expert, as a professor of mine would say in my program, then here are three traps one can fall into that assure meaningful inner change will not happen.
#1: Greed
America’s dirty massive secret. We love money. Correction; I love money. With more of it comes more security, comfort, and opportunity; there’s no denying that.
But if the inner life, the inner aching of your person is desperate for change from within to change your life externally? Money ain’t it.
Money can you buy you a retreat, help you see a therapist like me, and can assist you in watching live TED talks or seminars about self-help, but it will not boost your character.
There are too many modern examples let alone ancient examples of those who on their pursuit of wealth lost their soul, their own bodies, for simply more 0s. One guy said it’s harder for a camel to go through the eye of the needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of heaven. Another similarly infamous guy said clinging to wealth is the root of suffering.
To become a better person, you have to improve your relationship with money. What that looks like only you could know (perhaps with an astute therapist chiming in, hmm), but intentionally seeking to improve your attachment to cash will enable deeper growth.
#2: Pride
Pride comes before a fall; also comes before inner stagnation. Often pride is a series of assumptions, all rooted in a sense of you’re knowing the best answers, doing the best actions, or saying the best words.
There’s no fault in excellence and/or striving to be the best that you can be. Cue that 90s era “be all you can be” army song. However, if in the striving for excellence humility, curiosity, and openness are ignored at best or dismantled at worst, stop being excellent.
Get shitty at something.
Those who we admire with the most character often failed and failed hard. We in America do everything in our power not to fail, and rightfully so. We all hate losing. But often losing and failing and missing the mark leads to inner growth that a nonstop upward momentum, climbing the proverbial ladder never, ever could.
Pride is insidious; even the wisest, most gentle of monks have it. Perhaps the ask is to note if and when pride emerges and, as mentioned above, do attempt to be more curious and open about yourself to simply absorb arrogance do its thing. Only when we notice a problem can it be addressed.
#3: Cynicism
This is hardwired into all of us at this point in 2025, doesn’t matter one’s political persuasion. Hope is for chumps; cynicism makes sense of it all.
‘Cept it doesn’t.
In the otherwise dismal ending of the Star Wars saga, Rise of Skywalker, one character sort of offhandedly states that “they,” ie the Final Order, “win when they make us think we are alone.”
Even broken clocks are right twice.
I’m going to write something that a… non-spiritual person may cringe at, but try, if you can, to stay with me.
There are “forces,” see the quotes, that do, indeed, seek to make us live our lives in a way where we believe we are isolated, nobody cares, and the world is going to shit. If you don’t believe me, just open your phone and click on a news feed, doesn’t matter your political persuasion.
I’m inclined to think there’s a dimension to it intended to keep the human spirit and capacity for hope down. Call it superstition, uninformed, scientific, and tell me to keep to psychology all you want but I’ve been with enough clients and seen enough of the world at large to believe in this kind of tin foil hat conspiracy.
If you can’t get to a hopeful or optimistic outlook on things, that’s fine, I understand. There’s a lot of the dark in the world right now. Yet pessimism and “realism” is just as woefully reliant on our individual and societal negativity bias as optimism is on sentimentality.
How many headlines of moral good get clicks? How many urgent news stories make your sense of anxiety eased after reading them? How many moments of your life has something good happened, in some kind of a random but wholesome manner, that got unreported, unacknowledged, and unfocused on?
What you contemplate informs your reality. It’s not about ignoring the news; it’s about holding news designed to focus on the negative in proper perspective with the many good things that happen throughout someone’s life that never get to a headline or become clickbait.
I’m guilty of all three of these; I’d guess you are too. But they are just ego defenses; they are not real.
Greed is a distorted priority emphasis on money that only devolves into further distortion. Pride likely comes from wounding of earlier life where esteem/identity was fractured so arrogance comes to swing too far on the other side of the pendulum. And cynicism is what we eat, drink, poop, and sleep with all day long, every second we pick up our rectangular umbilical cords.
Awareness and wondering around them is the start of resisting their pull. The inner life takes time, and our ego defenses have already taken enough of our time away and the potential better person we carry within us. Here’s a call to calling them out more.