The False Self, an Introduction

Are you in pursuit of your true authentic self? If so, then what exactly is the “False Self”? Let’s see how the captain of a ship, an angel, and an elf can help us find it.

The false self is where we’ll find the root of our stress. When we’re talking about the false self we’ll need something more to understand the cacophony of demands, desires, obligations, and dialogue ever-present in our minds. We can use little characters to illustrate the dynamics of the mind even though in actuality any characters we describe are all mashed up into one single person, one mind, or one ‘you’.

We can illustrate the mind’s complexity and inner-struggles with an analogy that involves the Captain of a ship, his Angel and his Elf.

We’ll use our example of the Captain, angel & elf to provide an illustration or a framework for how we process information in our minds, how thoughts pop up seemingly at random, and how we make decisions. Let’s dip our toe into the waters with this whole idea.. It’s really pretty simple. Your life is like a journey. And as you set sail and embark upon the journey that is your life, your body is just like a ship, it’s your vessel.

You navigate through life by making decisions. So when you pick up and move to another city, or take a new job, or marry, or divorce, or have a child. That’s just like the ship setting sail in a new direction. Can you see the connection here? And just like your life, the waters around you can be calm at times and stormy and rough at other times. YOU are the Captain of the ship and you are the one making these decisions, these life “navigational” decisions. You also have an inner dialog — an inner chatter — that is like a little elf constantly chattering and warning you about stuff. So good so far?

Basically your life is a journey, the boat is just like your body in that it’s your vessel on this journey — and you are the captain inside making the decisions. That inner voice you hear is like a little elf chattering to you, the Captain, every single second of the day.

Now, one more piece.. The angel. You can accomplish major goals with planning and hard work and with the help of that weird synchronicity — those “right place at the right time” coincidences — that we can’t explain but yet we all experience. In our little model, those right-place-right-time occurrences are represented by the angel because they’re a bit more mysterious.

(A quick note about gender. This analogy applies to the human mind and that includes everyone. We’re all fundamentally human and that’s really what we’re talking about here — the intrinsic human nature that we all share. For purposes of describing the analogy, I’m using “he” for the elf and the Captain and “she” for the angel simply because language fails to give us a decent gender-neutral pronoun that doesn’t sound weird. But any of these can be reversed. Envision them however they help you best; if you see the Captain as female and the angel as male that works just as well. Or maybe they’re all female or all male. )

This article serves as a brief introduction to the Captain-Angel-Elf “False Self” model. Future articles will refer back to these basics. Thanks for reading!