Why the term, “Higher Self” is a form of dissociation: Try these 5 phrases instead
When I first got into spirituality/woo/personal development, the first time I heard the term, “Higher Self”, I couldn’t resonate with it.
Since then, I see the term used a lot, and it’s often by spiritual coaches or people who talk about concepts like, “ascension”, “5D”, and “Quantum”.
It’s meant to help you connect to a part of yourself that isn’t traumatized or caught up in pain spirals or negative thoughts. In many ways, the intention is helpful as a way to connect to something bigger than your current struggles, and find a sense of safety in yourself.
Lots of people find these kinds of exercises really healing, and I don’t want to disregard that.
From a trauma perspective, it provides a resource. It helps you feel safer and calmer, so you can create a more resourced state.
But your “higher self” as a term, I find really problematic.
This is both from my personal experience, what I have witnessed in others, and from understanding some basic theology and the history of new age teachings.
I believe that connecting to your “higher self” is another form of dissociation and disembodiment.
Subtle, but there.
The clue is in the name: Higher.
You are led through meditations to go upwards into your “upper chakras” and to connect to the light.
The whole focus is UP and OUT.
Up and out of your body, out of the present moment, and out of your lived experience.
Let’s just bypass all these “lower” emotions like your anger, sadness, grief, and rage. In fact, let’s just bypass your full humanity altogether.
It goes hand in hand with teachings around “ascension”, flying up into the cosmos, and cultural appropriation, and white supremacy.
Sure, lead a workshop in Bali and call yourself a shaman while wearing a tribal headdress and burning sage, even though you are a white westerner and most of the others attending are also white westerners too.
It’s a great way to dissociate IMO.
In the world of embodiment, we often talk about why most cultures– especially white western patriarchal ones– are very disembodied.
This disembodied system goes all the way back to the early Greek Philosophers, where they started promoting what is known as “asceticism”.
This is a very basic laymen’s nutshell of what it teaches:
Body bad. Body is gross and crass. Body means sex. Body farts, shits, creates secretions, and dies. The only way to be spiritual and virtuous is to ascend and transcend your smelly body to the higher realms.
Does that resonate in your religious or spiritual beliefs?
This philosophy permeates all religious and spiritual teachings, the idea that we must “ascend” our physical selves and go higher.
In the Bible, there is that famous verse in Matthew 26: “Watch and pray so that you will not fall into temptation. The spirit is willing, but the flesh is weak.”
This way of thinking also goes hand in hand with dominionism and the idea that we must “master” ourselves and then the planet we live on.
So when you have people teaching about connecting to your, “highest self” or “highest purpose”, all I see is disembodiment and dissociation, wrapped up in pretty mandalas and spiritual girlboss culture.
In my personal experience, it is often the coaches and teachers who do the most teaching on your “highest self”, in their personal lives have incredibly dysfunctional relationships and tend to be the biggest hypocrites in terms of what they teach vs how they are in real life.
These are the people who tend to gaslight their clients the most, engage in predatory practices, and do practices that are not psychologically safe.
They also tend to be most likely to subscribe to conspiratorial thinking yet think of themselves as a “free thinker”.
Not all, I will add, but many.
Their marketing is full of imagery with mandalas and crystals, but on a personal level, they are incredibly dissociated.
For me, whenever I have tried to connect to my “higher self”, I usually feel dizzy and spaced out, and have no real connection to it.
In my own personal journey in therapy, coaching, and personal development, I’ve had to learn to be with and embrace all my messy parts, emotions, and experience.
Learning to love and embrace my human-ness rather than trying to fly off into the spirit realm.
Learning to feel safe in my body rather than dissociating.
Learning to be ok in a messy process rather than head to a state of enlightenment.
As somebody who is autistic and neurodivergant, along with my own history, I’ve had to learn to be ok with “mundane-ness” rather than flipping between intense states.
This is why I never use the term, “highest self” in my client work.
So what’s the alternative if you want to connect with a part of yourself that is bigger than whatever pain you’re experiencing?
Here are some suggestions that I find helpful and use with clients– they come from somatic theory, IFS theory, and stuff I’ve picked up along the way:
5 ALTERNATIVE PHRASES TO YOUR HIGHER SELF
1. Your safest self
Find that part of yourself that feels safest. How do you feel in your body and what are you being like when you feel safest, most connected, and like you belong?
2. Your deepest self
Flip “highest self” on its head and let’s go deep down into your body. You could think of it as your core, or your deepest wisdom.
3. Your favourite self
Find a part of you where you feel your most like, “you”. The part that feels most secure, safest, and resourceful.
4. Your wisest self
Where do you feel your wisest?
5. Talk to the different parts of yourself
Talk to your belly, your heart, and your genitals. They all have a different voice, so start a conversation. Or you could chat to the different parts of you that are speaking and get to know their personalities.
Try them out, and see which ones resonate.
Remember that as humans, we have multiple personalities inside of us, and they get activated at different times in different situations.
Some of them are not so supportive and come from your threat responses, but none of them are “bad” or “lower”, all of them have wisdom if you’re able to listen to them.
And more than that, please remember ALL of your humanity is sacred and valid. What if instead of trying to bypass it, you could embrace all of it?
If you have found connecting to your highest self healing, I don’t ever want to discount that. I want to invite you to expand your definition of that and think about whether it connects you more to yourself or less.
We need more humans being humans, embracing this wild human experience.
This post was originally published on https://lucyrowett.com/why-the-term-higher-self-is-a-form-of-dissociation-5-phrases-to-try-instead/
