I was in two minds whether to make this video because I felt it may overcomplicate things for some people, and this is going to get a little bit abstract. But lets see how we get on.
Lets think about this when we are noticing our thoughts, or noticing our emotions or feelings in our body then there must be a part of us that is doing that noticing.
But what is that part? What is that part that notices? And can we use that part to our benefit?
One way we can look at this is through different types of self.
Take, for instance, that we have a physical self.
You can hold your hands out in front of you and see your physical self.
Lets think about this.
Have you ever heard of the ship of theseus paradox? Okay, so there is this ship its been put to good use, its been sailing around the seas and some of the boards, some of the wood is starting to decay. So those boards get replaced with new boards. If I replace one board, is this still the same ship? If I replace two boards, is this still the same ship.
At what point does it cease to be the same ship. If I replaced 50% with new wood is it still the ship of theseus? If I replaced 99% of the wood is it still the same ship? What happens if I go over that 99% and have replaced every single part of that ship, is it still the same ship? Its an interesting question.
Lets relate this to us.
I’m Stuart. If I cut my hair, am I still Stuart?
If I cut my finger nails and toe nails, am I still Stuart?
If I cut off my finger? Am I still Stuart?
If I cut off my arm? Am I still Stuart? So this is starting to change my physical self here quite dramatically.
Lets keep going. If I cut off both my legs. Am I still Stuart.
You can see where I am going with this. How much would I have to cut off, whilst remaining alive, to continue to be me?
As a side note here. The ship of Theseus paradox got extended at some point to include the question - if we gathered up all the rotten planks that got replaced, and put all those rotten planks back together to form a ship. Which of the two ships is now classed as the Ship of Theseus.
Similarly, there is this idea that most of the atoms in the human body get replaced every year, or at least every 5 years or something like that, the exact science behind that isn't important for this. But lets just say that as those atoms are replaced we can somehow collect them, and contain them in some way. Then when we have all of the atoms we put them all back together again to make another person. Which one is the real you then?
So we have this physical self where we need to be quite flexible in how we view that.
Then we have what we could call the thinking self.
So try this really quick exercise.
Close your eyes. And as a thought enters your head, any thought, see if you can notice where those thoughts are coming from.
Are they in front of you?
Are they behind you?
Do they come from the side?
Maybe they just appear.
And when they come are they words? Or maybe images?
And as you do this notice that you are able to notice this. There is the thinking, the images and words that your mind is producing, but there is also you noticing that.
There is the thought.
And there is you noticing the thought.
So open your eyes again.
Those thoughts that come to your mind change all the time. The images, the pictures, the words, they are always changing. But that part of you that notices this happening doesn’t change. Its constant. Again, what is this part that does the noticing. This part that is constant.
Well some have labelled it The Observing Self. It observes what you are experiencing.
Another way to look at this is using the metaphor of a documentary.
Have you watched any documentaries lately?
What kid of things have you seen in them?
Maybe they were nature documentaries, travel documentaries or documentaries about specific people’s lives.
Some documentaries can be quite negative, sometimes quite accusatory. Other times they can be really positive and celebrate someone’s life.
But lets think about how biased those documentaries can be. Think of the amount of footage that is captured. 1000s and 1000s of hours sometimes. And what happens to that footage?
It gets cut down to a few minutes of the most entertaining, emotive, or dramatic shots and then get edited together to tell a story that represents that thing. What you see on the TV is completely at the mercy of the producer or the director.
So lets suppose I have you a 1 hour documentary about the Amazon rainforest. Does that 1 hour documentary represent all of the Amazon rainforest?
What about if I gave you 100 hours of a documentary? Or maybe 100,000 hours?
You would see on the TV pictures that represent the Amazon rainforest, maybe different plants, different animals, maybe some footage of some tribes that live there.
You might hear other people’s opinions who have been there for themselves. But would that be close to actual reality? Would it be the same as actually experiencing the rain forest?
What happens if one director wanted to show all the cool animals, all their vibrant colours, the way they find food, and how beautiful the environment is? Another director wants to show all the man made damage and deforestation and all the destruction?
Which one is the real rainforest?
Watching the rainforest on TV would be nothing like actually the rainforest in real life. The two experiences are very different. One is a story about the rainforest, one is the actual rainforest. One is a story about the rainforest, one is the actual rainforest.
Lets relate this back to the human mind. As I have said many times on this channel the human mind is the worlds best story teller. It is like that documentaries film crew except ours is filming 24 hours a day, 7 days week. At the age of 30 you would have a quarter of a million of hours of footage. And without getting too caught up on the specific mechanisms and science of this how much do we think is actually stored in our memory? Not even 1%. Think about how much you can remember about earlier today?
How about last Tuesday, how about the second wednesday of last month? Maybe if that happened to be a birthday you could recall some aspects of that day in general but even then you wouldnt be able to recall everything detail that had passed through your eyes or every sound you had heard.
So what do you get from your mind?
You get a very biased documentary about who you are, and over 99% of the original footage has been cut. So your mind goes - this 1%, this is you, this is what defines you.
Remember that name the story video I put up before? This connects here. You might have a name for this documentary - The you are not good enough documentary. or the
You always fail documentary.
So if a documentary about the Amazon rainforest isn’t The amazon rain forest. Then a documentary about you is not YOU. And no matter what that documentary shows, whether right or wrong, true or false, positive or negative, old or new, facts or opinions, that documentary can never be you.
And you know how you can tell that the documentary isn’t you? You can step back and watch it. If you can watch the documentary, you cannot be the documentary.
I have a really good guided exercise about the observing self that I will upload soon, that you can use with people if you are a therapist, or you can follow along if you want to try it yourself.
Why would we want to develop this?
I think there a few reasons which I will keep brief as this video is already pretty long.
Firstly, it gives us more of a stable sense of self. Things can change around us, our circumstances and situation can change, but there is a constant of who we are.
Secondly, a lot of the other skills we do like noticing and naming thoughts, feelings and emotions, it can be helpful to understand there is a position from which we do this noticing. Like the sky and weather, our observing self is like the sky and what is noticed is the weather. The Sky contains the weather, the weather changes but the sky is constant.
Thirdly, and if you want I can make another video about this as it is specifically trauma related. There is this idea called ‘event centrality’, where what we find is when someone construes a traumatic event, or a traumatic history as central to their identity then it can reinforce and maintain those symptoms or that presentation or experience. So being able to get some separation between the trauma and self identity and self concept can be really helpful. Lots to discuss there and I can’t do it justice in this video.
I know this video is longer than usual. I did think about breaking it down into the separate exercises and ideas but I thought it might become a bit disjointed that way.
Hope you found something of use here.
Look out for the observing self guided exercise that is coming soon. Once it is up I will link to it in the description.
Take care and goodbye.
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