Max Littman, LCSW
May 25, 2025
There’s a certain allure in the idea of having outgrown the ego. In some spiritual and self-development spaces, it can sound like a badge of enlightenment: a calm, radiant arrival into a version of selfhood that’s above striving, comparison, or fear. The words might vary: “I transcended my ego,” “I let it die,” “I don’t identify with that anymore”, “I killed my ego”, “I experienced ego death”. But the subtext is often the same: That part of me no longer exists.
It’s an appealing story. But it’s not how the psyche works.
In Internal Family Systems (IFS), we understand that parts don’t disappear. They don’t die off. They don’t dissolve into mist once we’ve meditated enough or healed enough. They either lose connection to the larger system or, as unburdening happens, they find a place within it, they integrate into the larger Self, like a droplet of water into the ocean. Trying to kill the ego doesn’t liberate us; it exiles a living being that belongs to us and often has devastating effects on our mind, body, and spirit.
Ego as Strategy, Not Enemy
In IFS, we don’t see ego as a singular thing or something to eliminate. What gets labeled “ego” is usually a collection of protective strategies: posturing, performing, defending, competing, controlling, seeking significance. These strategies weren’t plucked from thin air. They came from somewhere: personal histories, cultural norms, family dynamics. They’re how parts of us adapted and learned to survive.
Some common egoic strategies include:
- Achievement: I am what I accomplish, like a part that obsessively checked grades or career milestones as a way to feel lovable. Or a part that panicked anytime it wasn’t the best in the room.
- Image crafting: If I appear impressive or composed, I will be accepted. Like a part that rehearses what to say in social situations, carefully plans outfits, and curates an online presence to avoid looking messy or unsure.
- Control: If I keep everything in check, nothing can fall apart. Like a part that creates color-coded schedules for every detail of the day, or steps in to manage group projects because trusting others feels too risky.
- Superiority or status: If I’m above others, I won’t be dismissed or hurt. Like a part that mentally ranks everyone in the room, seeking reassurance that it’s the smartest, the most enlightened, or the most emotionally evolved.
- People-pleasing: If I give others what they want, I’ll be safe. Like a part that always volunteers to help, even when exhausted, or says yes reflexively out of fear that saying no will lead to rejection.
- Dismissiveness: If I stay detached, I can’t be wounded. Like a part that keeps everything light and surface-level, avoids emotional conversations, and quietly judges others for being “too much.”
These strategies are not inherently bad. They’re evidence of a system doing its best to protect something tender or vital. And yet, parts that carry egoic energy are often disliked, not just by others but by parts within ourselves. They get scapegoated, misunderstood, marginalized. With the spotlight so fixed upon them, often a strategy they employ, they can be a more visible, enticing, and convenient target for our own and other systems’ parts. The rejection they receive only invites them to dig in deeper. Because beneath their bravado is often a fear: If I stop, will I disappear? Will I end up rejected and alone?
Confidence and Control: When Ego Leads
Egoic parts often present a thin, brittle confidence; more facade than foundation. Their certainty spikes in the face of threat or vulnerability. It’s a confidence built from needing to protect, impress, or dominate. It might be polished, but it rarely feels stable. At any moment, it could crack under pressure or retreat into shame.
When these parts are in charge, everything in the system can start to feel tight, strained, or transactional. There’s often a focus on comparison, performance, and control. Vulnerability feels dangerous. Other parts may go underground to avoid being bulldozed or shamed.
It may look high-functioning from the outside, but the system lacks flexibility, intimacy, and joy. It may appear composed, but it’s brittle. The cost is often exhaustion, even in the midst of so-called success; like the part that always has to look composed in group spaces, even when it’s quietly falling apart inside.
When Self Leads and Egoic Parts Can Relax
When egoic parts trust our Self to lead, they don’t feel as much of a need to hustle for significance or security. When Self leads, our egoic parts are not erased. They are often relieved from duty, temporarily or, when unburdened, permanently. Parts that perform can become playful and creative. Achievers can become inspired builders. Defenders can become boundary-setters.
These parts don’t disappear. They return to their true essence. They become part of a fluid, flexible system that moves with integrity, not rigidity.
Self Doesn’t Exile. Other Parts Do.
Self doesn’t shun. It welcomes what arises, no matter how inconvenient, loud, or unpolished. Exile is something parts do to other parts.
Often, those committed to being “spiritual,” calm, admired, or morally good end up exiling egoic ones. These parts aren’t banished because they’re no longer needed, but because another part has deemed them unacceptable, problematic, and risky to have around. Sometimes this banisher role is taken up by an inner critic or a superegoic part that thinks it’s keeping us respectable by shutting down anything that feels too proud, too much, too needy, or too disruptive. They often view the exile of our egos as a way to make us more palatable to others, more accepted as a member of the family or community.
This exile doesn’t always look punitive. It can sound calm, even wise. But the impact is the same: it pushes egoic protectors out of relationship with the system and Self. What’s often striking is that these strategies, while denied internally, are visible to others. They can leak out through tone, posture, or a certain kind of certainty, even while the system insists, “That’s not me anymore.”
This isn’t a flaw in character. It’s a split in awareness. And while the system may look more enlightened on the surface, it’s often more fragile and less authentic underneath. What gets pushed out doesn’t disappear; it just loses its seat at the table. And the longer it goes unheard, the more likely it is to burst through the silence or collapse inward in despair, psychologically and physiologically.
When Spirituality Becomes a Polite War
In many spiritual spaces, there’s an implicit caste system of parts. Calm, soft-spoken, and serene parts are “evolved.” Direct, bold, or prideful parts are labeled “ego.”
The result is a quiet violence: a cutting off of parts that never stopped working for us. They don’t vanish. They get shoved underground; into shame, secrecy, or numbness. This is spiritual bypassing. It doesn’t just ignore pain. It rejects the protectors of pain. And in doing so, it creates internal pressure cookers.
What erupts later, often through mental, physical, and relational symptoms, may not just be an egoic part. It may also be our vulnerability: our wounded, sensitive parts that our egoic protector has worked so hard to keep from overwhelming our mind-body-spirit system.
Why the Urge to Kill the Ego Is So Common, Especially Among White Cis Men
There’s a reason so many people, particularly white cisgender men, feel compelled to “kill their ego”. In cultures that prize dominance, success, and control (e.g. Western, White Supremacy Culture), the ego becomes both a tool and a target. On one hand, it’s built up to achieve and protect. On the other, it becomes the scapegoat for anything that feels disingenuous, aggressive, or insecure.
Spiritual frameworks, especially those rooted in Eastern philosophies, adapted (and often extracted) through Western filters, offer what can feel like a clean solution: transcend the ego. Get out of the muck. Leave the wounded and reactive parts behind.
Add meditation, non-dual language, or psychedelic medicine to the mix, and the bypass becomes harder to see. It doesn’t look like rejection. It looks like an awakening.
But the parts left behind, like the ones carrying the memory of being mocked for crying, or needing too much, don’t disappear. They are chained deep within the psyche, rooted to our nervous systems, and still holding burdens that can metastasize quietly throughout the whole system.
Befriending Egoic Parts: A Return to Relationship
The invitation is not to rise above the ego but to come closer to it. To meet the parts that carry egoic strategies and ask what they’re protecting. To be curious, not condescending. To listen for the fear: If I stop, will I still be enough?
True befriending is not passive. It’s not indulgent. It means making space for their stories, their grit, their devotion. These parts often make things happen. They’ve protected our voice, our pride, our ability to dream. There’s so much to be grateful for.
It also means understanding context. These parts learned from systems they didn’t create. Controllers often emerge from chaos. Performers often grow from neglect. Dominators often learned to dominate or be dominated.
Love doesn’t mean handing them the reins. Nor does it mean cutting them off. It means staying in relationship with them: checking in, setting limits, listening, and staying connected. It is like any relationship built on mutual respect.
What Happens When Egoic Parts Are Exiled, And What Becomes Possible When They’re Welcomed
When egoic parts are exiled, the system might look calmer on the surface, but it becomes more fragile underneath. The cost of that exile isn’t just psychological; it’s physical and spiritual. Parts that once carried forward movement, creative fire, and self-protection are cast out like liabilities. What fills their place is often collapse, flatness, or chronic striving with no fulfillment. The nervous system can grow dysregulated from constant suppression. The body may carry tension, fatigue, or autoimmune flares. The spirit may feel dimmed or disoriented, like it no longer knows what it wants, who it is, or what is its intended direction.
When this kind of exile becomes chronic, when egoic protectors are silenced again and again in the name of humility, detachment, or maturity, the effects deepen. Over time, people can become numb, cynical, spiritually disoriented, or physically depleted. Without connection to the parts of us that long to be seen, assert, shine, or create, we lose access to initiative, desire, and vision. The system may feel spiritually “clean” but creatively barren, relationally detached, or secretly despairing.
By contrast, when egoic parts are met from Self, consistently, compassionately, and with respect, they begin to unburden. The short-term effects might look like a release of bracing, tears that finally come, or the return of breath to the belly. Over time, the longer arc of healing becomes clear: vitality returns. Assertiveness becomes embodied (e.g. the shoulders broaden, fire is felt in our bellies, body movement becomes more fluid). Boundaries feel easier. Joy no longer comes with a caveat. A deeper sense of permission grows inside the system. The body becomes more expressive. The spirit feels more rooted and more free.
These are not small effects. They are profound restorations of our full aliveness.
When egoic parts are welcomed, not as enemies of growth but as protectors longing to be included, the system begins to come home to itself. Not by transcending, but by returning.
Personal Anecdote: The Prideful Part That Just Wants to Shine
I have a part that shows up after I do something I’m really proud of, whether that’s writing something that resonates deeply, helping a client or consultee make a meaningful shift, or even getting recognized publicly. It shows up bright-eyed, shoulders back, chest puffed a little. It’s proud. It wants to shine. It wants to be seen.
And almost immediately, other parts jump in to tamp it down. They say things like, “Don’t be arrogant,” or “You’re not that special,” or “Calm down, you’re making people uncomfortable.” The prideful part gets slouched back into the corner, shamed and silenced.
But over time, I’ve come to realize that this part isn’t arrogant. It just wants me to be seen, to be accepted, to be included, to be valued. It wants me to receive the essential nutrients we often dismiss in our individualist culture: community, relationship, connection. Our bodies literally break down without these nutrients, albeit in more subtle, long term ways than the absence of water, food, shelter, oxygen, and sunlight. The landmark Kaiser Adverse Childhood Experiences (ACEs) study gives us a scientific backing for what our ancestors have long known about the importance of community and connection.
When I meet my prideful part with Self energy, from this inner knowing, I feel something settle in my body. The pride feels seen, met, appreciated. And the parts who malign it typically soften and follow my lead.
Belonging Over Transcendence
Healing and wholeness is not about speeding toward transcendence. It’s about returning. It’s about welcoming our protectors home, like soldiers returning from a war they didn’t start, that they were recruited to fight, and forced to sacrifice their needs, wants, and growth.
Even the most boastful, polished, or controlling parts are trying to keep us intact. And they deserve to be met with the very thing they’ve worked so hard to protect us from losing: love.
For feedback and comments, I can be reached at max@maxlittman.com.
I provide private practice mentorship, consultation, and therapist/practitioner part intensives.
