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There’s no such thing as a monolithic version of the self; one homogenous “me.”
Rather, identity is an amalgam, a multi-faceted collection of connected but different personas. In their efforts to conceptualize this scenario, psychologists employ a variety of models depicting how one’s various mental “parts” interact with each other. For instance, we often describe internal conflict as arising from discordant relationships between two or more personas, creating what psychoanalyst R. D. Laing called “the divided self.” In my work with clients, I sometimes utilize a model developed by Daniel Kahneman, a Nobel Prize winner who proposed that each of us possesses two “mental operating systems”—the experiencing self and the remembering self.
The experiencing self is the “you” that becomes immersed in the moment, that directly experiences life through happenings and activities. In contrast, the remembering self looks back on these experiences and, with self-talk, “writes” the narrative of what happened. For example, let’s say you have a verbal dispute with a spouse or partner. While it’s occurring, the arguing becomes an all-in experience that consumes your consciousness. Later, reflecting back on this episode, you begin narrating to yourself the sequence, nature and meaning of what took place, composing a new entry in your personal history.
So, what? Well, research shows these two selves often don’t agree. Over time, the remembering self changes its account of what the experiencing self went through, sometimes embellishing certain aspects while downplaying or ignoring others. And, each time the remembering self revisits what took place, it tends to modify it further, eventually producing an account that deviates significantly from the experience itself. Psychologists call this confabulation, and it constitutes standard operating procedure in the human psyche.
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As children, the experiencing self occupies the majority of mental airtime. However, gradually, as self-awareness increases, the remembering self takes up more and more psychological space, a trend that continues throughout adulthood. Regardless, the nature and relationship of these two selves has a direct impact on mental well-being.
For one, it shapes how most of us make important decisions. The guiding influence in many of our choices is the remembering self’s account of what happened in the past, one that usually fails to accurately describe prior events. So, we formulate decisions more from these personal historical narratives than from the felt-sense of the experiences themselves. In part, this explains the value of intuition as a decision-making resource. Intuitive reasoning incorporates felt-experiences, body memory and what Gestalt therapists refer to as “organismic wisdom,” meaning it largely arises from the experiencing self.
What’s more, folks beset with obsessive worrying, ruminating, neurotic self-absorption and regrets usually populate most of their mental airtime with the remembering self, crowding out the experiential awareness that helps us feel truly alive. When one spends more time thinking about one’s life than actually living it, mental well-being suffers. Some therapists describe this as “living above one’s neck.” To drive home this point, I’ve asked some clients to estimate how much time they spend in a day in each of their respective selves—experiencing and remembering. Many are surprised to discover how much the latter dominates their consciousness.
Given this, one might resolve to devote more time to experiencing, not to mention taking the remembering self’s subsequent narratives with a large grain of salt. Sounds good, but one mental health expert offers a thought experiment that shows why this proves more challenging than it seems.
The experiment: You can choose between having a perfect dream vacation that you will not remember (pure experience) or having a mostly good getaway that you will recall entirely (experience plus remembering). As you contemplate this decision, you may also ponder which one of you will decide: the experiencing self or the remembering one?
Tough call, but one that reveals which mental operating system usually runs the show.
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