We have a concept of who we are, an amalgam of accrued parts and patterned responsive behaviors. This notional “self” has stabilizing benefits: we can ask ourselves what we would do, and the “self” develops faster responses until our allegiance to “our self” is an unthinking, habitual reflex.
Yet many of us experience pain because of “our self,” yet we do not correct it or escape. Our suffering is maintained by affiliation to an intersubjective conception of self: not only are we convinced of who we are, but others have bought in, accruing upon us in a petrifying abstraction. We assume this is who we are.
And yet, under tension (extreme anxiety), we find we never knew ourselves: the abstractions are fractured when we must move to survive.