What’s driving your automatic responses and behaviors? How can understanding your protective shields lead to more authentic living?
The concept of ego identity reveals how women develop specific behavioral patterns to cope with societal pressures. Dr. Shefali Tsabary explores three main ego types—the giver, the controller, and the taker—and shows how recognizing these patterns can help women break free from self-limiting behaviors.
Keep reading to understand these ego identities and discover which one might be influencing your life decisions and relationships.
Recognize Your Ego Identity
Tsabary argues that women’s automatic responses and false identities (the ones formed based on societal standards) are a protective shield called the ego. The ego identity emerges to protect women from the backlash they’ll receive if they act according to their true selves. While it can help women stay afloat in a patriarchal society, it ultimately hinders them by suppressing their true selves.
According to Tsabary, recognizing your ego identity is a crucial step to limiting its control over your mind so you can act authentically and be happy and fulfilled. Each ego identity is associated with certain behaviors—once you know your ego identity and the behaviors associated with it, you can recognize when it’s controlling you. This way, you can stop and evaluate how to respond based on your authentic self and best interests instead.
(Shortform note: In The Power of Now, Tolle also recommends recognizing your ego to overcome it. However, he emphasizes the importance of recognizing your egoic emotions more than just your egoic behaviors. This is because your ego controls your thoughts, which trigger certain emotions that influence your actions. If you can identify ego-fueled emotions before they impact your behaviors, you can reclaim control over yourself before your ego causes you to act in detrimental ways.)
Tsabary elaborates that there are three primary ego identities that women take on in an attempt to manage societal standards and achieve self-worth: the giver, the controller, and the taker.
The Giver Ego
A woman with a giver identity is one who is self-sacrificing, putting others before herself to her own detriment. For example, she may struggle to say no, feel powerful by giving to others, and have such strong empathy that she hurts when others are in pain. She also may often end up feeling taken advantage of, powerless, or like a perpetual victim.
Tsabary explains that giver identities often manifest in women who are highly sensitive and deeply fear abandonment to the point where their identity and self-worth are largely upheld by their relationships. When the loved one or validation from the loved one is taken away, the woman often feels lost and confused about who she is since her ability to serve—her identity—is taken away. These women may have experienced emotional neglect from caregivers during childhood.
| Toxic Shame and the Ego Identity In Healing the Shame that Binds You, John Bradshaw explains that the emergence of a false self (or egoic identity as Tsabary refers to it) is a manifestation of toxic shame—shame that makes us feel our true self is unworthy. Bradshaw believes that there are three types of false identities we form as a result of toxic shame—the cultural self (our role in society according to our gender), our self-trajectory (the life path we plan), and our relational self (the role we play in relationships). The three types of egoic identities Tsabary discusses align with Bradshaw’s concepts in two ways: First, they align with Bradshaw’s idea of the cultural self as they’re based on women’s societal gender roles. And second, they align with Bradshaw’s idea of the relational self in that they center around how we interact with others, and are largely influenced by our experiences growing up and the roles we played in our nuclear family. By comparing Bradshaw’s archetypes to Tsabary’s egoic identities, we gain a more complete understanding of why they may have emerged and how they impact us. For example, Bradshaw’s research shows that those who tend to put others before themselves and victimize themselves often played the role of scapegoat, caretaker, or peacemaker during childhood. These children experienced a family dynamic where they were emotionally neglected and the roles of parents and child were often reversed. Instead of being supported emotionally by their parents, they had to sacrifice their own needs to support their parents emotionally. These experiences programmed them to believe that the way for them to obtain love was to sacrifice their needs to care for others—to become the giver that Tsabary describes. |
The Controller Ego
The controller identity is one who ultimately values power and control. These women strive for perfection and to be the best at what they do. They’re highly critical of themselves and others, often micromanaging situations and people to meet their high expectations. They tend to see themselves as giving and caring but often feel resentful toward others for the help they feel required to give, and often end up reaching a breaking point where they lash out. The controller and giver egos may also coincide in women who ceaselessly strive to please others (giver behavior) in an attempt to win their admiration and control how others view them (controller behavior).
Women tend to develop the controller identity to relieve deep-seated anxiety over not being enough; this anxiety might come from having someone in their life who makes them feel unworthy, such as a parent or spouse.
(Shortform note: In Healing the Shame that Binds You, Bradshaw explains that people who exhibit controller behaviors often grew up in a family dynamic where they were the star child, the surrogate spouse, or the little parent. Star children felt they needed to be perfect to earn their parents’ love, surrogate spouses acted as their parents’ co-parents, and little parents helped parent their siblings. These children had to take on big responsibilities at a young age and learned that control and perfection were the ways to gain love and attention from their parents (as Tsabary puts it, to relieve their anxiety over not being enough).)
The Taker Ego
The taker identity is the opposite of the giver and the controller—those with this identity relinquish all control over themselves, relying on others to provide for them and offer guidance and support. The taker comes in different forms. On one hand, she may see herself as superior to others, believing others are there to serve her and that this is what she deserves—she expects and allows others to provide for and care for her. On the other hand, she may see herself as incompetent or helpless—she needs others to provide for her, but she believes it’s not her fault because she’s simply unable to do so herself. She may also be naive, childish, overly optimistic, and out of touch with reality.
Women tend to develop the taker identity because they’re afraid to acknowledge their fears and emotional pain—instead, they ignore these fears and emotions and act helpless. These women may have grown up in situations that made them feel unimportant, less-than, or out of control. For example, they may have had parents who acted overly important, siblings who outshined them, or a chaotic home life that they couldn’t change and had to emotionally dull themselves from instead.
(Shortform note: In Healing the Shame that Binds You, Bradshaw explains that those who exhibit taker behaviors often grew up with emotionally neglectful parents. He explains that their taker behaviors as an adult are the result of their emotions being shamed as children—they were made to feel that their emotions were too much or unimportant, so they learned to shut them down altogether. In some circumstances, these experiences can cause people to develop personality disorders like narcissistic, borderline, or paranoid personality disorder.)
Exercise: Acknowledge Your Ego Identity
One of the biggest barriers separating women from their authentic selves is their ego identity. We’ll identify which identity you’ve taken on and how you can overcome it.
- Do you feel more comfortable a) making choices yourself, b) letting others choose for you, or c) speaking to others before making a decision?
- If you chose answer a, you may have a boss ego. If you chose answer b, you may have a beggar ego. If you chose answer c, you may have a servant ego. Based on your ego identity and Tsabary’s discussion, which behaviors do you regularly engage in that are preventing you from living according to your authentic self? For example, if you’re a boss, your emphasis on perfection may prevent you from trying a new hobby because you’re afraid to fail.
- Next time you find yourself engaging in the behavior you identified above, what can you do instead? For example, instead of avoiding new things, you can make a list of new things you want to try and spend an hour a week exploring something from your list.
