Jeremy the therapist

The Age of the Divided Self, or "The Epidemic of Digital Dissociation." It's safe to assume that most of us are aware that we are constantly surrounded by distractions. Among work, personal life, and an increasing number of digital social media profiles, our attention spans are taxed like never before. There is no clean "work/home" divide, as COVID-19 and working from home fused career with living spaces. Physical interactions and tasks are continually interrupted by notifications that draw us out of the present and into friend's birthdays, new dating site matches, and even upcoming work projects. With this in mind, what if it's not simply our time and attention that are stretched and divided by our many distractions, but our very identity as well? Psychological research actually suggests that this fragmenting or literal "disintegration" of our personhood is likely and even commonplace. The idea of personality  "segments" which arise to complete different tasks dates back to Paul Federn in the early twentieth century, and has been further refined by Onno Van Der Hart and other trauma psychology specialists. It has gained traction as a way to understand the development of coping strategies, especially defense mechanisms. An ego state arises to respond to a fundamental human need, such as attachment or pursuit of safety. Everyone alive possesses ego states, which are created as behavioral responses to our environment, in order to meet our needs. Metaphorically, think of ego states as different hats a person wears in various aspects of their life. The way one acts and feels at work might be different from how they behave with friends or family. These are not simply roles, but rather deeply ingrained patterns of thought and feeling. You could also view them as different apps on the same phone, that are aware of one another and draw from the same phone user data. The important elements to remember are that an ego state is a focused, finite part of the self, often associated with a particular role, and is born in response to a new challenge or situation. Some states arise as coping behaviors that continue, and they are often tied to action system impulses such as fight/flight/freeze/fawn (people pleasing). We can think of them as aspects of personality. They are also formed by traumatic events, such as neglect and abuse, which cause dissociation, or literal dis-association of the self into modules or segments which meet basic social needs. A felt sense of numbness or disconnection is often felt at the initial time of dissociation, and may then persist in future situations which remind the person of the earlier crisis point. A pattern of: environmental trigger, freeze response/numbness, and then a switch into the familiar coping ego state could then emerge. An example would be a child who copes with an abusive parent by becoming a peacemaker and accepting all blame. In this situation, a "people pleasing" child state has emerged as a way to ensure continued affection and stability in the home. In this case, the child would default to pleasing others as a way to avoid the abuse associated with conflict. In another scenario, a child may become a "class clown" or entertain others as a way to receive attention due to neglectful parents. Here we see that being "on" or a source of laughs and joy becomes an important personality element that the young person can employ as a way to feel a sense of belonging. Are you beginning to see how social media may factor into the creation of self-states? Ego states serve valuable purposes but can prevent emotional growth when they interfere with authentic connection. Continuing from our examples above, if someone can only respond to conflict by denying their own needs, or can only gain acceptance through humor, then their range of human experience is severely limited. In the case of the former, resentment is likely to result from constantly dismissing their own boundaries. A key linkage between social media usage and ego state creation is just how self-states are even created: through dissociation. Dissociation is known to occur through  traumatic or life-threatening events which divides the self into ego states, but what if social media, video gaming, and livestreaming create dissociation and separate selves? Digital meetings: the creation of flat selves? The study "Zoomed out: digital media use and depersonalization experiences during the COVID-19 lockdown" found that increased digital media use during COVID lockdowns, specifically video e-meeting platforms (such as Zoom) and video games, correlates with higher feelings of depersonalization, a form of dissociation where one feels detached from their body and sense of self. This detachment could theoretically be linked to the formation of distinct online ego states, where the digital persona becomes dissociated from the individual's core self. People experiencing higher depersonalization also reported enhanced vividness of negative emotions and a reduced vividness of positive emotions. Notably, the study discovered that physical exercise during lockdown correlated with lower levels of depersonalization, suggesting a decrease in  dissociative experiences. From an ego states psychotherapy perspective, these findings suggest that heavy use of digital media may reinforce certain dissociative ego states, distancing individuals from their physical bodies. This could lead to a fragmented identity, where the digital persona and the actual self become increasingly distinct. The mitigating role of physical activity could be interpreted as integrating and grounding, helping individuals maintain a connection with their physical and sensory experiences, thus supporting identity integration. The authors suggest that tele-meeting platforms don't allow for the dynamic range of human communication. Disengagement and detachment while using e-meeting platforms may result in a mediated, thin ego state that is a bare representation of the actual, multidimensional human being behind the computer screen. This theme of disembodiment and reduction of the self into thin, flat representations or "performed selves" is important to remember. The Dissociative Trance of Social Media Use So far, we've learned about the disembodying effect of online video communication and how it can increase vividness of negative emotions, leaving users potentially feeling "in their heads" more than present in their surroundings. We now turn our attention to the dissociative power of social media use. The study "I Don't Even Remember What I Read" informs us that social media reading is a form of "normative dissociation," which includes such familiar experiences as losing yourself in thought while driving (highway hypnosis)  or becoming engrossed in a book to the exclusion of your external environment. These are simply parts of daily human life, and can even allow for creative problem solving, as is the case with daydreaming. However, social media platforms are engineered to increase time scrolling and to therefore extend the dissociative experience for the maximum time possible.  According to the same study, normative dissociation, including social media use, entails reduced sense of willful choice, sense of time, self-awareness, and even memory of the activity (scrolling, posting), so regardless of initial willfulness of the social media use, the impact upon ability to stay present and maintain a sense of continuity is severely impacted. It's notable that the dissociative state was present in both readers and posters of social media content, indicating that both forms of media use result in a disconnection from the present moment and loss of self-awareness. This, along with the dissociative impact of e-meeting programs and video gaming echo the thoughts of early internet psychology researcher John Suler, who described dissociation from self as a key factor in online disinhibition, particularly the display of antisocial, toxic behavior. It is worth highlighting that Suler wrote about this topic in 2004, years before the widespread usage of video meeting software and rise online influencers. He contended that dissociative anonymity (concealment of true identity and compartmentalization of new digital identity) and dissociative imagination (development of the digital self) are factors in the disinhibition of online behavior. This is easily seen in the antagonistic arguing of social media sites like X, but also in online prank videos and tiktok skits, where influencers are main characters in their own channels and livestreams. This lens of the self as an internet personality is overlaid upon actual reality, often to the bewilderment of onlookers. Shattered Self Syndrome Suler predicted the power of anonymity and digital identity to literally dissociate the core, three-dimensional self into attributes (i.e. humor/beauty/indignation) which are then rewarded by likes and subscriptions. Whereas in traditional dissociative disorders, a traumatic event results in dissociation, which then ignites the formation of a separate ego state, in our current online climate, dissociation can also occur through engagement in e-meeting software (or youtube video creation) or posting on social media, with the resulting digital ego state being born and nourished through online reinforcement. Disembodiment, loss of self-awareness, and immersion in the ego state are common factors in both traditional and digital dissociation. The same risk applies to both: the over-reliance on one ego state to the detriment of the embodied, unified self. Social Media: Who's Using Whom? What happens when we continually enter dissociated ego states and use products that encourage us to forget our bodies and conscious minds? Do we enter a sort of "trance state," more suggestible to shaping by feedback from other users? From earlier in this article, we know that dissociation results in new ego states, so what kind of self-states are we creating when we continually disconnect from our bodies and more conscious thoughts voluntarily? Social media and digital content production are released into a base of other users, and then shaped by attention in the form of likes or other indicators of approval. This creates what we could call a "social media behavior bias," in which performance of a stilted ego state or “slice” results in social approval, which is one of the most powerful reinforcers known. Social media was never going to be neutral or reflective of the entire human personality and experience, once gamification elements such as "likes" were introduced. Whether people are reinforced for their ideal life and learn to continue bragging, or are given attention for sharing negative emotions and therefore pivot further into "rantsonas," social media creates distinct ego states in a far more accelerated and visible manner than traditional socialization. Social media users are incentivized to post content that receives approval, demonstrates social desirability/popularity, and provokes interest, which creates a positivity bias and invites viewers to compare themselves to the filtered and idealized profiles seen online. These thin ego slices are not the genuine human being who created the profile, but are instead hollow and curated. People may even develop imposter syndrome from comparing themselves to the digital versions of themselves. Though users are aware of the reality of their lives, and the biased, careful crafting of their own profiles, they may still compare themselves to the manicured, appealing profiles of other users, believing that those social media users enjoy a richer existence than they themselves experience. Authenticity is an afterthought or even a detriment to digital identity success, so why risk rejection through revealing any perceived flaws or negative aspects of life? The positivity bias of social media skews self-presentation toward ideal representations, leading to a premium upon prestige and superficial glamour. We can observe that there is a dissociative objectification of the self and resultant comparison of the thin ego slice to other users. This self-objectification is also seen in online dating site behavior, in which users  refer to both themselves as others as commodities in a marketplace. This would seem to indicate a dissociated, detached view of others and one's own worth, based sheerly upon objectification. The Incredible Shrinking Self What effect does chronic disembodiment have on social media users and content creators? We are aware that depersonalization can accompany increased negative emotions, that the dissociative, distracting elements of social media can lead to reduced happiness and even that smartphone notifications can result in inattention and hyperactivity. Once more, we are reminded that dissociation is a common occurrence with digital social media use, and that it coincides with more vivid experience of negative emotion. A natural question that arises from this: is the repeated dissociation of self caused by digital notifications, social media reading, posting, and e-meeting causing a fragmentation of the self in ways that disintegrate the richness of individual identity? There is evidence that social media use leads to shallow social interactions and a decrease in communication with family members. A related question: what is the social, developmental impact of repeated use of the phone and social media as a way to avoid any awkward elements of live, interpersonal communication? It seems plausible that chronic dissociation and diversion of mental energy to digital representations of self creates thin ego slices that become the baseline model for interpersonal interaction. Habitual turns toward digital selves and leaning away from personal engagement could result in a disconnection from meaningful, dynamic socialization. There is also the related concern that repeated disinhibition of aggressive impulses (i.e. arguing with others via social media or creating content that is based in mean-spirited commentary or pranks) could result in an existential rift between the person’s stated values and those he or she enacts online. Toward an Integrated Self According to ego state theory, each state requires mental energy. Both social interaction and somatic awareness of a state can enliven it to activity. In other words, if the individual human being dissociates in online social media use or audiovisual content creation, develops a new identity through dissociative imagination, and feeds this new ego state through the approval of others and continued curation, how much energy is left to the authentic self? If one's entire emotional energy is invested into the maintenance of a certain appearance or thin, performative caricature of the self, which is continually "summoned" by notifications and external reinforcement, how is the integrity of the overall identity preserved? Furthermore, how sustainable is it to objectify the self into ego states akin to slices or threads, which are then put on display for mass evaluation or rejection? As noted earlier in this article, ego states are roles which accomplish valuable tasks, but which are only limited aspects of the entire self. Just as humor and people-pleasing ego states are not the solution to all situations, an entertaining social media presence or influencer persona is unequipped for the complexities of life's social depths. An individual is a synthesis of several facets, which include work, social attachments, spirituality, among other elements. Social media profiles often tend to "niche" into particular traits, whether fitness, motivational quotes, or other specific fragments. The indivisible self model proposes 5 major factors which comprise an overall wellness factor, including the essential, physical, social, creative, and coping selves. Social media and digital content personas are simply not equipped to fulfill all of these essences of the identity and yet so much time and effort are dissociated into these cyber-selves. Perceiving oneself as an integrated person and developing a literacy of the disembodying impact of digital media may be at least ingredients to the antidote for identity disintegration. Through understanding how digital media impacts our self-awareness, we may take the first steps toward developing a repertoire of robust ego states.

“Ambiguity tolerance” may sound like a special perk in a complicated video game or card game, but it means “the ability to be comfortable with the unknown, the uncertain.” It’s one of the greatest signs of good mental health, and its opposite, ambiguity intolerance, is all too familiar to anyone who can’t handle any suspense. The comfort zone is a gilded cage that stunts your emotional development, like psychological junk food. Maturity = the ability to face spontaneity with confidence, rather than cantankerousness. In a culture that flatters us and says “if you’re not 100% certain all the time, you’re not getting what you deserve,” facing the chaos of the universe with clarity of mind is a superpower. All the certainty brokers, such as apps, are selling you a curated, sanitized form of safety that removes the spice of human excitement and unpredictability, reducing organisms into digital rectangles. Defy order, and embrace the messiness of human creativity.

This is an essential antidote to the voyeuristic self-inflicted disgust which many men rehearse, regarding women.

The disappearance of “third spaces” that are neither home nor work, coupled with stigma against married couples with kids spending evenings or weekends outside the home, has created a society of “family pods” that don’t intermingle nearly enough. Children benefit from their parents’ wide friend network. They have more possible godparents or future mentors/connections to jobs, people to take them to school when parents are sick, or many many other advantages. people in the early to mid 1900s simply had better social sense and civic/community mindedness than people now. Not everything translates to an internet analogue, including but not limited to socialization and community for your family.

“Perversion, the erotic form of hatred, is a fantasy, usually acted out but occasionally restricted to a daydream… It is a habitual, preferred aberration necessary for one’s full satisfaction, primarily motivated by hostility. By ‘hostility’ I mean a state in which one wishes to harm an object… The hostility in perversion takes form in a fantasy of revenge hidden in the actions that make up the perversion and serves to convert childhood trauma to adult triumph. To create the greatest excitement, the perversion must also portray itself as an act of risk-taking. … I have recently found myself believing that perversion arises as a way of coping with threats to one’s gender identity, that is, one’s sense of masculinity and femininity… Now and in coming years the task is to see if the hypothesis that perversions are usually disorders of masculinity and femininity is generally true…” - Robert J. Stoller — perversion as eroticized hatred from Perversion: The Erotic Form of Hatred (1975)

It’s probably a capital idea to enjoy the company of the person you’re dating. If you’re physically interested in the opposite sex, but mentally detest them, it’s time to dive into classic literature, film, and music, to find some positive counter examples of the heroic masculine or feminine.

Turning romance into gambling has left people overwhelmed at the casino from Hell

Shame fuels great anger

I don’t want to party like it’s 1999, I want to pay for a house like it’s 1999.

On antisocial personality dynamics. 👇Boredom plays a significant role, while shame plays a huge role in narcissistic personality.

You Can See Everything: a Psychoanalytic Interpretation One of Nathan Fielder’s gifts is the ability to curate a conversational space so inviting that a speaker reveals more of themselves than they initially intended. In You Can See Everything (Oppenheim, 2026), Elizabeth Holmes and her husband, Billy Evans, experience this firsthand, and the stillness lasts long enough that you can observe their personality structures attempt to retain their shape on camera, with moments of breaking frame. Holmes smiles with wide eyes and smile for extended (one might say uncanny) stretches while Billy’s eyes stay intense. Theirs is a story about lying, intense love, and a woman who insists she has never done the one thing the world convicted her of: lying at a massive scale. I watched the film as a clinician first and a moviegoer second (okay, and a serious Nathan Fielder fan a CLOSE third). What follows is my read through Nancy McWilliams’s personality theory and through Fonagy’s work on mentalization. It is interpretation, not courtroom psychology, and it rests on Holmes’s own words as reported from the theatrical cut. Holmes does not stop at simply disputing a charge. She denies the category of the act itself. “I’ve never tried to deceive anyone,” she tells Fielder. Asked whether she has ever lied in her adult life, replies: “I don’t think so.” Fielder, for once stripped of the blank slate questioning style, asks: “Liz, what?” Billy, almost fondly: “She’s weird.” Liz is famous for that thing she’s allegedly “never done”: lying. McWilliams (2011) places shame at the center of narcissistic organization. Grandiosity, in her account, is not swagger for its own sake. It is a structure built to keep annihilating shame out of awareness. After all: admit a lie and you admit a crack in the self-image that was supposed to make you invulnerable. Rewrite history instead, and the self stays intact for one more day. Holmes’s insistence that she has always “tried to say what I believe” fits that defense with almost textbook neatness. Belief becomes the solvent in which other people’s experience of deception is supposed to dissolve. Film is a great medium for this interview, as we can see Holmes’s expression remain warm throughout the interview: the smile ready, the presentation of approachability intact even during serious, upcoming incarceration. Nancy McWilliams describes how narcissistic personalities often rely on charm and a carefully tended surface to pull admiration, the supply that keeps the grandiose self afloat. The warm eyes function as a mirror held up to the room: "see how sincere I am, and reflect that back. I'm here as a positive force." Fonagy and Target (1997; see also Fonagy, Gergely, Jurist, & Target, 2002) describe mentalization as the capacity to hold another person’s mind in mind: to recognize that other people have beliefs, feelings, and intentions that may not match your own, and that those mental states are what organize their behavior. Theory of mind is the everyday language for the same skill. Without it, other people collapse into props in your story. Holmes keeps treating other minds that way, insisting she has never tried to deceive anyone, as if her own sincerity cancels what investors, patients, and jurors experienced. She misses Fielder’s joke about hosting a show (“Nathan for You,” which I recommend you watch) on business scams while Liz is actually convicted of an actual scam. Holmes remarks that she had not thought about that coincidence until he said it. Later, Fielder explains that he perceives Liz to use language in a technically honest way, regarding her intent, but in a manner which would obscure and confuse others. To illustrate this, he loads up and plays the seriously old school “Who’s on First” Abbott and Costello comedy skit, a famous exercise in linguistic miscommunication. She says, plainly, “I didn’t pick it up.” Humor requires a brief exit from your own perspective. You must see how the other person is experiencing a situation, from their vantage point, which at least in this instance, she’s unable to do. Billy’s interruptions of Christian Holmes (Elizabeth’s father) show an unwillingness to entertain other perspectives, rather than a failure to perceive them. When Fielder asks about Sunny Balwani, (Liz’s business partner in her Theranos days) Billy jumps in. When the father names a turning point (”That’s an easy one,” her sexual assault at nineteen) and identifies Balwani as the mastermind who manipulated her, Billy derails and enters the conversation again, never allowing Nathan and Liz’s father to examine the traumatic background. The conversation stops being about what Christian thinks. It becomes about what can be admitted into the shared mythos that Billy is building. McWilliams already assumes that narcissistic structure forecloses true empathy; add impaired mentalization and you get someone who can “invent from a cage,” as Liz says she will do from prison, who can “build monuments of love” (as both Liz and Billy say that Liz will do for Billy), and fail to register that the people outside the shared culture of the couple do not wish to play along inside the “bubble.” Prison might be expected to puncture the bubble of grandiosity, but for Holmes it becomes merely a new stage. “From wherever I am,” she says, “I’m going to continue to work inventing, even if it’s inventing from a cage.” McWilliams writes that grandiosity and depletion are two faces of the same personality organization: the depleted self feels empty and small. The grandiose self swells to cover that emptiness. When the covering story is threatened, the person often doubles down rather than mourning. Holmes still speaks with sweeping ambition and almost no qualifications, so the cage doesn’t revise the script, it’s just a new stage design. I find the missing sense of humor clinically useful here. A joke asks you to tolerate some shame, a little being-seen-as-ridiculous. Narcissistic defenses treat that request as an attack. So the room goes flat. Fielder offers play. She offers sincerity. Those are different currencies, and they do not convert. Christian Holmes’s interview is one of the film’s most revealing sequences precisely because Billy will not allow it to unfold, uninterrupted. He meddles and sabotages it at every turn. McWilliams notes that narcissistic defenses often crystallize around unbearable injury, with a grandiose self constructed over shame too great to feel. The “Invincible inventor” identity looks like a fortress raised after negative experiences. Sunny was once Elizabeth’s right hand man, with Billy now fulfilling that role, deciding who gets to access to Liz. Caution is necessary here, because the presence of a trauma, such as an assault, does not excuse fraud, and it does not make Billy (or Sunny) into cartoonish villains. Billy reports that Liz claims “every action she takes for as long as she lives will be building monuments of love” to Billy. In Fielder’s reconstruction of a prison visit (Amanda Seyfried standing in for Holmes, staged from Fielder’s memory of the conversation), she describes the two of them building monuments of love for each other and says, “I have conversations with him in my head.” Billy, from the outside of prison says: “I know what she’d want.” Relatedly, McWilliams describes the narcissistic cycle of idealization, in which the other person is prized as a reflecting surface more than as a separate subject. Here the reflecting works in both directions. Each carries a working model of the other so complete that speech becomes optional. They have built a digital machine of each other, enmeshed in idealisms, rehearsing what the beloved would say until the beloved becomes a program running in the head. That arrangement can feel like profound intimacy from the inside. From outside, it looks like two monuments facing each other across visiting glass, neither quite able to see a living person who might surprise them. McWilliams distinguishes narcissistic from psychopathic (or antisocial) personality organizations with unusual clarity. The narcissist is organized around shame and the hunger to be admired. The psychopath is organized around omnipotent control and often takes satisfaction from putting one over on others. Visibility is optional for the second type, while results are not. The narcissist is a convenient monkey’s paw for the psychopath, because the narcissist must be SEEN winning to be fulfilled, while the psychopath only needs the win itself. I should double down in my disclaimer that this is simply for entertainment purposes, not medical therapeutic diagnosis; simply commentary one a nearly 3-hour film's character depictions. There’s a fascinating subplot in which Fielder tries to identify whether Liz is aware that Billy Evans asked for substantial monetary compensation as a condition of his and Liz’s participation in the documentary (which is extremely unorthodox, as far as documentaries are concerned). Nathan verbally recounts the timing of Billy’s request, and notices that Liz leaves the room right before Billy makes his proposition. Does this indicate she’s aware of what’s coming, and she wishes to maintain plausible deniability? Her response when Nathan asks her at prison indicates that perhaps she was aware, as she maintains she allows Billy to handle financial matters. This is not a shocked reaction, but one of deflection. By the end of the film (SPOILER) we learn that Billy has relinquished his request for royalties, indicating at the very least, he and/or Liz thought better of the inevitable optics nightmare. However, I think it’s a bit too late, as it’s almost the worst of both worlds to have asked for the money, revealing the willingness to override typical documentary policy, while not even receiving the literal compensation in exchange for the bad press. Liz and Billy both walk away looking worse for wear, in this documentary. The form a culture of two; both frenetic, entrepreneurial forces, with Billy willing to embody the independent, disagreeable businessman persona and Liz appearing as the “good cop.” It’s difficult to know just how much this pattern may have represented the dynamic between Liz and Sunny Balwani at Theranos. It’s a coupling of masculine/feminine approaches to winning at business, like a marriage of “Lean In” and “The Art of the Deal.” The audience can see the 1-2 punch dynamics at play. You Can See Everything is a strange title for a story about people who cannot see each other. Fielder sees a great deal. Holmes sees a continuous invention project. Billy sees a monument under construction. Christian sees a daughter damaged by assault and by Sunny Balwani. The audience sees a woman who will not grant that she has ever lied, and a marriage that has turned mutual idealization into a closed loop, a “culture of two.” Mentalization would have interrupted the loop with new data. So would a joke she could laugh at, or a sentence that begins, I deceived people, and here is how. There is no sense of authenticity, just a veneer of sincerity performed at cinematic scale, warm eyes aimed at the lens, and the promise that invention continues even from a cage. The clinical moral of the tale is that if someone cannot hold your mind as separate from theirs, your experience will be missed, or at the very least, misrepresented. What does a friend or close connection do, when presented with evidence that hurts? How do they respond when they’ve hurt you? Is there an apology, or this there an alternate account of reality?