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"You're being a pseudo self to yourself. You're being the family super self to yourself." - Jerry Wise
There's something unsettling about watching a CEO who commands boardrooms admit they can't tell their parents they want to change the time for Christmas dinner. Jerry Wise has spent decades watching successful people crumble the moment they step back into their childhood homes, reverting to versions of themselves they don't recognize. The breakthrough comes when you realize that voice in your head, the one constantly criticizing and pushing and never letting up, isn't actually you at all. It's what Wise calls the "family super self," this emotional WiFi network you've been connected to since birth, transmitting their anxieties and standards and judgments straight into your nervous system. You've been living as a pseudo self, acting out patterns you never chose, defending behaviors that hurt you because somewhere along the way you confused survival mechanisms with success strategies.
What makes this conversation so powerful is how Wise dismantles the myth that self-criticism equals achievement. That president who can't stand up to mom and dad will swear up and down that being brutal with himself is what got him where he is, never stopping to wonder why he needs his family's harsh voice to stay motivated. Wise explains enmeshment not as some abstract psychology term but as the painful truth that many of us don't know where we end and our families begin. The path forward isn't cutting everyone off or pretending the past didn't happen. It's learning to hold space between yourself and them, to stay connected while finally, maybe for the first time, being yourself. Your inner child has been waiting for this, for the moment when the conflict stops and you can just exist without performing, without proving, without that relentless internal commentary that was never yours to begin with.
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