We all have a voice in our heads. It narrates our worries, replays our embarrassing moments, and whispers that everyone is judging us. Psychologists call this default state the immersed self—the state of being trapped inside your own ego, looking at the world solely through your own eyes.

While the immersed self feels natural, recent research reveals that it’s actually a cognitive glitch that blinds us to reality. The immersed self makes us anxious, irrational, and surprisingly bad at predicting our own happiness. Unlike the distanced self, which allows us to step back and see situations clearly, the immersed self keeps us locked in tunnel vision.

The immersed self evolved to help us survive in small tribes, but in the modern world, this mechanism misfires constantly. It interprets minor stressors as existential threats, hijacking our brain’s resources exactly when we need calm clarity. From crashing planes to ruining negotiations, here are 10 mind-blowing ways the immersed self messes with your brain—and the science on how to escape it.

Immersed Self vs. Distanced Self: Key Differences

10. The Immersed Self Can Literally Crash the Plane

We tend to think of “ego” as just being arrogant, but the immersed self can be a lethal distraction. In 2013, the pilot of Asiana Flight 214 crashed a Boeing 777 in San Francisco. Psychological analysis suggests he fell into a trap of the immersed self known as “tunnel vision.”

Under the stress of being evaluated on a new aircraft, the pilot’s immersed self became fixated on how he was landing the plane to protect his reputation, rather than asking the bigger question: should he land the plane? The immersed self hijacked his brain’s resources, shifting them from solving the problem to defending his self-image. When we operate from the immersed self, we lose the “big picture” awareness necessary for survival. This is why pilots are now trained to recognize and counteract the immersed self during crisis situations.

9. The Immersed Self Turns “Social Pain” into Physical Injury

Have you ever wondered why a breakup or a rejection hurts your chest? It isn’t a metaphor. Neurological research shows that social exclusion activates the exact same brain regions as physical injury. In fact, taking Tylenol has been shown to reduce social pain just as it reduces a headache.

The problem is that the immersed self keeps the wound open. Unlike a physical cut that heals, the immersed self “relives” social pain by replaying the memory over and over. Each replay fires the same pain receptors, trapping you in a loop of suffering. The immersed self doesn’t process trauma—it perpetuates it. Escaping the immersed self through distanced self techniques is the only neurological anesthetic that stops the stinging and allows real healing to begin.

8. The Immersed Self Makes You Surprisingly Less Rational With Money

We usually assume that being “selfish” or “egocentric” means we are ruthlessly looking out for number one. Surprisingly, studies on the “Dictator Game” show the immersed self does the opposite. When people made financial decisions from the immersed self perspective (using “I” statements), they actually kept less money for themselves than those who stepped back.

Why? Because the immersed self is flooded with immediate emotions, social guilt, and the pressure of what others might think. The immersed self makes us react to feelings rather than facts. When participants used distanced self-talk, they became colder and more calculating, acting in their rational self-interest to maximize their payout. The immersed self might be nicer, but it’s a terrible economist—it trades your financial wellbeing for the temporary comfort of avoiding guilt.

7. The Immersed Self Treats Your Future Self Like a Stranger

Why do you procrastinate or fail to save for retirement? It’s because your immersed self has an empathy gap. Brain imaging studies reveal that when we think about our future selves (ten years from now), our brain patterns look identical to when we think about a total stranger.

From the immersed self perspective, “Future You” is someone else’s problem. This is why Jeff Bezos had to use a “regret minimization framework” to start Amazon—he had to mentally time-travel to age 80 to care about his decision. Without this distance from the immersed self, we only care about today’s comfort, happily sabotaging our future success. The immersed self is shortsighted by design, prioritizing immediate relief over long-term flourishing.

6. The Immersed Self Traps You in “Solomon’s Paradox”

King Solomon was famous for giving brilliant advice to others while his own life was a mess of bad decisions. We all suffer from this paradox, and the immersed self is the culprit. When we are locked in the immersed self while facing our own problems, our wisdom evaporates. We know exactly what our best friend should do in a toxic relationship, but we stay in our own.

The immersed self blocks access to the logical, wise part of your brain because it’s too busy feeling the emotions. The moment you step out of the immersed self—perhaps by asking, “What would I tell a friend in this situation?”—you instantly regain your IQ points. The immersed self is the enemy of self-wisdom, creating a paradox where you’re the world’s best advisor to everyone except yourself.

5. The Immersed Self Is Triggered by the Word “I”

The trigger for the immersed self state is linguistic. Using first-person pronouns like “I,” “me,” and “my” emotionally immerses us in our experiences, acting like glue that binds us to the stressor and activates the immersed self.

It sounds too simple to be true, but research confirms that “illeism”—speaking about yourself in the third person—breaks the immersed self’s spell. When LeBron James famously said, “I wanted to do what’s best for LeBron James,” he wasn’t just being arrogant; he was instinctively using a psychological tactic to dampen the immersed self and make a clearer decision. Every time you say “I,” you’re reinforcing the immersed self. Change your pronouns, change your perspective.

How to escape the immersed self with language: Replace “I” with your name (“Why is [Your Name] stressed?” instead of “Why am I stressed?”). Use second person (“You can handle this” instead of “I can handle this”). Adopt third person (“She needs to take a break” instead of “I need to take a break”). Practice in writing by journaling about your day using your name instead of “I.” You’ll break free from the immersed self and access clearer thinking.

4. The Immersed Self Makes You Worse at Hard Tasks

If you want to fail at a difficult challenge, just be yourself. Studies on the “Batman Effect” showed that children who stayed in the immersed self gave up quickly on hard tasks. However, those who adopted a persona (like Batman or Dora the Explorer) performed significantly better.

The immersed self is burdened by insecurity and “baggage.” By shedding your identity and adopting an alter-ego, you bypass the immersed self and access the distanced self. The immersed self is fragile and quits when things get difficult; the distanced self is bulletproof. When you face a challenge from the immersed self, you’re carrying the weight of every past failure. When you face it as someone else, you’re free.

3. The Immersed Self Blinds You to “Sunk Costs”

The immersed self loves the past. It gets emotionally attached to things we have built, making it impossible to quit failing projects. This almost killed Intel in the 1980s. The founders were locked in the immersed self regarding their memory chip business and couldn’t see that it was time to move to microprocessors.

They only saved the company when they asked what a replacement CEO would do. A replacement has no immersed self history with the company. The moment they stepped out of the immersed self and into this hypothetical perspective, the answer was obvious. The immersed self clings to the “good old days” even when the ship is sinking, confusing identity with strategy.

2. The Immersed Self Mistakes “Reliving” for “Processing”

We often think that obsessing over a bad memory helps us “process” it. We are wrong. The immersed self doesn’t process; it relives. The immersed self replays the event through your own eyes, immersing you in the anger and embarrassment all over again without providing any new insight.

True processing requires “reconstruing”—viewing the event from a distance, like a fly on the wall. Only when you stop the immersed self’s reliving can you start understanding the motives of others and find closure. The immersed self is a broken record that plays the same painful song on repeat. The distanced self is a film editor that can examine the scene, understand it, and move on.

1. The Immersed Self Is an Evolutionary Mismatch

Ultimately, the immersed self isn’t “evil”—it’s just outdated. The immersed self evolved to help us survive in small tribes where social standing was life or death. Being hyper-aware of ourselves and our reputation through the immersed self was a survival mechanism that kept us from being ostracized.

But in the modern world, the immersed self mechanism misfires constantly. The immersed self interprets a rude email or a public speaking gig as a threat to our existence, hijacking our brain to defend our ego exactly when we need to be calm. We are walking around with the immersed self as prehistoric software that treats every minor stressor as a saber-toothed tiger, leaving us exhausted, anxious, and stuck.

The good news? Once you recognize the immersed self for what it is—an outdated survival program—you can learn to override it. By practicing distanced self techniques like third-person self-talk, temporal distancing, or the “fly on the wall” perspective, you can escape the immersed self’s trap. The immersed self will always be your default mode, but it doesn’t have to be your only mode. Understanding the immersed self is the first step to transcending it.

Recognizing and Escaping the Immersed Self: Quick Guide