What is the Strategic Self?
The Strategic Self is who we are by default, the person we experience ourselves to be. This is a completely artificial version of personhood because it is based in the part of us that formed to protect us from our experience of the most basic level of reality not being safe. Without our parents or primary caregivers having deconstructed their own defenses they were unable to feel us at a non-verbal root emotive and energetic heart level. In the absence of being able to feel our parents feel us we developed a defense system that looked to maximize acceptance and approval, as that was the closest thing to being felt, and minimize rejection and disapproval, as that was the closest thing to feeling the core disconnect that we felt with our parents being unable to feel us.
