The ego may be less interested in making you feel good than in keeping your story about yourself consistent. People can defend identities that actually makes them miserable because changing them would mean admitting, “Maybe I’m not who I thought I was.”
That’s where it gets sneaky… humility can become an identity. Being wounded can become an identity. Being “the good person,” “the enlightened one,” “the misunderstood one,” even being someone who is constantly healing can become something we start protecting from contradictory evidence.
And once an identity becomes important enough, the mind can start filtering reality through it. You notice the evidence that keep the story alive and quietly dismiss what threatens it.
Sometimes growth may have less to do with becoming a “better version of yourself” and more to do with becoming less attached to having a fixed version of yourself at all. Being able to discover you were wrong or outgrow an old self-description
So instead of only asking, “Is my ego involved here?” I think the more revealing question might be “What would I have to admit, change, or let go of if my current story about myself weren’t true?”
To put it more simply, what identity have you caught yourself protecting that you once genuinely believed was simply who you were?