I've never had a cohesive sense of self. That's the part that gets labeled "mentally ill." No socially appropriate ego development. I became aware anyway and I can fake functioning like everyone else when I have to. Healing this sort of thing involves doing the opposite of what Buddhism and other more esoteric systems teach. It means coming back into the body and integrating the self from no-self.   It is not about losing the self because that self never was...in that way we are both ahead of "typicals" and not too... the biggest problem is typicals don't know how  to help and are in fact often dangerous to us... This still breaks my heart everyday as I continue to learn about my body and thus from this little window the body which is humanity, too. *** Things are always changing when we're healing...CHANGE. Dogmatic attachment to anything at all is the antithesis of being in the now...the antithesis of healing.