Q: I can’t control my dismantling anymore. I lost my job and am looking for work in a very competitive field. if I can't sell a self that is not even real how will I support myself?

A: You’re not asking how to get a job. You’re asking whether truth is compatible with survival.

On the surface, your focus is on things like job-seeking, competitiveness, and self-promotion. But the real issue here is survival.  If the false self is dissolving, what’s going to keep me alive? Basically, it’s: If I stop pretending to be someone, will reality still feed me?

The false self used to be your interface with the world; it knew how to perform, persuade, impress, posture, sell. And now it’s malfunctioning - maybe even dying. 

Meanwhile, the world is still demanding a performance. So the mind panics and fabricates all sorts of stories like, If I can’t sell myself, I can’t survive, and If I can’t perform an identity, I’ll starve.

In your specific context of job loss, competitiveness, self-promotion, etc., the pressure is acute. The world isn’t politely waiting for your existential process to conclude. Bills still exist, interviews still exist, language like “personal brand” still exists. So the false self is whispering things that sound reasonable, like Just build a temporary interface, Just play the role lightly, You don’t have to believe it - just use it. 

That voice is not wrong in a practical sense. It’s wrong in a developmental sense. Because it’s not neutrality speaking, it’s fear. Fear of groundlessness, of not knowing who’s steering, of letting the system run without a familiar operator. You don't yet know how life functions without the false self. And neither does the part of you asking this question. That’s not a failure, that’s the territory.

Your question exposes classic Disruption behavior: I can’t go back - but I don’t see how to go forward without lying. Phase Two always asks: Can I keep functioning without betraying what I’ve seen? Is there a way to continue living without reanimating the corpse? You’ve lost a job (external disruption). You can no longer suppress the dismantling (internal disruption). The old strategies still exist conceptually, but you can’t inhabit them anymore. You’re cornered, and Deconstruction is looming on the horizon. This phase is not asking you to solve survival. It’s asking you to stop assuming you know how survival works.

The false self didn’t “support you.” It negotiated roles inside a dream you mistook for reality. What’s dissolving is not your ability to function, it’s your belief about who does the functioning. Something has always been moving your life forward. You just took credit for it.

There’s often a strong temptation here to try to compartmentalize truth and survival: I’ll just play the game strategically. I’ll fake it just enough to get by. This may work for a while, but it’s not sustainable because once you’ve seen the self is fictional, conscious lying is no longer unconscious survival; it becomes self-betrayal. And the system knows the difference. That’s why this feels intolerable now when it used to feel normal.

The question that will open the next door is not How do I sell myself without a self? That question can only spin you in circles.

The forward-moving question is: What if survival was never dependent on the fiction I’m watching collapse?

Sit with that - not as an idea, but as a live inquiry.

What, exactly, is afraid right now, and what would actually die if it didn’t get its way?

That’s where the ground is giving way. And that’s where something real starts to stand.