The goal of the spiritual seeker is to raise their consciousness such that the grip of the ego is loosened, and one can fear less and less and love more and more. The fact that the ego's grip tightens as we age has ensured our species' survival, but also brought the normalisation of emotional suffering, due to the normalisation of the belief 'what I truly am can die'. The time span I'm talking about is hundreds of thousands of years, as I believe that humanity was much more animal-like 600,000 years go, and therefore, with a much weaker sense of ego. By the way, I also believe that enlightenment is not a return to an animal-like way of being. I see the enlightenment of humanity as a three step process: a million years ago, whatever humanity was probably didn't have much of a solid idea of who they believed they were- not as elaborate of an ego as is normal today, then we have today, where it's normal to believe in a detailed life story, and also the belief in death (which bounds us to suffering), and then finally the first stage, where people like you and me transcend our elaborate life stories and know ourselves to be pure consciousness.

Perhaps all psychological suffering stems from the belief in death- there are many ways to test this:

"I am frustrated with others for being miserable and awkward when I want to rejoice with them about the good things! Travel! Build inspiring business! Deep down I believe that what I am can die, so it pains me to waste a second of finite life."

Identifying as a self-improver

Feeling overly guilty about something after the lessons have been learnt

Confusion defence-mechanism

I've noticed a subtle psychological defence-mechanism which I think is quite common among spiritual and scientific circles: they, very subtly and unconsciously, try to confuse the person they're talking to by going into elaborate concepts in order to divert the attention away from a pain-point in their lives. For example, in a coaching call, the coach may ask a simple question such as "how are your finances doing?" and those who use this defence mechanism might say "well it doesn't bother me because technically I'm everything so it doesn't matter" (and then go on to say things that might be true, but are deliberately confusing to the coach, and will expertly steer the conversation to a different subject. I can certainly imagine someone who uses science as a religion going off into metaphysics in order to change the subject. This is a trap for people who are more knowledgable in a subject than their questioner, and who can continue to avoid important issues by dazzling them and steering the conversation elsewhere. Someone who does this should humble themselves and go willingly into areas of conversation which are, to their detriment, being avoided.

The ego always thinks it's good

Regardless of how bad we may think someone's intentions are, they are likely to believe that what they're doing is good. The most obvious example of this is suicide bombers- to some, it's the worst thing a person can do, to others it's the best. How the best? Because they believe that it will please the Most High.