Self has the same structure as other similar mental things like Friendship.
Self is not a mysterious thing. It is merely the name given to the accumulative, repetitively reinforced, history of similar internal personal psychological events. Similar in structure to Friendship.
Friendship is not a mysterious thing. It is the name given to the accumulative, repetitively reinforced, history of interpersonal psychological events. When you just meet someone new, you are not yet their friend. It is only after a series of mutually beneficial personal interactions that friendship gradually develops, until the point there are enough of them that one can truly say a friendship has been established. Friendship is not an entity in of itself, it is merely the convenient word used to describe this accumulation of repetitively reinforced mutually beneficial interpersonal events.
Likewise, the Self is not an entity in of itself, it is merely the convenient word used to describe a serial accumulation of similar repetitively reinforced internal personal psychological events which establish/reinforce the importance/superiority of one's individuality with regard to others. When one was a child there were yet few of these events. The older one gets, the more of these events have accumulated.
In a friendship, there may come events that weaken the friendship, that do not repetitively reinforce it. Arguments, disputes, anger, etc. But as long as they remain minor in total, it is accurate to say the friendship yet endures. Since "friendship" is merely the word to conveniently describe this sum total accumulation of individual events.
Likewise, with the Self, individual events can occur that either reinforce the overall tendency of all the events or not reinforce it. These always happen one by one in real time. The effect of any one of these does very little to affect the sum total of the vast accumulation of such similar events since birth; but it does directly affect the application of that sum total to the current moment in real time. For instance, one may have a lifetime accumulation of moments of Self that can accurately be described in summation as "selfish". But at any moment in real time, one can either reinforce or not reinforce this summation. E.g., one can at any moment help someone in need, or not help. At that particular moment, and all such moments, one either acts in concert with the overall summation of all such events, or does not. One is never under psychological pressure to maintain the summation, except the pressure of habit. Anytime one is alert to not acting from habit alone, one is free to be either selfish or not.
Anytime one is alert to not acting from habit alone, one is free to act independent of self.