The following is not an exhaustive list, and context and positioning matter, so these aren't sure-fire signs that the ego is in charge, but they might be an indicator. All of these terms and ideas can be used legitimately, so it requires some self-examination to see whether the dynamic indicated is at play.
For a number of years, I got worse not better as I engaged in the type of discourse and perspective described below. Fortunately, I eventually broke down and adopted the different way offered by the AA Big Book. My ego naturally plays up on a daily basis, and will continue to do so for the rest of my life, but I'm now a little more aware of its operation, and I definitely know whose side I am on.
Starting off the childhood narrative with clinical descriptions of family members (narcissistic, co-dependent): Firstly, the family background is largely irrelevant to my story, at least in an AA setting (the Al-Anon story is a different matter); many AA members grew up in regular families; many non-alcoholics grow up in unhappy families; many people who are not unhappy at all grow up in unhappy families. Secondly, the use of clinical or psychological terms dehumanises: the mother who is a worrier is far more human than the diagnosed co-dependent. Thirdly, this approach presents me as the clinician performing the psychological evaluation. They're in the petri dish, and I'm poking at them. My relationships with family members were at their worst when I adopted this position.
Use of the word toxic of people or relationships: If I touch something toxic and become poisoned, the fault is the toxic thing, not me; if I'm in a toxic relationship, I'm fine; it's the relationship that's the problem. The placement of responsibility outside myself, combined with the demonisation of others, tells me that the ego is busy embedding itself. The same principle applies with the overuse of the term abusive. I would use this of others but be very chary of using it of myself. That's a sign that there's something up.
Reference to 'masks' and the 'discovery of the authentic self' or similar: This dissociates responsibility for the 'mask' self. Unfortunately, this 'mask' was all too real to others, and they had to live with it. This false self is a real and almost demonic power. Not just a mask: an occupier, a parasite, responsible, in aggregate, for most of the horrors of the world. Secondly, no 'self' is authentic. All individualisation, from the point of view of the individual, is egoic. We can view the uniqueness of others with impunity; as soon as I start to gaze upon the uniqueness of myself, I'm going down a dangerous path. What the programme asks me to be interested in is doing God's will: that requires the hollowing-out of self. Now, in doing God's will, I do develop something of an identity and a personality, but that's a mere function of doing God's will, and rightly perceptible only by others. As soon as I'm looking at myself, trying to discover myself, I've stopped looking for God's will; I've stopped being and acting in the world; I'm actually rebuilding the ego. The enthronement of the true, authentic self, as the arbiter of right and wrong, as the reference point for decision-making, as the moral barometer, is solipsistic idolatry, pure and simple.
References to people-pleasing and 'being what others want to me to be': I never asked others what would please them or what they wanted me to be. Furthermore, the people in question were far from pleased with me. If I was a people-pleaser, I wasn't a very good one. I personally find avowed people-pleasers very annoying to be around. They don't please me. Whom do they please, I wonder? In presenting my behaviour as being for conditioned by the desire to please others, I was very effectively denying my own egoic objectives. In reality, I was not remotely interested in others' pleasure or others' desires. I was interested in me. Whilst I blamed others in this way for my behaviour, there was no way to effectively take responsibility, as the underlying motivations were still at play, operating under cover of darkness.
Use of the word 'safe' in situations with no physical threat or 'survival' in situations with no threat of fatality: If you attack me physically, I will suffer physically regardless of mental state. If you attack me psychologically, I have full responsibility for whether or not that damages me. Describing past and present situations as 'unsafe' when what I mean is that X and Y do something and I don't like it denies responsibility. Pure projection. There's a dramatisation, also, of using the words 'safe' and 'survival' when there is no physical threat. When I use these illegitimately, I absolutely love being the hero–victim of the narrative. I can almost smell the grease-paint.
Active dislike of the word 'defect': The ego does not like the notion that there is something wrong with my beliefs, thinking, or behaviour. Why? Because the defective beliefs, thinking, and behaviour are literally it: the ego's primary manifestations. To see them as the problem is to see the ego as the problem and the elimination of the ego as the solution, and the ego is very chary of allowing its death warrant to be presented to me, let alone me signing it. Furthermore, accepting that I have responsibility for my life entails acceptance that I have defects of character. Step Three is predicated not only on powerlessness over alcohol but the recognition that I'm profoundly selfish and that that selfishness will kill me. It's impossible to hold this idea in mind whilst still writhing in squeamishness over the word 'defect'. It's quite right that the defects are not the person, but that's entailed by the fact that they're removable: if anything were inalienably part of me, it could not be removed. But this is a simple idea to explain and adopt, and this small hurdle should not stand in the way of me running the race.
Characterisation of 'defects' as 'defences': Defence entails attack. Who is doing the attacking? Others. So others attack but I defend? Others are mean, malicious, malevolent, but I'm justifiably defending myself? So they started it? They're the persecutor? I'm the victim? My sponsor says that what appears to be other people's misbehaviour is their response to my character defects. And around in a circle it goes. If I'm 'defending', then they're 'defending', but then there is no attack, and the whole structure collapses. The circle can be broken only if I accept active responsibility. Again, the notion of defences represents a projection outward of the problem and a denial of personal accountability. If the defence is working, it should not be dropped, as the attack will get through. If the defence is not working, it's not a defence. A defence is therefore something that must remain exactly as it is.
Denial of moral responsibility: Step Four requires me to take moral responsibility. This entails the guilt produced by my conscience plus developing the keen sense of obligation to do God's will. Guilt and 'shoulds' are therefore part and parcel of living in a moral world, where I am a moral agent. Casting all guilt and the attendant low self-worth as pathological and actively expunging all 'shoulds' then leave me in an amoral world where, rather than doing what is right, I'm left doing what I want to do, and I'm back with the ego on the throne. Note that Step Four is a moral inventory. Without the acceptance of the principle of moral responsibility, there is no framework for the Step Four, let alone the examination of wrongs, defects, and shortcomings in Steps Five, Six, and Seven. Imagine saying to someone in Step Nine: I shouldn't have stolen your money / taken your things / gossiped / said cruel things / put myself first: I was just defending myself ... against YOU.
Denial of God: Now, this is a delicate matter, because it's perfectly possible for human beings to have a very spiritual life without a personified god in charge. I'm not an expert in religion, but I'm told there are religions without a god. Obviously it's up to everyone what higher power they have and what spiritual path they follow. However, for many years, I did not have a personalised god, rather a sterilised, abstract higher power. Not God; a god. The conception was a theoretical cardboard cut-out. Why? I did not want to accept the existence of a higher reality, and I did not want to accept that someone else was ultimately in charge, to whom I was accountable. Why? I was the god of my life, and my physical existence was the proof that I was the centre of the universe. The self-consciousness of the 'authentic self' (see above) was the substitute for the Other, who would require me to be hollowed out, to become the translucent vessel. As indicated above, it's quite possible for people to proceed spiritually without a relationship with a personal god; my own experience—and I've seen this mirrored in others in recovery—is that this is very hard to do for someone with as fulminant and persistent an ego as mine. The choice of a religion or spiritual practice from a complete different culture (often an appropriated, watered-down, sanitised, and thinned-out version of that religion or spiritual practice rather than the religion or spiritual practice as actually practised in its original setting, with all of the eccentricity, sheer bizarreness, superstition, cooky metaphysical ideas, cosmology, luridness, gore, and ego-challenging concepts of a fully-fledged religion) is often the booby-prize, the fake ID to get one through the door, the decoy, the alibi, the substitute, the resuscitation class dummy.
The idolisation of pain and suffering: Aspects of recovery are obviously painful at times; aspects of life are obviously painful at times. In the past, I've worshipped pain as a sign that something real is happening, as a persistent rite of passage; the crucifixion in which I suffer and die because of the sins of others. I would perceive something noble in this. There is nothing noble in pain I'm causing myself through false beliefs and false perceptions or, even worse, immorality. Fear can dribble on forever. Cowardice has an expiry date.
What's the answer? Start at the very beginning of the Big Book and work through it with a sponsor.