personas
As a young acting student in London back in the 90’s our professor told us to go out and observe people. “Just sit on a park bench” they said, “and notice. Pick someone. How do they hold themselves? What are their mannerisms? What can you infer from it all? Could you play them? How are they like you? How are they different? Why?”
Even now on summer days having lunch in busy parks in other cities, I recall the exercise fondly. These days I think it’s just nice to enjoy the relaxation of common spaces. It’s a way to slip into a state of wonder and curiosity. People are fascinating to me. It’s why we create such rich characters for our fictional worlds and in my career today I see more and more how we do it in our real lives too.
We all have different people we ‘play’. Aspects of us that we bring forward or parts of us that we created to help us get through life. Psychologists call them ‘personas’. Many are incredibly useful, as in the practice of crafting an alter ego to step into a state of focus and confidence. Beyonce’s Sasha Fierce or Kobe’s Black Mamba.
Other ego states and personas have become more unconscious, created to cope with and avoid fear/anger/sadness etc from the past. Some people may become so deeply identified with their more unhelpful personas and spend so much time inhabiting them that they kind of take over. The down side of over-identifying with personas in this way is that people can get stuck. “I can’t change this is just who I am” could be a common response if challenged.
But if change is wanted, assuming zero bad intent on behalf of less-appealing parts is a great place to start.
One thing I know from studying and working with people around personas is that life gets a lot easier (and more fun) if you can embrace humility and manage to be curious about them - even better, be amused by them. Perhaps especially when they are getting in your way. Humility and playfulness can be a glittering path toward wisdom, discernment and choice. The formula is; curious amusement over shame. If amusement is a bridge too far then start with something smaller, like a lightly-held energy of open-minded exploration.
The payoff is worth it. You get to uncover more of who you uniquely are and that is everything. Committing to experiencing life and expressing yourself as the most genuine version of you always reaps surprising rewards. Because without the false stories and protective mechanisms, we are all made up of overwhelmingly positive traits. It’s the gift of our shared humanity.
Engaging curiosity while questioning our own personas helps to uncover who we really are underneath the programming. For example, when I began this exploration in myself it began with a question something like this:
Why do I sometimes against my own desires and relate to people I love in ways that are certainly not going to get me the thing I am after?
…Okay why did I do it again? …Whoa, why did I do it that time!?
(Even when we uncover and get to know our personas it can take committing and re-committing again and again to the actions required to move beyond them so it helps to have a sense of humor about it. ;)
“Scientists have recently determined that it takes approximately 400 repetitions to create a new synapse in the brain—unless it is done with play, in which case, it takes between 10 and 20 repetitions.”
— Dr. Karyn Purvis
The study of personas over time has illuminated common threads. Jung, who popularized the concept, stated that the goal of working with personas is “to develop a more realistic, flexible persona that helps us navigate in society but does not collide with nor hide the true self.”
Many modalities address harmful personas (the ones that do hide the true self) in their own ways. Internal Family Systems might say that you are acting from a “protector part”, Relational Life Therapy may say it’s your “adaptive child”, showing up to keep you safe. Many agree that your social self is beating out your essential self or say that you’re living in contraction rather than expansion. In fear as opposed to love. The list goes on.
One descriptor you’ve certainly heard is “triggered”.
Whatever you call it - you’re relating to yourself or others in ways that are just not gonna work. Because from that place, odds are your energy will activate other people's defenses or protective parts too and it’s off to the dance!
Ultimately the problem stems from a very natural coping mechanism. A strategy developed to avoid an intolerable emotion in the past. Useful at the time. But if it’s not useful anymore then it may be time to open up and create some room so that more of who you truly are can participate in life again.
Physiologically when we get triggered the prefrontal cortex has gone offline, the right brain is acquiescing to the left and adrenaline has flooded our systems. All of that has completely jacked up the ability to check yourself before you wreck yourself. You’ve shifted into a subcortical, primal, survival state, initiating knee-jerk reactions from fight, flight, freeze. The big picture gets lost. Wise adults have ridden a wave of adrenaline into a sea of victimhood and blame. Or at the very least made it challenging to find a way out of whatever story of otherness that is now certainly occurring. You become an island - fiercely independent and battling to prove you’re right. And likely criticizing someone else's island too. Rude. ;)
So what do we do about it?
In my work I have come to see that personality itself is malleable and change is possible when the unhealed experiences, programmed beliefs and subconscious patterns are integrated and resolved. When that happens, personalities transform organically.
Side-note: Keeping an open heart towards other peoples triggered, angry or reactive parts too can help make space to not take their behavior personally. Asking yourself what they must have lived through to be showing up this way can help maintain a critical element in effective communication: equity.
So here’s an example of what it could look like to bring curiosity to a persona and include the body in the process.
Say for example that when you’re upset you have a tendency to act like a martyr who frequently acquiesces to others. “No, no you go ahead without me” etc.
Can you see it as just a protective mechanism you might use to avoid the pain of feeling unappreciated for example? When you learn to catch it, play with being kinder to yourself.
Instead of the default self-shaming approach of ‘why am I like this?!’ Gently recognize that you might be believing a false or outdated story, as in ‘I have always had to give up what I really wanted so that everyone else could be happy. This is just who I am now’. (Victimhood is a big favorite for the martyr.) That story may have felt true in the past. But what if you are ready to go after what you want now? What if you want to enjoy feeling all the ways in which you are deeply appreciated? Then believing that story today is no longer useful.
So if you catch yourself behaving from that place and manage to zoom out, you’re already ahead of the game. Then take a moment and breathe. What does it feel like in your body to be ‘martyr’? Can you access your wise adult self to observe this martyr persona with more humor, compassion and curiosity? Connect with the emotions of that part rather than rejecting them. Embrace the discomfort and move your body. Walk around the room as a magnified version of them until you laugh out loud. Play. Allow the true emotions contained there to move freely without judgement.
Ultimately living life in healthy relationship with ourselves and others beats getting stuck over-analyzing ourselves. Approaching healing work this way can fast-track your ability to transcend inner limitations.
Befriending your personas in this way presents an opportunity for you to have them, rather than them having you.
We all have aspects of ourselves that we can be more open and playful with - especially the ones we don’t like! It helps to remember that change is natural. As the kids say “It’s not that deep!”
So experiment. Try on having more fun relating to your parts. See if you can enjoy building a friendly relationship with yourself (and others) based on positive intention rather than the unconscious demands of unresolved personas.
Which leads us back as always to curiosity. It’s the key to love. Self-love, loving others, creating democracy, it's the key to the whole kingdom. Because If you're truly curious, you are open and that means you aren't judging, you're exploring. There's equity there. And we are all innately equally valuable. Babies do not have to prove their value. On a human level, equality always.
People push back on that idea. They want rankings. Which shouldn't surprise anyone since we’ve lived in a patriarchal culture for long, but I hold onto hope that it can change as more and more people are endeavoring to live more consciously. Relating from equity is a superpower for success at the game of life and curiosity is how you win.
Finally, go easy. I ask all my clients now to sign a friendliness clause committing to take responsibility and be friendly towards themselves. It will not always feel possible or easy to do, so making a conscious commitment to it helps. It also makes it easier to re-commit to friendliness when fault-finding and negative projections rear their heads again. We’re human.
“People thrive in a climate of 100% accountability, where nobody blames or claims victim status. 100% responsibility is the shift from ‘I was wronged’ to ‘I take full responsibility for events occurring the way they did’. From this empowered position, problems can be solved quickly, because time and energy are not squandered in a fruitless attempt to find fault.”
—The Hendricks Institute
The natural benefits of people being liberated from fear is needed right now. Culture demands a lot of us sometimes so building capacity to show up fully resourced and able to respond healthily is vital. It’s not a perfect science and life will keep presenting challenges as we all know. But the ability to experience more of your authentic self and to express yourself fully, out from under the burden of adaptive personas goes a long, long way towards building a life you're proud of.
Guidance is invitational, for adults, and not a substitute for professional medical advice so if you think you need that, I can recommend someone. I am #notadoctor ;)