how to love personas
I was always interested in people. As a young acting student our professors would tell us to go out and observe people. “Just sit on a park bench” they would say, “and really notice. Pick someone and notice. 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?” I loved this activity. I still do it. Only now it's become more like a kind of peaceful meditation practice for me. A way to easily slip into a state of wonder and curiosity. People fascinate me. I love movies, plays, shows, books, all the ways we create characters in fiction, but 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’. Some are clearly helpful, like the practice of creating alter egos to step into a state of focus and confidence like Beyonce’s Sasha Fierce or Kobe’s Black Mamba etc. Other ego states and personas may have become more unconscious. Some people can even get 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 they get challenged. It makes sense though when you consider that these personas were likely created to keep them safe initially, perhaps to help avoid a scary or overwhelming feeling. Assuming zero bad intent on behalf of your (and other people’s) less-appealing parts is a great place to start from when befriending our personas.
One thing I’ve learned in the last few years studying and working with people around personas too is that life gets a lot easier (and more fun) if you can embrace humility and manage to be curious about them - even better, amused by them. Perhaps especially when they are getting in your way. Humility and playfulness can be a glittering path leading to wisdom, discernment and choice, The formula is: curious amusement over shame. If amusement is a bridge too far then start with something smaller like an energy of exploration..
It’s a simple idea but simple doesn't mean easy. 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 our programming. For example, when I began this exploration for myself it began with a question something like this:
Why would I go against my own desires and relate to myself and people I love in ways that are almost 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 is very helpful to have a sense of humor and play 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
Learning from incredibly knowledgeable teachers/mentors /therapists & coaches on this has illuminated common threads in so many beautiful modalities. Internal Family Systems for example 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 will say that your social self is beating out your essential self or that you’re living in contraction rather than from expansion. The list goes on. One thing 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 usually from that place, you will activate other people's defensive personas or protective child parts too and…we’re off to the dance! Most would agree that ultimately though, it seems to stem from 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 issue is that 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 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 all the wise teachers say we can do about this? Firstly it is vital to involve the body in the whole thing. Which starts with…
Breathing.
Man, when people used to tell me to breathe I had my own triggered persona that wanted to punch that person right in the face. (Turns out I had a traumatized breathing pattern and I should have listened. But hey, ‘things happen when they happen’ as my friend Bones liked to say.)
The fact is, when stressed our breath is the first thing to go wonky. It doesn't even take getting truly stressed actually - a slight fear response can do it. If you look closely you’ll see people stop breathing all the time. Or they will breathe way up in their chests and you’ll see their shoulders go up and down. When you feel it in you, belly breathe. No one has to know. Tilt your pelvis back a little and inhale letting your head go up a bit and then tilt it forward a bit as you exhale - so small people can’t even tell but you’ve actually made a huge shift that greatly affects the pH and oxygen in your system, resourcing safety and resiliency in many aspects of your physiology. My rebel persona still fights it, I'm not gonna lie, but science is science.
And we’re back 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.
So in a practical sense - how do we do it? Here’s an example of what it could look like to bring curiosity to a persona and include the body in the process. Let’s say for example you’ve got a martyr persona who frequently acquiesces to others. “No, no you go ahead without me” etc. Can you zoom out and see it as just a protector with no bad intentions? See if you can switch from the stress-assessing approach of ‘why am I like this?!’ and instead play with getting to know it exactly as it is. What that looks like is instead of believing the story for example, ‘I have always had to give up what I really wanted so that everything can work - this is just who I am now’. (victimhood is a big favorite for the martyr) Can you instead breathe into the sensations of that part? What does it feel like in your body to be ‘martyr’? Access your wise adult self and observe this martyr persona with more compassion and curiosity. Connect with that part of you - the energy of the martyr as it lives in your unique bodily sensations. Check in and be curious towards the part of you. Get to know it exactly as it is. What did they really want back when they began to see the world this way? Give them a chance to reclaim some of whatever that was today and see how that feels in your body now. Involving the body in it all is critical because it’s how we literally experience life. Not analysing life but living it. Approaching any inner healing work this way fast-tracks your ability to transcend the limitations. Try asking the parts of you that you're working with things like ‘What are you most proud of?’ or ‘What do you most want?’ Feel the answers. Befriending parts in this way presents an opportunity for you to have them, rather than them having you.
As the kids say “It’s not that deep”
We all have aspects of ourselves that we can be more open and playful with - especially the ones we don’t like! Those in particular reap the greatest rewards from this approach. So try having more fun relating to your parts. See if you can enjoy building a friendly relationship with yourself (and others) based on real choice rather than the unconscious demands of unresolved personas.
Go easy. I ask all my clients now to sign a friendliness clause committing to take responsibility and be friendly towards themselves. It will likely not always feel possible and it may not be 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 more people feeling free from fear, more of the time are so needed right now. We have to fight back against culture's demands on us sometimes. 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 joyfully out from under the burden of adaptive child personas goes a long, long way towards building a life you're proud of.
This approach’s efficacy is multiplied by connection with a facilitator so book a session with me or reach out and we can see if I know other people / references that are the best fit to help you learn more.