Multiple Identities

     You know the feeling:  You are in a meeting, at a party, out to dinner, you look just the way you want to, each word you speak is the right one, conversation comes easily, you laugh at the right places, you are relaxed, you feel good about yourself and the people around you see that you are on top of your game, they gravitate toward you, it’s just great being you – the stars are aligned, the gods are with you, you have created the perfect storm. 

     But you also know this feeling:   You are in another  place, at a party, out to dinner with different friends, maybe in a meeting.  Someone asks you a question, you pause, not sure how to start, then you begin to answer but haltingly.  Now you are nervous,  starting to feel a little wet under the arms.  You try again.  No better.  The person who asked you the question tries to rescue you by rephrasing the question and then someone else jumps in to take more of the focus away from you.  You are left feeling inadequate, non-fluent, anything but smart.  Not only do you not feel like yourself,  you feel like you’ve been abducted by aliens and the imposter is posing as you – you can’t wait to get home, crawl  under the covers, hyperventilate a little and black out.   

      One person, two situations, how many identities?  And what does it matter anyway?  Who cares?  People have good days and bad days and maybe that’s all there is to it.  But, then again,  maybe it’s more complicated than just bringing your A game to one situation and your B game to another.  And, as it turns out, we all have many games to bring, a kind of A-Z alphabet soup collection of selves.  

Decades of research, including my own, indicates that the differences in how human beings act in different contexts as they assume various roles points to the notion of multiple identities –  identities that are displayed to ourselves and others due to a myriad of factors that come into play and, under the right conditions, coax one of our many selves into the limelight to display his or her unique talents (or flaws).   While it all sounds like a setting for one more of Christopher Nolan’s Dark Knight Rises movie, the concept of identity has amassed a huge scholarly following, replacing, to some degree, an historical interest in understanding who a person is by virtue of their race, class, identity and/or sexuality -- or the way two or more of these intersect.  The idea of identity is more conceptually dynamic and individually specific as it helps us drill down to a deeper level of thinking about the self and its relationship to a complex, ever-changing social world in which we live.  If we do, in fact, have many different people living inside of us, what could that mean for change and self-growth?  What could that mean for those of us who are committed to a never-ending I-Quest?   Hopefully, I can figure out some answers before the next blog entry.

January 3, 2013

     I’m already sick and the new year just started – usually I try to wait until I need a few days off from work and then get sick.  I think it’s  a classic example of mind-body connection but it could be a coincidence or it could just be a simple virus -- I have a tendency to always go the more complicated route.

 

       I love theory and, lately, identity theory has consumed my thinking. I have spent most of my professional life (lives) in departments of literacy, teacher education and communication.  In places like this, academics like to say things like:  people are  “socially constructed”.  We also like to use cool phrases like "ecologically valid" and "internalization of dialogue", two of my favorites, _________ and, believe it or not, they are both meaningful and useful. One interesting thing about the way our specialized disciplinary language shapes up is that it often comes into being  in reaction to an opposite idea.  The "social construction" idea, though, is the one I want to stay with because it is so foundational to  I-Quest and personal change.

    The concept of becoming  a particular kind of person through a process of "social construction" basically means we can't become anyone by ourselves (individual as the opposite of social).  Imagine on the day you were born, your misguided parents put you in a room by yourself and had no contact with you until you were, say, ten years old.  With all good intentions, your weird parents did not want to interfere with your "unique development", they wanted you to become "who you were meant to be" and  "fulfill your God-given talents" and other unexamined colloquialisms that people say every day.  But, of course, you guessed the problem -- you turn out to be even more weird than your parents.  Basically, this means that people don’t just automatically become who they are, they are pulled, folded, tucked and hammered into a certain shape through their interactions with others – during conversations, the way people act toward them (or ignore them), labels they are given, attributes others use to describe them, until we start to become well, a real human being. We are used to thinking of more or less mainstream (middle class, White) parenting in which we guide, direct, listen, interact, share values, rituals, specific family practices, etc. as allowing our children to "become who they want to be" or  even "allowing them to follow their interests".  While, all the time, they are immersed every second of every waking moment in a hubbub of social activity filled with social interactions of every imaginable kind -- other children, relatives of every age, babysitters, siblings, TV, videos, games, etc.  There is nothing individual about growing up.  And not only do we, as parents, have great influence over who our children become, we intend to have as much influence as possible -- we really DO want our kids to be certain kinds of people (loving, industrious, good moral/ethical values, polite, clean, etc.) and so we pay very close attention to how we engineer their environments hoping to have a monstrous impact on who they become.   Obviously, social and cultural environments are not the entire story but I'm trying to make the case that they are crucial overriding components and they are the components over which we have some control.

     Focusing on the idea of  other people and their interactions with us as a huge idea in identity and self-change, if you are still working on those resolutions, consider the people you are surrounding yourself with -- who are you interacting with around your goals?  Do they have similar goals?  Who can you talk to on  a regular basis about what you are trying to achieve?  Who will celebrate with you those small, daily and weekly accomplishments that will add up to a BIG WIN?  Social/cultural variables count; if you are interested in change, consider the social circumstances (including people) in which you are attempting it.  A new identity or reshaping of an old one depends on as Gordon Wells, sociolinguistic, likes to say -- the company you keep.

I-Quest:  Happy New Year!

An Identity-Quest is the process of consciously developing an understanding of your multiple identities and how to refine them over time.

    

     I think January 1 is the most symbolically powerful day in the entire year.  It signals hope.  It signals change.  It is, as they say, the first day of the rest of your life.  Big stuff.  Huge.  Monumental.  This is the day, consciously or unconsciously, most people hope to become different, better, transformed.  Somehow life will be just a little happier.  Some of us map it out carefully like we are about to journey to the rainforests of South America – make it sustainable!  Breathtaking!  Eco-friendly! A file or notebook full of lists will make the journey perfect. Others just name the changes they want:  Lose weight, stop smoking, be kinder, be more assertive, relax, spend more time with family, etc.  Turns out both approaches are superficial and in the end are  about as effective as Bob Newhardt’s TV psychiatrist advice to a woman who is terrified of being buried alive in a box:  “Just Stop it!”    The sad reality is that most people who start the new year with a resolution to do something or to be different, end up failing.  And it’s not because they aren’t trying hard enough, often it’s because they are counting on a strategy that cannot work – will power.  Oliver Burkeman, a psychologist, argues that will power is a “depletable resource”.  He says that the more of it you use making one change, the less you’ll have left over to make others.  Or maybe because you are exhausted from the mental effort, constantly thinking about what you are trying to change – I remember a friend of mine in college saying that when she was on a diet and wanted to think about anything but food, that is all she thought about.  Or maybe it’s because change is just more complicated than that.

     The idea of will power doesn’t get to the heart of what is known about personal, permanent change.  It’s way helpful to know how you got to be the way you are in the first place – understanding a little about the influences, tools and even processes that have made you who you are will, in turn, make them available to you to enact real, substantive transformation. That is part of the I-Quest project I hope to share and explore with you in this blog.  Self-change is not about a simple series of behaviors, doing something different.  That is a small part for sure but behaviors have to reflect deeper, inner shifts.  The real deal lies in the assumptions you make about who you should be when you step into one of the many different social roles you play in your life:   as a professional, a friend, a mother/father, wife/husband, a daughter/son, a lover, etc.  What it means to be a mother, a husband, a daughter, a sister, a professional, etc. are identities that  have been constructed over time through ongoing, daily, interactive experiences with others.  We learn how to be a mother from watching mothers and interacting with our own. From the time we are born, the incredible number of social and cultural interactions in which we are involved on a daily basis begin to take root and say  how we should put ourselves together.  People construct understandings of how they should be in the world.  But what has been constructed can be deconstructed and reconstructed so that we can always become a new version of ourselves -- one we are more satisfied with and ultimately one more aligned with who we have always wanted to be. 

     Let’s go back to making resolutions on this super-duper important day; to start with,  you do not want a long list of resolutions.  One, two, three at the most and it’s better if they are connected – that they live together in the same identity.  For example, if the outcome you want for this year is to be a healthier person, then, nutrition and exercise naturally belong together (less stress and other things might also go in this category but it may be too much to take on all together and living a less stressed life could be one cool result of the other two).  One of the biggest issues is to start right away by focusing on your identity of being a person who is healthy – “I am someone who (fill in the blank) – eats fresh fruit and vegetables  every day, someone who monitors and controls the number of calories I eat, exercises 30 minutes 4-5 times a week, is aware of current thinking regarding nutrition, etc.  This is your, unique identity and, so, make it work for you, make sure it feels right, that it resonates with you, it’s really who you want to become. Writing about this new self can sometimes make an enormous difference and fuel a process of change that will inevitably take time. I have many journals and computer files of personal writing; each morning I grab one and do what I call “Writing Myself into the Day”.  Sometimes the writing is just affirmations of my strengths and successes but the focus is usually on the identity I am currently working on, how a person like that would think, how they would talk, and actions that would project someone who is really like that. People who are becoming healthy, for example, never say they are on a diet because that is almost always a short term thing, rather, they articulate other identity-related comments like:  “I don’t think sugar is that healthy (and I'm a healthy person) so I’ll skip the cookie for now.”  Identities are complex and don’t come into being quickly.  Stay focused, reflect on how you want to perform this particular part of yourself.  And remember one of my favorite quotes:  “Even if you stumble, you’re still moving forward.”