Personas update

January 23, 2024

Dear Leland and Everett,

Today I want to provide an update on the persona work I’ve been doing. I introduced you to my first several personas when talking about my early visions here. 

Since that vision I’ve discovered three more personas that have made their way into my ‘Tribal Council’:

• Too Much: fears that I am too big, that my personality is too big, and tries to protect me by keeping me from crossing socially acceptable thresholds. I was very large growing up, and had a very large personality. I eventually learned that my large size and large personality could intimidate others. Sometimes others reacted with particular hostility when my presence intimidated them. I often did not realize when I was scaring or making others uncomfortable. Over time, Too Much emerged as my solution, vigilantly monitoring my behavior and reminding me to reign myself in before I made others uncomfortable. 
• It’s Fine: is deeply attuned to others’ needs, knows that I am healthy and agreeable, and assumes that I can sacrifice my wants and needs on behalf of others. 
• 7th Grade football player: was afraid to hurt others, to show aggression, to fight to win. I played football in the 7th grade. I don’t believe my team won any games that year, though we did come close once. On the final play of that game, the coach called a pass play for me (I played tight end). I got open, caught the ball, and ran down the sideline with one player in close pursuit. I stopped running in the hopes that the other player would run past me, allowing me to run into the end zone for the winning score. But by stopping I allowed other players to catch up, and these players collectively tackled me about a yard short of the goal line as the game ended. What’s particularly frustrating is that the player in close pursuit was much smaller than I was; I could easily have run him over and scored. Over time, that play stuck in my psyche as evidence that I was unwilling to run over others, in fear that I might hurt them.

You might notice that with the 7th Grader I used the past tense in describing him. In fact, I’ve repurposed the 7th Grader. First I spent some time accepting that football can be a violent game, that there is nothing intrinsically wrong with being larger than my opponent, and that there is nothing wrong with using that size to my advantage. Further, accepted that because football is a violent game, some people get hurt playing (and they take the risk of getting hurt by playing), and that I can live with the consequences of hurting others so long as I play within the rules. Said differently: in middle age, I finally came to accept that I should have just flattened that other kid and scored. What this allowed me to do was repurpose the 7th Grader and give him opportunities to practice ‘flattening’ others. Now when someone gets in my way, when appropriate I unleash that 7th Grade persona and ask him to run over that roadblock. In practice, that looks like achieving a goal rather than overcomplicating it, asking for forgiveness rather than permission, and allowing others to stop me only when they have the power to do so. I won’t pretend that I live the prior sentence all the time, but I find that repurposing the persona allows me to find a better balance between pursuing what I want and helping others achieve what they want.

The idea of repurposing a persona has helped me turn several of them from disempowering to empowering:

• My codependent persona is now tasked with helping me identify more consciously when others are acting out of fear or sadness, so that (instead of scrambling tirelessly to help them avoid a negative emotion) I might help them identify the emotion for what it is: an opportunity to heal.
• The professor is currently assigned with helping me figure out how to understand my spiritual and emotional learnings so that I might bring them into the hyper-logical world I inhabit.
• Sgt Get it Done is on sabbatical, earning a much-deserved rest. I anticipate he will be called upon again, but after years of overuse and fatigue he is recuperating. 
• Snot nose is responsible for helping me identify when others are acting out of fear of getting kicked out of the tribe, so that I might look for opportunities to ease that fear.
• Leper is responsible for helping me identify when others are showing signs of feeling ultimately unloveable, so that I might help them bring that hidden belief into their awareness.

All of my personas originally emerged as ways to help me protect myself from pain, but developed patterns that no longer served me. Over the years, each developed highly attuned skills; rather than try to discharge them (an idea I doubted would work), I thought it would be more useful to assign each a more productive use for their skills. Overall I find repurposing my personas has helped me turn self-defeating habits into more productive habits. 

You might have noticed that It’s Fine and Too Much are yet to find a new purpose. The truth is that I’m still working with these personas. It’s Fine is practicing standing up for what I want, an act I still find deeply uncomfortable; what I am finding useful is not to denigrate or attack what others want, nor to try to convince others’ that my wants are more important than theirs. If I can articulate and advocate for what I want without the rest, I find I am often able to achieve far better compromise than when I just suppress my needs and wants in service of others. 

Too Much is the part of myself still needing the most work; it’s the persona that still feels the most disconnected from the rest of me. My sense here is that as I step into authenticity and wholeness, my biggest remaining fear is that others will find that I am Too loud, Too emotional, Too disorganized, Too messy, Too Much drama, Too Much effort, and just generally Too Much of everything to be worth the trouble. Said differently, I fear that being fully and authentically me will be Too Much trouble, and that others (in particularly the people I love most) will turn away. 

What is odd and hard to describe is the pull I feel toward healing and integration. I feel called to heal, to live life as wholly and authentically me. For better and worse, this means embracing and integrating Too Much. This means being me, even when Too Much fears that I am being Too Much for others to handle. I don’t know what it will mean to integrate Too Much authentically, but I do know that the idea still brings deep discomfort. 

Interestingly, I’m sensing that after going into a metaphorical cave to heal, I am now being called out of the cave and back out into the world. The first steps out of the cave are meant to continue the healing journey, but to heal in relationship. Too Much is hard to heal in isolation: one cannot really be Too Much for oneself. I can only be Too Much around others. 

Said differently, I am feeling the invitation to come out of the cave fully and authentically me. I sense that revealing my authentic self will somehow extend the invitation to others to heal and to live in wholeness. I’m still working toward how I integrate Too Much (or at least the aspects Too Much has been tasked with suppressing), and sense this is where I will be spending time in the coming days and weeks as I come out of the cave and reveal myself into the world anew. Wish me luck.

I love you,

Dad