When you meet a client for the first time, you don’t actually meet the person, you meet the persona. You meet the person’s mask, which he uses to represent himself or himself to others. Behind that persona, though, is the real person, who is often buried deep inside. And sometimes, the person doesn’t even know herself or himself as a person, only as a persona. Now, a person’s persona can be a safe place to help them control their ideas, feelings, and actions in the real world. Because of this, we all make up different identities and use them when we move into different groups. This isn’t bad by itself, but it can be used in bad ways.
But a person’s persona may protect them in some ways, but it can also make them seem fake, and if they do it too much, it can even make them seem less like themselves. That is, someone can get so lost in their persona that they forget who they are. “Who am I besides the parts I play?” “Who or what am I in truth?” Clients sometimes ask these kinds of questions when they come to coaching.
Coaching, on the other hand, is a call to be real by its very nature. In coaching, we ask people to get out from behind their identities and be themselves. We do a lot of matching and pacing with our clients to build trust and a strong sense of connection. This makes the teaching room a safe place where people can come out from behind themselves. It’s a safe place to show who you really are and find out who you really are.
The persona often covers or hides a person’s features. The more a person’s features are covered, the less we know about who they are. Masks are good for hiding behind, but bad for getting to know someone. When people hide behind their identities or get lost in them, it hurts their relationships. So why do people keep up a character and hide behind it? The main reason is that stepping out from behind the image feels scary and risky.
What are people afraid of? Most of the time, it’s a fear of one’s inner self, and most of the time, that fear comes from having low self-esteem. If a person’s value or worth depends on putting on a confident front based on money, salary, possessions, standing, strength, beauty, or anything else, then being a person without any of those things makes them feel weak.
“Upon what basis can I be myself? On what basis can I accept myself, can others accept me? I need to make myself worthy and show that I am a ‘somebody.”
Conditional self-esteem is a weakness that this kind of person has. That’s the problem. This is the frame that makes people afraid of being open, afraid of being weak, and afraid of being rejected. The frame is the problem, not the person. The person doesn’t know who the person really is. That person is important and valuable just because he or she is “a human being.” This is what Carl Rogers meant when he said that it is our job to show “unconditional positive regard.”
But, of course, we all live in societies that don’t immediately give “unconditional positive regard.” After a certain age, kids, teens, and adults are all seen as people who need to show themselves. So we grade people. We put people in groups. We rate people. And when we do that, we mix up two very different ideas. We get the ideas of personal worth and value and social worth and value mixed up. We believe that a person’s social value is the same as their personal value. That’s where people get the idea that if they meet X and Y standards, they will be important and “somebody.”
This is usually one of the most basic and basic things to teach as a difference. Because almost no one grows up without this confusion and because it is the basis for almost everything a person wants to do to be his or her best, you should talk to all of your clients about it. Accept the persona to get to the person, and teach the person to value himself or herself for what he or she is, no matter what. Here is where personal growth starts.
Curated by Danielle Tan.
Reference:
- [Certified_meta-coach] 2023 Morpheus #19 PERSON AND PERSONA by L. Michael Hall, Ph.D. Executive Director, ISNS.
