IIC 16: Who Am I, Really? Identity and Resiliency

We look at identity — different aspects of identity and how they connect to the fall in the garden of Eden. We also discuss the psychological impact of original sin on integration and on identity, and there is an exercise to help you access unconscious aspects of your identity.

[00:00:13] Welcome to the podcast Coronavirus Crisis Carpe Diem, where you and I rise up and embrace the possibilities and opportunities for spiritual and psychological growth in this time of crisis, all grounded in a Catholic worldview. We are going beyond just resiliency to rising up to the challenges of this pandemic and becoming even healthier in the natural and spiritual realms than we were before. I’m clinical psychologist Peter Malinoski. I am honored to be with you, however long it takes to get through this journey and beyond. I’m your host and guide with Souls and Hearts at soulsandhearts.com. Thank you for being here with me. This is episode 16 released on May 18th, 2020 entitled Who am I, Really? Identity and Resiliency. In the last episode, we discussed the main sign of psychological health. You remember what that was? I asked you to send in your thoughts about what that main sign was in the Resilient Catholics Carpe Diem community space at Souls and Hearts, which we launched about a week ago. I was having a great exchange with Kathleen, which spurred me on to some further considerations about integration, resiliency, and especially identity, especially identity. So I really want to shoutout, give a thank you to Kathleen for that exchange. And let’s get into this whole question of, who am I really? Who am I really? All right. So I’m going to take you back. We’re going to go back all the way back to the beginning of human history.

[00:01:53] Come on with me to Genesis three. We’re going to pick it up in the middle of the story. Adam and Eve have already fallen to Satan’s temptation. They’ve eaten the fruit of the tree of knowledge of good and evil. And let’s listen to the story. But I want you to be thinking about the theme of identity, who Adam and Eve were, and also in those moments, how they saw themselves, what they assumed about themselves immediately post-Fall. That’s what I want you to keep in mind. Okay. So put your listening ears on and get ready. It’s story time with Dr. Peter. “Then the eyes of both were opened and they knew that they were naked. And they sewed fig leaves together and made themselves aprons. And they heard the sound of the Lord God walking in the garden in the cool of the day. And the man and his wife hid themselves from the presence of the Lord among the trees of the garden. But the Lord God called to the man and said to him, ‘Where are you?’ And he said, ‘I heard the sound of thee in the garden. And I was afraid, because I was naked, and I hid myself.'” Okay. Identity. Immediately post-Fall, sin has entered the world. What do we see? We see a radical shift in both who Adam and Eve really were. Who they objectively were, right? They had been in a state of grace.

[00:03:43] Now they’ve fallen into sin. Sin has entered the world, right? So we’ve got a shift in the absolute reality of who they are. But also, we have a radical shift in how Adam and Eve see themselves. They hear God walking in the garden, gently calling out to them, and God, you know, being all-knowing, he knew exactly where Adam and Eve were. This wasn’t some, you know, kind of search for them. He knew. But in his gentleness, in his consideration for them, in their distress, in their agitation, in their fear, he didn’t want to startle them. He didn’t want to disconcert them any more. He didn’t want to cause any more suffering than they were already experiencing. He was calling out to them to let them know he was coming. So what was their response? The response, fear, welled up in them and they hid. They hid from him. Why? You have to understand that their identities at that point were devastated. Think about what just happened. It’s really difficult to underestimate the catastrophic psychological effects of the fall. It’s easier to see the effects of the Fall in the Garden of Eden, the effects of original sin coming into the world on the human body, that’s much more obvious, right? Because we see death enter the world. Originally, we were never intended to die. Death enters the world. Physical dysfunction. Right? Things don’t work. Aging, pain, different kinds of physical sufferings, pain in childbirth, human labor enter the world.

[00:05:31] All of this stuff is now part of the new reality. I’m going to argue by analogy that as radical and as catastrophic and devastating the impact of original sin was on the human body, similarly, it was devastating on the human psyche. It was devastating for us psychologically. We don’t see it as clearly. The contrast isn’t as great because we don’t really have a sense of what it would be like if we were perfectly psychologically ordered. We can imagine more easily what it would be like if our bodies were more perfectly ordered. It’s harder for us to imagine what it would be like if we were more perfectly psychologically ordered. All right, so let’s get back to this theme of identity. Identity. I’m going to make a distinction between subjective identity and objective identity. Now subjective identity includes the experiences and how we recall those experiences of our lives, our close relationships, the values that come together to form one’s subjective sense of self. You might say subjective identity is how we feel ourselves to be in the given moment. For some, that sense of identity may be more consistent and stable. Others may experience more variations from that day to day, hour to hour, even minute to minute. But the critical thing about subjective identity is it is how we experience ourselves. It’s how we experience ourselves that’s contrasted with our objective identity, right? Our objective identity is who we actually are, how God sees us, how he knows us to be.

[00:07:22] It’s the reality of who we are. And that objective identity doesn’t depend at all on our opinions of ourselves or anybody else’s opinion of us, for that matter. All right. So we’ve got subjective identity, objective identity. Now it gets one more distinction I want to make within subjective identity, right? There’s our conscious subjective identity. That is who we profess ourselves to be, who we think we are consciously in our awareness, in our thoughts. And then there is our unconscious subjective identity. There are parts of us that hold assumptions about us that are not always available in conscious awareness. But there are moments when these unconscious assumptions are revealed to us. They break into conscious awareness, sometimes only for fleeting moments. That happens particularly when we are stressed, when we’re tired, when we’re overwhelmed, or when we’re particularly open to understanding who we really are or who we really believe ourselves to be at the unconscious level. These moments, when our defenses open up, and some of what we keep out of awareness starts bubbling up. That’s our unconscious, subjective identity. All right, so let’s look at an example. Do you guys remember the boasting traveler from Aesop’s Fable in the last episode, episode 15? You know, the one who bragged about how he made this most prodigious leap in the city of Rhodes? All right. That traveler was troubled with narcissism.

[00:09:04] And we reviewed last time in that last episode how narcissism reflects a deep sense of inferiority, weakness, shame, inadequacy. Remember how the boasting traveler did not have that in his conscious awareness? These were unconscious beliefs that he was inadequate, that he was inferior. But they existed. Just because he wasn’t aware of them didn’t mean they didn’t exist. They still existed, and they still motivated his behavior. They motivated his behavior to try to impress others, to puff himself up. But then what happened? A bystander punctured this puffed up presentation. He challenged the boasting traveler, challenged that boast, and he may well have deflated him, you know, brought him into contact with his own assumptions about his inadequacy, that is, his subjective sense of his identity in the unconscious. Another example of unconscious, subjective assumptions about ourselves. Let’s take a look. What could that be? Let’s look at dependency. Dependent people may not be in touch, or they may be in touch, but often they’re not in touch with their deep unconscious beliefs that they will only have their needs met if they are subordinated to a more powerful other person. They need that other person, that other powerful person, to make themselves whole or complete. That’s the unconscious, the often unconscious assumption. Sometimes that comes into conscious awareness, but a lot of times it’s not available there. Every personality style, every personality disorder has implications for our identity. It has implications for our subjective sense of identity and our conscious or unconscious assessments of ourselves.

[00:10:55] So in a word, every personality style reflects assumptions about our identity. So let’s break this concept of identity down into just a little more fine-grained analysis. Come with me as we go just a little bit deeper into this. As we said before, objective identity is who we actually are, how God knows us to be, the reality of who we are. It doesn’t depend on our opinion of ourselves, you know? And this isn’t as much in fashion these days, this concept of objective reality in our culture. And it’s not as not as rock solid as it used to be in secular psychology. Divine Revelation, though, doesn’t care much about current fads. It doesn’t care much about the fashions that are rolling through secular psychology or the modern culture. Divine Revelation teaches us a lot about who we are as human beings. Objective reality from the one who is truth, God himself. Subjectivism, though, is really prevalent in our culture. Subjectivism is the doctrine that our own mental activity is the only unquestionable fact of our experience. What’s shared in the community, what’s revealed by God Himself, what’s known through our religion, that whole concept of real or objective truth is just discarded within this philosophy of subjectivism. You have your truth. I have my truth. There is no objective truth. That’s really subjectivism in a nutshell. And it’s really prominent right now in our culture today.

[00:12:38] But reality. Reality has this pesky way of just hanging around and not being denied. Even in secular psychology, we still have concepts in secular psychology that require the assumption of objective reality. Delusions, hallucinations, for example. What are they? They’re departures from reality. So that’s still hard to get rid of. All right. Well, let’s let’s review the three elements of identity then. Okay. They are objective reality, who we really are, who we really are. That is who God knows us to be. Subjective reality, the second is who we profess ourselves to be and who we believe ourselves to be in our conscious awareness. Right. That’s our subjective, conscious identity. And then the third is what we unconsciously assume ourselves to be, right? Going back to the boasting traveler, his conscious profession was that he was this great jumper. But unconsciously he harbored deep assumptions about his inadequacy, about his inferiority, which is why he was trying to puff himself up. All right, so let’s go back to Adam and Eve. What was going on with Adam and Eve immediately post-Fall? As we talked about, their identities were devastated. Psychologically, this was incredibly traumatic. The implications were staggering. They heard the voice of God and they hid. God was calling out to them and they avoided him. It seems to reflect, and we don’t really know what was going on in their hearts and in their souls.

[00:14:29] We don’t really know. So I’m speculating here, but based on the behavior and based on what Adam said in response to God, Adam said, “I was afraid.” I was afraid, not in touch with the reality that in spite of the Fall, in spite of the loss of the state of grace, God still loved him. God still loved him. God still loved Eve. Totally lost track of that in that moment. And that’s why God came to look for him and called his name, called out for him. I have this concept that I made up years ago called the Triangle of Identity. Think of the three vertices or the three corners, if you will, of a triangle. Right. On one of them, it’s who we really are, the objective reality about our identity. Another vertex or another corner of that triangle, who we believe ourselves to be in conscious awareness, who we profess ourselves to be. And the third is the unconscious beliefs we hold about ourselves, our unconscious, subjective identity. Can you imagine those three points? Who we really are, right? Beloved child of God, for example. Who we profess ourselves to be, right? I am, however we describe ourselves, you know, in ordinary language. And then our deep unconscious assumptions about ourselves, the third point. The size and the shape of that triangle tell us significant things about how well adjusted we are psychologically. And also, I would argue, to possibly spiritually. I’m not an expert in that.

[00:16:25] That’s beyond my pay grade, but I definitely have held to the idea. And I’ve used this example over and over again about those three points, reflecting something in the size and the shape of that triangle. When those three points come together in a single point, you have perfect harmony and unity within because who you know yourself to be, who you profess yourself to be, reflects perfectly who you really are, who God knows you to be. And if your unconscious is also lined up with that, what a beautiful thing. Perfect order, perfect harmony. So here’s where we start to get into the exercise, right? I want you to take just a little bit of time and we’ll provide a little bit of time. I’ll provide a little bit of time during this actual podcast. But for those of you that resonate with this kind of activity, I’m going to just encourage you to bring this into your examination of conscience or bring it into some reflection that you have later today or tomorrow. Go back and remember how you thought about yourself when you were in your dark place, whatever that dark place for you was, what kind of assumptions came bubbling up about who you were in your own mind? This may not be hard for some of you because some of you, I mean, let’s just be honest about it. Some of you may be in your dark place right now.

[00:18:02] Right. You may be in that dark place right now. So that may be pretty close, pretty near at hand. But if you’re not in your dark, hard place, I want you to remember back to the last time you were in it. See what the clues are from your unconscious about how you thought and felt about yourself. If you can begin to work on those assumptions that come bubbling up in the natural realm, if you can begin to work on those assumptions, those assumptions that have come bubbling up when you were in your dark place, if you can work on those assumptions in the natural realm, and you can work on them in the spiritual realm. You may not have to go back to that dark place as much, might not last as long, might not be as frequent. Why? Because you’re acting proactively. You’re not going along with the sense that if you don’t feel it, it’s not there. You’re creating a space to really get to know yourselves, the parts of you that have been disavowed, that have been disconnected, that have been dissociated away as a result of the original Fall in the Garden of Eden, the sins of others and our own personal sins. That’s what always leads to a sense of disintegration or a lack of integration. All disorder in the natural realm can be traced back to sin. It wasn’t originally that way. That’s the first cause.

[00:19:45] Now, that doesn’t mean that if we’re struggling with something or we’re suffering with something, that it’s because of our own sins. We know that that can’t be true because our Lord, who was sinless, our Lady who was sinless, you know, suffered also, right? So if we’re suffering, that doesn’t mean it’s necessarily because of personal sin, but it does go back to some kind of sin, original sin. And that’s what Christ took on himself in the redemptive act of his death on the cross. So in review, we have objective reality, our objective identity, right? Who we actually are independent of our own thoughts or feelings about it or anybody else’s. That’s how God sees us. And then two kinds of subjective identity are conscious subjective identity. That is what we profess ourselves to be, who we think we are, how we describe ourselves. And then our unconscious identities, which are also subjective. These are the things that we may not be in contact with, but that come up from time to time under certain kinds of conditions where our defenses open up and it allows that access. We want to work on what’s going on in the unconscious because frankly, nothing disordered enters into heaven, right? All those beliefs are going to have to be worked through. And as we talked about with Dr. Sodergren in episode, I think it was 12 or 13, I can’t remember, you know, all that has to be resolved before we go into heaven.

[00:21:17] I think part of the function of purgatory is to actually resolve the disorder, not just atonement for sins, but also resolving all the disorder, all the underlying disorder, both in the spiritual realm and in the natural realm. Okay. So I want you to know, I’ve been listening to you. I’ve had multiple requests from listeners to address the topic of grief and resiliency. So be with me in this next episode. We’re going to get into that. That’s going to come out on Memorial Day, May 25th. We’re going to get into grief, loss, and resiliency. What you say really matters to me. It helps me tailor this podcast to be more effective in reaching you where you’re at. So keep the suggestions coming in. All right. So here’s what I’d like you to do. I want you to register for the Resilient Catholics Carpe Diem community. You know, we’re working on growing this community and becoming more connected. We launched it a week ago and we’ve got two opportunities coming up. We’re small right now, and so we’ve got tremendous advantages in that. Let’s take advantage of the smallness of the community right now to really get to know each other. All right, so here’s the big news. On Friday, May 29th, 7:30 p.m. Eastern Time, I’m going to make a brief presentation on the special topic of grief, loss and resilience. So this is going to follow the next podcast, which comes out on May 25th, on May 29th.

[00:23:05] That’s the Friday after Memorial Day. We’re going to get into this in greater depth with 6 to 12 of you. It’s going to be a real small, real close Zoom meeting. I’m going to do a presentation on grief and loss that goes into greater depth than what I than what I’ll do in the next episode of the podcast. Seating is limited. You can start to register for that on Wednesday, May 20th. This is free. It’s going to last an hour. It’s part of your free 30 day trial. And since we’re working with small groups, I decided to do a Zoom meeting rather than a webinar so that we can have a lot of exchange as we go through this. It’s really meant to be interactive, right? So that’s May 29th, 7:30 Eastern Time. It’s going to be 4:30 p.m. Pacific Time for those of you out on the West Coast. And I’m really excited about getting to know many of you there. All right. Here’s the next one. On Saturday, June 6th, 5:00 PM Eastern Time, 2:00 Pacific. We’re going to be getting much more experiential again with a small group, 6 to 12 people. It’s going to be about managing your stress during the pandemic. So there’s going to be lots of tips and pointers. There’s gonna be lots of recommendations about that. That’s also going to be 60 minutes long. We’re going to do some experiential exercises in that one to a greater degree.

[00:24:33] All right. So how do we deal with stress that’s coming up? That’s for the members of the Resilient Catholics Carpe Diem community. You can register for that community. I get on the discussion boards several times a week. I respond more quickly to the conversations on those discussion boards than I can to my email. Register with us for the first 30 days. That’s all free. And then the two Zoom meetings will be free. You can actually attend both of them if there’s room. Okay. No one’s going to be left behind, though, for financial need. After the first 30 days, we’re asking for $25 a month. But if that $25 per month is too much, then contact me at crisis@soulsandhearts.com. Let me know. Dr. Gerry and I never want financial concerns to ever keep anyone away from benefiting from what we have to offer at Souls and Hearts. So to register for the Resilient Catholics Carpe Diem community, log on to your Souls and Hearts account. Make sure you’re logged in. Go down. Go to the home page. Scroll down and you’ll see the Resilient Catholics Carpe Diem community in the middle. Click on that. You’ll go to the community. It’ll ask you for some additional information, including a credit card, and you’ll get logged in. You’ll get registered. If you have any questions, email me crisis@soulsandhearts.com.

[00:25:52] I’ll walk you through it. All right. So sometimes I get questions. Dr. Peter, Dr. Peter. What if I can’t make those times for those Zoom meetings that you were talking about? I’m really interested. Can I still watch? Absolutely. We don’t want to leave anyone behind. We’re going to record those meetings and make them available to those that want to view them later. All right. So now we’re into the most important thing. I’m really serious about this prayer and sacrifice. Please pray for Souls and Hearts. Please pray for me. Please pray for our community. Please pray for this podcast. Please pray for Dr. Gerry, that what we do here be God’s will. That what we do here be what God, our Father and Mary, our mother, want it to be for you. I really want you guys to be praying for me and to be praying for this whole endeavor. I pray for you every time I post, every time I respond to an email, every time I post in the community, I’m praying for the person I’m writing to. Well, all right, so sometimes if it’s a real short response, I might forget. All right, I’m human, I might forget, but I do try, I do try. So prayer, the absolute basis upon which all of this is founded. And that’s a wrap for today. So in closing, let’s invoke our patroness and our patron. Our dear Mother Mary, Undoer of Knots, pray for us. Saint John the Baptist, pray for us.