hi this is emerald and welcome to the
diamond net and today I'm going to be
talking to you about the persona in the
Jungian psychological model so the
persona is part of the Jungian
psychological model and it's the aspect
of that model that's concerned with how
we present ourselves to the world so
it's basically the social mask that we
put on in order to fulfill particular
roles within a society and we may have
different facets of our persona that we
use at different times so for example
our persona may be different around our
family as compared to how it is around
our friends or it might be different
from how it is at work and this is quite
natural because essentially what the
persona is is a tool it's a tool for
being able to function within a social
matrix and it's the face that we show to
the world it's the selective lens for
what we allow other people to see about
us and in fact this is how other people
come to know us is through our persona
now despite the fact that the persona is
so elementary to our functioning in the
social matrix and how other people come
to know us it's really a drop in the
gallon bucket when it comes to the
entire psyche in fact it is the most
superficial layer of the Jungian
psychological model now a lot of people
don't realize that the persona is
surface level and they think that they
are their persona I'll get into that a
little bit later but I think in order to
show the surface level nature of the
persona we as modern people have a
really useful metaphor that we can look
at so if we look at let's say a social
media profile clearly we have a lot of
different things that we can choose on
that profile as a way to present
ourselves to others on the Internet you
know so we can fill out our about Me
section and we can say oh I'm this
person here and we can show our pictures
and we can show what's going on in our
lives by showing people pictures we can
choose what we post up on
Facebook
and that's essentially what
you're doing when you're creating your
persona you're putting on this mask for
the world to see so that you know people
can come to know you as this particular
person in this particular identity but
most people would not make the mistake
of actually conflating themselves with
their Facebook profile you know that
would be a little bit silly to do but a
lot of times people do conflate
themselves with their persona that
they've chosen here so in order to
really understand what the persona is
and how not to over identify with it we
have like three main things that we have
to know number one the persona is not
the self it is just one small aspect of
the self the second thing is that the
persona is not fixed it's not something
that you were just given at birth and
there it is that's your persona you had
to actively construct your persona and
so you can always change your persona to
anything you want really the sky is the
limit with it and the third thing is
that the persona is not the ego now it's
quite common for these two things to get
mixed up because they do have sort of a
similar feel to them and they're used in
similar ways but really what the persona
is is your social mask it's how you
present yourself externally for
functioning in the world whereas the ego
is more internal it's a layer deeper so
the ego is everything that you believe
yourself to be and even though it is a
rather small area of the psyche compared
to the entire rest of the psyche you
know it's usually more expansive than
the persona usually there's more things
that you identify with than what you
actually present to the world now having
said that for most people the persona is
heavily informed by the ego so we tend
to create our social masks in congruence
with the ego structure now if someone
has a weak or underdeveloped ego they
may make the mistake of only identifying
with their persona so the persona and
the ego would essentially be the same
thing but this is very unhealthy because
the persona is by its very nature very
superficial and narrow so if you narrow
your ego down to the level of persona it
creates a lot of problems now this
pattern of identifying only with the
persona tends to happen what I've
noticed anyway is in young teenagers so
they may come to be identified with a
particular style of music or a
particular clique of some kind and they
may try to present
themselves in a way that's congruent to
that and they don't want anything else
that contradicts what that is so for
example if there's a kid who gets really
really into rap music and they might
think oh well I don't listen to any
other kind of music and I'm only going
to dress this way and I'm only gonna
talk this way and you know I live the
hard life and that's the only way that I
am and anything that basically falls out
of that range of being a rapper you know
is not going to be acceptable for them
to show in their persona and perhaps not
even acceptable for them to accept as
part of their ego so that can be a
problem now as I said this is an
outgrowth of underdeveloped
ego you know so it's makes sense that a
lot of teenagers do that because
teenagers are just constructing their
identity so they essentially like take
these templates in the form of these
different styles of music or a different
type of clique and they sort of use it
as their clay you know that they can
mold now the problem is when they don't
actually mold it and they just want to
take it like straight as it is and only
be that you know but it can actually be
a decent template for building up the
personality it's quite natural for
teenagers to do that and usually by the
age of about fifteen or sixteen the
person is starting to get a bit more of
a refined personality around that basic
idea so even if let's say somebody
really identified with rock music and
you know that was all they were about
when they were 13 14 usually when
they're 15 they start to read some
nuance into that personality because
they're building up in more complex ways
now having said that the majority of
adults still somewhat believe that they
are their persona but they're more
likely to see it as just one aspect of
themselves so they're more likely to
realize that they aren't just the way
they come off to people know as I said
before the ego and the persona are
usually pretty congruent with one
another but there can be some
incongruences let's say if a person has
a trait that they know or they believe
that society won't accept in them or
they know their friends and family won't
accept in them so for example if a
person
was gay let's say 50 years ago you know
there can be some very real social
consequences and so a person even if
they knew that they were gay and it was
part of their ego they might choose to
omit that from their persona so it would
be kind of like a minor repression now
if that person who had omitted that
trait from their persona also had a lot
of shame relative to being gay or
perhaps a lot of judgments about other
people being gay you know they may not
even realize it themselves in which case
you know the knowledge that they're gay
maybe just repressed down to the shadow
so they would genuinely not know it this
is where repression happens like a
full-blown repression so that's the
difference between lack of expression
so lack of allowing a trait into the
persona and an actual full-blown
repression now of course not expressing
a particular trait in the persona is not
ideal but it's not quite the same thing
as going unconscious to that trait now
in this next part of the video I'm going
to go over 7 different problems that can
be experienced with regard to the
persona so the first one is not creating
a persona at all you know so essentially
what the persona is is it's a tool for
functioning in society so if a person
neglects to create a persona or has an
underdeveloped persona what they're
gonna find is that they're not able to
adapt very well socially
because this is how people come to know
them if they don't really have an idea
of how they're coming off to people or
what their personality is that other
people see  they're not going to
be able to function as effectively in a
social way all right the second persona
problem is constructing your persona in
such a way that it doesn't allow for the
expression of the full depth and breadth
of your personality so in another one of
my videos I spoke about how people have
a preconditioned personality a lot of
times people will think that a person's
personality is just a conglomeration of
different social constructs but this
actually isn't true there's something
that's there even before society
enacts itself upon you and you're not just
a blank slate and so if you construct a
persona
doesn't allow that natural personality
to come out then you're going to run
into some issues all right the third
persona issue is if someone has a
persona that's too narrow and is only
identified with one or a few different
social roles so for example if somebody
is a doctor and that's all they are they
don't have any interest outside of being
a doctor and that's what they identify
as and I think a really good example of
this would be in the movie Black Swan
where the main character that's played
by Natalie Portman you know she's so
obsessed with being a dancer like that's
her whole entire life like she never
really does anything else other than
that her whole entire life is basically
this huge sacrifice for dance and she
becomes very neurotic as a result and
there's this one scene when she's
meeting this guy at this bar and you
know she can't really loosen up and he
and he asked her hey you know who are
you and she goes I'm a dancer you know
and that was the first thing that she
said you know she didn't go straight to
oh my name is this or oh I you know my
name is this and I like to do that it
was immediately I'm a dancer and her
identity her persona essentially
eclipsed her whole entire personality
another movie example of this would be
in the movie Requiem for a Dream where
the character that's played by Ellen
Bernstein she's basically this old
mother kind of figure where you know see
essentially she lives alone you know her
son hardly ever comes visit her
her husband passed away years ago and  you could tell that the only things
that she ever identified herself with
were being a wife and being a mother and
I think beauty is also part of her past
identification but because
she's in a sense like past her prime in
that way in the movie she has a lot of
like fantasies about going back and you
know like having her husband Seymour
there and being the mom and you know
maybe the son's gonna have some kids and
you know she's gonna wear a red dress
and be beautiful again and she gets into
like this fantasy of 
trying to be the way that things were in
the past
and have that persona that
she's already outgrown and so because
these are very narrow and were actually
very time sensitive the way that she was
identifying  now she's stuck
with not really having a persona which
goes back to that very first problem
that I mentioned of not having a persona
so she lost her ability to really
function in society and she ends up in a
lot of really negative situations in the
movie as a result and this example
brings me to problem number four of the
persona is making something that you'll
lose a core aspect of your persona so
for example youth is something that
everyone will lose and so if you
identify strongly with your youth you
know you're going to have a really
really hard time as you get older
because essentially if your main core
identification is with youth and all of
your other identifications stem off of
that identification what will happen is
that you'll slowly start losing your
ability to have a persona as you get
older and life will sort of feel like
it's passing you by because you won't be
able to function as well in society now
this is a huge risk in our society
because most of the people they depict
in the media like in movies that type of
thing most of the protagonists of
stories and most of the characters that
you're meant to identify with are young
people and so because of this because of
the lack of representation of older
people in movies it becomes
difficult for someone to create a
persona from that and so a lot of older
people tend to get more and more
disconnected from society because they
just don't know how it is they can fit
in in a way that they want to be
alright
problem number four is conflating the
persona with the ego I spoke about this
before so somebody with an
underdeveloped ego may come to identify
only with their persona
so anything that falls outside of the persona they don't
consider it to be an aspect of themselves
alright problem number six with the persona is it was someone's persona is
too rigid because this basically blocks
off a lot of their natural drives and a
lot of their natural personality
doesn't come through now this rigid
persona happens when somebody tries way
too hard to come off a particular way or
be seen in a particular light so for
example teenagers are also like
notorious for this mostly because they
tend to conflate the persona and the ego
and I was no exception to this
so for example when I was a teenager I was heavily identified with like goth type of stuff
so I didn't want to ever be seen in anything that was other than that like the way that I like to dress
so if I were to be seen in let's say I don't know the color blue or
pink or something like that
well that would be you know an issue for mebecause I wanted my persona to be just a particular way
I wanted to be perceived
by others in just the right way
and anything that fell outside of that I
didn't want
now another example that I see really really common is that
there are a lot of guys who are trying to be like alpha males
and the problem with
this is that they get really stuck in that persona
or they can get really
stuck in that persona
so they may be afraid to show signs of vulnerability
you know might be afraid to display their emotions
so this can be a problem because that can lead to a persona that's too rigid
all right the very last persona issue that I want to bring up is something
called negative restoration
so this is where somebody basically ends up trying to in a sense resurrect a persona that they used to use
but it's no longer relevant to them
now this usually happens after some form of trauma or upheaval
where they get really afraid to behave in the way that they're behaving and coming off the way they're coming off
so they may revert to an old ego
structure all right
so that's it for the issues that I'm going to go over in the video
and these seven issues that I brought up are by no means an exhaustive
list
but this gives you an idea of what can be some common things to watch out
for when you're creating your persona
but when you're consciously creating
your persona it helps to know what
having a healthy persona entails
so there are three main qualities that constitute a healthy persona
the first is that it's flexible so it can adapt to many different types of situations
allowing you to fit in in many different social environments
the second is that it's transparent
that means that mask is see-through and allows whatever happens to be inside to come out within reason
so it allows you to express more of the full depth and breadth of your personality
the third is that it'sheld at a distance and recognized as a tool
as opposed to like some inextricable part of yourself
so you can see it as something that you're using to interface with the world
but it doesn't really mean all that much about yourself
all right so here are some steps and some things to keep in mind for creating
a healthy persona
so the first step is to realize that your persona is 100% created by you
so they can either be consciously created or unconsciously created
and in knowing this you should be able to feel at ease with being able to create whatever persona
you feel is going to best allow you to express yourself
oftentimes people will feel held back by the idea that whatever persona they have
is just the one they're stuck with and that any change to that would be dishonest
but really when it comes to persona creation the sky is the limit
and as long as you're making it fairly congruent with your internal experience
and it's not a dishonest thing
all right once you realize this about the persona then you can go on to the second step
where you decide to consciously create your persona
and to decide to create it in whichever way you think is going to best serve you
so I think the best way to think about this
is in relation to like
think of yourself as an artist and your persona as your work of art
so that way you can feel like you can create it any which way that you want
and it'll be authentic to you
and I would recommend approaching
this in the same way
that children approach the game of make-believe
so children in order to prepare themselves for adult life
they might pretend to be pirates in play or they might pretend to be a princess up in a castle
or some adventurer of some
kind
and basically this gets them used to playing some kind of social role
it'sthem trying on four different personas albeit very fantastical personas
butthis is what gears them up for being able to create an actual persona
once they become a teenager or maybe even a older child
so I recommend approaching your persona creation in the same way
so a child when they're pretending to be a
pirate or they're pretending to be a princess
they don't literally believe themselves to be those things they're just enjoying wearing that social mask for a while
and then they can put it down and they can go back and they can eat dinner with their family as their usual self
but theproblem with adults is that we get so into the social mask that we are putting
on
that we actually believe ourselves to be that social mask
so if we grow up and we decide that we're gonna be a doctor
we think oh I am the doctor as
opposed to realizing that's the social mask that we're wearing
so treat it a lot like a child would play their game of make-believe
do it with a certain degree of detachment but always with a lot of joy
and a lot of effort put into it just like a child would put in
so give yourself permission to play make-believea little bit to find out what it is that
you want out of your persona
all right once you've started to create your persona a little bit
the next thing that you want to do is start to let go of things within your current persona thatare no longer serving you
if something is keeping you from being your full self
or expressing in some way that you'd like to be able to express yourself
you can actually decide not to do that anymore and switch that aspect of your
persona out with
some other aspect that's going to allow you to express yourself better
so you're not married to your persona
and if your persona is making it difficult also for you to adapt in particular situations
that means it's not really doing its job properly
and so you could benefit from switching some things out
and just letting go of things that are just no longer really doing anything positive for you
alright so step number four is that once you've started creating your persona
and once you've started to let go of things that no longer serve you
it should become quite clear that your persona is just something that you've
created
and in doing so this will allow you to go a bit deeper
and to realizethings about yourself that you may not have known
so you can really use this as a springboard into inner work
and I highly recommend you do so because it will help you even more so go toward the things that you want
and it will help you create the persona that you want
so you might try to do things like shadow
work and meditation
and basically anything that's going to allow your consciousness to travel beyond the confines of your ego
all right so while you're creating your persona the fifth and final step is
to maintain a certain level of distance and detachment from your persona
so remember your persona is
not the full extent of yourself
the persona is only a tool that can either
be picked up or set down whenever it's not useful
and the persona is always 100% created so it is an invention of the mind
so my recommendation for keeping distance is to create the persona
inmuch the same way that Buddhist monks create a Mandala out of sand
so basically they spend a ton of time just working on creating beautiful mandalas
out of sand
and at the very end they wipe it away
and essentially that's the way the persona is
you spend a long time creating the persona and having it through life
and at the end of life you'll have to wipe it away anyway
but just know that it was never real in the first place
it was always just dust in the wind
and so always keep a level of detachment
otherwise you can get very attached to something that isn't real or permanent
but just because something isn't real or substantial doesn't mean that it doesn't have practical function out here in the world
it is absolutely core to your ability to function in the social matrix to have a persona
so what I recommend is just enjoy the process ofcreating your persona
and always make it in such a way that it makes life easier for you
anyway that's all I have for now
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