Knowing and Nudging Terroir Part 3

Hard or Soft Borders for Self-Concept

Now we have looked a bit at the Self coming into being through processes, interactions and actions that build up over time (self as habit), and we have looked at how interpreting those things allows us to conjure into being our self-concept. 

Flickr.com: L. Filipe dos Santos

The next step is to evaluate the borders around what we think is most stable and immutable and yet is most subjective and suspect: the self-concept.

In Charmaz’ paper I quote from in previous parts of this series (highly recommend you look out the PDF and read it in its entirety if you have the time), she uses the example of a woman, Cynthia, and her navigation of a diagnosis of Parkinson’s at age 56 after a car accident.

Cynthia’s framing of her life is that of significant and grinding levels of stress and that she does not, in fact, have Parkinson’s, but rather she needs to address the stress in her life. She uses two negative MRI scans and the fact that the tremor disappears at rest, and is not slow and rhythmic as is usual with Parkinson’s, to confirm that whatever is going on for her it is emotional more than physical.

Other people who suffer a sudden onset of a serious illness with subsequent disability may have less latitude than Cynthia to search for alternative explanations to their official diagnosis. They may not have the narrative content to reconstruct an alternative explanation for their conditions. In addition, some people with chronic illness concentrate on other things than loss—and perhaps skirt around loss. That way, loss does not come thudding in and they may face it in small pieces. Ironically then, ill people’s unaware and inaccurate assessments of their situations may, at times, contribute to their resilience because they do not suffer from the emotions elicited by acknowledged loss.

It is easy to look at Cynthia’s life as described in Charmaz’s paper and judge the circumstances that surround her as a very uneven partnership in marriage with an insecure, selfish and possessive spouse; a sick child who became a focal point for Cynthia’s purpose and meaning in life; and a self-concept that sought to define a lack of boundaries as an expression of capability, mastery and importance—"without me everything falls apart”.

Cynthia’s self-concept as hardy and capable has fairly hard boundaries:

…Cynthia’s earlier view of herself had assumed the…bodily attributes of invincibility, agelessness, unceasing functioning, and strong personal control. She had possessed valued identities; she saw valuable attributes that reflected a vital self. [This self] stood in stark contrast with how she viewed having a diagnosis of Parkinson’s disease. Cynthia recalled her thoughts and feelings when she received her diagnosis as “Disaster. The end. Kaput.” The metaphors Cynthia invoked reveal her definition of this disease as a devastating affront to body and self.

Framing her symptoms as signs of living with untenable levels of stress does not impact her self-concept as hardy and capable because she can embark upon addressing the stress in her life and the symptoms will inevitably resolve.

An individual in a similar circumstance to Cynthia but with softer boundaries or borders around her self-concept might gravitate immediately towards rejecting the former self-concept of invincibility and capability and adopt without delay all of the behaviors that would create a new self-concept that incorporates the Parkinson’s diagnosis.

There is no right or wrong to a hard or soft self-concept; the importance of this step is to assess your self-concept borders. You are likely to have hard borders in some aspects of your self-concept, but softer borders in other areas. Additionally, think back to a time when you had a hard border on an aspect of self that was unceremoniously punctured by an interaction or experience. How did you update your self-concept after what you believed about yourself turned out not to be true?

If you think of someone you admire in your life based on the habits they have and actions they have taken in their life, what do you think their self-concept might be? Write out the facets of that person’s self-concept as you conceive of them. Then just write down “Why not me?” Do. Not. Answer. That. Question. The idea is to keep it open and possible in your mind. Just leave it open.

Hard or soft borders, it is good to go into your terroir feeling the potential for malleability. 

When Self as Habit Needs New Habits. Yesterday.

As mentioned before, habits are individual and inter-relational. In Cynthia’s case, despite her disagreement with her diagnosis, new habits appeared in the family members around her as her symptoms were there for everyone to have to navigate, no matter whether the underlying source was Parkinson’s or nerves. Her daughter, who had had a serious childhood chronic illness, learned to drive and gained some independence. Her husband began doing cooking and yard work.

When facing the onset of a chronic illness, no matter the time of life, both self as habit and self as concept are suddenly not aligned with self as body/mind. In Cynthia’s case, it was perhaps easier for the family members to adopt new habits to support her as this would presumably align with their self-concept of caring for their spouse and mother. Whereas for Cynthia, her self-concept and habits were all ingrained in a super-caring-doing-woman and so where to begin?

In Part 4 we are going to look at how the path to a new self-concept lies in the application of new habits. Cynthia can remain aligned with a self-concept that does not include a Parkinson’s diagnosis and still embark on new habits. We will also look at how hard borders around a self-concept can be softened to help with behaviour change adoption as well.