The P^6 of Coping
The P^6 of Coping
Persona Pressure Perfectionism Performance People-Pleasing
Coping strategies are the tools we learn to use to move through life with the least amount of road rash. We have no judgement for these coping strategies because they absorb the friction of being alive and without them, we’d honestly be worse for wear. We employ coping strategies because they work. They shield us from the friction of being alive. It’s just that we don’t CHOOSE our coping - we don whatever armour is closest to us and hold on for dear life. It’s just not quite the consensual, authentic choice we’re going for in a life of intention. So we hold context for our coping and also start to imagine a new way.
As we imagine a new way of being, we can become familiar with the way that we are. These are the 6 P’s of: Persona Pressure Perfectionism Performance People-Pleasing. All of these coping strategies interact with each other - persona is the expression of people-pleasing that we perform out of pressure to be perfect.
Persona is the response to fear of rejection, when we’ve been told again and again that who we are is not good enough or is outright unacceptable. Persona protects our authentic essence as a representative who interacts with the world on behalf of your true self.
If we are rejected for our persona, it doesn't hurt as much because it wasn’t REALLY us but then - we’re also never really known. The protection we seek comes at a cost.
If I believe I am the problem that gives me a semblance of control in an otherwise flotsam world. If I am the problem, then there’s something I can do about it. The self-judgement serves a purpose - it lets me feel less powerless. It’s just that we can feel less powerless without our own self-worth footing the bill.
Persona has a purpose and isn’t meant to be rejected completely. We sometimes need persona to get through the grocery store but it’s important we interact with persona consciously so our authentic self isn’t suffocated. We need to have more time and space to be ourselves, than be in persona.
We see persona in everyday life - these aren’t bad or good, they’re coping strategies we employ because they work. There’s no judgement for them. Persona can look like:
Pretending to like something around certain people to fit in
Drinking with certain friends, even though you don’t like how alcohol makes you feel
Wearing specific clothes to be perceived in a certain way
Again, this isn’t good or bad - but how conscious is it? What are you trying to avoid?
Being in the presence of anyone has you instinctively socially “on”, then feeling exhausted and depleted
Holding your tongue in the moment, not saying what you want to say or setting a boundary
This leads to internalizing that you’re the problem and what-is-unsaid is often the origin of a shame spiral.
How to interact with persona more consciously:
Consider if it’s safe for you to be authentic. To get out of black-and-white thinking, is there a percentage of persona that would be helpful for this situation? Is there a percentage of authenticity that can be infused?
Create a distinction between your persona and your authentic self so you can more consciously choose. Who is your persona? Who is your authentic self? What would their names be? Their preferences?
Take note of when you’re not in persona - how do you know you aren’t in persona? What does it feel like? The more we can create a shore of both persona and authenticity, the more we build a bridge between the two.
Persona is related to an anxious attachment style and a flight trauma response. While anyone (and everyone) experiences persona in their own way, an anxious attachment style and a flight trauma response amplify persona - like turning the volume knob up on the pre-existing symptoms of viewing yourself as the problem and creating distance to protect yourself. Persona doesn’t arrive from nowhere - it is a way we learn to become safe in the world.
It’s just that this coping strategy might be reaching its expiry date - so how will you know when persona no longer serves you in the same way?
How will you know when you’re safe to be yourself?
There is so much unspoken & spoken pressure to keep up with cultural milestones, to be BUSY in a capitalistic world where our productivity is synonymous with our worth. This pressure is a frenetic energy that keeps us on a hedonic treadmill believing the NEXT thing will make us happy - the next shopping spree, taking the relationship to the next level, but as treadmills go - no distance is actually gained. The pressure we experience is a daily pressure to
Urgency as upturned freeze response because if I’m always moving, I can’t be a target
Acceptance as a basic human attachment need and looking to others creates a guarantee of acceptance with replicability (and also may not honour our authenticity because people are different)
Time scarcity as the fear of time running out leading to an overcompensation response of time hoarding - as in, doing too much and filling your schedule endlessly.
We see pressure in everyday life - these aren’t bad or good, they’re coping strategies we employ because they work. There’s no judgement for them. Pressure can look like:
Filling your calendar and working until it’s time to go to bed
Not taking vacation days
Wanting to do the next adult thing (get married, have kids, buy a house)
These things aren’t good or bad - but can you answer WHY you want those things? Is it YOU who wants those things or do you want them because you’re supposed to want them?
Wanting more and more structure and responsibility to be taken seriously but feeling hollow and dissatisfied without knowing why
How to interact with pressure more consciously:
Reduce urgency by doing things 5% slower. It doesn’t take that much more time but allows your body to “catch up” to your pace. Doing only ONE thing at a time until it’s complete also helps reduce urgency.
Dream about your most ideal life - the life you could have if money and time were no restriction. Then ask yourself WHY you desire those things. What are you avoiding? Is it you who wants those things or your persona / conditioning?
Create space when getting pulled in the vortex of comparison. Protect your dreams as yours - what is good and right and true for you may not be good and right and true for others (and vice versa).
Practice a tolerance for space, stillness and silence. This is good practice for connecting with our intuition as well and reducing the urgency of pressure. Can you practice the sacred nothing for 10 seconds, even?
Pressure is related to an ambivalent attachment style and a fight trauma response. The narrative of pressure that mirrors ambivalent attachment and a fight trauma response is “if I only just…” This mirrors the same hologram of control we experience in persona - if I am the problem then there’s something I can do about it. The fight trauma response thwarted over time can become the freeze trauma response - our body is always trying to preserve energy and when fighting doesn't do anything, freeze becomes the most appropriate response.
When we’re experiencing pressure (either in our daily life or in our overall lives & choices), we are not actively consenting. Consent is without pressure. For us to have an inner consent to our own existence, we must create space between pressure for us to be able to choose with consent. So how do you know when your body says yes? How do you know when you’re free to say yes without pressure? What have you decided that has been a free choice?
Performance again serves a purpose - the problem is when the performance never ends. Performance is the bridge between people-pleasing and persona because you perform what you think people want of you and this becomes your persona. This coping strategy is a verb or action of persona (which is the noun) - so where persona is a static hologram, performance is the animation that interacts with the world.
Performance is shapeshifting so much for so long that you don’t remember your original form to return to. Imagine Animorphs if they didn’t remember they were human.
This coping strategy is rooted in the belief that your Self is dangerous or will result in rejection, so just like persona, you never trust the love you do receive because it is the performance that is receiving the ovation and the inner critic gets to have a hey-day with ruminating false beliefs like “if they only knew the real you” which only reinforces the performance.
Upholding a persona imago means the performance never ends because as people get to know your persona, it becomes more and more awkward and impossible to introduce your authentic self. It’s like forgetting someone’s name and after you’ve been in conversation for an hour, it becomes awkward to ask their name. This is how we can become complicit in our own conditioning - from past experiences of rejection, we tailor a persona to gain acceptance but it becomes an inescapable cycle.
“Tear off your mask - your face is glorious” - Rumi
We see performance in everyday life - these aren’t bad or good, they’re coping strategies we employ because they work. There’s no judgement for them. Performance can look like:
Only taking photos when you look a certain way (and taking 500 until you find the “perfect” one - we’ll get into perfectionism in just a moment)
Invulnerability with friends so you know more about them than they do about you
Telling stories that make you look better (or worse) than others - inevitably resulting in dehumanizing one or the other
In connection with people-pleasing, not wanting to be a bother and doing everything you can to be least bothersome (resulting in your shrinkage).
How to interact with performance more consciously:
Similar to creating distinction with your persona, identify the roles and accompanying expectations that you play. What does your script say? Does the script require a rewrite?
Identify times and people where you can step off the stage. What is the felt difference between being on the stage and being off the stage? How do you know when you’re “on”?
Practice rolling your shoulders back and feel the space between your ears and shoulders. Bring your chin in (not down) by a millimetre. Soften your jaw by bringing your tongue to the roof of your mouth. Extend your belly in zipping up your core. Soften your pelvis, release your glute muscles. Let your feet root into the ground. Notice what it’s like to take space within your own body.
If you’ve been performing for most of your life, it’s time to ask what would happen if you stopped the performance? This tells us what you’re avoiding - the fear that keeps you on the stage. Again, we return to non-consent. Authenticity is the greatest revolt to conditioning that has caused you to shrink.
Perfectionism is an inhumane standard because the only things that are actually perfect (as in - unchanging) are dead. Performance and perfectionism go hand in hand because when there are “slips” in the performance and your humanity (imperfection) is exposed, the inner critic & taskmaster is quick to pounce with unrelenting self-judgement.
Our worthiness becomes a carrot on a string, a hedonic treadmill where there’s always imperfections for us to focus on. We can see this with the ever-changing standard of the “ideal body type”. We become trapped in a cycle of being “so close” to perfection - only for the standard to change.
This is how we create a cycle of conditional love for ourselves, based on past rejections, the type of love we give ourselves and the type of love we seek out. What we experience again and again becomes coded in our brain as normal and safe because it is familiar, not because it is actually normal or safe.
Perks of being an wallflower: we accept the love we think we deserve
We see perfectionism in everyday life - these aren’t bad or good, they’re coping strategies we employ because they work. There’s no judgement for them. Perfectionism can look like:
Procrastination out of fear of success (or failure). This can become chronic fantasizing about the possibilities without doing anything about them to avoid the risk of doing what you actually want.
You struggle to do things for fun or for yourself, especially creative things that have no purpose other than to enjoy them.
This connects with the performance of being perceived in a specific way (also persona) by taking 500 pictures until you find the “perfect” one.
Again, this isn’t good or bad - but is there another way to be present in this moment?
Only sharing certain parts of yourself so no one sees how you really feel or the ways you actually struggle (see how persona, perfectionism and people-pleasing all cohabitate?)
How to interact with perfectionism more consciously:
When your humanness is inevitably exposed (as in, when you make a mistake like dropping the spatula), instead of exclaiming a self-judgement, practice saying something neutral like, “oh how human of me”.
Practice building a tolerance for imperfection by giving yourself permission to be human. Sometimes what we need is a good old fashioned permission slip signed by you for you. Little by little, big change happens.
Identify if the pressure to be perfect is arising from within you or from outside sources. How do you want to respond?
Before we come into self-love or even self-acceptance, we must first arrive at self-acknowledgement. Practice literally sitting on your hands and acknowledging your existence as a human (and therefore, fallible) person.
We don't do things for no reason. Every {in}action serves a purpose. Perfectionism offers certainty in a life that is full of uncertainty. Perfectionism gives the illusion of power and control because it promises {falsely} certainty. If only you are perfect, everything will work out for you. If only you are perfect, you will be loved. As social beings, love and acceptance are basic needs like food and water. We will do anything, including abandon our Selves, in order to maintain acceptance from others.The promises of perfectionism are a red herring - you don’t need to do anything to be loved or accepted. You are already good and you don’t need to be good to be loved.
People-pleasing can be difficult to extract from persocause our persona is often birthed from data gathered from people-pleasing. People-pleasing is an unconscious response to anticipating peoples’ expectations of you and becoming THAT. This coping strategy is ripe with self-gaslighting because we expect others to accept us more than we accept ourselves but then distrust the acceptance of others because of low self-worth. People-pleasing is an urgency (pressure) to assuage peoples’ perceptions (through persona), even at your own expense.
Self-betrayal in exchange for acceptance (the root of imposter syndrome too, by the way)
Feeling guilty about setting boundaries or having time for yourself (the connection to pressure)
Believing your wants, needs, desires don’t matter
In everyday life people-pleasing is (these aren’t bad or good, they’re coping strategies we employ because they work. There’s no judgement for them):
Not saying your preference, even if you have a preference
Constantly apologizing, even when it isn’t your fault
You’re quick to agree, even if you have other opinions - there’s a lot unsaid
You have a low opinion of yourself and conversely need other people to like you.
The self-gaslighting of people-pleasing is expecting others to accept you when you don’t accept yourself so even you do encounter acceptance, you don’t trust it because how could they really accept you if they knew you?
How to interact with people pleasing more consciously:
Before saying yes (or no), ask for time to think. If you say yes (or no) too quickly, remember you can always change your mind. You are under no obligation to be who you were 5 minutes ago.
Create space to express yourself in ways that are aligned with your values. You can still be clear and kind. For me, having allergies was the beginning of the end of people-pleasing because I had to express my boundaries and this created a positive feedback loop demonstrating to my body I viewed myself as worthy of protecting.
To start setting boundaries, practice asking for time to think before setting a boundary. Writing out your boundaries first can help release the fear associated with it.
Identify your needs, preferences and desires by trying. How do you know what you like?
All of this constellates around usefulness as the centre - proving you’re useful to protect your acceptanace. The lie we’re fed in our conditioning is that if we are useful, we will be loved - but then we can never trust the love we receive because we know it’s based on what we DO. The proof is already here. You exist. There’s nothing else you have to prove to be loved.
I would be remiss not to point out that all of these coping strategies start with the letter P - the 15 letter of the alphabet. As an existential psychotherapist, I’m always looking for meaning in symbols. We observe and discover meaning where we look for it.
First, I look to tarot, a rich landscape of symbols. The fifteenth major arcana tarot card is the Tower, an invitation we cannot refuse to let go of structures and conditioned ways of being that no longer serve us. It is the destruction that accompanies creation. The destruction is not destruction for the sake of destruction, though - it is intentional and necessary destruction because the sixteenth card is the Star - an embodiment of vulnerability, authenticity and becoming the Self you always pictured. We cannot get to the gifts of the Star without enduring the
Tower.
In numerology, we find the derivative root of 15 by adding the digits together (1+5=6). The number 6 is associated with the planet Venus (take a look at your natal chart to see where your natal Venus is to see how these coping strategies relate to you). Venus is slow, sensual, diplomatic to a fault, can be a chameleon and manipulative in the truest sense of the word with no judgement (as in- manipulation is simply the alteration of one state to another. Therapy itself is manipulative because clients enter the session in one state and exit the session in a different, hopefully better state). Venus exalted, in her highest state, is powerful in her capacity to feel, sense, enjoy and share life around her. That’s what we’re going for.
These symbols point us to an important revelation regarding these coping strategies: they’re meant to be released. They, in fact, must be released in order to get to the Star, to Venus exalted. To actualize your potential, to become the fullest version of you, you must first let go of the ways you’ve been told not to be.
It’s a journey to get there and I like to start at the beginning. You are the beginning. Affirmations, for me, are the best way to teach yourself your Truth but we have to believe our affirmations for them to work. We also have to do something with them - you can write them on your hand, on your mirror, leave a note for yourself in your car, say it out loud while you’re doing the dishes. These are my go-to believable affirmations for you to start with:
I exist
I am a person
People are not problems
I am not the problem
OR I am not a problem (whichever resonates more)
Stay tuned for next week when we learn about how to intervene in the shame spirals that inevitably swirl amidst this venn diagram of coping.
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