CHAPTER 14
THE IDENTITY CODE

Feelings of worth can flourish only in an atmosphere where
individual differences are appreciated, mistakes are tolerated,
communication is open, and rules are flexible—the kind
of atmosphere that is found in a nurturing family.

— VIRGINIA SATIR

When we communicate, there is a story, a storyteller, and a listener. The story travels from teller to listener, from writer to reader. Without people telling and listening, writing and reading, there would be no communication.

We began this book by talking about the importance of story. In part II we talked about the different ways people interact with the world, the way some people are primarily visual, some primarily auditory, some primarily kinesthetic, and so forth. In part III we talked about the importance of recognizing that someone else might not have the same response we have to a story and what techniques we can use to try to match their response to ours. In all of these discussions, we assumed that the person who is reading, or listening to, or experiencing our story has just one identity. We talked about ways people are different from each other, but we haven’t yet talked about the different identities we each carry around inside ourselves.

Every day, we live out many different stories about ourselves. Another way of saying this is that we take on multiple identities to accomplish what we set out to do in the world. I am a husband to my wife, a father to my kids, a child to my mother, a friend to my friends, a boss to my employees, a performer to my radio listeners, an author to you, and so forth.

Many of us have experienced a personal “aha” moment when we saw or heard or felt who we really are, a deep and profound sense of personal identity and connection with all creation. Psychologists call that the core self, and Connirae and Tamara Andreas wrote a brilliant book about it in a therapeutic context, Core Transformation: Reaching the Wellspring Within. I learned much of what I know about this concept from a training session I took with them a decade ago (although the way I’m expressing this all is entirely mine—their expressions are much more elegant, detailed, and specific to therapy and personal growth and transformation).

Those moments when we discover our core selves are memorable because they don’t come that often. Most of the time, we’re inhabiting one of our many subidentities.

Each of these identities requires a different skill set. This doesn’t mean that we’re acting or playing a role or putting on a mask when we inhabit one of these identities. For example, the part of me you meet when I sign books is really me—but it’s just one part of me. You probably won’t meet the part of me who is a dad because it’s not useful for me to be my dad part when I’m signing books.

There’s that word useful again. By now you may have recognized that “usefulness” is a like a secret handshake for competent communicators. When you are an unconsciously competent communicator, you instinctively recognize which part of yourself is most useful when communicating with someone else. And you understand how to identify the part of the listener that will be most likely to connect with or listen to you.

Effective communication happens when your message matches the part of you that most cares about and most uses that message—and reaches the part of your listener that most cares about and uses that message. This is a form of map and territory congruence.

If you’ve been reading this book in a linear way, you may think you’ve read this before. Matching your message to the person listening may sound an awful lot like the theme of part III of this book, “The Meaning of a Communication Is the Response You Get.” It is. The message of that section was that each of us is different from one another, so what persuades me may not be very persuasive to you. We talked about tools we can use—such as anchoring, future pacing, and the learning trance—to make it easier to persuade someone to at least pay attention when we communicate with him or her.

Mapping identity is also about your relationship with the person listening to you, but it goes even deeper. At this level of the communication code, we learn that even if you are talking to just one person, there is not just one “me” talking and not just one “me” listening. Each of us has multiple identities, and what is persuasive to one part of me may not be persuasive to another part of me. To increase the effectiveness of the techniques in part III, we need to map out our listener’s identity and figure out which part will be most effective to speak with.

CREATING MINI-ME’S

In the 1999 Mike Myers’s movie The Spy Who Shagged Me, the hero Austin Powers has a little problem with his nemesis, Dr. Evil. Dr. Evil has cloned a part of himself and named the one-eighth-sized clone Mini-Me. Dr. Evil created Mini-Me because he felt he wasn’t quite evil enough; he created Mini-Me out of his fright-eningly curled pinky finger—his purely evil part. Mini-Me can’t talk—or at least can’t talk much—because an evil part doesn’t really need to talk. He writes notes and fights (unfairly) very well. Whenever Dr. Evil seems to be in danger of showing the least bit of compassion or humanity, Mini-Me scribbles him a note to buck up his evil side. He’s a very useful sidekick to have around for a fictional character like Dr. Evil.

Mini-Me gets most of the laughs in the film. It’s funny to see a pint-size version of an already cartoonish character, and actor Verne Troyer does a great job of imitating actor Mike Myers’s Dr. Evil. As with most jokes, though, there’s also a germ of truth. All of us create Mini-Me’s, parts of ourselves that take on a life and an identity of their own. We create them because, like Dr. Evil, we find them useful.

It’s easiest to identify the different mini-me’s that play defined social roles in the world, such as my dad part, my friend part, and so on. These are identities that are created by our relationships with other people. Closer to our core, we have identities that we create from our own needs and desires. For example, I have a curious part, a hungry part, a compassionate part, a spiritual part, and so on. Being human, I also have a selfish part, a vengeful part, and a part capable of expressing anger. We create parts for every aspect of our being.

These parts have developed because they are useful to us. When we are born, parts emerge to accomplish certain tasks and to meet specific needs. Crying was a behavior controlled by one of our first parts, a part we developed because we needed a way to tell the world that we were hungry. Every time a new need arose, a new part of our brain was activated as a resource to meet that need. One part took responsibility for getting the diapers changed, another for getting fed, another for getting affection, and so forth.

As we go through life, we develop a whole repertory of parts. An entire cast of these parts develops to handle particular desires, needs, problems, and crises. Very often these parts were momentary loci of focused energy and attention; and when they were finished with their job, they dissolved back into your core self, the totality that is you. Others were created to meet ongoing and lifelong needs, such as the need to be fed, or the need for attention, or the need to protect the body. These parts tend to come into being when we face large life changes, such as going to kindergarten, engaging in our first romantic relationship, leaving home, suffering a deep personal loss, and so on.

The parts that emerge to provide us with important new skill sets can take on relatively independent lives of their own. They each have a unique identity and personality. That’s why it’s more useful to say that there are multiple “me’s” than to talk about just one “me.”

“Wait,” you might say. “You make it sound like each of us has multiple-personality disorder.” We do each have multiple personalities, but for most of us they are not disordered. Most mental health issues grow out of structures already present in the brain. The difference between someone who is mentally healthy and someone who has multiple-personality disorder (MPD) is that with MPD one part takes over, gives itself a name, and causes amnesia about all the other parts. In a mentally healthy person, a part takes center stage when needed but is aware of the other parts and, in fact, interacts with them.

For example, I can use my teaching part while I write this section of this book, and at the same time I’m drawing on my friend part (thinking of you in a positive way, trying to give you something useful) and my parent part (hoping to equip you for the world, to one day see you fly on your own). Mentally healthy people unconsciously and intuitively understand that each of these parts is “me” and that collectively they make up the larger “me.”

We juggle our different parts all the time. The part that comes to the fore when you are having a fight is very different from the part in charge when you are falling in love; and both are quite different from the part that takes charge when you are applying for a job, dealing with a store clerk, or advocating for something you believe in.

Therapists can use this information about our different parts to heal dysfunctional parts and help us find our core self. I talk about how to do that in my book Healing ADD.¹ When we communicate specific, individual-issue messages, however, we almost always want to speak to a particular part. Consider how George W. Bush spoke to our hurt and vengeful parts when he used the bullhorn at Ground Zero in New York. Or how some politicians speak to their constituents’s fearful child parts when they repeatedly invoke 9/11 “be afraid” frames. That’s because each part has its own function, and we can use the differences between parts to control how our message is heard. This is the key to cracking the identity code.

THE NASCAR DAD

What makes the identity code so powerful is that it also allows us to chunk up to communicate with many people at the same time. A real communication expert can put a whole group of people into a learning trance or throw them into the future.

The Republican Party, for example, recently targeted the so-called “NASCAR dad.” The NASCAR dad does not define a group of people but rather an identity that is shared by a large group of people.

Many different kinds of people like to watch car racing.² More than 75 million people enjoy watching this sport. And 40 percent—almost half of these fans—are women. Forty-two percent—almost half—earn more than $50,000 per year. And only 38 percent of these NASCAR fans come from the South, matching exactly the spread of the U.S. population (35 percent of the U.S. population lives in the South). So the average NASCAR fan could just as easily be a well-to-do woman from the mountain states as a working-class guy from the South.

The term NASCAR dad doesn’t describe these people’s age or wealth or geographic status—or even their gender. It describes a part, which is uniquely identifiable and touches a larger sense of identity. Men and women (and kids) who watch NASCAR—like nearly all Americans—like to think of themselves as patriots. When they watch the car races and share that experience with others similarly enthusiastic about it, they experience themselves as “regular,” “genuine,” “down to earth” kinds of people.³ It is this identity, the “ordinary patriotic American” part, that Republicans wanted to target to cause the NASCAR psychographic to delete from consciousness the wealthy corporate elite who are the true Republican base.

TARGETING THE FEAR PART’S CODE

George W. Bush usually focused his message on just a few parts—and made sure his message was congruent to those parts. The parts Bush spoke to are mostly our vengeful and fearful parts (presumably because those are the most prominent/powerful parts within him).

We all have parts that are responsible for safety and security. Those are basic needs. In most people those parts are preverbal, instinctual, and very powerful. They are powerful enough to override the intellect parts because they’re in charge of survival. When Republicans crafted messages directly to those parts, they had tremendous power.

Almost every speech Bush gave was set up to appeal, in large or small ways, to our fearful parts, the parts responsible for safety and security. In March 2007, for example, Bush gave a speech to cattle ranchers, one of his favorite groups. Most vote Republican and come from Texas, Bush’s adopted home state. The main part of the speech was about the economy. Bush trotted out the frames his handlers had given him: he talked about the “death tax” and about his belief that “only you know best what to do with ‘your money.’”

These frames could be used to appeal to many different parts. They could appeal to the cattlemen’s selfish parts, or they could appeal to their self-righteous parts. But Bush found a way to make these economic frames appeal to their fearful part. Notice, along the way, that he also used the “indirect you” code (see chapter 6). He said:

You know, when you cut the individual tax rates, you affect farmers and ranchers. Many farmers and ranchers are Sub-chapter S corporations, or limited partnerships, or sole proprietorships, which means you pay tax at the individual income tax level. And if you’re worried about a vibrant agricultural economy, it makes sense to let those who work the land keep more of their own money so they can invest, so they can make the necessary changes so that their businesses can remain vibrant.

This is a pretty interesting way to sell tax cuts. Bush uses the word “invest,” but he’s not really telling these ranchers that tax cuts will make their businesses bigger or better. He’s suggesting that they have something to “worry” about and that they need these tax cuts just “so that their businesses can remain vibrant.” No tax cuts, Mr. Rancher, and your business is gonna collapse faster than a rickety fence in a tornado. It’s an implied threat. Bush is telling these good old boys that if they don’t get their tax cuts, their businesses aren’t going to survive. They won’t “remain vibrant.” They will lose out in the global free trade wars (which his father helped create in the first place).

This speech is a classic example of motivating listeners away from pain. Each of us has parts that protect us from threats. If you tell us something painful or scary might happen and give us a way to avoid it, we are pretty likely to do as told, as those parts are very powerful.

Bush used the same strategy, in the same speech, in an even clearer way when he shifts to talking about the war in Iraq. In March 2007 things weren’t looking too good for Bush’s war. The House and the Senate had both voted on bills setting a deadline for withdrawal. Polls showed that Americans were not pleased with the war and wanted to bring the troops home. So there was Bush, standing before a very friendly audience, wanting to rehearse his most powerful argument in favor of staying the course:

September the 11th is an important moment in this country’s history. It’s a sad moment. But it should serve as a wake-up call to the realities of the world in which we live. On September the 11th, we saw problems originating in a failed state some 7,000 miles away that affected how we live. See, September the 11th was not only a day we were attacked, it is a day that our country must never forget, and the lessons of that day must never be forgot, that what happens overseas matters here at home. It may be tempting to say, oh, just let it run its natural course. But for me, allowing the world to run its natural course, which could lead to more violence and hatred, would end up reducing the security of the United States, not enhancing the security. And our biggest job in America, the biggest job of this government, is to protect you from harm.

Bush always likes to start any discussion of war with 9/11 because 9/11 has become an anchor for every American tied directly to our most fearful and our most protective parts. When we even hear or see the numbers “9/11” many of us immediately bring forward our protective parts. By 2007 even the pro-war cattle ranchers listening to this speech probably were aware that Iraq and 9/11 were completely unrelated.

Bush starts his discussion of the Iraq war with 9/11 anyway, however, because no matter what the price may be in terms of conscious pushback or even derision, he wants to go directly to his listeners’s unconscious but incredibly powerful fearful and protective parts. Using the “you” code again, Bush builds up these parts until he gets to his punch line: the ranchers should support him in any kind of war because Bush will “protect you from harm.” That’s just what the fearful part, once it’s evoked, needs to hear.⁴

George W. Bush can be stumblingly inarticulate. But author and New York University professor Mark Crispin Miller writes in The Bush Dyslexicon that, “Bush is almost always clear when he’s speaking cruelly. For example, when the subject is punitive infliction of great pain, there is no problem with his syntax, grammar, or vocabulary, even if he happens to be lying…. Like all the rest of us, however well or badly educated, Bush can talk quite clearly on the subjects that most interest him: baseball, football, campaign tactics, putting men to death.”⁵

On the other hand, Miller notes that “when he tries to feign idealism or compassion, the man stops speaking his own native language.” Bush speaks very clearly when he is speaking from his vengeful part, his angry part, and his tough-guy part. He knows how to address the vengeful, angry, and fearful parts in us as well. He’s not so good at speaking from his compassionate part or his understanding part as these are apparently stunted or well muffled by some protective part within him.

TARGETING OUR BEST PARTS

The vengeful, angry, fearful, and protective parts of us are very powerful. Conservative message-makers love those parts because when people are looking for revenge or protection all the time, they’re more likely to embrace authority figures. I talk about that in my book Screwed. But there is an alternative.

Martin Luther King Jr., Gandhi, and Jesus talked to our compassionate parts, our hopeful parts, our idealistic parts. King moved a nation when he told us he had a dream. Gandhi transformed continents when he advocated nonviolence. Jesus changed the course of the world when he told us that the meaning of life is love. Although at any given hour or day, the fearful part can seem the stronger part, these examples down through the ages remind us that hope is ultimately stronger than fear and that love is stronger than hate.

Republicans under the Bush administration have focused virtually all of their messages around fear: “Look out! Saddam’s going to get you.” “Look out! Iran is going to get you.” If you are not afraid enough about what’s happening abroad, they will scare you right at home: “Look out! Social Security is in crisis!” “Look out! The government wants to take your money!” Republicans consistently appeal to the vengeful, frightened, protective parts of us all.

Liberals generally appeal more often to our natural al-lies—the hopeful, idealistic, and compassionate parts we all share. Presidents like John F. Kennedy and Franklin D. Roosevelt spoke to our hopeful parts. Here’s Kennedy, speaking during the fourth debate he had with Richard Nixon:⁶

I believe that if we can get a party which believes in movement, which believes in going ahead, then we can reestablish our position in the world, strong in defense, strong in economic growth, justice for our people, co-guarantee of constitutional rights, so that people will believe that we practice what we preach.

To move forward, to hold a positive vision—that is a powerful message we can use to appeal to our collective, societal hopeful part. Imagine how our country would change for the better if politicians today followed in the footsteps of JFK and FDR and really told the liberal story.