https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/four-ways-lockdown-impacts-our-identities-each-feels-quite-sarah-babb

I completed two days of online facilitation and I could not quite pin down the quality of how I was feeling. Yes, tired, but there was something else underlying it. Usually after a few days of facilitating a room full of managers, there is an aliveness, an alertness, a pleasure, a joy underlying that tiredness.  I am as much a part of the questioning, vibrant challenging exchanges, the heaving and journeying, of each person in the room. Yet there was a different quality to this tiredness after days on Zoom.  After I closed the computer I felt quite flat.  A foreign feeling.

A psychologist stated in an article in The Guardian ” I miss noticing how people enter the therapy room – the subtle difference from the session before, or the way they may hold their face and body; ……Finding new ways to nourish one’s needs in this new reality – especially in the absence of touch and gaze, which we unknowingly rely upon to recognise ourselves – can be tricky….Isolation can maraud all of us as we miss the interactions, intimate or causal, that confirm our sense of our value, our place in our community, our work and the world.”[1]

Lockdown and social distancing as brought on in response to the COVID-19 pandemic impacts our interior world of identity in fundamental ways. But in different ways. Here are four ways we are impacted, and ways to work with these.

1. In lockdown all identities are switched on at once 

Each of us holds multiple identities as to who we are in the world, each of which is socially animated and affirmed. Our identities include what roles we hold and how we strive to be in these. As a manager we may aim to be firm but fair, results focused, and as parent we may strive to be gentle, kind, present, generous in this role. It is how we identify in a role that weaves into who we are and who we strive to be.  

Each context brings a particular identity to the fore. Such as when we arrive at work the salience of our work identity comes to the fore.  This means our cognitive and emotive attention can be focused that role with the behavioural and cultural cues of that context. 

Under lockdown it is beyond exhausting and depleting as multiple identities are brought to the fore at once. Working at home means our identities of parent, manager, home maker, partner, and others are all switched on at once. 

There is no natural transition between role demands and a constant pressure to meet all expectations all at once, each role demanding different things. Managers are exhausted by code-switching between roles at the best of times, as they both adopt power in some roles and lessen personal power in other engagements.[2]  Without transitions between roles all switches are on at once. This is depleting and confusing in equal measure.  

Switching between multiple identities in lockdown needs us to build in different rituals and routines to signify and mark the distinct identities and transitions between them.  Where you sit, how you enter work and exit ‘family’ time, as this gives us time to breathe in between, time to decompress and refuel.

2. Identities interplay and conflict, and even more so in lockdown

We also know that our identities hold tension as we play out different behaviours, patterns and even values between them. Our way of being with the family may differ to how we have been on our work roles, and we may feel conflicted by this. 

Under lockdown it is confusing and we can feel stuck in between roles and identities. We may even feel down about our seemingly low efficacy in either one.  Being liminal can feel fraught as you are hanging between; betwixt and between, not able to meet the obligations of either. 

Holding multiple identities gently 

We can practice small ways in which we hold different identities. We shift our mindset from being in an’ either/ or’ approach to holding a ‘both/and’ approach. We can hold the tensions and even contradictions as to who we are and want to be. So temper that self-criticism to hold compassion for what is going on and where you are at right now.  Press pause. Breathe. Have empathy for you and others in the confusion and messiness of it all. Notice when you add the confounding layers of judgement that you ‘ought to’, ‘should have’, ‘must’. Notice and accept where you are as a start. Only then can you think a bit more clearly around your next choices.

We need to build our capacity to be personally agile - emotionally and dispositionally – in that we are self-aware and have a self-authoring mind as per the work of Robert Kegan’s stages of adult development. Susan David in her book Emotional Agility talks to unhooking from emotions in order to move through them.

3. Identities are not fixed.

As soon as we accept that our identities are constantly shifting and evolving, the more ease we will have to be in the flow of the moment. And to see what is emerging for ourselves.  If we cast our minds back ten years it is clear how we have changed: our preferences in music, hobbies, social activities, even friends, roles and ambitions.  Yet when we look into the future ten years it is somehow harder to see that we will change as much in this time.  Dan Gilbert calls this the ‘end of history illusion’, that somehow at each point we think we have reached the pinnacle of our development and that now we are finally the person we were meant to be.  In actuality our identity constantly evolves as we confront different contexts and inner shifts.

In lockdown we feel powerless – that the changes are being forced on us.

In lockdown many a colleague are questioning their next moves, either out of necessity or calling. Find ways to deliberate about what is becoming clearer for you about you to find your agency in what your needs are. Our yearning to have meaning and to contribute to a world, may leave us with some curiosity to explore multiple alternative possible selves. Ask what is next for me, and have at least three alternate stories. Be playful in exploring possible future selves.

Jennifer Garvey Berger in her book on Unlocking Leadership Mindtraps (2019) poses a series of questions as ways to overcome Leadership Mindtraps. The ego is one mindtrap preventing us from acknowledging the reality of a context, which keeps us stuck. We want to prove things and protect our ego and be in control and yet we are not in control of many things. The question which loosens the grip of ego is ‘who do I want to be next?”. By asking ourselves this question it frees us to consider the next move, and the multiple possibilities open to us.

4. Identities need social interaction

We need social interaction to affirm who we are in the world. Our identity depends on social endorsement to boost who we try to be in the world, and to contest when we push or shift boundaries.  And these social cues are often subtle- who greets us in the office, where we sit in the boardroom, who nods when we voice an opinion, who looks away.  It is also in the spontaneous and casual interactions that our identity is enlivened.  We discern meaning in the daily social commentary and make meaning of ourselves from connecting with others. We need to be valued, to be seen, for the world to reflect back to us who we want to be in the world, and who we are. 

Without social interaction in lockdown we feel flat.

In lockdown our social cues are limited. Confined to 2-D interactions via online meetings and calls.  It is in this we feel social distance, not only physical distance.  We feel somehow out of touch, disconnected and keep reaching for ways for the social norms and social cues that affirm us, somehow. Peering into a screen does not do this, and somehow scheduled meetings with pre-set agendas limit social reinforcements. It is the pre-meeting chatter, the coffee rituals, the corridor interactions, and even the school drop offs or parking lot encounters that reflect who we are. These myriad of small daily connects keep us knowing who we are in this world where we fit in and ultimately why we matter.
Forge multiple social interactions 

Find ways in lockdown for many interactions and in those interactions keep these to the small, not only the big ways. Also connect with those outside your inner circle of family and immediate work teams. Joining a circle of different people to connect with can help us find ourselves in these times.  You may be a part of a WhatsApp group of friends, family, work and professional colleagues but these are familiar and known. It is beyond this- a more diverse set of ears and eyes that will serve us. Connect with those one layer out on your social and work networks that you share common interests with and can trust. Those less vested people will provide a more earnest and sincere place to reflect and share.  In times of uncertainty social learning is as important.  

“We learn how we — and others — feel and think about the new situation we are in, and how to manage those thoughts and feelings. This type of learning has us focusing on people and requires that we inquire about our own and others’ experiences. Just as cognitive learning teaches us how to manage the natural world, socio-emotional learning helps us manage the social world.” [3]

Find trusted spaces to reflect and have some echoed back to you.  Most of all remain curious as to what you are learning about yourself in these times. A multitude of possibilities opens up to you from this gap. The gap of where you are and who you want to be now and into the future.

A further question to ponder is ‘how do you want to remember yourself during this pandemic and lockdown, ten years from now?’ Step into crafting the future and the future self you see each day, with social support and learning, step into this future.

Social distancing and lockdown impacts our identity work in several ways. In summary

1. In lockdown all identities are switched on at once – build rituals to ease the transitions 

2. Identities interplay and conflict, and even more so in lockdown – hold a ‘both/and’ mindset, gently

3. Identities are not fixed- ask who do I want to be next. 

4. Identities need social interaction – connect with different circles for multiple interactions and learning

[1] Susie Orbich in The Guardian UK, 7 May 2020  This article is adapted from the John Donne lecture at Hertford College, Oxford, which was delivered on 24 April 2020

[2] E. Anicich & J. Hirsch, Why being a middle manager is so exhausting. Harvard Business Review, March 2017

[3] A. Peshkam & G. Petriglieri . Keep your people learning when you go virtual. Harvard Business Review, April 2020.