Rich, this is brilliant — and I want to add a layer from 40+ years of clinical neuropsychology that I think deepens your point in a direction your readers need to hear.
What you're describing as Self-Identity On Demand — this deliberate swapping of the predictive model — is the *conscious, adult* version of something the brain already does involuntarily to keep children alive. You did it intentionally at 19 with Sgt Rock. But children in single digits who are subjected to extreme abuse, torture, or who witness violent crime do this without choosing to and without knowing they're doing it. Their brain doesn't ask permission. It just builds another place to go.
I watched this happen in real time early in my career. A seven-year-old girl I was holding in a physical restraint during a four-hour tantrum shifted right in front of me — not calming down, not giving up, but *leaving*. Going somewhere else in her mind where what was happening to her wasn't happening to her. That moment sparked my entire trajectory into neuropsychology.
Your brain's first job is to make sure you survive. If that means constructing a separate identity — whether it's Sgt Rock on a bus to Fort Dix or a dissociative state in a child who has no other escape — so be it. This isn't a premium thinking skill you have to teach people to access. It's one of our most primal survival mechanisms. We are *born* with this wiring.
The difference — and this is where your work gets important — is authorship. The abused child doesn't choose the identity that forms. It gets built in the dark by a desperate brain. What you're teaching people is how to take that same architecture and use it with intention, with awareness, with a roster instead of a trauma response. That's the leap. That's what makes your framework powerful — not that it creates something new, but that it puts conscious hands on something the brain has been doing since before we had language for it.
Beautifully done. This deserves a much wider audience.
This is the comment I was hoping someone with your background would write, because it's the distinction that matters most.
The mechanism is identical. The difference is authorship. A child's brain builds that architecture in the dark because it has no choice...survival dictates the model. The brain's first function is to keep you alive. This is what happens when you bring that same architecture into the light, with intention, with awareness, and with the ability to choose which model you load and when.
There's a line in the article: "The only difference between a nickname and an alter ego is authorship." Your comment just extended that further than I took it. The difference between a survival mechanism and a performance skill is also authorship.
Your career has been spent helping people who never had that choice. Mine is spent showing people who do have the choice that it exists. I think those two things need each other. This is what happens when multiple perspectives land on the same mechanism...your voice and world applied to it gives everyone a deeper understanding than either of us delivers alone. That's the greater good of this kind of @Substack collaboration. Thank you for bringing yours.
I was actually wondering if, in your mind, you become a character like 'Super Coder (aka Claudia Cupareanu) not implying yours was a bit answer. Humor is hard via text 😁
Haha, "Claudia" was so specific it got me confused, because Kamil Banc built a Claude Code personal assistant called Claudia, so my brain went straight there 😆 https://github.com/kbanc85/claudia
Each article you write is a powerful insight that continues to shift me.
There were two things that grabbed my attention:
1. "There is no little “you” sitting in a control room being authentic. There’s a dynamic system constantly asking who do I need to be right now to navigate this effectively?"
This reminds me of "labels" and the danger of boxing ourselves into a single way of being - and thus preventing ourselves from growing.
2. "The persona doesn’t add something foreign. It subtracts something expensive."
It's funny how powerful subtracting is. When we continue to subtract we get to this place where there is nothing in our way.
Your second point just took the concept somewhere I haven't fully explored yet.... "When we continue to subtract we get to this place where there is nothing in our way." That's the endgame of the whole framework and you said it WAY cleaner than I did. Way, way cleaner. Brilliant. Yes, the persona removes the expensive stuff. Keep on removing long enough and what's left is just you, operating without interference. That might be the real roster...or the rosters purpose. Not a Counsel. Not five characters. One clear version of yourself with nothing in the way. I need to sit with that. Thank you for reading this closely...and sending me places with gratitude.
I cannot take the credit for that! I've been reading Richard Rudd's book the Gene Keys - it aligns with the I Ching in many respects but is a contemplative practice that looks at our unique karma paths that we are here to transmute in the world.
It's really in that state of nothingness - no thought that we're able to know and understand because we're no longer fighting the information that's right in front of us. When we know nothing we are able to see everything.
I just looked up the definition of "to know" and this is was what Google provided:
1. to be aware of through observation, inquiry, or information.
2. have developed a relationship with (someone) through meeting and spending time with them; be familiar or friendly with.
We've been taught to know is an active or forceful process when the definition highlights the receiving aspect - to observe ... to inquire - and even more interesting is the idea of developing a relationship with something ...
I am curious what comes up for you as you contemplate this.
Two things have bubbled to the top here, Emily. One I'm writing about tomorrow... it deals with being able to see the whole thing you want to know, differently. The second, a week from tomorrow, is discernment. The end game of subtraction? Automaticity. You subtract until what remains is, naturally, you. The game goes on.
This is so true our brains aren’t just for thinking, they shape how we experience everything. Training your mind changes how you move through life, not just what you know.
That's the starting point, Data Frank. The next question is whether you're choosing which mind you're training or letting your default make that decision for you. That's where it gets interesting.
Ooh this sounds like fun. After some healing challenges I sputter in my gym commitments - frustrating for someone who used to do hard workouts 4-5 days a week. But Liv Lifter? No issue.
It’s like character development in a novel.
Why is this more effective than assigning an attribute to who ‘I’ am though? Like, “I am someone who is committed to being strong?”
Liv Lifter is already on the roster! Love it. Your question is the one that separates this from every affirmation technique on the shelf, so let me give it a real answer. "I am someone who is committed to being strong" still runs through your default identity model. Your brain hears it and immediately checks it against your history: Really? Because last Tuesday you skipped the gym and ate crackers on the couch. The affirmation creates an argument with yourself that you have to win every time. Liv Lifter sidesteps that argument entirely. She's a different model with a different history. Your brain doesn't fact-check her against your Wednesday because she wasn't on that couch. The distance is the mechanism. Affirmations ask your current self to believe something new. A persona loads a self that already believes it. One is persuasion. The other is architecture. 💪😎👍
Thank you Rich! Substack hereby needs a ‘mind blown’ emoji. Matrix is my favorite movie…”I know jujitsu” - - this persona loading bit is going to be fun. I just have to get to know the character really well so that I CAN become them.
The worksheet has the reader creating 3 personas superficially. As this concept will likely be new to most people, I think helping to create just one - in more depth- would be helpful. So then the roster is what happens at the end of the process rather than up front.
You were right. I was seeing this as the builder, not the reader in all the excitement. So I rebuilt it from scratch with fresh eyes. Cover, intro, a filled-in example (mine, from Fort Dix), then a blank worksheet, then a roster to grow into.
Still a work in progress on the design side, but the structure and flow are what I need your eyes on. When you go through it, I'm curious: does the example make the blank worksheet feel doable or intimidating? That's the one question that matters most right now.
---
Rich, this is brilliant — and I want to add a layer from 40+ years of clinical neuropsychology that I think deepens your point in a direction your readers need to hear.
What you're describing as Self-Identity On Demand — this deliberate swapping of the predictive model — is the *conscious, adult* version of something the brain already does involuntarily to keep children alive. You did it intentionally at 19 with Sgt Rock. But children in single digits who are subjected to extreme abuse, torture, or who witness violent crime do this without choosing to and without knowing they're doing it. Their brain doesn't ask permission. It just builds another place to go.
I watched this happen in real time early in my career. A seven-year-old girl I was holding in a physical restraint during a four-hour tantrum shifted right in front of me — not calming down, not giving up, but *leaving*. Going somewhere else in her mind where what was happening to her wasn't happening to her. That moment sparked my entire trajectory into neuropsychology.
Your brain's first job is to make sure you survive. If that means constructing a separate identity — whether it's Sgt Rock on a bus to Fort Dix or a dissociative state in a child who has no other escape — so be it. This isn't a premium thinking skill you have to teach people to access. It's one of our most primal survival mechanisms. We are *born* with this wiring.
The difference — and this is where your work gets important — is authorship. The abused child doesn't choose the identity that forms. It gets built in the dark by a desperate brain. What you're teaching people is how to take that same architecture and use it with intention, with awareness, with a roster instead of a trauma response. That's the leap. That's what makes your framework powerful — not that it creates something new, but that it puts conscious hands on something the brain has been doing since before we had language for it.
Beautifully done. This deserves a much wider audience.
This is the comment I was hoping someone with your background would write, because it's the distinction that matters most.
The mechanism is identical. The difference is authorship. A child's brain builds that architecture in the dark because it has no choice...survival dictates the model. The brain's first function is to keep you alive. This is what happens when you bring that same architecture into the light, with intention, with awareness, and with the ability to choose which model you load and when.
There's a line in the article: "The only difference between a nickname and an alter ego is authorship." Your comment just extended that further than I took it. The difference between a survival mechanism and a performance skill is also authorship.
Your career has been spent helping people who never had that choice. Mine is spent showing people who do have the choice that it exists. I think those two things need each other. This is what happens when multiple perspectives land on the same mechanism...your voice and world applied to it gives everyone a deeper understanding than either of us delivers alone. That's the greater good of this kind of @Substack collaboration. Thank you for bringing yours.
Wow, Rich, what a fascinating read, and what a fascinating exercise for the mind.
Thank you you, Daria. Or, are you in Claudia Cupareanu mode… 🤩
Haha, maybe not my most insightful comment, but there's no bots on my Substack. Just me.
I was actually wondering if, in your mind, you become a character like 'Super Coder (aka Claudia Cupareanu) not implying yours was a bit answer. Humor is hard via text 😁
Haha, "Claudia" was so specific it got me confused, because Kamil Banc built a Claude Code personal assistant called Claudia, so my brain went straight there 😆 https://github.com/kbanc85/claudia
Ha! 😂
Each article you write is a powerful insight that continues to shift me.
There were two things that grabbed my attention:
1. "There is no little “you” sitting in a control room being authentic. There’s a dynamic system constantly asking who do I need to be right now to navigate this effectively?"
This reminds me of "labels" and the danger of boxing ourselves into a single way of being - and thus preventing ourselves from growing.
2. "The persona doesn’t add something foreign. It subtracts something expensive."
It's funny how powerful subtracting is. When we continue to subtract we get to this place where there is nothing in our way.
Your second point just took the concept somewhere I haven't fully explored yet.... "When we continue to subtract we get to this place where there is nothing in our way." That's the endgame of the whole framework and you said it WAY cleaner than I did. Way, way cleaner. Brilliant. Yes, the persona removes the expensive stuff. Keep on removing long enough and what's left is just you, operating without interference. That might be the real roster...or the rosters purpose. Not a Counsel. Not five characters. One clear version of yourself with nothing in the way. I need to sit with that. Thank you for reading this closely...and sending me places with gratitude.
A YMCA workout later, the dog is on the scent. More to come...
I cannot take the credit for that! I've been reading Richard Rudd's book the Gene Keys - it aligns with the I Ching in many respects but is a contemplative practice that looks at our unique karma paths that we are here to transmute in the world.
It's really in that state of nothingness - no thought that we're able to know and understand because we're no longer fighting the information that's right in front of us. When we know nothing we are able to see everything.
I just looked up the definition of "to know" and this is was what Google provided:
1. to be aware of through observation, inquiry, or information.
2. have developed a relationship with (someone) through meeting and spending time with them; be familiar or friendly with.
We've been taught to know is an active or forceful process when the definition highlights the receiving aspect - to observe ... to inquire - and even more interesting is the idea of developing a relationship with something ...
I am curious what comes up for you as you contemplate this.
Two things have bubbled to the top here, Emily. One I'm writing about tomorrow... it deals with being able to see the whole thing you want to know, differently. The second, a week from tomorrow, is discernment. The end game of subtraction? Automaticity. You subtract until what remains is, naturally, you. The game goes on.
That was such a powerful way of putting it, "You subtract until what remains is, naturally you."
It's so interesting to realize that when we subtract - all we are left with is us. When we continue to pile on what is not us, we slow ourselves down.
Thank you, Emily. I'm not sure if you've read https://whatnobodytoldyouabout.substack.com/p/what-nobody-told-you-about-ai?utm_campaign=post-expanded-share&utm_medium=web but I thought of you reading it because we often go deeper. This one really travels and has been the center of a lot of thoughts lately.
This is so true our brains aren’t just for thinking, they shape how we experience everything. Training your mind changes how you move through life, not just what you know.
That's the starting point, Data Frank. The next question is whether you're choosing which mind you're training or letting your default make that decision for you. That's where it gets interesting.
Agreed. Awareness is the entry point. Choice is where the real work begins.
Ooh this sounds like fun. After some healing challenges I sputter in my gym commitments - frustrating for someone who used to do hard workouts 4-5 days a week. But Liv Lifter? No issue.
It’s like character development in a novel.
Why is this more effective than assigning an attribute to who ‘I’ am though? Like, “I am someone who is committed to being strong?”
Liv Lifter is already on the roster! Love it. Your question is the one that separates this from every affirmation technique on the shelf, so let me give it a real answer. "I am someone who is committed to being strong" still runs through your default identity model. Your brain hears it and immediately checks it against your history: Really? Because last Tuesday you skipped the gym and ate crackers on the couch. The affirmation creates an argument with yourself that you have to win every time. Liv Lifter sidesteps that argument entirely. She's a different model with a different history. Your brain doesn't fact-check her against your Wednesday because she wasn't on that couch. The distance is the mechanism. Affirmations ask your current self to believe something new. A persona loads a self that already believes it. One is persuasion. The other is architecture. 💪😎👍
Thank you Rich! Substack hereby needs a ‘mind blown’ emoji. Matrix is my favorite movie…”I know jujitsu” - - this persona loading bit is going to be fun. I just have to get to know the character really well so that I CAN become them.
You know, I've been working on that. :-) And it's supposed to be fun...if we're not having fun, we're doing something wrong.
Care to test a prototype? The following link is to a PDF to help you get to know your characters, and what they can do for you. It's only a start, but I'd love your input: https://assets.cdn.filesafe.space/l97xVzfqiLIYOQBQKmHC/media/69a8c2e54b6c77a5521d634a.pdf
The worksheet has the reader creating 3 personas superficially. As this concept will likely be new to most people, I think helping to create just one - in more depth- would be helpful. So then the roster is what happens at the end of the process rather than up front.
You were right. I was seeing this as the builder, not the reader in all the excitement. So I rebuilt it from scratch with fresh eyes. Cover, intro, a filled-in example (mine, from Fort Dix), then a blank worksheet, then a roster to grow into.
Still a work in progress on the design side, but the structure and flow are what I need your eyes on. When you go through it, I'm curious: does the example make the blank worksheet feel doable or intimidating? That's the one question that matters most right now.
https://assets.cdn.filesafe.space/l97xVzfqiLIYOQBQKmHC/media/69a9b0408ca91acbc425d557.pdf