The Neuroplasticity of Identity

Identity is often talked about as if it were something fixed, almost like a hidden object buried inside us that we are supposed to discover once and for all. But a more interesting and probably more accurate way to think about it is this: identity is something the brain is constantly building. That idea was a big inspiration for me after my Mind Tricks Radio interview with Dr. Elizabeth Mateer, a Harvard Medical School neuropsychology fellow. Our conversation touched on neuroplasticity, memory, attention, and self-narrative, and it got me thinking about how much of who we are is shaped not just by what happens to us, but by what we notice, repeat, remember, and come to believe.

The brain does not record life like a camera. It selects, filters, prioritizes, and gives extra weight to certain experiences, especially the emotionally charged ones. A humiliating moment in school, a painful rejection, a harsh criticism, or a season of failure can become much bigger than the event itself. Those moments often harden into conclusions: I’m awkward. I’m not creative. I’m bad under pressure. I always mess things up. Then the really tricky part kicks in. We start scanning for proof that those ideas are true, while ignoring all the evidence that does not fit the story. Before long, what began as a painful experience becomes part of our identity, and we carry it around as if it were an objective fact.

That is where neuroplasticity becomes such a hopeful idea. If the brain can help reinforce limiting stories, it can also help loosen them. We are not stuck with the same interpretations forever. When people begin acting differently, paying attention to different experiences, and challenging old assumptions, they are not just “thinking positively.” They are helping create new pathways in how they understand themselves. That does not mean erasing the past or pretending painful things never happened. It means the past does not get the final word. You can have a history of anxiety and still become bolder. You can have a history of self-doubt and still become more grounded. You can have neglected parts of yourself for years and still bring them back to life.

This is also why it is so important not to build your whole identity around one role. If all of your self-worth is wrapped up in being successful at work, being in a relationship, being needed, or being admired, then life gets fragile fast. When that one area gets shaken, everything shakes with it. But people tend to be much more resilient when they have several meaningful parts of themselves in play: friend, parent, creator, professional, learner, helper, musician, athlete, reader, explorer. That is not being scattered or fake. It is actually a healthier and more flexible way to live. Authenticity does not mean acting exactly the same in every situation. It means showing up in ways that still reflect your values, even as different parts of you come forward in different settings.

Maybe the better question is not “Who am I really?” but “What kind of self am I continuing to practice?” That question leaves room for growth. It leaves room for reinvention. It leaves room for old parts of yourself to return and new parts to emerge. Identity is not just something that happened to you long ago. It is also something you are shaping every day, whether consciously or not. That is a challenging idea, but it is also a liberating one, because it means change is not only possible. It is already built into how the mind works.

FULL TRANSCRIPT

Dr. Aaron Kaplan:
I’m really excited to have this conversation with you because I’m really passionate about some of these areas that you write about and teach about and research and talk about, particularly neuropsychology. We had discussed a little bit earlier that I have some background in that and I really enjoy it. Especially applying concepts of brain development and cognitive development with identity is really fascinating stuff. So I’m super excited about this conversation.

Before we get into the meat of that, though, I’d really like to get to know my guests a little bit better. So why don’t we start by telling me a bit more about yourself and your career and how you got interested in these very fascinating subjects that we’re talking about?

Dr. Elizabeth Mateer:
Absolutely. I like to start off any sort of conversation like this about my career and how I got here by just saying it’s constantly related to asking why.

I was always a very curious and creative child. I’m originally from New York, in the beautiful Hudson Valley. Like I said, I was always very curious and creative. I was always reading, always had a book in my hand. I really enjoyed reading fantasy books, Harry Potter, all those types of books. And I was also writing. I journaled a lot as a child. So constantly reading and writing.

And I was also a dancer. I was in ballet class from the time that I was little up until I finished high school, and all I ever wanted to do was be a dancer. So at 17, I started trying to pursue that professionally. I was in New York City going to about 20 auditions a week, also teaching dance classes, and still reading, still writing, living a very creative life. I did that for about five years.

Then I sort of had to have a conversation with myself, a real honest conversation with myself, about how sustainable this was going to be long term. Because it’s fun in your early 20s living in New York City, just waiting for the next gig, but I really was starting to get tired. And I had always wanted to finish my bachelor’s degree. I had an associate’s degree. So I decided, when I was about 23 years old, that realistically, I am not talented enough as a dancer to make this into the kind of career that I want for myself. And that’s a hard conversation to have.

Dr. Aaron Kaplan:
Sure.

Dr. Elizabeth Mateer:
But I did. And so naturally, as one does to have a more serious career, I went to college for creative writing and poetry.

Dr. Aaron Kaplan:
Right. That’s going to be a lucrative career there, right?

Dr. Elizabeth Mateer:
Right. And it’s funny. I’ve had a lot of moments after that, for many years, where I criticized myself a bit on that decision, saying, well, why didn’t I go for something more STEM-related or something more “serious”? I don’t feel that way anymore. I’m actually so grateful that I have that training in creative writing and that I pursued something that I really care about and that’s added so much value to my life.

As I was writing my own experiences, I was writing a lot of memoirs, writing a lot of poetry, I started uncovering patterns about myself. Based on that, I got interested in maybe wanting to learn about psychology. So reading and writing was sort of my pathway into becoming curious about psychology.

I’m also the eldest of six children, eldest daughter, and I think there’s a little bit of nature involved in learning how to be a good listener and that sort of thing. Maybe some environmental factors kind of pushed me in that direction of thinking I want to be a therapist.

I went to NYU for my master’s in counseling, and I was accepted into a PhD program right as my master’s program was ending. And this was in April or May of 2020, just as the pandemic hit. So I’m into my PhD studies, I’m conducting research, I’m learning, I’m writing. We get to the point of clinical placements, and I had found myself being really curious about neuropsychology, sort of the cognitive underpinnings of why we are the way we are and why we behave the way that we behave.

And there was something about neuropsychology that, for the first time since I found dance, really clicked for me. Like, okay, this is it. Neuropsychology is really interesting because when you do neuropsychological assessments, as I’m sure you can relate to, you’re sort of digging into a question you’re trying to solve. It’s a puzzle. You’re gathering points of data, coming up with theories of what’s going on, and trying to use data to support it. It’s sort of like unraveling a puzzle. At least that’s how it feels to me. It’s a very challenging aspect of psychology, and I love that piece.

Dr. Aaron Kaplan:
I love that you said putting a puzzle together. We’re finding all of these different pieces, and sometimes you find that one note in the medical record that then connects with something they said in the interview and fits together with the data, and that’s the piece that kind of brings it all together.

Yeah. Well, Elizabeth, that’s a really interesting background that brought you into psychology and to the work you do. And it seems to me that you’re kind of a living example of this topic that we’re talking about, because you’ve had a bunch of different iterations of your development and your career with the creative stuff, the writing, the poetry, the dance, and sort of always seeking. So I’m imagining that all of these pieces fit together for your interest in this topic about identity and the neuropsychology and neuroplasticity behind it.

Let’s just talk about the brain a bit and this idea of developing a sense of self out of everything that happens to us in our lives. Can you tell us a little bit about, is there a neurobiology of self? How do we tie in our identity to brain functioning? I know that’s a tough, broad question, but are there any insights you can give us about that?

Dr. Elizabeth Mateer:
I like to think about the way that we develop a sense of self as more so that we build our sense of self. Our brain is constantly iterating, and our brain really loves patterns. So patterns that are repeated over time are the things that tend to become the most salient in our brains.

We’re constantly taking in so much information. We walk into a room, we’re scanning, we’re taking in the sights, the sounds, the smells. Maybe we see our friend in the corner, or there’s something on the television, and we’re taking in so much information that our brain has to kind of prioritize what it’s going to encode. It prioritizes those things based on what we pay attention to, what’s emotionally salient, and then again, what’s repeated over time.

And these things that we pay attention to, those are the things that we’re able to encode and then become memory. And those memories are what we build a narrative around. What we build that narrative around kind of becomes our identity.

And on top of that, every time we go to retrieve a memory, it’s not like rewinding something and playing it back exactly. It’s more that we’re reaching in and reconstructing it anew. So we’re rebuilding that memory, and sometimes it’s not always exactly as it happened, based on maybe the emotions that we were feeling at the time. In that sense, we create a story around what those memories are, and those stories become how we see ourselves and how we move through the world.

Dr. Aaron Kaplan:
I see. Okay. So there are things that occur in our environment, and what we pay attention to and how we relate to them and the emotional experience around them begins to shape the way that we see ourselves and develop an identity. I just imagine that the environment one grows up in and what they’re exposed to will have a huge impact on the identity a person might relate to.

Dr. Elizabeth Mateer:
Sure. And I will preface this by saying I’m not a child expert by any means. I primarily work more with geriatrics, so I’m kind of the opposite end of the spectrum.

Dr. Aaron Kaplan:
Dementia evaluations, right? Sort of.

Dr. Elizabeth Mateer:
Exactly. That’s very common for neuropsychology. I do love my folks over 65.

When it comes to kind of developing this identity, what I can say is that if you grow up in an environment where you’re constantly being told you’re so smart and creative, that is likely going to be something that you start to believe about yourself. You’re going to encode that, and you are going to move through the world in a way that maybe opens yourself up to more opportunities that allow you to be smart and creative.

Whereas, on the other hand, if you grow up in a household where you’re constantly told you’re dumb and you won’t amount to anything, that’s likely going to show up in the classroom. Okay, well, this subject is hard. Why should I even try? Because I’m dumb and I won’t amount to anything.

There is research on this to show that kids that grow up with those sorts of messages have poorer outcomes in school because they believe that about themselves. And it actually has nothing to do with what they’re actually able to do.

Dr. Aaron Kaplan:
Sure. Well, that makes perfect sense. The idea about being told you’re very creative and artistic naturally becomes reinforcing because it’s more likely that, as a child, you’ll start doing more artistic and creative things, getting reinforced for doing them, then getting better at them because you’re doing them. And it sort of self-perpetuates that part of one’s identity. So that makes a lot of sense.

I read a few articles that you wrote for Psychology Today, and you talk about this idea of multiple identities. In general, how do you see the effect of having different identities across different contexts? Is that good for people? And in what way? How do we put that in context?

Dr. Elizabeth Mateer:
I want to preface this by saying I’m not talking about the disorder multiple personality disorder.

Dr. Aaron Kaplan:
Right, exactly. We’re not talking about that.

Dr. Elizabeth Mateer:
We’re talking about having different aspects to yourself or different identities. Like, I have an identity as a neuropsychology fellow and a poet. Those are two identities that I share.

I think it’s very healthy to have these multiple aspects of our personality because our brains are very adaptive. We adapt to our environment. So not only does it make sense from a neuropsychological perspective that our brain is constantly scanning the environment and adapting to it, it just makes sense. It’s not realistic to show up in one identity in all contexts.

Like if I showed up to a dinner with friends and asked them to address me as Dr. Mateer and I started doing a neuropsych assessment on them, they would be like, go home. You’re full of yourself.

Dr. Aaron Kaplan:
Right.

Dr. Elizabeth Mateer:
And then on the other hand, if I go and I see a patient and I start venting about a co-worker to them, that’s also completely inappropriate.

So we do need to hold these different aspects of our identity or these multiple identities. I think a professional identity is one that most people can relate to, but then it can get more nuanced, like being a psychologist and a writer, or a lawyer and a father, and so on.

Dr. Aaron Kaplan:
Are these identities sort of cognitively compartmentalized in the brain somehow? How does the brain separate the different identities, the roles that we show up in, in different contexts? I’m speaking a little beyond my knowledge base here, but sort of like cognitive schemas that are set and relate to a particular role in one place that are separate from elsewhere. How do you view that?

Dr. Elizabeth Mateer:
Kind of going back to what I said earlier, our brains are very adaptive. We’re always scanning the environment, and we’re making note of, A, what’s important in this situation, and B, what’s going to keep us safe in this situation.

A lot of these things, I think, come back to basic evolutionary principles. So if you’re in a professional environment and you’re expected to behave as a professional, and you start behaving unprofessionally, well, now you’re at risk, or you’re at risk of losing your job. That’s not a safe thing to do. That’s not a safe place to be.

So I think some things show up in terms of preservation. Our brain is constantly assessing how can I show up in this situation safely, and that is one aspect of how this comes into play and how the brain kind of organizes what aspects of maybe our personality or our identity show up in what context.

Dr. Aaron Kaplan:
Yeah, that makes sense.

And so you’ve talked about before how attention is sort of the gatekeeper. What we notice gets encoded, and that starts creating the way that we relate to different contexts. You also mentioned an interesting concept of emotionally charged moments and periods that overweight how we develop our sense of ourselves and our identities. Could you tell us a little bit more about that?

Dr. Elizabeth Mateer:
Yes, absolutely. I love attention. It is one of my favorite cognitive functions. And I really do think of it as kind of the gatekeeper or the window to all of the rest of our cognitive functioning.

So I think of attention sort of as a spotlight, and wherever you shine that light is whatever is available to be encoded. Anything outside of that spotlight, we can’t encode it. There’s no chance that we’re going to be able to get it in.

Dr. Aaron Kaplan:
That’s an interesting concept too, because when I do psychotherapy with my patients, one thing that I explain to them is until the things we’re working on are things that you are consciously focusing in on, you’re not going to be able to work on them. So especially with cognitive behavioral therapy, we have this idea of automatic thoughts and these processes that go on sort of in the background that we’re not aware of. And so part of therapy is becoming a lot more aware of the things that we want to work on and to change. So that’s all about attention, right?

Dr. Elizabeth Mateer:
It’s funny you say that too. I have so many people come in and say, “I can’t remember names. Anytime I go to meet someone, I shake their hand, they say their name, and I immediately forget it.”

I’m like, well, I guarantee you didn’t forget it. You just didn’t pay attention to it in the first place. Because when we meet someone new, it’s kind of this emotionally charged situation, typically. Even for very well-regulated people, it can be a little anxiety-provoking, especially depending on the context. So maybe you’re a little nervous about not looking awkward, making a good impression, maybe they’re wearing an interesting outfit and you notice their smile, and then you go to shake their hand and they say their name, and you were focused on all these other things. It’s not that you can’t remember names. It’s just that the spotlight was not on the name, and it didn’t get in.

So what about these emotionally charged moments? When we experience something that is emotionally charged, whether it’s a super joyful emotion, a scary emotion, sadness, whatever it is, those moments are encoded into our brain with more salience than something that was neutral. I don’t remember what I ate for breakfast because there really wasn’t much attachment to my egg sandwich. Whereas if someone cuts me off in traffic and I have to pull over to the side and my heart is racing and I was afraid, I’m probably going to remember every time I go to that corner that that experience happened.

And then what happens when that memory is triggered by something or we remember it for some other reason? When we go to pull that memory out or retrieve it and we reconstruct it, we’re reconstructing it with the emotion that was attached to it. And oftentimes when that happens again and again and again, that can start to create a narrative around that thing.

The example I wrote in that article was a kid in class. You’re in high school, you raise your hand in class to answer a question, and the teacher says, “No, that was the wrong answer,” and a bunch of kids laugh. Now you feel shame. You feel like, “That was dumb.” You might start telling yourself a narrative like, “I’m stupid and I don’t do well under pressure.” And anytime moving forward, if there’s a chance to be called on, whether it’s in future classes or maybe in professional meetings, that feeling of shame that you had when those other kids laughed at you is attached to that feeling. And then you start telling yourself the narrative of, “I’m someone that doesn’t speak up,” or “I don’t do well under pressure.” And then that becomes part of the narrative of who you are, part of your identity, so to speak.

Dr. Aaron Kaplan:
That makes a lot of sense. And so the emotional experience you have is connected to the memory, and then that becomes part of the data feedback loop to you that gives you the narrative about yourself, and then you develop that piece of identity about that.

So I’m guessing that this idea of having multiple self-aspects, a greater sense of self-complexity, is psychologically good for people. I’m gathering from what I read from what you wrote that that would be sort of your thesis. Could you tell us a bit why?

Dr. Elizabeth Mateer:
Absolutely. And you are right. That is part of my thoughts on the topic. The reason is that people with more identities or more aspects are overall more psychologically protected, and therefore they’re more resilient.

I think another way to describe this is that having multiple aspects of your identity sort of distributes emotional risk in the same way that a diversified investment portfolio kind of distributes risk. If you’re someone that has a very narrow identity, meaning maybe their identity is very wrapped up in their career and they identify as whatever their job is and that is who they are, they introduce themselves as that, they see themselves as that, and then something goes wrong at their job, all of a sudden their sense of self-worth is very depleted.

Whereas someone that holds multiple aspects of their identity, maybe their job is important to them and they see themselves as a doctor, but they’re also a parent and a friend, and they are a painter, and they like to travel. So something goes wrong at work, and they have all these other aspects of their identity that keep them afloat and hold them up when something goes wrong in one aspect of their life.

It’s sort of protective in that it still allows them to have access to competence and connection and meaning in their life in other ways rather than just being wrapped up in this one aspect of their identity.

Dr. Aaron Kaplan:
Yeah, you don’t have all of your identity eggs in one basket, so to speak, and you can ride through rough times in one thing if you feel good or engaged in other aspects of yourself. That makes a lot of sense and probably a good reason why it’s important for people to explore different things and create different parts of themselves and cultivate them so they’re not over-relying on one aspect in case they’re struggling there sometimes.

I believe I recall you mentioning something about the concept of authenticity in your writing, or if you didn’t label it as authenticity, just sort of this concept of showing up as those aspects of yourself that you really connect with in an authentic sort of way. I’m wondering: some people might think, this idea that Dr. Mateer is talking about, where you’re different with your friends than you are at work and in this situation and that situation, doesn’t that make you sort of a fake person? You’re like a chameleon and there’s really no real you there. How would you respond to that?

Dr. Elizabeth Mateer:
This is actually one of my favorite topics, and I think one misconception that we have about authenticity is that it’s showing up the same everywhere consistently. Like there is one sort of true self, and if we don’t show up as our true self in every context, then we are somehow inauthentic. I don’t think that’s true.

I think that, again, kind of going back to this idea that our brain is adaptive and it is concerned with safety and showing up appropriately in every context, it’s not realistic to show up exactly as this one quote-unquote true self in every context.

And the key difference here, because there is a way to be inauthentic and there is a way to be authentic across all of these different contexts, is that I think ultimately being truly authentic means behaving in a way that is in alignment with your values. Whereas if you’re showing up in a different context and you’re different in a way that’s not in alignment with your values, then you’re performing.

Healthy adaptation is flexibility across contexts.

I can give an example of what I mean by the difference between moving in alignment with your values and performing. Say you’re in some sort of supervisor role at your job and you hold the values of being a collaborative supervisor who believes in positive reinforcement and not shaming folks when they mess up and likes to create collaborative solutions to problems. Those are your values.

However, you’re trained by someone who holds the values of publicly shaming people when they do something wrong. And when one of your subordinates makes some sort of error at work, they want you to discipline them by their public shaming method. Now, if you go along with that and you publicly shame them when they do something wrong, now you are being inauthentic because you’re not behaving in a way that’s in alignment with your values.

Whereas if you pull them into the office, collaborate with them, and create an employee improvement plan, that is behaving in alignment with your values. In both of those contexts, you’re still showing up as the professional version of yourself. You still have that professional identity. But one way you’re behaving authentically, whereas the other way you’re behaving inauthentically.

And then you go home and maybe you hang out with your spouse and you’re in sort of a different aspect of your identity, but you can show up authentically or inauthentically in your personal relationship as well.

Dr. Aaron Kaplan:
Yeah, I like that way of looking at values as defining for yourself what’s authentic, as opposed to the specific role that you’re playing. Whether you’re at a poetry slam versus you’re at work, if you’re adhering to values in all of those situations, then you’re being authentic, even if those are different versions of yourself showing up.

And that concept of psychological flexibility and values, that’s kind of a popular concept these days in the literature. You see it popping up with the ACT literature and also in other places. So that’s really consistent.

But why do you think it is that there’s pushback on that, that people maybe believe there should be one version of the self and this idea of multiple versions of the self across different kinds of situations is problematic? Where do we get that from?

Dr. Elizabeth Mateer:
I think, as human beings, we like things to be simple. We like things to be organized. Our brain likes to put things in boxes. That’s why we have biases. We get all this information, and again, our brain works for us and it works against us sometimes. We take so much information in, and our brain is trying to be efficient and categorize things, and sometimes we make mistakes. Oftentimes it’s happening quickly.

And it’s easier for us to synthesize simple information. So I think that’s part of the reason why we have this tendency toward wanting to have sort of one true self across context. But the reality is we are complex human beings with different interests and roles in the world. I don’t know if it’s possible for there to just be one true version of ourselves.

Dr. Aaron Kaplan:
You said something interesting in your writings. This is the idea that a person may have some aspect of their identity that maybe is sort of latent. Maybe it shows up a little bit later in life. Let’s just take you, for example, that you were really into dancing and artistic things as a younger person, and then you developed a professional role as a neuropsychologist. I know you’re still interested in poetry and those things also. But I’m imagining that for some people, maybe those things get sidelined for a while and then they show up later in life, and it’s important. Can you say a little bit about that phenomenon?

Dr. Elizabeth Mateer:
Just practically speaking, life gets busy in early adulthood. Whether you’re in school or folks start families, have children, make big financial investments, there’s a lot of life that’s happening that I think takes people away from, in my case, a creative pursuit.

And one thing that’s interesting about creativity specifically is that it pulls from different aspects of our life. It’s kind of like the synthesis of elements of experience and environments and emotions, knowledge, et cetera. So as we get older, we have more time to accumulate those things. We have more experiences, more knowledge, more relationships, more lessons, more emotional highs and lows. We’ve likely experienced really sad things happening, like loss, and also really joyful things. So the older you get, the more wealth of experience you have to draw from.

And I think that also gives people time to kind of prioritize, okay, these are the things that I want to pay attention to. There is some aspect of privilege in this as well, if you have the availability and the time to give yourself a moment of space to think about, okay, now I want to pursue something creative, or I want to come back to this, or I want to find something new.

But I think when folks are able to do that, it can come back with so much. And I see this with the patients I work with, and I also see this in myself. Coming back to something after a period, or discovering something new, can add this really beautiful element of dimension to our lives.

Dr. Aaron Kaplan:
Yeah. I also imagine that as people get older, they start to take a step back and look existentially at their lives and what’s meaningful to them. And then, especially as people begin to retire or step back from their careers and they’re trying to tap into meaning and purpose, reconnecting with parts of themselves, especially the creative aspects, would be really important. Because then you’re sort of pivoting from one role to another, because it’s already there, it’s just latent, and maybe it hasn’t been cultivated in recent years because there’s been so much focus on career. But it would seem to me that that’s important for people to have that to fall back on and then to refocus on as they’re moving into different phases.

Dr. Elizabeth Mateer:
One thing that I’ve gained personally from working with older folks is that we never know where life is going to take us. You can really think that your life is headed in one direction and then things can be drastically different. Some people handle that better and other people don’t.

And this is purely anecdotal from seeing patients that I’ve worked with, but folks that tend to have their identity wrapped up in one thing, whether it was their job or their role as a spouse or a parent, if that thing is taken away, they tend to have worse outcomes. They tend to have a much harder time adjusting to being at an older age, usually with some health problems if they’re coming in to see me, versus folks that have diversified their lives a bit more and have different interests and hobbies and things that they’re involved in. They tend to do better as they get older.

Dr. Aaron Kaplan:
That’s consistent with what you were saying earlier about kind of diversifying your roles and your identity across different contexts so that all the eggs aren’t in one basket. So that makes a lot of sense.

I don’t know if you see this in your practice, and it probably relates to this concept that we’re talking about, about people maybe over-identifying with things that happened to them in the past to create their narratives and sort of saying, how can I ignore all of these things that happened and imagine myself not identifying strongly with that history that I have, maybe preventing them from growing into something else or something different that would be better for them or adaptive for them or fulfilling for them? How do you work with those kinds of people? What would you say?

Dr. Elizabeth Mateer:
This is where one of my favorite topics, and one of the topics of this talk, comes in: neuroplasticity.

It can be very hard when something significant happens in our past, whether it’s trauma or whatever the case may be. It can be very hard to separate that from your identity. There’s a lot of narrative around, okay, I am the way I am because of these things and all the things that happened to me. Well, there is an element of removing agency from yourself in that. Sure, things can happen to you, but we still have agency and choice in how we move forward.

And what’s cool about the brain is that, like I said before, we’re not replaying necessarily our memories exactly as they happened. We have the opportunity to maybe not rewrite a story, but we can change how we relate to things that have happened to us in the past.

For example, say there’s some sort of thing that we’re attached to that we’ve made part of our identity. I’ll use the example of attachment styles. This is very popular these days on psychology TikTok. Folks will say, “I show up in my relationship this way because I have an anxious attachment style,” or “I have an avoidant attachment style, and so that’s just how I am in relationships.”

Sure, our attachment styles are developed in childhood from our early experiences with our caregivers. But the piece of the research that people don’t like to acknowledge is that we can work to change our attachment styles by, A, understanding them. And so that’s where going into the past comes from. But B, when you show up in dating or in your new relationship, recognizing, when my partner says this and I have the instinct or the urge to react this way, I recognize that as part of my anxious attachment style, and now I’m going to make the choice to react differently.

And in doing so, if you’re able to pause, recognize where that’s coming from, that’s the pattern from the past, and make a choice to do something different, you’re sort of creating a new neural pathway and you’re effectively allowing your brain to do its thing and start to change the way that you show up moving forward and not let that rewrite the story, rewrite the narrative about how you are in that situation.

Does that make sense?

Dr. Aaron Kaplan:
Of course it does. And it sounds like by consciously deciding to show up differently, you end up getting reinforced for that behavior, probably in a positive sort of way. If you do something differently than what you’ve done before, that’s part of your narrative that is self-sabotaging or bad for you in some way, you try something different, and it goes well, then you’re more apt to do it in the future and then rewrite that narrative of yourself.

And I wanted to say one other thing too, and that is that I think what we see in therapy a lot, and I’m sure that you see this all the time too, is that when people have a narrative about themselves, I like to call it a core irrational belief. That’s kind of one of my buzz terms, and I work with my patients using that concept. But you’re usually looking for evidence to confirm that narrative about yourself, and you’re discounting evidence or data that would contradict it, right?

So part of it is saying, I’m an uncreative person, or I’m awkward around people and people are awkward with me, and you’re looking for evidence of that happening. But it doesn’t necessarily happen all the time. Some of the time, you might be having experiences that go very, very well, but those aren’t the ones you’re paying attention to. So in therapy, we’re trying to focus on the other aspects, the contradictory data or the data that shows that maybe your narrative isn’t as fixed as you think it is.

Dr. Elizabeth Mateer:
Right. And I love that example, because what you just said is we’re not paying attention to the things that are maybe not reinforcing this narrative that we have about ourselves. This comes back to attention again. What are we paying attention to and what are we focusing on?

If I’m focused on being an imposter in this room and I don’t deserve to be here, and I walk in and I see someone I know and they don’t acknowledge me, that reinforces my belief that I don’t deserve to be here. And it doesn’t matter that a minute later, three of my colleagues come up to me and say hi. I’m still focused. I’m paying attention to that one negative event.

Dr. Aaron Kaplan:
Exactly. That’s a perfect example of that.

So how would somebody, are there signs that a person could pay attention to that would suggest to them or give them pause to say, maybe I’ve become too narrow or too rigid in the way I think or feel about myself as a person, and this is sort of working against my best interest?

Dr. Elizabeth Mateer:
I think one sign, and this one can be hard, but if this is happening it will come up, is if something goes awry or amiss and everything else falls apart because of that. So say you’ve really narrowed in on your romantic relationship, and then something goes wrong in the romantic relationship, and then everything in the rest of your life starts kind of falling apart and it’s very hard to keep it together. It’s hard to perform at work. It’s hard to socialize. That’s probably a sign that maybe your identity is a little bit too wrapped up in your relationship.

Does that make sense?

Dr. Aaron Kaplan:
Yeah, it does. You’re right. So it’s sort of like that collapsing of your identity when something doesn’t go well. An overreaction, so to speak, of your general position in life might be an indication of that.

So are there ways that people could sort of work to counteract that or even develop themselves? How do people broaden their identity, maybe reclaim sidelined interests that they might have, and just sort of branch out and become more broadly engaged, have different narratives in different places? How do people cultivate this?

Dr. Elizabeth Mateer:
This is one of my favorite topics. My friends kind of make fun of me because this is something I’m very good at. They’re always making fun of me. They’re like, “You just started painting. You have an easel set up across the room.” I just went to the store and started doing that. I was like, yeah, I’m going to be a painter now.

So this isn’t something that I have a problem with, which is why I’m so passionate about it. But I think that this is actually something that, if it’s not natural to you, it can be really hard to do.

I think starting very small is important. Sometimes it’s as simple as going back to, what did I enjoy when I was a child? For me, I used to love reading fantasy books, and somewhere along the way, through all my grad school, I stopped reading fantasy novels. I picked one up recently and I was like, oh my gosh, I love doing this. I love this type of story.

So I think that’s a really great place for people to start if they’re very lost. Just to say, well, in school I was on the soccer team. Then maybe there’s an adult league that plays, maybe I can join that. I think that’s a good way to start.

Also, I think working on the trait, and this kind of goes back to the personality thing, of openness. Working on our openness, just being open to new ideas, open to trying new things, and open to failing and looking stupid. I think that’s something people are very afraid of. People don’t want to be cringey. People don’t want to be perceived as failing at something, trying and failing. There’s a lot of shame, I think, sometimes in trying something new and not being good at it, and trying to just remove that.

Dr. Aaron Kaplan:
Yeah, so people perceive a fair amount of risk in trying new and different things. Will I fail at it? Will I look silly? Will it go okay? Will I even enjoy it again? What if I don’t? There’s a lot of that psychological risk that people perceive, but I’m gathering people should try anyway. Because if you don’t, then you stay stuck.

Dr. Elizabeth Mateer:
This is one of the ways that our brain can work against us. It’s that protective mechanism, that safety aspect. It’s protective in a professional setting, but it can hold us back when it comes to maybe experiencing life to the fullest.

Dr. Aaron Kaplan:
Sure. Elizabeth, this has been a super interesting conversation. I really enjoyed talking with you about this topic. I’m wondering if you have any final thoughts you’d like to leave us with about all of this.

Dr. Elizabeth Mateer:
Thank you. I’ve enjoyed this conversation as well.

I think my final thoughts on this are to remember that we are not fixed as human beings. Every day we have the opportunity to rewrite parts of our story, parts of our identity. We can really build who we are, and we get to create who we become, and I think that that’s really cool.

Dr. Aaron Kaplan:
Awesome. So we have agency in our own destinies here.

Thank you so much for that, and thanks again for coming on to the show. I really enjoyed speaking with you, and keep up the great work and the writing you’re doing, and also your poetry and other exciting creative stuff that you’re into. That’s so cool.

Dr. Elizabeth Mateer:
Thank you. I appreciate it.