Why an Alter Ego could be the Key to Stress Management
One of the things that I most delight in about my three-year-old son is his alter ego, Woostuz.
Woostuz (exact spelling unknown, but it nearly rhymes with “Rooster’s”) is a small hunchback character who walks stiffly around, arms splayed out past his hips, hands in fists and his face a grimace.
He views the world through tightly squinted eyes, as if his bent back and poor eyesight might account for his contrary, unreasonable and often highly comedic behavior. 😆
Woostuz also speaks gibberish in a low, grouchy voice that sounds a lot like he's cursing a blue streak.
When Woostuz is around, get ready for disruption, and also be prepared to laugh.
When I see my son start to hunch over and squint his eyes, I say, “Oh no, watch out! It’s Woostuz!”
When you have a three-year-old, you spend most of your time in complex negotiations.
How to convince him to brush his teeth, stay seated at the dinner table, put on his own socks, clean up his toys, go to bed, get ready to leave, ad infinitum.
Everyone gets tired of it. Including my son. 😩
Woostuz is a novel way of offering a bit of comic relief from all of it.
We get a laugh. I can usually take a break from whatever I’m trying to get him to do. And he gets to let loose and also be freed momentarily from “behaving” and doing what he’s supposed to do.
I love Woostuz. I’ve even been seen around the house doing my own Woostuz impression, much to the children’s delight.
Using an alter ego to stretch ourselves out of our comfort zone
As a coach, I’m always interested in how we can stretch ourselves to do the things that we find difficult (consistently), and how to gradually adopt the behaviors that will ultimately support us in growing into the person we want to be.
Using an alter ego is a really interesting, effective and often light-hearted way to do that.
I was first introduced to the idea of using an alter ego on the Work Life podcast episode, "The real reason you procrastinate".
Adam Grant, the host, had Margaret Atwood on the show.
It turns out that the bestselling author (including the legendary The Handmaid’s Tale) is a major procrastinator … and she uses an alter ego to help her stay on task and not while away her writing time on Twitter, for example.
Atwood explains, “I had another name that I grew up with, and that gave me two names. So I had a double identity. So Margaret does the writing pen 🖊 and the other one does everything else … Peggy does the laundry 🧺. Now there is, of course, some overlap. Because sometimes when Peggy's doing the laundry, Margaret is thinking about what is being written. Deciding what to write is done by Margaret. Deciding when to write is sometimes a tug of war.”
I thought it was hilarious. Shortly after, I mentioned it to my sister on a phone call.
Completely nonplussed, she said, “I have an alter ego too.”
It turned out that she also used her alter ego to deal with all the day-to-day logistics that went into managing her career and raising three adopted kids with her husband.
On her text messaging app, my sister had a separate conversation between her husband and her alter ego (let's call her Sigrid, this alter-ego is a very orderly, no-nonsense persona) where they exclusively communicated about all the admin and logistics of their complicated family life.
What a great idea, I thought.
My own husband and I had found, especially during the height of the pandemic, that our relationship was often overwhelmed by all the transactional, often stress-infused exchanges about how to keep our family ship afloat.
What about the fun, the romance, the laughs? If admin takes over, where is the space for that?
Well, if one were to use my sister’s tactic, which put all that no-fun logistical back and forth into Sigrid's capable hands, I imagine that would leave more room in real life to engage in the lighter parts of a marriage that are also needed to survive hard times.
Sigrid tells her husband what time the kids need to be picked up and where. She reminds him to buy milk and to call the furnace cleaning service.
Then, when my sister and her husband cross paths later in the kitchen, she might then be able to share something funny that happened at work that day.
Creating your alter ego
Do you have an alter ego? Maybe you’ve already been using this technique without entirely being conscious of it.
To get even more value out of it, maybe give it a bit more of your attention. Notice when you use it and how, and the benefits you get from it.
Or, if you’ve never tried out an alter ego, and are curious about it, you might want to try it for situations where:
More lightness and humor might make it easier;
You’re trying something totally new, and/or;
You could use a boost of confidence
Trying on a slightly different – or even exaggerated – persona could definitely help.
Now … who should that persona be? What characteristics might they have?
Well, often the answer is quite intuitive, but if you need a nudge, perhaps your alter ego already embodies, in some way, who you would like to be in this situation.
Take my son and Woostuz, for example: My son would sometimes like to be totally rebellious and totally in power!
His alter-ego helps him feel more in control – of people’s attention, of his own destiny, all of it.
Plus, it gives him a light-hearted break from the tyranny of always being bossed around by everyone bigger than him (Mom, Dad, Big Sister, the whole world!).
So … who might you choose for your alter ego? And what might they help you accomplish, with greater lightness and humor?
We have a tendency in life to get stuck in our patterns.
Sometimes, we even get typecast in our own minds, limiting our ideas about what we're capable of and what's possible for us.
Alter egos give us an opportunity to play with that, and open up our world and the possibilities once more. 🌎
