At the start of any gathering, you may note the presence of any of 18 different social Personas each identified by their own familiar front facing temperaments.

Which one were you today?

Choose 2 Personas familiar to you and observe how they change as you progress through the slideshow.

Our temperament in the group give us a familiar way to establish to others our Aspirational qualities. Others may share our same aspirations. Or we may hold these qualities alone. They remain our own chosen signatures for how we hope to be seen as sovereign individuals.

Gradually our unique aspirations begin to coalesce into the shared group field. We begin to notice internal feelings arising that stem from the interactions of others. We begin to see our own preferred qualities reflected in the faces of others. The lines begin to smear between self and others. We hold not just a subjective point of view but an intersubjective one as well that is being co-constructed by all present.

Not soon after joining the intersubjective field, we notice our own internal resistance. Each front facing temperament has its own built in back facing shadow that steps in when we feel threatened. And there is something universally threatening about our absorption into a shared group identity!

Resistance may be disconcerting but we come to groups specifically to learn to anticipate and tame these recurring emotional patterns.

Our shadow emotions may be built in to our chosen personas but they need not control our social behaviors. Here are outlined the defense mechanisms commonly employed by each Persona. The health of the group depends upon the deliberate work of each member to experience their uncomfortable shadow feelings without perpetuating these habitual defenses.

Refraining from our built in defenses puts us in direct line of fire with our worst feelings.

As everything feels worse, we look to escape toward a more comfortable framework.

Feeling defenseless, we may choose to swap out our failing group persona for one more oriented toward self preservation or 1:1 connection. This strategy allows us to establish a new persona similar to the one we had before but with less commitment to the safety of the group.

Why stay invested with a group even as everyone’s shadow emotions have depleted the aspirational fun that brought you here in the first place?

It’s an important question. Why stay?

Of course, everyone’s aspirational goals (of the first three Acts) are still active, just dampened by the legacies of hurt that have hijacked their way in. Most are now seeking corrective experiences for past group failures. This works, until it doesn’t. Each shadow pattern repeated resounds the clarion call to drop the ball and run.

A Group Self is different than the family that you were assigned to at birth. A Group Self is your adult interior experience that you take with you as you engage with multiple interchangeable sets of people. Free will is part of this game’s design. It’s expected that you will leave.

For those entering the next Acts, the floor is dropped out of the maps we have used so far. You will be letting go of the chess piece you have been handling so far and starting again.

This time as something else.

Just as there were intersubjective fields containing the group’s aspirations, you now sense new shared fields arising to house the group’s most destructive habitual patterns.

Triangulation between adversaries, favoritisms, gaslighting, the lies of charlatans and the desperate retaliations of their rubes.

Though everyone blames everyone else, it becomes hard to find root causes for the insecurity. The field itself seems to carry the infection. Group Spirits have taken seat, each carrying their own particular resonance of hurt.

Next to your Persona you will see Group Spirits that have arrived in part due to your shadow’s interactions with others. You may now choose to accept its fate and follow where next it leads. More than likely, there are other Group Spirits that appear more pertinent to your journey. Choose any one that seems most critical to the group’s well being.

At this point, every Group Spirit is whispering in everyone’s ear. They each are everyone’s business.

If you’ve done the introspection necessary to identify the flavor of the specific Group Spirits that most commonly beset your own experience in groups, then you are not far from sensing the presence of hidden entities we can call Submergencies.

As archetypal influences, submergent aspects of life’s origination can be provoked by the slightest nuances of group interaction. These are the dark forces required in the chemical forging of the human dream. They can be subtly insinuated through normal everyday gestures and tone. Though often vehemently denied… and it’s as though they have been there all along.

“Wow you seem pretty defensive there chief, I wonder just what it is you are trying to hide from us all?”

As inflammatory as the accusations may be, we can also see Act Eight as a critical one in “naming the unutterable” and providing space for transparent and genuine group connection.