Transcripts

Rita Carter:
So, for example, a mother - she has to be Mom at breakfast time; three hours later she might be in a board meeting where she's got to be very assertive and think about big things. And she kind of needs to keep those things separate.

Rita Carter, author of the book Multiplicity, contends that we don't have a core personality, instead we have lots of different, distinct personalities.

Until you recognize that you have lots of different people inside you, you will never get control of it. Because at the moment what happens is we go around thinking, "Oh, I'm going to be me, the same me tomorrow." And so when another personality takes over (is triggered by a new situation), we are completely taken by surprise. So, I don't know if it's happened to you but it often happens to me, I will wake up around four o'clock in the morning and think back to something I did the night before and think, "Why did I do that? What was I thinking?"

Identifying and understanding our different personalities can be very helpful.

The point is that once you know it's there you can then start to say, "Well, what triggers this, what brings it out?" Because all of your personalities were created for a purpose, they didn't come into being for nothing. They were all created because they were initially a reaction to a particular type of situation.

At somethingyoushouldknow.net I'm Mike Carruthers and that's Something You Should Know.